Bultmann, Rudolf (1884–1976)

Rudolf Bultmann was one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the period that immediately followed the Second World War. A founding member of the school of dialectical theology in the 1920s, he was a major New Testament scholar, who refined the method of form criticism. He argued that the Synoptic Gospels reveal not the historical Jesus, but the Christ of faith, the Christ-myth developed by the early church. The existentialist philosophy of Martin Heidegger was a major influence, and he adapted it to the needs of Christian theology, devising an existential access to faith. He contrasted Historie – objective, factual accounts of historical events – with Geschichte – the meaning that people choose to give to those events. One must demythologize the New Testament – strip it of its prescientific imagery – before one can interpret its significance for oneself. Bultmann defined biblical hermeneutics as an inquiry into the reality of human existence and proposed a new understanding of the person and teaching of Christ. Central to this is the concept of the kerygma, the proclamation of the salvation-event focused on Christ. It is in response to the kerygma that a human being can actively opt for faith. Bultmann reinterpreted the Lutheran doctrine of justification and the theology of the cross in the light of this.