Rudolf Karl Bultmann

Rudolf Karl Bultmann , 1884-1976, German existentialist theologian, educated at the universities of Tübingen, Berlin, and Marburg. He taught at the universities of Breslau and Giessen and from 1921 to 1950 was professor at the Univ. of Marburg. Strongly influenced by the existentialist philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Bultmann is best known for his work on the New Testament, which he reduced—with the exception of the Passion—to basic elements of myth, which then have application to contemporary concerns. His approach is termed "demythologization." His classic work is Theology of the New Testament (tr. 1951). Other writings in English translation include Essays, Philosophical and Theological (1952, tr. 1955), Primitive Christianity in its Contemporary Setting (1949, tr. 1963), Jesus and the World (1951, tr. 1958), The Gospel of John (1953, tr. 1971), The History of the Synoptic Tradition (1957, 2d ed. tr. 1968); see also his selected shorter writings, Existence and Faith (tr. 1960); studies by E. T. Lang (1968), Walter Schmithals (tr. 1968), and André Malet (tr. 1969).

Bultmann, Rudolf (1884–1976), NT scholar and theologian. He was a professor at Marburg from 1921 until he retired in 1951. He carried the methods of Form Criticism to the point where any historical value in the Synoptic Gospels was called into question. In his Jesus (1926; Eng. tr., Jesus and the Word, 1934), he presented the mission of Jesus as summoning His followers to a decision. Bultmann combined his biblical scholarship with the dialectical theology of K. Barth and the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone to make an almost complete hiatus between history and faith, leaving only the bare fact of Christ crucified as necessary for Christian faith. He regarded St Paul and the author of Jn. as the only genuine theologians of the NT, because they offer an interpretation of human existence and see talk of God, Christ, and salvation, in terms of the individual's changed self-understanding effected by the proclaimed Word or kerygma. Narrowing the theological focus in this way involved criticizing the cosmological elements in the NT as ‘myth’, and it was his programme of demythologizing the NT which in the 1940s and 1950s made Bultmann notorious. Latterly his aim to make the Christian message intelligible in the modern world has been more widely respected.