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.
