Bultmann in Retrospect 1

Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) is the one twentieth-century biblical scholar who sits comfortably alongside Barth among the greatest Christian theologians of his time. That judgment would be disputed by those who reject the liberal theological tradition of Schleiermacher, Ritschl and Herrmann in which he stood, but he developed it in ways that strengthened its claims to continuity with classical and Reformation Christianity, and today he seems more mainstream than English theologians once thought. Like Barth and the greatest of their liberal predecessors, he can be read for what he has to say today, not merely as an exercise in the history of theology, valuable as that is too when respect for tradition cannot be assumed. Bultmann’s theological stature is still, however, partly concealed by the kind of theology he taught and wrote. Modern specialization and the secularization of biblical scholarship are inimical to NT theology. Its central place in both theology and biblical scholarship 50 years ago is discounted by those who want a purely secular discipline. Equally unsurprisingly, Christian theological educators who advocate pre- or post-modern kinds of biblical interpretation which resist historical criticism are unsympathetic to Bultmann’s synthesis of that and a modern confessional theology.

Reservations about the hegemony of historical scholarship in theological study of the Bible are surely justified. Twentieth-century NT interpretation learned less from Barth (and earlier from Schleiermacher) than it might have done. But unqualified hostility to the Enlightenment has hindered Christian engagement with modernity, and the unresolved tension between traditional Christian ways of reading the Bible and the anti-supernaturalism of much modern theology still makes for unease with critical historical study. Most theologians now use rational methods in biblical study without sharing the world-view they have seemed to presuppose, but belief in God has been so long associated with miraculous interventions that loosening this connection has not been straightforward, and the various bridges built by NT theology have not always been appreciated, or their theological aims understood. Many Christian scholars see no reason for NT theologies which draw on philosophical resources to clarify these texts’ talk of God, and Bultmann’s project interpreted away much of the biblical language.

But conservative NT theologies have also been slipping out of the scholarly mainstream. Christian theological interpretations of the Bible are still heard if not well understood by the wider culture, but the combination of religious interests and rational methods typical of NT theology can appear an unnecessary diversion to students whose motivations, whether religious or not, are remote from the systematic theology that has provided the discipline’s main conversation partner. Interest in a divine subject-matter which eludes historical research seemed to undermine the scholarly integrity of critical historians, but even where academic rigour has prevailed, biblical theology has seemed stale to scholars whose interests are primarily aesthetic, historical or social-scientific. All these methods and perspectives do currently contribute to this discipline pioneered by Gabler and G.L. Bauer, but in theological contexts modern approaches to texts are typically accompanied by religious interests, 2 Cor. 6.14 notwithstanding. Without that overarching religious interest shared by Bultmann and his theological opponents, NT theology would deserve to wither. The question of God may now be addressed in different ways, with religious and moral practice complementing doctrine and its philosophical supports, but only approaches to theological interpretation which reject Western rationality can afford to ignore post-Enlightenment strategies.

A further factor relegating Bultmann to the ranks of those who were important in their day but not for later generations is that theological edifices built on historical-critical scholarship are inevitably more precarious than those less vulnerable to the shifting sands of historical research. Biblical scholarship has advanced by rejecting hypotheses which have proved implausible in the light of new evidence or assessments. The great monuments of systematic theology are also context-specific, but some of them are more durable than theological constructions which depend more directly on historical scholarship. Bultmann’s synthesis was more solid than Baur’s because built on a century’s further historical research, but many of his literary and history-of-religions hypotheses have inevitably been superseded. Many scholars remain critical of his theological standpoint, and some doubt whether his fusion of theology and exegesis provides the best model for theological interpretation. But his Pauline and Johannine interpretation are more than mere landmarks in the history of biblical research. He was sharply critical of liberal life of Jesus research, but in 1926 wrote the luminous Jesus book translated as Jesus and the Word (1934).

Bultmann’s clarity of thought and style have survived some unsatisfactory translation, and the less familiar parts of his oeuvre, written before he was internationally famous, also have much to offer a later generation. His international scholarly reputation was delayed by Germany’s political isolation and by the perceived negativity of both his gospel criticism and his demythologizing, but a longer perspective has resulted in more positive appreciations of his achievement. The difficulty in translating existentiale Interpretation ² reflects the difficulty of understanding it, but Jüngel taught a new generation not to choose between Barth and Bultmann; rather to learn from both. His centenary edition of Bultmann’s 1926–36 lecture courses on Theologische Enzyklopädie (1984a), translated by Roy Harrisville as What is Theology? (1997), confirms his primary vocation as a theologian.

A more intimate understanding of Bultmann in his family, university, church and political contexts has been made possible by recent well-annotated editions of correspondence with Krüger (Lilie 1997–2000), Gogarten (Göckeritz 2002), Heidegger (Großmann and Landmesser 2009), Althaus (Dreher 2012) and Bornkamm (Zager 2014), following the more illuminating exchanges with Barth (1911–66, published in Jaspert 1971; 1994; ET 1981). These include a few other items, and the most revealing correspondence with Käsemann (77 letters) currently being edited by Landmesser remains available in the Tϋbingen University library. Their disagreements add spice. The index to the Nachlass (Waßmann, Osthof and Bruckhaus 2001) contains 3,412 items, some of interest.

Bultmann’s sermons have long been held to illuminate his theology, and the first collection of Marburger Predigten (1956), translated as This World and the Beyond (1960) has been supplemented by Grässer’s edition of Das verkündigte Wort (Bultmann 1984b), containing 34 of the 128 sermons and so forth that it overviews. Other centenary celebrations included the publication of his Habilitationsschrift on the exegesis of Theodore of Mopsuestia (1912) edited by the Tübingen Roman Catholic theologians Helmut Feld and K.H. Schelkle (1984), and the 28 essays in Bernd Jaspert’s collection Rudolf Bultmanns Werk und Wirkung (1984). Some of the best very recent work has also appeared in journals and collections of essays, especially those edited by Ulrich Körtner, Jesus im 21 Jahrhundert: Bultmanns Jesusbuch und die heutige Jesusforschung (2002); Christof Landmesser and A. Klein, Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976): Theologe der Gegenwart (2010); and Martin Bauspiess, Christof Landmesser and F. Portenhauser (eds.), Theologie und Wirklichkeit (2011). These stem from meetings of the Bultmann Gesellschaft which flourishes.

Most effective in re-igniting a wider interest in Bultmann’s life and thought is the major biography of Konrad Hammann (2009), now available in English (2013). It deserves a wide Anglophone readership on account of its patient exposition of Bultmann’s main writings, including several key early articles. A biography was long overdue, to join Busch on Barth (1975; ET 1976) and Bethge on Bonhoeffer (1978, ET 1970). Hammann does not have the close links with his subject that Busch and Bethge had with theirs, but he goes further than they do in explicating the writings. His scale (582 pages) allows him to analyse them in greater detail than is found in other introductions to Bultmann’s thought.

Several of the older discussions are better value than some more recent work. See René Marlé (1956), Otto Schnübbe (1959), John Macquarrie (1955 and 1960) Schubert Ogden (1961), A. Malet (1962), G. Ebeling (1962, ET 1966), Walter Schmithals (1966, ET 1968), R.A. Johnson (1974), Maurice Boutin (1974), Ole Jensen (1975), R.C. Roberts (1976), Wolfgang Stegemann (1978), Anthony Thiselton (1980), John Painter (1987), Gunnar Sinn (1991), David Fergusson (1992) and James Kay (1994) among the best. These are often penetrating on specific issues, and the lucidity and brevity of Kay’s Christus Praesens offers a Princeton bridge to Congdon’s book which is discussed below. All these books have merit, but for an overview of the oeuvre which contextualizes it in the life, Hammann will surely remain indispensable. It does little to assess Bultmann’s significance for modern theology, and its focus is narrowly German, but it provides the necessary background and sufficient analysis of the writings to entice its readers to return to those texts and reconsider their potential.

More valuable even than this for NT specialists is the fairly recent collection of Bultmann’s most important reviews. These offer a wealth of information and incisive criticism, especially of German research prior to the new 1960s internationalizing of biblical scholarship. Rudolf Bultmann, Theologie als Kritik (2002) deserves shelf-space alongside Erich Dinkler’s collection of Bultmann’s Exegetica (1967). It contains 96 items from 1908 to 1962 (some covering more than one book), one from 1967, some brief supplementary material, including Paul Feine’s response to a hostile 1914 review, and the further damning evidence this elicited. Its indices of all the books Bultmann reviewed, and of names and subject-matter, runs to 112 pages, and will help those who use the book for reference. It is a treasure-trove, covering half a century of German NT scholarship and some classical research (Greek). Like many of his generation, Bultmann was an excellent classicist. He considered his 15-year long weekly Graeca (a classical Greek senior reading group in his home) an important and pleasurable part of his work. Reviewing was a duty he took seriously, cutting to the heart of the matter as he saw it. Not all the books reviewed are treated kindly, but the rather little English-language work discussed fares well, and sharp criticism is one kind of compliment.

It would be hard to overestimate the value of this well-chosen collection. It has been enhanced by a separate commentary on its first 62, and 59 other items from 1908–1930, in Matthias Dreher’s Rudolf Bultmann als Kritiker in seinen Rezensionen und Forschungsberichten (2005). Some of Bultmann’s essays commented on here are among the most important, but not included in the 2002 collection because they are available (also in English) in Bultmann’s Faith and Understanding, I (1969) or The Beginnings of Dialectic Theology, edited by J.M. Robinson (1968). Dreher’s commentary is supplemented by his ‘Ausblick auf die Jahre 1931–1969’ (2005: 427-57) which also deserves attention, and a total list of Bultmann’s reviews and surveys of research. The ‘Ausblick’ discusses some of Bultmann’s responses to criticism of his existentiale Interpretation. Dreher explains Bultmann’s ‘Auslegungskonzept’ with an illuminating diagram (2005: 429) which makes clear why so few understand it. Although phrases like existentiale Interpretation, Entweltlichung and Entmythologisierung do not appear in the 1920s, their content is already in place in that crucial period. Bultmann’s theological exegesis was already then determined by its object, believing self-understanding, but the attempt to combine reconstruction and interpretation dialectically in a single concept dates (he says) from about 1950 (2005: 430). By this late date the reference to existence, or the interpreter’s existential confrontation with history, determines the choices which in turn guide the reconstruction. This was not really new in 1950 because Bultmann had already argued that our preunderstanding affects our account of the reciprocal relationship between reconstruction and interpretation (2005: 430 n. 9). It can be illustrated from Bultmann’s later review of a Sebastian Franck biography in The Mennonite Quarterly Review (1958). He finds here ‘an impressive example of the power of strictly methodical historical research combined with passionate love for the subject of the research to produce an impressive historical portrait … With his objectivity as a historian (E. Teufel) combines an inner participation in Franck’s fate, and on occasion gives expression to high-spirited judgments’ (1958: 490-91). Dreher’s commentary includes a 35-page essay on Bultmann’s best-known review article, that on the second edition of Barth’s Romans ( 1922), and 11 pages each on his reviews of Barth’s 1924 book on 1 Corinthians, The Resurrection of the Dead, Dibelius’s 1925 Geschichtliche und übergeschichtliche Religion im Christentum and Hirsch’s Jesus Christus der Herr (1926), four important review articles available in English since 1968–69. Dreher also highlights Bultmann’s repudiation of Deissmann’s (and Wrede’s) repudiation of dogmatics (2005: 212). The striking change of tone in his 1924 review of the fourth edition of Deissmann’s Light from the East, from his 1908 enthusiasm for it, reflects his theological Wende (‘We have above all learned to see some things with different eyes and our judgment on Deissmann’s book is today different from what it was in 1908’ [2002: 130]). His long review of Deissmann’s Paul in 1925 (he calls it an ‘attack’) is instructive, declaring the methodological bankruptcy of an exegesis based on Paul’s personality.

Dreher finds the beginnings or first signs of Bultmann’s existentiale Interpretation in 1924 (2005: 213-22) in an important review of a long-forgotten book on Jesus by Hans Hartmann (1923). The influence of his collaboration with Heidegger is already clear here. Beyond this, 20 pages on Bultmann’s 1927 review article on recent Johannine research throw light on the start of the great commentary (1937–41), and a long discussion of the 1929 Theologische Rundschau article on the history of Pauline research stand out. Like the 1930 RGG article on Paul (ET 1960), the latter adumbrates his Theology of the New Testament, I (1948, ET 1951).

A century after Barth and Gogarten initiated what became known as ‘the dialectical theology’, and nearly 80 years after Bultmann’s demythologizing essay (which epitomized much of what he had been saying over 20 years), both debates now belong to the history of theology, disowned by some and appropriated by others. Barth and Bultmann in particular have generated volumes of research informed by the availability of new material. Martin Evang’s 1988 monograph on Rudolf Bultmann in seiner Frühzeit was a landmark, providing indispensable analysis of his early career, his ecclesial orientation (especially his sermons), his understanding of exegesis, and his theme ‘true religion’ in the early lectures, up to and including ‘Ethical and Mystical Religion in Early Christianity’ (1920). Ernst Baasland’s 1992 dissertation, Theologie und Methode: Eine historiographische Analyse der Frühschriften Rudolf Bultmanns, took this research on the young Bultmann further, and another stand-out dissertation, Gunnar Sinn’s Christologie und Existenz (1991), took Macquarrie’s analysis of Bultmann’s interpretation of Paul to a new level. These three excellent books together with those of Roger Johnson, The Origins of Demythologizing (1974), and James Kay’s Christus Praesens (1994) already mentioned set a standard unmatched by some more recent discussions of Bultmann’s theology.

In a different class from those unmentioned in this review we now have the major new monograph of David Congdon (2015a). As reservations about the accolades it has received will follow, it is appropriate first to express admiration for the scale and handsome production of this bulky volume. Its length and style make heavy demands on a reader, but its 100-page chapters have subtitles, and it succeeds in showing any who still have doubts that Bultmann was a considerable theologian even apart from his status as a biblical scholar, and was driven by a determination to communicate the gospel in the modern world, combining Enlightenment criticism and liberal scholarship with theology in the new cultural situation after the First World War. That ‘apart from’ misstates his aim and achievement, which was to combine his theology and his biblical criticism in a synthesis of theological interpretation and theological criticism of the NT. Congdon has less to say about Bultmann’s biblical interpretation than one might expect in a book on his demythologizing (which is precisely that) but succeeds in presenting him as a ‘missionary to modernity’. He claims to offer ‘a new interpretation of demythologizing’ in terms of mission because ‘Bultmann connects the dialectical nature of the theological task to the missionary nature of the church’ (2015a: 499) and ‘demythologizing names the methodological program that corresponds to the missionary praxis of the church. The practical truth of the Christ-myth is a fundamentally missionary truth’ (p. 500, italics his).

Congdon’s big book began as a Princeton Theological Seminary dissertation guided by Bruce McCormack, i.e. in systematic theology, with a Barthian background. It follows Jüngel in wanting to bridge the gulf perceived by the two giants and their followers over half a century, and it argues that Bultmann was sadly misunderstood by Barth and his acolytes. Those disposed to agree will surely praise Congdon for his detailed knowledge of the 1920s sources and much of the secondary literature but may note that his apologetic stance has left almost no room at all for any criticism of Bultmann. That corrects some imbalance, but the necessary criticisms could actually have clarified the exposition. Instead, the attempt to relate the two at times seems forced. Congdon’s account of their relationship contains useful information and some creative suggestions, but relating ‘the whale and the elephant’ in terms of their agreement about the ontological difference between God and humans leaves much unsaid, and uniting them on the basis of the ‘essence’ of dialectical theology founders on the difficulty (or impossibility) of stating what that essence was. Chapter 3, on ‘The Missionary Essence of Dialectical Theology’, rejects ‘the notion of a “pre-dialectical” period for Barth and Bultmann’ (2015a: 238) while acknowledging ‘that Barth inaugurated what we might call a dialectical revolution in modern theology’ (p. 237). The chapter throws far more light on Barth than on Bultmann, and it remains unclear what ‘the dialectical thesis’ actually is. He calls it ‘a modern apocalyptic reformation’ and ‘an apocalyptic-eschatological missionary soteriology’ (p. 288), but accumulating factors in its background does not deliver an ‘essence’. His treatment of the connection with Weiss and apocalyptic eschatology in biblical research is far from sure-footed, but his account of dialectical theology as ‘also the systematic or consistent application of reformational (sic) theology under the conditions of modernity – not just an eschatological but an epistemological radicalizing’ (p. 288) is better. The claim that dialectical theology is ‘essentially correlationist theology’, supported by some analysis by Badiou’s student Meillassou and his antipostmodern ‘speculative realism’, risks losing the dark wood in some dark trees. It is evidence of Congdon’s wide reading, but the phrase ‘dialectical theology’ surely refers not to some ‘school’ but to a loose grouping of quite different theologians who were all critical of their teachers’ generation for overlapping reasons. Gogarten was a pupil of Troeltsch, and Bultmann remained far closer than Barth to their teacher Herrmann. Congdon discusses Christophe Chalamet’s Dialectical Theologians: Wilhelm Herrmann, Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann (2005), which covers much of the same ground in a less analytic and detailed, but more readable way. He makes some sharp observations, but I think Chalamet is more right about the major influence of Herrmann on Bultmann.

Congdon’s concentration on Barth and Bultmann rightly identifies the problem of appropriate talk of God as key to both their projects, and he gives due weight to Bultmann’s objection to ‘objectifying’ language about God. His title identifies Bultmann’s aim to communicate the gospel, which can therefore be called ‘missionary’ (or evangelistic?), but the attempt to root ‘dialectical theology’ in the foreign missions’ ancestry and interest of both Barth and Bultmann is strained. The best that comes out of this possible appeal to a conservative Christian readership is Congdon’s drawing on Theo Sündermeier’s missiology to clarify Bultmann’s ‘translationism’ in chapter 6, ‘Toward a Dialectical Intercultural Hermeneutic’. This is true to Bultmann’s hermeneutical concerns, but Congdon is more interested in identifying what dialectical theology is than in showing how Bultmann’s questions arose also out of his exegetical work. His attempt to show that Bultmann’s hermeneutics were the appropriate development of ‘dialectical theology’ is true to the inner consistency of Bultmann’s progress in the 1920s, but tying it to the ‘essence’ of dialectical theology seems artificial. It grew out of Bultmann’s developing a theological exegesis in his own intellectual and cultural (not yet political) context. The impetus provided by Barth’s Romans (1922) was decisive, but his desire to discuss the issues was not fully reciprocated by Barth, who saw the differences between them more clearly. Apart from a brief section on the Johannine ‘Word made flesh’ (2015a: 482-85), one could almost read Congdon’s thousand pages without realizing that Bultmann was a professor of NT, let alone among the greatest, even though references to Jesus and Paul in the index are copious. And calling that Johannine sub-section ‘The Paradoxical identity of Myth and Demythologizing’ uses Bultmannian words and phrases in an un-Bultmannian way, as do: ‘The myth of the whale and the elephant’, ‘the mythical picture of Bultmann’, ‘the kerygmatic Christ-myth’ (p. 496) and ‘the kerygma demythologizes the one who hears it’ (p. 495, his italics).

The first half of the book, on dialectical theology, is preparatory to Part III (2015a: 439-827) on ‘The Mission of Demythologizing’ which, following an excellent shorter chapter 5 on ‘The Truth of Myth and the Necessity of Demythologizing’, claims to reinterpret this programme ‘in the light of the missionary character of Bultmann’s dialectical theology’ (p. 436). Chapters 7, on ‘The Problem of Myth and the Program of Deconstantinizing’, and 8, on ‘Eschatological Existence and Existentialist Translation’ (pp. 687-827), are the climax of the book. Those with limited time or energy could start here and dip into the rest where the sub-headings allure. How far it all adds up to the promised ‘constructive reinterpretation of Bultmann’s hermeneutics’ (p. xviii) or shows that demythologizing fulfils the missionary origins of dialectical theology is debateable. The thesis that ‘dialectical theology is essentially a theology governed by a missionary logic, and demythologizing is the extension of this logic into hermeneutics’ (p. xxvi) perhaps presses a valid point into an artificial frame. A footnote rightly comments that ‘demythologizing is fundamentally an exercise in responsible God-talk grounded in revelation’ but also less persuasively advocates ‘the missionary interpretation of demythologizing as a critique of constantinianism’ (p. 659). The discussions and interactions with other interpreters of Bultmann, especially in some long footnotes, are illuminating, and ‘deconstantinizing’ has the merit of underlining the cultural and political dimensions of what Bultmann rejected, but Bultmann might be surprised to hear that demythologizing is ‘a repoliticizing of God-talk’ (p. 587) and of its ‘truly revolutionary potential’ (p. 591). Dorothee Sölle and Moltmann criticized it for being ‘apolitical’. That charge is not refuted by quoting David Fergusson’s (correct) observation that ‘Bultmann was not advocating an other-worldly, private religion. Christians are called upon to confess and enact the faith in the time and place in which they find themselves’ (p. 591). Congdon’s discussion of myth, Weltbild and objectification in chapter 7 are impressive but over-complicated by discussions of analogy introduced in order to argue that what Barth identifies as ‘the analogia entis is identical with what Bultmann calls “objectifying thinking”’ (p. 623). Kevin Hector (Theology without Metaphysics [2011]) is more cautious in seeing them as ‘roughly equivalent’. These sections on ‘Mythology as Primitive analogia entis’ and ‘Demythologizing as a Critical Analogia Fidei’ follow an earlier recognition that ‘unlike Barth, Bultmann does not dwell at any length on the question of analogical speech about God …’ (Congdon 2015a: 616).

The final chapter on ‘Eschatological Existence and Existentialist Translation’ begins with ‘An Introduction to Existentialist Interpretation’. This has the merit of insisting (with Fuchs) that ‘despite the semantic kinship with existentialism, the two are “not the same thing”’ and that it ‘has nothing to do with conforming scripture to a Heideggerian ontology or reducing the kerygma to an inner disposition of the heart’ (2015a: 689). What it is, however, is not made any clearer by paralleling it with ‘the intercultural method of appropriation (Aneignung) and transpropriation (Übereignung)’ which add up to ‘a hermeneutic of dialectical translationism which is the hermeneutical counterpart to dialectical correlationism’ (p. 689). The importance of pre-understanding for Bultmann is given due weight, but interpreting it as Aneignung again gets complicated. It is part of an attempt to rescue Bultmann from the criticisms of Barth and Ott by suggesting that self-understanding, not pre-understanding, is ‘the normative category in Bultmann’s thought’ (p. 697) and denying that demythologizing is motivated by an account of human existence prior to faith and the kerygma.

More light dawns with the blunt statement that ‘Bultmann’s entire body of work is one sustained refutation of Krister Stendahl’s position’ (2015a: 699) in a justly famous 1962 IDB article on ‘Biblical Theology, Contemporary’, separating ‘the historical task of descriptive exegesis from the theological task of relevant translation and application’ (p. 698). The scholarly world divides at this point (as the rest of this article will illustrate). Those who agree with Bultmann might have expected a more clearly targeted support from Congdon’s wide-ranging discussion. Those who disagree are unlikely to be persuaded, despite Congdon’s careful discussion of pre-understanding, self-understanding, Sachkritik and Entweltlichung. This final chapter’s drawing together the threads of a difficult and occasionally meandering argument is impressive but will leave some readers gasping for breath. Its final responses to some critics of Bultmann, notably Moltmann and Robert Jenson, are inconclusive, but the three short texts from Bultmann’s Nachlass in appendices are welcome. The lengthy bibliography contains some surprising gaps: in addition to J. Körner (1957), Sinn (1991) and Baasland (1992) already mentioned, Christoph Gestrich’s 1977 monograph on the split-up of dialectical theology might have helped, and C.W. Kegley’s 1966 collection, Macquarrie on The Scope of Demythologizing (1960) and Bornkamm’s 103-page survey of the literature in Theologische Rundschau (1963) remain useful.

A brief conclusion on ‘The Future of Demythologizing’ is hopeful that ‘Bultmann’s day is still to come’ (2015a: 836), but this book is unlikely to advance it. I think it was a mistake (for which the publisher must bear some responsibility) to provide only German references to Bultmann’s voluminous writings. Most of these are available in English, and Anglophone readers could have been helped to follow up Congdon’s evidence and arguments.

The lack of clear explanation of some key ideas might have been remedied in Congdon’s short ‘Companion’ to Bultmann’s theology published in the same year (2015b). Christoph Chalamet judges it ‘the best short introduction to Bultmann’s thought’, Bruce McCormack ‘a wonderful “guide”’ and ‘hard to imagine one more perfectly executed’, and Paul Jones ‘lucid and innovative’. It offers succinct chapters on eschatology, dialectic, non-objectifiability, self-understanding, kerygma, history, myth, hermeneutics, freedom, Advent. Congdon recognizes here that ‘Bultmann is always first and foremost a biblical exegete. His theology is essentially New Testament theology, specifically in a Pauline and Johannine mold …’ (2015b: 33), but that is not apparent from either book. Dialectical theology is admitted (p. 15) to be hard to define. Chapters on theology and on faith are missing, but both are well-referenced in the index. Experience and ethics are missing, even from the chapter on freedom, as are atonement, death, resurrection, religion. Existenz gets a mention, but Sein does not – neither does ‘time’ (or temporality). The chapter on history neither explains historicism nor mentions the key term Geschichtlichkeit. It is paraphrased elsewhere as ‘the existential present’ (p. 29). Making Kähler’s distinction between Historie and Geschichte Bultmann’s key is questionable: Dilthey and Heidegger are more important for him.

Those who read Bultmann from the angle of his theological interpretation of the NT will find Congdon’s treatments of eschatology and history unsatisfactory and he is less comfortable with the history of NT scholarship than with Barth. Schmithals’s Introduction to Bultmann’s theology (1966, ET 1968) and Kay’s Christus Praesens (1994) therefore remain superior. That said, the small book is much clearer than the large, and the final chapter is high-spirited, suggesting (as a ‘fact’ often overlooked) that ‘Bultmann is perhaps best understood as a theologian of the incarnation, or better yet a theologian of Advent’, meaning ‘the liturgical season that celebrates the coming of Christ, rather than the actual event of Christ’s eschatological coming’ (2015b: 146). Each chapter ends with some difficult ‘Questions for Reflection’. Some of Bultmann’s own essays, especially from Faith and Understanding, I (1969) and Schubert Ogden’s collection of his ‘basic writings’ (1961), offer a better introduction to Bultmann’s hermeneutical theology.

Beyond Bultmann (Longenecker and Parsons 2014) consists of 13 essays by scholars with international reputations standing at some distance from the Bultmann tradition. Each explains and criticizes a chapter of his Theology of the New Testament. Some make creative suggestions for the future rather than merely retreading well-worn criticisms or noting that historical and literary advances over the past century have rendered some of his hypotheses nugatory. Among the best, Samuel Byrskog on ‘The Message of Jesus’ probes a topic insufficiently appreciated on account of Bultmann’s historical and theological positions on the historical Jesus (so-called). Byrskog relates this research to new ways of handling the synoptic tradition, including the study of mnemonic time, and social and collective memory. His attention to the richly layered background of Bultmann’s account of history suggests that there is more to be learned by current Jesus research from engaging with Bultmann than is usually recognized.

Since the lasting value of Bultmann’s classic lies in its theological interpretation of Paul and John, the four chapters on these are pivotal, and the editors have chosen their contributors well. Richard Hays on ‘Humanity Prior to the Revelation of Faith’ has travelled further ‘beyond Bultmann’ than most, but his critical stance does not distort his valuable analysis. He suggests that Bultmann could have avoided ‘the language of “intention” and argued instead that Paul’s formulations are groping dimly towards a reality that can now be more adequately named in a different (modern) linguistic register’ (Longenecker and Parsons 2014: 74). Equally illuminating is John Barclay’s appreciative account of ‘Humanity under Faith’ which can nevertheless speak of where Bultmann’s ‘performance most conspicuously fails to fit the Pauline score’ (p. 89, i.e. where Paul speaks of the resurrection of Jesus). Bultmann in his interpretation of Paul was self-consciously engaged in a theological task and this ‘permits only ever-repeated solutions or attempts at solution, each in its particular historical situation’ (Bultmann 1955: 237). Barclay then looks for an interpretation for today which shares Bultmann’s strengths. He positions grace at the centre of Pauline theology without reviving Bultmann’s outdated construction of Jewish ‘works-righteousness’.

Both these Pauline essays connect with Francis Watson’s brief concluding chapter on ‘Bultmann and the Theological Interpretation of Scripture’. Congdon (2015a: 577) rightly challenged Watson’s attempt to relativize the original demythologizing essay as a ‘flawed wartime production … a piece of Christian apologetics composed under the conditions of the Third Reich’ (Longenecker and Parsons 2014: 259). It summarizes much of Bultmann’s hermeneutics, and there is no need for Watson to choose between theological hermeneutics and NT theology properly understood as modern critical theological interpretation. They are complementary, as theory and practice. And talk of ‘Bultmann’s naïve enthusiasm for his philosophical mentors’ (p. 258) is embarrassing. But whatever one thinks of the kite-flying suggestion of replacing ‘self-understanding’ with ‘the more contemporary term “spirituality”’ (p. 271) this essay also is a delight to read. Its proper insistence that all great theology needs to be seen in its historical context is also admirably met in its political aspect by Angela Standhartinger of Marburg who plugs a gap in Anglophone awareness of Bultmann’s anti-Nazi stance.

Jörg Frey’s long essay, ‘Johannine Christology and Eschatology’, provides some hard-hitting dissent, but what makes it perhaps the most helpful in the book is its (all too rare) attempt to explain (by reference to the temporality of human existence) what Bultmann means by eschatology. Unlike most critics of Bultmann, Frey has studied J. Körner’s 1957 monograph Eschatologie und Geschichte, very highly rated by Bornkamm. Frey may overstate the extent to which Bultmann’s ‘predecisions’ damage his exegesis. Was it not rather the search for systematic coherence which encouraged some dubious literary decisions? And the gnostic hypothesis is of its time. I would not call the claim ‘that Bultmann’s work represents a systematic and not a historical conception’ (Longenecker and Parsons 2014: 102) a ‘fact’, but agree it is in part ‘a presentation of Bultmann’s own theology via the interpreted biblical texts’ (p. 101). The case for some such combination of exegesis and the interpreter’s own theology deserves the sympathetic yet critical treatment it receives in Ulrich Luz’s Theologische Hermeneutik (2014) and Theissen’s Polyphones Verstehen (2014). Also illuminating, if on a narrower front, is Richard Bauckham’s lucid essay on ‘Dualism and Soteriology in Johannine Theology’. This offers sharp analysis of Qumran and Johannine dualism, and points ways forward to where further investigation is needed.

The four quality chapters on Paul and John are the strong centre of the collection, but it aims at completion and therefore contains essays on ‘The Kerygma of the Earliest Church’ and on ‘The Kerygma of the Hellenistic Church Aside from Paul’, and on Bultmann’s final Part IV. On the first, C. Kavin Rowe wants to ‘move beyond Bultmann in a rather complete sense’ (Longenecker and Parsons 2014: 35). He questions ‘the viability of the Theology as a hermeneutical enterprise’ and his observation that, unlike most scholars, ‘Bultmann actually knows what he thinks the whole New Testament is basically about’ (p. 36) is not meant as a compliment, coming from one who ‘rather completely’ disagrees about this. Rowe objects to Bultmann’s ‘conception of a kerygma that stands beyond our formulations’ (p. 35). His secondary objection that Bultmann’s historical construction outruns the available evidence could be made against most biblical scholarship where the evidence is so limited, but Rowe does respect the attempt to combine history and theology even if ‘(T)he hybrid that resulted was ultimately a failure’ (p. 36). Udo Schnelle on the kerygma of the Hellenistic church limits his (too brief) criticisms to noting historical gaps and indicating where research has moved on.

The four essays on the least interesting Part IV of Theology include two of the best in the collection. The most creative is the last: Wayne Meeks on ‘The Problem of Christian Living’. The weakness of Bultmann’s final chapter (1955: chapter 8) is courteously exposed and contrasted with ‘the excitement and passion expressed in Bultmann’s account of Pauline and Johannine theologies’ (Longenecker and Parsons 2014: 211). It seems he feels let down by the history of the church: ‘the eschatological community loses its nerve and lapses into institutional self-preservation and legalism’ (p. 211). Meeks asks whether an ‘authentic’ ethic can be formulated in accord with Bultmann’s existentialist hermeneutic. Against its prioritizing of individual decisions and silence about society, he himself does better justice to Bultmann’s stated concern for ‘forms of community that would enable human flourishing’ (p. 217) by developing an ‘ethics of response’ which owes much to H. Richard Niebuhr’s notion of the responsive self (or Responsible Self). This improved on the Stoic tag of what is ‘fitting’, by taking seriously the reality to which action should be fitted, and the fundamentally social character of the self which acts. This goes way ‘beyond Bultmann’ at a point where that is clearly necessary, but it does not challenge the points where Bultmann still has much to teach his critics, above all his engagement with the problem of Godtalk in a post-theistic world. That makes Meeks’s problem with the idea of NT theology look like a problem with older American approaches to ‘biblical theology’ rather than an objection to any critical theological interpretation of the NT. To say that the NT does not have a theology does not make the phrase a ‘category mistake’ but calls for clarification of what this contested discipline actually is or should be: a form of critical theological interpretation of scripture. One may share Meeks’s impatience with ‘the golden age fallacy’ (the first generation having everything right) without agreeing that Bultmann shared it. He thought Paul and ‘John’ were most insightful, but not on account of when they thought and wrote. But Meeks finally agrees with Bultmann that the NT texts ‘have something to say to the present’ (1955: 251) and that ‘critical historical scholarship has a role in helping them to say it’, as does the ‘responsible interpretive community’ (Longenecker and Parsons 2014: 229), the real locus of authority in making moral and theological assertions. We must ourselves take responsibility for the ‘second-order procedures by which the practices that constitute the Christian community must be ordered and corrected in every generation’, i.e. theology and ethics. How ‘we may use the New Testament (and the Old) in the process’ is also our responsibility, and an issue on which Bultmann had much to say and which he demonstrated in his practice of critical theological exegesis.

From a liberal catholic perspective, Luke Johnson shares Meeks’s disappointment with Part IV. His essay on ‘The Rise of Church Order’ (Bultmann, 1955: §§51-53) combines generous appreciation with some valid criticisms, but his admiration for Bultmann’s recognition of ‘the hermeneutical problem presented by the New Testament’ (Longenecker and Parsons 2014: 156) and for the project of a ‘pure’ biblical theology (the later Gabler’s phrase) does not mute his hostility to ‘the way in which theological judgments intrude into his historical analysis’ (p. 159). He sees the oddity of this complaint given the theological nature of the enterprise, but he does not allow that mistaken historical judgments can be corrected without interpreters abandoning their theological aims. Instead, he charges Bultmann (‘like his predecessors and peers, and in fact like many of his successors’) with simply not making ‘an adequate distinction between the discrete epistemologies demanded for doing history and theology. The result is something of a muddle, in which theological presuppositions affect historical description, and historical developments are the subject of theological judgments’ (p. 159).

Bultmann’s synthesis has fractured (rather than collapsed, like Baur’s), and the project may be impossible of realization (which I think would be bad news for Protestantism, and for any scripture-based theology) but he was not muddled and did more than most to make his procedures plain. He had a different view of history and of theology from most of his critics, and both invite further in-depth analysis. Johnson knows this but does not consider how history might function within theological criticism (e.g. of church structures). To say that Catholicism ‘is, in historical terms, simply what happened’ (Longenecker and Parsons 2014: 170) settles nothing theologically. Johnson’s more literary framework for theological interpretation is attractive – and surely more compatible with Bultmann’s approach than he allows.

My admiration for Professor Dunn’s outstanding contributions to British biblical scholarship wants to suppress any criticism of his account of Bultmann’s ‘frankly rather boring’ sections on the later ‘Development of Doctrine’ (Bultmann 1955: §§54-57), but the stereotype ‘a twentieth-century Heideggerian’ who made ‘“existentialist philosophy” the “canon within the canon”’ (Longenecker and Parsons 2014: 175-76) is over simple, even when glossed to ‘the hermeneutical key for appreciating and interpreting the theology of the New Testament in contemporary language’ (p. 176). Dunn finds it ‘somewhat surprising that “history-of-salvation” for Bultmann is not history like “world history”’ and is ‘equivalent to “revelation” or eschatology’ (p. 177). But Heilgeschichte is not Heilsgeschehen, and Bultmann is not Cullmann. To describe Bultmann’s enterprise ‘as defending his own view of what authentic faith is’ is one-sided, and that ‘this is not The Theology of the New Testament, so much as Bultmann’s Theology of the New Testament’ (p. 181) is not news. The definite article was never part of the title.

Larry Hurtado on ‘Christology and Soteriology’ (Bultmann 1955: §58) finds Bultmann’s ‘cursory treatment’ of Hebrews ‘curiously deficient, as if tone-deaf to the powerful notes of its exposition’, and he discusses Revelation, which ‘Bultmann seems to have underestimated’ (Longenecker and Parsons 2014: 205). Dr Hurtado has expounded his own very different ‘take’ on the NT brilliantly elsewhere, and it provides him with reasons to disagree with his subject, but should he not tell his readers why Bultmann sees only Paul and John as ‘real’ theologians? The suggestion that for some it may be ‘sufficient simply to cite Luther as one’s authorizing precedent’ (p. 200) hardly applies to Bultmann. Most of his serious critics at least see why Bultmann ‘directed attention away from these christological statements and onto how the NT presented their consequences for believers’ (p. 195). Hurtado insists that:

[I]n Phil 3:4-11 Paul’s contrast is not between his ‘previous understanding of himself’ and some new sense of freedom from ‘human accomplishments and boasting’ but, instead, between his former Pharisaic reliance on Torah as the definitive revelation of divine purposes and the subsequent recognition that Christ is. Paul’s passion in this passage is not over some new ‘self-understanding’ as stated in Bultmann’s somewhat abstract and quaintly (!) Lutheran terms but instead is directed toward a deep relational knowledge of Christ, for which Paul was willing to forgo all else. (p. 198)

How sharp is that either-or? And when we (rightly) develop our accounts of Paul’s historical situation do we make contemporary appropriation more difficult? Bultmann was clear why he was fusing theology and history, and what he thinks both involve. His more superficial critics could learn from Congdon’s major book – as Congdon could learn something from all these discussions of his Theology of the New Testament.

The remit of Beyond Bultmann is narrow, and the space constraints have restricted attention to each chapter’s surface meaning at the expensive of burrowing into what stands behind them. Within its limits this fine project is impressively carried out. Its limited scope is now wonderfully complemented by the more comprehensive and deep-probing Bultmann Handbuch (Landmesser 2017). This contains 79 shortish essays by 41 scholars overviewing Bultmann’s context, writings, influence and the tools necessary for research on him. The biographical section (161 pages) follows Hammann’s brief sketch (2009) with five essays on the ‘traditions’ in which Bultmann stood: Augustine, Luther and Lutheranism; Kierkegaard; Schleiermacher and Dilthey; Historical criticism; history of religion(s) school and liberal theology. These are of course fundamental. Less weighty, but fascinating for anyone interested in the period, are 17 essays on his relationships with his contemporaries, drawing on thousands of letters and other archival material. Some are brief (Martin Rade, Gunkel, Jaspers, Hirsch, Otto, other Marburgers, Schlier, Jonas, Gadamer-Kruger-Lowith-Anz), but others longer and valuable in themselves (Gogarten, Barth and the dialectical theology, Heidegger, von Soden, Käsemann, Ebeling, Fuchs, Bornkamm-Braun-Conzelmann-Schmithals). These are followed by four essays on Bultmann’s relationships with the church, politics, Judaism and culture.

Part C brings the solid food: his work. Six essays (136 pages) on the genres (monographs and commentaries, lectures and essays, reviews and research reports, dictionary articles, sermons, letters) are followed by four on ‘Structures’ (26 pages) and twenty-one on ‘Themes’ (160 pages). Those on Structures (Sin and Justification; Faith and Understanding; Self-understanding and World-understanding; Freedom and obedience, Freedom and obligation) are key to the whole Handbook and call for close study by anyone wanting to understand Bultmann better. Those on themes provide a checklist against which slighter accounts of Bultmann’s theology can be measured. ‘Theology of the New Testament’ is only one essay, but the other 20 in this section are directly relevant to it: History of Religions Context of the New Testament (Hellenism, Judaism, Earliest Christianity), Gnosis, the Synoptic Tradition, Jesus, Paul, John/Johannine Theology, Theology of the New Testament (by the editor), Bultmann and the Old Testament, Religion, History, Eschatology, Anthropology, Faith, Ethics, The Concept of Revelation, Word of God Theology, Theological Encyclopaedia, Hermeneutics and existentiale Interpretation, Myth and Demythologizing, Early Church Developments, Theology and Philosophy.

A fourth section contains nine essays on the impact and reception of Bultmann – among his pupils, in the demythologizing debate, in Jesus, Paul, and Johannine research, in systematic theology and recent work in the history of religions, in philosophy, in English-speaking areas and in Scandinavia. Forty-eight pages of bibliography (11 of them from Bultmann) are good on German work but contain gaps (Jones 1991; Kegley 1966; Congdon 2015a, 2015b, for example); the index on subject-matter is especially useful.

Listing the headings in this marvellous resource can at least give some sense of its scope. Its overall quality is guaranteed by its editor and publisher, who will not allow anything substandard through their net. Apart from the glance at Bultmann’s reception in the English-speaking world (Francis Watson) and a slightly fuller chapter on Scandinavia (Ernst Baasland), this is an entirely German and mostly Protestant set of perspectives, and achieves the penetration badly needed now that such a distance exists from Bultmann’s crucial 1920s period. The distance is greater in Britain if Watson is right that E.P. Sanders has made him a figure of the past ‘without further presence in English-language New Testament scholarship’ (Landmesser 2017: 466). But Watson is surely right to conclude that Bultmann’s importance today lies in his contribution to ‘theological interpretation’ and to add that his understanding of this differs from (some) contemporary usage shaped by post-modernism. Some have made that phrase code for hostility to historical criticism. Bultmann continues to set the standard for attempts to fuse critical historical and theological interpretation. Whether that is desirable or not continues to divide the two linguistic areas and cultures. Elsewhere (Longenecker and Parsons 2014: 272) Dr Watson commented that for those ‘lacking theological interest or competence’ Bultmann’s ‘theological reflection on the New Testament … is already sufficient to call the whole work into question’, but most NT scholars in every country have some religious interests even if they keep them separate from their historical research, as Wrede and Krister Stendahl for example insisted. But until they can give some account at least of how they are related (if not of how to get from one to the other) Bultmann’s model will remain a reproach as well as a challenge.