326 - Myth or Narrative? Bultmann's "New Testament and Mythology" Turns Fifty

Myth or Narrative? Bultmann's "New Testament and Mythology" Turns Fifty

By James F. Kay

On June 4, 1941, Rudolf Bultmann addressed the Society of Evangelical Theology meeting in Alpirsbach, Germany on the topic "New Testament and Mythology: The Problem of Demythologizing the New Testament Proclamation." Bultmann spoke at nine o'clock in the morning, and, with the exception of prayers at noon and again at four o'clock, the whole day was devoted to discussing his lecture. Thus appeared, a half century ago, what Schubert M. Ogden later called "perhaps the single most discussed and controversial theological writing of the century."¹

I

If the historic importance of a theological text largely resides in "the quality of its provocation," as Christopher Morse suggests, then, by that standard alone, Bultmann's essay has achieved the status of a classic. What was provocative was not so much the claim that the New Testament reflects a mythical world picture. That had already been said by D. F. Strauss in the last century. What proved more provocative was Bultmann's contention that the Enlightenment's negative criticism of myth could be put to positive purpose by a theology concerned for the preaching of the gospel. The intolerable scandal of demanding intellectual assent to the incredible must give way to proclaiming the real scandal of faith: the cross of Christ as decisive for human existence. Navigating through this famous claim became a rite of passage for two generations of theological students.

Indeed, through the quality of his provocation, the modest, churchgoing professor from Marburg was propelled into a prominence bordering on notoriety. When Bultmann lectured on demythologizing at Princeton Theological Seminary during his 1951 American lecture tour, his travel diary records that "as a precaution, students were not

James F. Kay is Assistant Professor of Homiletics, Princeton Theological Seminary.

¹Schubert M. Ogden, "Preface," in Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings, ed. and trans. Schubert M. Ogden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), p. vii. A new English translation of Bultmann's essay appears on pp. 1-43. 1 thank Professor Ogden for generously making available to me a copy of the typescript, Protokoll der Tagung A her Marburger' 2.-5. January 1979 in Hofgeismar which records the circumstances in which Bultmann originally delivered his lecture.

327 - Myth or Narrative? Bultmann's "New Testament and Mythology" Turns Fifty

invited, only faculty."² Princeton President John A. Mackay pointedly remarked in Bultmann's hearing that "the most important impulses in theology have always come from heretics."³ Bultmann's vindication among Presbyterians had to await their Confession of 1967. Conceding that the scriptures are "conditioned by the language, thought forms, and literary fashions of the places and times at which they were written," and "reflect views of life, history, and the cosmos which were then current," the Confession of 1967 managed to unfurl something of a Bultmannian banner in otherwise Barthian territory.⁴

Yet, arguably, it was Rudolf Bultmann-not Karl Barth-who reigned over North Atlantic theology for much of the 50s and early 60s. As John Cobb then commented, "Bultmann's brilliant and daring theological proposals have become the focus for much of the most creative theological work of our time."⁵ Even as late as 1965, John Macquarrie could still name the eighty-year-old Marburger as "probably the most discussed theologian at the present time."⁶

No doubt what kept the discussion going for so long was the emotionally charged term "myth." For Bultmann, myth embraces those reality claims that do not square with scientific understanding. For example, the kerygma's claim that Jesus rose from the dead cannot refer to a real fact or event about Jesus inasmuch as facts and events are held to be recovered, or reconstructed, through scientific means. As literature, myths are stories of the gods, a genre common to the ancient world. According to Bultmann, the Christ myth of the New Testament is one version of the Gnostic myth of the heavenly Redeemer, the antecedents of which are found in the Iranian myth of the Primal Man first isolated by Richard Reitzenstein early in this century, The difference between the New Testament and other ancient versions of dying and rising saviors is that the New Testament "intertwines" its Christ figure with a real historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Only through the mythical conceptuality of a redeemed Redeemer, or an apocalyptic Son, could Paul and John convey in their time the saving significance of Jesus. Thus, proclaiming the kerygma does not eliminate myth in order to return to the historical Jesus, as liberalism vainly attempted. Rather, the task is to interpret the Christian myth so that it can again declare to our time God's saving will for human existence. This is the hermeneutical program that Bultmann advances in 1941 as "demythologizing."

Bultmann's demythologizing proceeds by means of a general theory

²Quoted in Antie Bultmann Lemke, "Bultmann's Papers," in Bultmann, Retrospect and Prospect: The Centenary Symposium at Wellesley, ed. Edward C. Hobbs, Harvard Theological Studies, no. 35 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), p. 3.

³Ibid.

⁴The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Part I, Book of Confessions (New York and Atlanta: Office of the General Assembly, 1983), 9.29.

⁵John B. Cobb, Living Options in Protestant Theology: A Survey of Methods (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), p. 258.

⁶"Rudolf Bultmann," in A Handbook of Christian Theologians, ed. Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1965), p. 456.

328 - Myth or Narrative? Bultmann's "New Testament and Mythology" Turns Fifty

of myth that indicates the real referent of the kerygma to be the "Beyond," or non-objectifiable transcendent God, in relation to human existence. The mythically couched confession of salvation through Jesus Christ refers, in the end, neither to the preexistent Messiah nor to the historical Jesus, but rather to him "in whom God acts for us in the present."⁷ What happens when this existentialist theory of myth is applied to the cross-resurrection kerygma of Paul? Mythical talk of the judgment "of the rulers of this age" wrought in Christ's cross becomes a divine judgment on all humankind, and a call to carry out "one's freedom from the world by accepting suffering."⁸ By appealing to 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 and 6:2, Bultmann then transposes the resurrection from a mythical-historical account of the destiny of Jesus Christ (as in 1 Corinthians 15) into an account of the proclaimed "word of the cross" as the determinative power for authentic existence. In this way, Bultmann's program preserves salvation as a divine act and undergirds preaching with a theological rationale, while, at the same time, leaving intact the closed continuum of worldly occurrences presupposed by modern science.

II

Our very summary of Bultmann's 1941 program will only confirm for many his irrelevance for theology today. The positivistic assumptions of Bultmann's mechanistic model of science are now challenged by theologians, such as Thomas F. Torrance, informed by post-Einsteinian developments in physics. The reexamination of the futurist dimension of the Christian hope by Ernst Kdsemann, Wolfhart Parmenberg, and Rirgen Moltmann has led to the eschatological relativization of Enlightenment historiography. The research of Carsten Colpe has convincingly debunked Bultmann's Gnostic-Redeemer myth, at least as a pre-Christian phenomenon. All this helps to explain why, within just months of Bultmann's death in 1976, Christof Gestrich reported from Germany the precipitous decline in the plausibility of Bultmann's positions. As one seminary dean remarked recently, "Students today do not even go through Bultmann; they go around him."

Nowhere is the present pattern of "going around" Bultmann more evident than in the widespread supplanting of his term "myth" with that of "narrative" or "story." With a few notable exceptions, myth no longer functions as a dominant category in New Testament interpretation. Neither does it do so in theology, apart from some feminists and Jungians. Since the 70s, we have witnessed the steady triumph of "story" as reflected in narrative criticism, narrative theology, narrative ethics, and narrative homiletics.

⁷Rudolph Bultmann, "New Testament and Mythology," in Ogden, New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Wiitings, p. 41. Translation slightly altered.

⁸Ibid., p. 35.

329 - Myth or Narrative? Bultmann's "New Testament and Mythology" Turns Fifty

This development is not unrelated to Barth's preference for "saga" over against Bultmann's "myth" in referring to the biblical accounts of creation or to Jesus' resurrection. Nevertheless, it is arguably the late Hans W. Frei who, through his seminal essay, The Identity of Jesus Christ, succeeded in projecting narrative into the center of a discussion once dominated by myth. Although Bultmann's name scarcely appears in Frei's essay, it is clear throughout that Frei's opponent is none other than the author of "New Testament and Mythology."

Despite all his differences with Bultmann, there is one important sense in which Frei does go "through" Bultmann rather than "around" him. Frei builds hermeneutically on Bultmann's recognition that Jesus Christ is the chief character in a soteriological narrative. Where Frei departs from Bultmann is in rejecting the category of myth as suitable for either the story line or the chief character of the Gospels. Indeed, Frei argues for the uniqueness of what he terms, "the Gospel narrative," and thereby attempts "to distinguish the Gospel story of the Savior from a common savior myth of the period."⁹

Frei's crucial distinction between myth and story does not reside in myth being non-narrative. The distinction lies, rather, in the Gospel story being a peculiar kind of narrative, what Frei, following Erich Auerbach, terms a "realistic narrative." That is to say, the Gospel narrative is more akin to "history writing and the traditional novel" than to myth in three respects: the "depiction of a common public world... in the close interaction of character and incident, and in the non-symbolic quality of the relation between the story and what the story is about."¹⁰ Frei's contention that the Gospels are more appropriately approached through the genre of "realistic narrative" than through "myth" leads him to redescribe Bultmann's Christ as a "storied," rather than a "mythical," character. Thus, for Frei, the identity of the Savior issues from a realistic rendering of the Gospel story, not from an existentialist interpretation of the Christ myth.

III

Since Frei follows Bultmann in finding the saving significance of Jesus revealed through his role in a story, Frei, as a believing Christian, must necessarily undertake an interpretive task similar to that shouldered by Bultmann in "New Testament and Mythology." Frei, too, must show how a literary character possesses saving significance for people today. Bultmann, in the end, invokes a divine miracle, whereby the proclamation of the kerygma occasions the saving presence of God-in-Christ. By contrast, Frei, more mundanely, albeit more ingeniously, infers the present factuality of the Savior on the basis of his literary identity. The fictional Gospel narrative renders an identity of Jesus that entails the claim of his factual presence today. For Frei, the

⁹Hans W. Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ., The Hermeneutical Bases of Dogmatic Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), p. 52. Italics added.

¹⁰Ibid., pp. xiii-xiv.

330 - Myth or Narrative? Bultmann's "New Testament and Mythology" Turns Fifty

whole Gospel narrative culminates in the propostion that to know who Jesus is "in connection with what took place, is to know that he is."¹¹

Frei's employment of formal identity descriptions suitable for characters in realistic narratives bestows upon Jesus a personality profile remarkably resembling those of the older liberalism. For example, Frei speaks assuredly of Jesus' "inner life" and focuses on his virtuous "obedience" to God. Frei's repeated references to the "Gospel narrative" (singular) also reflect a harmonization, if not homogenization, of the Synoptic Gospels (and, at points, John) reminiscent of the liberal Lives of Jesus. The difference between Frei and the liberal teachers of Bultmann is that Frei does not regard the "'inner life of Jesus' as a historical datum present to hand in world history, which can be clearly seen with a little honest effort," as Bultmann once characterized the position of Wilhelm Herrmann.¹² Rather, for Frei, "the inner life of Jesus" is a literary datum present to hand in world history, which can be clearly seen with a little help from formal identity descriptions. Thus, Frei's move from the identity of Jesus given by the Gospels to his contemporary presence in the world occurs through retrieving the category of narrative. Updated to agree with the canons of literary realism, narrative is pushed by Frei into renewed prominence as an alternative to Bultmann's demythologizing.

If knowing the narrative identity of Jesus is "identical to having him present or being in his presence,"¹³ then the Gospel narrative, as narrative, necessarily becomes the exclusive Word of God for Frei. To use the language of Barth, if Bultmann has arguably collapsed the first and second forms of the Word, namely, the incarnate Logos and the scriptural witness to him, into the third, that is, proclamation, then Frei has just as surely collapsed the first and third forms of this Word into the second, redefined as the Gospel narrative. Since, for Frei, this narrative so sovereignly renders the identity and presence of Jesus Christ, there really remains no logical need for preaching in any sense other than narrative recitation.

Such reduction of proclamation to narrative recitation is questionable in light of Paul's kerygma. The Word of God for Paul is not primarily a story about Jesus Christ, but a saving summons from Jesus Christ through the mouths of his heralds. True, Paul does narrate to the Corinthians the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as sequential facts in space and time (1 Corinthians 15), if contrary-from Bultmann's perspective-to the Apostle's later and better lights (2 Corinthians 5:18-6:2). Nevertheless, Paul's "narrative," by virtue of its spareness alone, lies far from the kind of literary realism that Frei finds

¹¹Ibid., p. 145.

¹²Rudolph Bultmann, "On The Question of Christology [1927]," in Faith and Understanding, ed. Robert W. Funk, trans by Louise Pettibone Smith (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 137.

¹³Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ, p. vii.

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essential for rendering the identity and presence of Jesus Christ. Indeed, as Bultmann reiterates in his Theology, Paul is not interested in "Jesus' manner of life, his ministry, his personality, [or] his character."¹⁴ That is, Paul is not concerned at all with the lineaments of personal identity which realistic narrative embodies. Yet Paul's indifference in this regard does not prevent him, as Frei's proposal might suggest, from vigorously interpreting the cross and resurrection in their relation both to Christ's presence and our existence.

The subsequent criticism of Bultmann by Frei's camp follower, Richard B. Hays, for not recognizing that Paul's writings presuppose a Gospel narrative misunderstands the issue. Bultmann is emphatically aware that a saving story is not only presupposed but present in Paul (e.g., 1 Corinthians 15, Philippians 2:5-11). The question is not whether Paul's gospel presupposes a saving narrative centered on Jesus Christ, a claim Bultmann would not care to deny, but whether this narrative is "mythical" or "realistic" in genre. For Bultmann, the parallels and antecedents known to the history of religions indicates that this narrative is mythical. The Reformation and the Enlightenment, to which Bultmann is heir, further require that this narrative be translated into direct address and interpreted-not simply recitedfor existence. Whatever misgivings one may have about Bultmann's attempts at non-narrative proclamation of the "story," Bultmann can at least claim Paul as one who himself employed non-narrative rhetorical strategies in this task.

Whatever gains are achieved by a more holistic approach to the synoptic shape of the Jesus story, there are also some major losses. Narrative criticism seemingly regards Bible stories as so unlike anything else within their cultural milieu that their nearest literary analogues must await the appearance of realistic fiction in nineteenthcentury France. Moreover, Frei's abandonment of form criticism and its offspring, redaction criticism, signals that hermeneutical importance is no longer assigned to the life situation out of which the Gospels emerged or into which they were and are addressed. In short, no social context need bother the preacher or professor of the Bible, a context which is presupposed in principle, if not always in practice, by Bultmann's form criticism. If Frei's insulation of the Gospels from Hellenistic and apocalyptic myths is intended to secure the real humanity of their Savior figure, this only succeeds by sacrificing that of their authors and hearers.

Such problems as these, inherent in Frei's proposal-in many ways as "brilliant and daring" as Bultmann's-suggest that today's narrative movement may travel farther by going "through" and not "around" Marburg. At the 1984 Bultmann Centenary Symposium at Wellesley, Schubert M. Ogden concluded his address by remarking that "no one

¹⁴Rudolph Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 2 vols., trans. by Kendrick Grobel (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951-55), 1:294.

332 - Myth or Narrative? Bultmann's "New Testament and Mythology" Turns Fifty

who knew Rudolf Bultmann could doubt that he was serenely confident about the future of his contribution, believing, as he did with Paul, that we cannot do anything against the truth but only for it."¹⁵ In the fiftieth year of "New Testament and Mythology," the quality of its provocation for narrative theology offers new grounds for Bultmann's confidence.

¹⁵Schubert A Ogden, "Rudolf Bultmann and the Future of Revisionary Christology, in Bultmann, Retrospect and Prospect, p. 5 8.