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Bultmann's View of the Old Testament

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Norman J. Young
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Extract

For the Christian faith, the Old Testament is no longer revelation as it had been, and still is, for the Jews. For everyone who stands in the Church, the history is no longer a live issue … the history of Israel is not the history of revelation for us.

So Bultmann writes in an article on the significance of the Old Testament for Christian faith, and on the basis of this we might be inclined to dismiss the whole discussion of Bultmann and the Old Testament, and to add ‘Marcionism’ to the list of heresies already attributed to him. But this would be too hasty, for over against the above quotation we can cite another:For anyone who has done even a minimum of historical reflection, it is senseless to try to hold on to Christianity and at the same time to discard the Old Testament. One should realise then that the Christianity he hopes to preserve is no longer Christianity. Either–or; both, or none at all.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 1966 , pp. 269 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1966

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References

page 269 note 1 Bultmann, Rudolf, ‘Die Bedeutung des Alten Testaments fur den christlichen Glauben’, in Glauben und Verslehtn, vol. I (J. C. B. Mohr, Tübingen, 1933), p. 333.Google Scholar

page 269 note 2 ibid., p. 325.

page 271 note 1 ibid., p. 317.

page 272 note 1 Bultmann, Rudolf, History and Eschatology (The University Press, Edinburgh, 1957). P. 127.Google Scholar

page 272 note 2 Cullmann, Oscar, Christ and Time (Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1950), p. 20.Google Scholar

page 272 note 3 Bultmann, Rudolf, Theology of the New Testament, vol. I (Scribners, N.Y., 1954), P. 318.Google Scholar

page 273 note 1 As espoused, for example, by Herberg, Will, in his article ‘Biblical Faith as Heilsgeschichte’ (in the Christian Scholar, vol. 39, March 1956, p. 25f)Google Scholar. There he insists that ‘redemptive history is not merely a recital… [it] is also a demand upon us’ (p. 31).

page 273 note 2 Except in the sense that historical involvement with the past is always a possibility. But in this sense, Bultmann holds, any past is equally significant for ‘occidental history’, and equally irrelevant for our personal history as Christians. ‘One can say just as well that the Spartans have fallen for us at Thermopylae and that Socrates drank the hemlock for our sake. And in this sense Jerusalem is a holy city for us no more than Athens or Rome’ (Glauben und Verstehen, I, p. 334).

page 273 note 3 Bultmann, , Glauben und Verstehen, p. 333.Google Scholar

page 274 note 1 Bultmann, Rudolf, Essays, Philosophical and Theological (Macmillan, N.Y., 1955). P. 191.Google Scholar

page 274 note 2 Bultmann, Rudolf, in an article in New Testament Studies, vol. I, 1954, p. 13.Google Scholar

page 274 note 3 Bultmann, , Theology of the New Testament, vol. 2, p. 122.Google Scholar

page 274 note 4 This view appears in the essay ‘Prophecy and Fulfilment’ (Essays, pp. 182–202, written twenty years later than the work named in the next footnote).

page 274 note 5 ‘Die Bedeutung des Alten Testaments für den christlichen Glauben’ (Glauben und Verstehen, vol. I, pp. 313–336).Google Scholar

page 275 note 1 Bultmann, Essays, p. 208.

page 275 note 2 Bultmann, , Theology of the NT, vol. I, p. 267.Google Scholar

page 275 note 3 Bultmann, Essays, p. 208.

page 276 note 1 Bultmann, , Glauben und Verstehen, p. 319.Google Scholar

page 276 note 2 ibid., p. 321.

page 277 note 1 ibid., pp. 323–4.

page 278 note 1 As we have just seen, for Bultmann ‘The Old Testament is thus the prerequisite for the New not in the historical sense that the historisch phenomena of the Christian religion have become possible only on the grounds of the historicalreligious development declared in the Old Testament…’ (Glauben und Verstehen, p. 319).

page 278 note 2 e.g. in Theology of the New Testament, vol. I, pp. 54–55.

page 278 note 3 Bultmann, Essays, p. 185.

page 278 note 4 Bultmann, , Theology of the NT, vol. II, p. 117.Google Scholar

page 278 note 5 Bultmann, , Glauben und Verstehen, vol. I, p. 336.Google Scholar