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History and Eschatology: The Presence of Eternity
History & Eschatology charts the shift away from an ancient cyclical interpretation of history to teleological & eschatological alternatives. Bultmann explains the fundamental shift in historical understanding introduced in the Judeo-Christian tradition & explains why the disappointment faced by the early church in Christ’s belated return prompted a reinterpretation of history. This brought about a teleological understanding of history which was adopted by later Renaissance & secular traditions. Even Marxism continued to hold onto this teleological approach. Bultmann, drawing on Paul & John, challenges this purely teleological approach & recentres a Christian understanding of history & eschatology in the historical event of Christ which is both timeless & immediately present.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1957
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109 people want to read
About the author
Rudolf Karl Bultmann
94 books56 followersRudolf Karl Bultmann (August 20, 1884, Wiefelstede – July 30, 1976, Marburg) was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of New Testament at the University of Marburg. He was one of the major figures of early 20th century biblical studies and a prominent voice in liberal Christianity.
Bultmann is known for his belief that the historical analysis of the New Testament is both futile and unnecessary, given that the earliest Christian literature showed little interest in specific locations.] Bultmann argued that all that matters is the "thatness", not the "whatness" of Jesus, i.e. only that Jesus existed, preached and died by crucifixion matters, not what happened throughout his life.
Bultmann relied on demythologization, an approach interpreting the mythological elements in the New Testament existentially. Bultmann contended that only faith in the kerygma, or proclamation, of the New Testament was necessary for Christian faith, not any particular facts regarding the historical Jesus.
Bultmann is known for his belief that the historical analysis of the New Testament is both futile and unnecessary, given that the earliest Christian literature showed little interest in specific locations.] Bultmann argued that all that matters is the "thatness", not the "whatness" of Jesus, i.e. only that Jesus existed, preached and died by crucifixion matters, not what happened throughout his life.
Bultmann relied on demythologization, an approach interpreting the mythological elements in the New Testament existentially. Bultmann contended that only faith in the kerygma, or proclamation, of the New Testament was necessary for Christian faith, not any particular facts regarding the historical Jesus.
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November 4, 2020
This is one of the unread books picked up on Broadway and carried back to Chicago after graduation from seminary. In it, Bultmann expands upon his existentialist Christianity. The Parousia did not and will not occur in time. The belief in a second coming in history is understandable under the conditions of the early church, but absurd today. An essence of the Christian message, however, still remains after the excission of the mythology.
Despite his rather dry style, I appreciate Bultmann. The dehistoricization of the parousia, the outpouring of spirit, still leaves the psychological possibilities of self-redemption and, upon that, social salvation. Like many, many others I've had several experiences of feeling that my attitudes and presuppositions, the ways I looked at and interpreted the world, had radically changed for the better. Characteristic of such experiences are emotions of compassionately joyous care for others and the sense that I was seeing things clearly for a change, without the usual suppressions and personal overlays. Characteristic also is the sense of fittingness and acceptance. This is not to say that one doesn't perceive unnecessary suffering and that one lacks the motive to alleviate it. It is to say that one perceives reality and, indeed, acknowledges both the suffering and an active concern for it rather than turning away from either it or the possibilities of responding to it.
One of the virtues of some psychotropics is, of course, their tendency to promote this kind of Christ consciousness--or Buddha Mind or, as I prefer, "right mindfulness". Of course, such experiences pass and because they are contingent on the drug one tends to discount them. They do, however, leave a memory of a better, fuller way of being and that is something to reverence.
Much of my life, personally and intellectually, has revolved around such experiences. I suspect that I first broke through to the aforementioned suprapersonal, compassionate state of mind under the influence of drugs while a teenager. Fortunately, it has happened since without drugs being involved, several times. However, like the drug induced occasions, the serendipitous ones have always passed within a few hours or, at most, a day or two, leaving only revered memory and a host of questions: Do these states of mind stand up to ethical critique? Are they potentially effective in day-to-day life? Is the experience common and how have people accounted for them across time and across cultures? Have, as I believe, people a tendency to overlay the experience with culturally-based mythologies of the kind Bultmann discusses, so that Christians tend to think of some supernatural cause like their Christ or God or the Holy Spirit? If so, how to continue Bultmann's efforts to get at the essence of the thing without obfuscating and off-putting interpretations? What causes them? Can one learn to teach or induce them? How might one increase the duration of such experiences of grace?
These experiences are substantially at the base of much of what is good and true about what we subsume under the "religion" rubric. Like the Unitarians say, again in the Christian context: it's the religion of Jesus, not the religion about Jesus, that is of essence. So much of what is called religious is patently psychotic in the simple of sense of being out of touch with and in denial of reality, of real, lived experience. This, what Bultmann and I would call the existential basis of what is true about religions, is, to the contrary, entirely about reality, about everybody's lived experiences across history and across cultures, preferencing none over the other, imposing no Procrustean strictures. From this perspective, the psychotic religious beliefs aren't unreal, they're just very limited. They contrast to the greater realism of true religion as the demons in the bible contrast, spiritually, to the concept of deity. Like Jesus, a rightminded person is also an exorcist.
But, alas, I don't know the way. All I and most of the rest of us can do is to bear such experiences (or our heartfelt responses to the descriptions of such ways of being) in mind and live, as Jesus and good old Immanuel Kant recommended, as if we were citizens of such a paradise.
Despite his rather dry style, I appreciate Bultmann. The dehistoricization of the parousia, the outpouring of spirit, still leaves the psychological possibilities of self-redemption and, upon that, social salvation. Like many, many others I've had several experiences of feeling that my attitudes and presuppositions, the ways I looked at and interpreted the world, had radically changed for the better. Characteristic of such experiences are emotions of compassionately joyous care for others and the sense that I was seeing things clearly for a change, without the usual suppressions and personal overlays. Characteristic also is the sense of fittingness and acceptance. This is not to say that one doesn't perceive unnecessary suffering and that one lacks the motive to alleviate it. It is to say that one perceives reality and, indeed, acknowledges both the suffering and an active concern for it rather than turning away from either it or the possibilities of responding to it.
One of the virtues of some psychotropics is, of course, their tendency to promote this kind of Christ consciousness--or Buddha Mind or, as I prefer, "right mindfulness". Of course, such experiences pass and because they are contingent on the drug one tends to discount them. They do, however, leave a memory of a better, fuller way of being and that is something to reverence.
Much of my life, personally and intellectually, has revolved around such experiences. I suspect that I first broke through to the aforementioned suprapersonal, compassionate state of mind under the influence of drugs while a teenager. Fortunately, it has happened since without drugs being involved, several times. However, like the drug induced occasions, the serendipitous ones have always passed within a few hours or, at most, a day or two, leaving only revered memory and a host of questions: Do these states of mind stand up to ethical critique? Are they potentially effective in day-to-day life? Is the experience common and how have people accounted for them across time and across cultures? Have, as I believe, people a tendency to overlay the experience with culturally-based mythologies of the kind Bultmann discusses, so that Christians tend to think of some supernatural cause like their Christ or God or the Holy Spirit? If so, how to continue Bultmann's efforts to get at the essence of the thing without obfuscating and off-putting interpretations? What causes them? Can one learn to teach or induce them? How might one increase the duration of such experiences of grace?
These experiences are substantially at the base of much of what is good and true about what we subsume under the "religion" rubric. Like the Unitarians say, again in the Christian context: it's the religion of Jesus, not the religion about Jesus, that is of essence. So much of what is called religious is patently psychotic in the simple of sense of being out of touch with and in denial of reality, of real, lived experience. This, what Bultmann and I would call the existential basis of what is true about religions, is, to the contrary, entirely about reality, about everybody's lived experiences across history and across cultures, preferencing none over the other, imposing no Procrustean strictures. From this perspective, the psychotic religious beliefs aren't unreal, they're just very limited. They contrast to the greater realism of true religion as the demons in the bible contrast, spiritually, to the concept of deity. Like Jesus, a rightminded person is also an exorcist.
But, alas, I don't know the way. All I and most of the rest of us can do is to bear such experiences (or our heartfelt responses to the descriptions of such ways of being) in mind and live, as Jesus and good old Immanuel Kant recommended, as if we were citizens of such a paradise.
May 24, 2023
Some of Bultmann’s articulations on the intellectual history from Kant to Marx were actually quite insightful. But there’s nothing more exhausting for a follower of Christ to read an unbelieving scholar blasphemously opine about the Christian faith under the guise of “Christian scholarship.”
January 22, 2025
Kitabın zorluğu, hem özelleşmiş konusundan, hem de çevirinin yetersizliğinden kaynaklanıyor. Geçen 18 yılda (bir derlemedeki birkaç parça dışında) başka Bultmann çevirisi yapılmadığı için, mecburen bu kitapla yetinmek zorunda kaldım. Bultmann; Varoluşçuluk ile hermenötiği kaynaştıran, çok ilginç bir ilahiyatçı. 1955 tarihli Gifford Konferansları'nda, dünyanın sonuna ilişkin Hıristiyan tasarımı ile tarih boyunca ortaya çıkan tarih felsefesi anlayışlarını karşılaştırıyor. Eskatolojiden çok, tarih, tarihçilik ve tarihsellik üstüne bir soruşturma yürütüyor. Bunu yaparken beslendiği en önemli kaynak, bu konferanstan altı yıl önce yayımlanmış olan, Karl Löwith'in "Tarihte Anlam" kitabı (- ki o da okuma listemde). Seküler tarih felsefesinin nasıl Hıristiyanlık'tan türediğini anlatması açısından ilginç bir kitap, ama kıyametçilikle ilgili kültürel bir inceleme beklentisiyle okumayın.
April 22, 2008
Eschatology (the end game) has always disturbed me. Bultmann has some remarkable insights, such as St. Paul being a religious anarchist, Jesus having the end game each moment of one's life, and John (the other one) writing the finale that's the stuff of Christian horror films-cum-Baptist-sermons.
There is eternity as human construct, of course. What really is is ?
I think it a 3.5 star. But then this place doesn't give me that option. Could I vote twice, once a 3 another a 4 to get there?
There is eternity as human construct, of course. What really is is ?
I think it a 3.5 star. But then this place doesn't give me that option. Could I vote twice, once a 3 another a 4 to get there?
March 2, 2008
Bultmann on history: is that dangerous or fascinating?
March 6, 2012
Made a big impression on me when I read it, nearly thirty years ago.
June 3, 2015
A "must read" if you want to understand Christian Existentialism and how Bultmann understands history and Christianity.
June 30, 2024
THE GERMAN THEOLOGIAN LOOKS AT “MEANING” IN HISTORY
Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) was a German theologian and professor of New Testament at the University of Marburg. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 171-page hardcover edition.]
He wrote in the Preface of this 1957 book, “The following chapters contain the Gifford Lectures which I was invited to give … [in] March 1955. The printed text corresponds closely in substance to the lectures as they were delivered. Only minor additions have been made and the number of references to literature increased. I am conscious that there are many problems which should be discussed further than was possible for me within the framework of these lectures, and I must be content if my attempt to deal with them contributes to such further discussion.”
In the first chapter, he states, “The belief in an eternal order, ruling the life of men, broke down, and with it the ideas of absolute goodness and absolute truth. All this is handed over to the historical process which for its part is understood as a natural process which for its part is understood as a natural process ruled not by spiritual, but by economic, laws… therefore man is no longer understood as an autonomous being, but is seen as at the mercy of historical conditions. His historicity does not consist in the fact that he is an individual who passes through history, who experiences history, who meets with history. No, man is nothing but history, for he is, so to speak, not an active being but someone to whom things happen. Man is only a process without ‘true existence.’ The end, it seems, is nihilism. Can there be a salvation from nihilism? … Can we detect a law, an order in the course of history? … Or must we say that the historicity of man is not yet fully understood and must be thought out to its final conclusions in order to banish the conclusion of nihilism? Such questions can be answered only when we consider exactly the essence, the idea of history.” (Pg. 10-11)
He states, “The New Covenant is not grounded on an event of the history of the people as was the Old Covenant… The new people of God has no real history, for it is the community of the end-time, an eschatological phenomenon. How could it have a history now when the world-time is finished and the end is imminent!... Therefore no social program can be developed but only negative ethics of abstinence and sanctification… All this means that in early Christianity history is swallowed up in eschatology. The early Christian community understands itself not as a historical but as an eschatological phenomenon… The question then is… how long the expectation of the imminent end of the world can remain unshaken.” (Pg. 36-37)
He points out, “The problem of Eschatology grew out of the fact that the expected end of the world failed to arrive, that the ‘Son of Man’ did not appear in the clouds of heaven, that history went on, and that the eschatological community could not fail to recognize that it had become a historical phenomenon and that the Christian faith had taken on the shape of a new religion. This is made clear by two facts: (a) the historiography of the author of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles (b) the importance which tradition gained in the Christian community.” (Pg. 38)
He observes, “But eschatology was never abandoned, rather the expected end of the world was removed into an indefinite future. This happened without any great shock… in consequence of the developing sacramentalism. Two effects of sacramentalism were: (1) The interest of the believers was directed … to the salvation of the individual soul… (2) The powers of the beyond, which will make an end of this world, are already working in the present, namely, in the sacraments which are administered by the Church.” (Pg. 51-52)
He notes, “The longer the Parousia failed to come and the end of the world was removed to an indefinite distance, the longer the Church had a history in this world, the more an interest in history developed… The interest of the Church in its own history had a further special cause. The Church claims to be founded by the Apostles, and the bishops claimed to be the successors of the Apostles. This claim had to be justified and therefore catalogues of bishops stretching back to the Apostles had to be compiled.” (Pg. 56)
He asks, “What is the core of history? What is its real subject? The answer is: man… We usually distinguish between history and nature. The course of both passes within time. But the difference is clear, for history is constituted by human actions… History as the field of human actions cannot, however, be cut off from nature and natural events… All these conditions and events within nature, so far as they are relevant for human life and history, may be called encounters …in contrast to human actions. Indeed, not only human actions but also human sufferings belong to history; in a certain sense they are also actions in so far as they are reactions.” (Pg. 139-140)
He states, “it must be stressed that what we call ‘personality’ if also temporal-historical and is constant only as a possibility which is ever to be realized. Personality is not a substance behind the decisions, a substance in relation to which the concrete historical decisions are only accidents. My self-understanding as personality depends on my decisions, which may for the most part be unconscious, made without reflection… the ‘I’ is an ever-growing, ever-becoming, ever-increasing entity. Personality experiences its own history within the frame of universal history and interwoven within it, but nevertheless as a history which has its own meaning and is not merged into universal history.” (Pg. 146)
He explains, “Christian faith believes that it receives this gift of freedom, by which man becomes free from himself in order to gain himself… For man cannot say this word to himself, it must be said to him---always individually to you and to me. Just this is the meaning of the Christian message. It does not proclaim the idea of the grace of God as a general idea but addresses and calls man and imparts to him the grace of God which makes him free from himself. This message knows itself to be legitimated by the revelation of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. According to the New Testament, Jesus Christ is the eschatological event, the action of God by which God has set an end to the old world. In the preaching of the Christian Church the eschatological event will ever again become present and does become present ever and again in faith.” (Pg. 150-151)
He notes, “It is the paradox of Christian being that the believer is taken out of the world and exists, so to speak, as unworldly and that at the same time he remains within the world, within his historicity. To be historical means to live from the future. The believer too lives from the future; first because his faith and his freedom can never be possession; as belonging to the eschatological event they can never become facts of past time but are reality only over and over again as event; secondly because the believer remains within history. In principle, the future always offers to man the gift of freedom; Christian faith is the power to grasp this gift. The freedom of man from himself is always realized in the freedom of historical decisions.” (Pg. 152)
He concludes, “man does not stand outside history. But now we can say: the meaning in history lies always in the present, and when the present is conceived as the eschatological present by Christian faith the meaning in history is realized. Man who complains: ‘I cannot see meaning in history, and therefore my life, interwoven with history, is meaningless,’ is to be admonished: do not look around yourself into universal history, you must look into your personal history. Always in your present lies the meaning in history, and you cannot see it as a spectator, but only in your responsible decisions. In every moment slumbers the possibility of being the eschatological moment. You must awaken it.” (Pg. 155)
This book will interest those studying Bultmann, or contemporary theology.
Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) was a German theologian and professor of New Testament at the University of Marburg. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 171-page hardcover edition.]
He wrote in the Preface of this 1957 book, “The following chapters contain the Gifford Lectures which I was invited to give … [in] March 1955. The printed text corresponds closely in substance to the lectures as they were delivered. Only minor additions have been made and the number of references to literature increased. I am conscious that there are many problems which should be discussed further than was possible for me within the framework of these lectures, and I must be content if my attempt to deal with them contributes to such further discussion.”
In the first chapter, he states, “The belief in an eternal order, ruling the life of men, broke down, and with it the ideas of absolute goodness and absolute truth. All this is handed over to the historical process which for its part is understood as a natural process which for its part is understood as a natural process ruled not by spiritual, but by economic, laws… therefore man is no longer understood as an autonomous being, but is seen as at the mercy of historical conditions. His historicity does not consist in the fact that he is an individual who passes through history, who experiences history, who meets with history. No, man is nothing but history, for he is, so to speak, not an active being but someone to whom things happen. Man is only a process without ‘true existence.’ The end, it seems, is nihilism. Can there be a salvation from nihilism? … Can we detect a law, an order in the course of history? … Or must we say that the historicity of man is not yet fully understood and must be thought out to its final conclusions in order to banish the conclusion of nihilism? Such questions can be answered only when we consider exactly the essence, the idea of history.” (Pg. 10-11)
He states, “The New Covenant is not grounded on an event of the history of the people as was the Old Covenant… The new people of God has no real history, for it is the community of the end-time, an eschatological phenomenon. How could it have a history now when the world-time is finished and the end is imminent!... Therefore no social program can be developed but only negative ethics of abstinence and sanctification… All this means that in early Christianity history is swallowed up in eschatology. The early Christian community understands itself not as a historical but as an eschatological phenomenon… The question then is… how long the expectation of the imminent end of the world can remain unshaken.” (Pg. 36-37)
He points out, “The problem of Eschatology grew out of the fact that the expected end of the world failed to arrive, that the ‘Son of Man’ did not appear in the clouds of heaven, that history went on, and that the eschatological community could not fail to recognize that it had become a historical phenomenon and that the Christian faith had taken on the shape of a new religion. This is made clear by two facts: (a) the historiography of the author of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles (b) the importance which tradition gained in the Christian community.” (Pg. 38)
He observes, “But eschatology was never abandoned, rather the expected end of the world was removed into an indefinite future. This happened without any great shock… in consequence of the developing sacramentalism. Two effects of sacramentalism were: (1) The interest of the believers was directed … to the salvation of the individual soul… (2) The powers of the beyond, which will make an end of this world, are already working in the present, namely, in the sacraments which are administered by the Church.” (Pg. 51-52)
He notes, “The longer the Parousia failed to come and the end of the world was removed to an indefinite distance, the longer the Church had a history in this world, the more an interest in history developed… The interest of the Church in its own history had a further special cause. The Church claims to be founded by the Apostles, and the bishops claimed to be the successors of the Apostles. This claim had to be justified and therefore catalogues of bishops stretching back to the Apostles had to be compiled.” (Pg. 56)
He asks, “What is the core of history? What is its real subject? The answer is: man… We usually distinguish between history and nature. The course of both passes within time. But the difference is clear, for history is constituted by human actions… History as the field of human actions cannot, however, be cut off from nature and natural events… All these conditions and events within nature, so far as they are relevant for human life and history, may be called encounters …in contrast to human actions. Indeed, not only human actions but also human sufferings belong to history; in a certain sense they are also actions in so far as they are reactions.” (Pg. 139-140)
He states, “it must be stressed that what we call ‘personality’ if also temporal-historical and is constant only as a possibility which is ever to be realized. Personality is not a substance behind the decisions, a substance in relation to which the concrete historical decisions are only accidents. My self-understanding as personality depends on my decisions, which may for the most part be unconscious, made without reflection… the ‘I’ is an ever-growing, ever-becoming, ever-increasing entity. Personality experiences its own history within the frame of universal history and interwoven within it, but nevertheless as a history which has its own meaning and is not merged into universal history.” (Pg. 146)
He explains, “Christian faith believes that it receives this gift of freedom, by which man becomes free from himself in order to gain himself… For man cannot say this word to himself, it must be said to him---always individually to you and to me. Just this is the meaning of the Christian message. It does not proclaim the idea of the grace of God as a general idea but addresses and calls man and imparts to him the grace of God which makes him free from himself. This message knows itself to be legitimated by the revelation of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. According to the New Testament, Jesus Christ is the eschatological event, the action of God by which God has set an end to the old world. In the preaching of the Christian Church the eschatological event will ever again become present and does become present ever and again in faith.” (Pg. 150-151)
He notes, “It is the paradox of Christian being that the believer is taken out of the world and exists, so to speak, as unworldly and that at the same time he remains within the world, within his historicity. To be historical means to live from the future. The believer too lives from the future; first because his faith and his freedom can never be possession; as belonging to the eschatological event they can never become facts of past time but are reality only over and over again as event; secondly because the believer remains within history. In principle, the future always offers to man the gift of freedom; Christian faith is the power to grasp this gift. The freedom of man from himself is always realized in the freedom of historical decisions.” (Pg. 152)
He concludes, “man does not stand outside history. But now we can say: the meaning in history lies always in the present, and when the present is conceived as the eschatological present by Christian faith the meaning in history is realized. Man who complains: ‘I cannot see meaning in history, and therefore my life, interwoven with history, is meaningless,’ is to be admonished: do not look around yourself into universal history, you must look into your personal history. Always in your present lies the meaning in history, and you cannot see it as a spectator, but only in your responsible decisions. In every moment slumbers the possibility of being the eschatological moment. You must awaken it.” (Pg. 155)
This book will interest those studying Bultmann, or contemporary theology.
August 24, 2021
This is Bultmann's Gifford Lectures, and it is a most intriguing read. The question is, does history have meaning?
April 24, 2024
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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