From: Joel Cannon (jcannon@jcannon.washjeff.edu)
Date: Mon May 19 2003 - 10:31:23 EDT
George Murphy posted a useful analysis of Bultmann (which my
evangelical background taught me to regard as wearing an absolutely
black hat--no gray or slight areas of white).
In comparing (my impression of) Bultmann's existential viewpoint to
what I observe in my congregation and have observed in groups such as
InterVarsity, not to mention televangelists, it seems to me that one
might say that Bultmann has "won," or at the least has significant
commonality with the vast majority of today's protestants in terms of
how we understand God acting in the world, and what it means to be a
Christian. While North American protestants get upset about
Bultmann's view of history, resurrection, Jesus' mighty works, etc.,
North American protestants' understanding of conversion, piety, the
sphere of God's action are right at home with Bultmann's existential
interpretation.
In particular, two implicit strands of Bultmann's existential focus
that seem to be intrinsic to modern evangelicalism in the United
States are psychology and individualism. We tend to understand
conversion as an internal event, a change in our understanding of the
world (psychology) that delivers us from a guilty conscience. When
discussing what Jesus does for us, we prefer "forgiveness of sins,"
the more psychological term to justification, the term that Paul
habitually used (and used in different sense than we do). We (like
Bultmann) are spiritual descendents of Martin Luther, a man who was
obsessed by a guilty conscience (in contrast to Paul who showed no
signs of such). Similarly our piety is predominantly introspective
(e.g. on a recent men's retreat, we were to answer a question
something like, "What would God see if he looked at your heart?"), and
primary strand of our understanding of God acting is internal (and
perhaps in manipulating seemingly chance events for ours or someone
else's favor).
This observation does not mean that Bultmann and North American
evangelicals are right or wrong about this. But the fact that two
groups who start from such stunningly different foundations can end up
at the same point does invite the question of how well the
psychological and individualistic understanding is connected to the
foundation.
> One of the best expressions of this is what he says about the
> doctrine of creation in _Jesus Christ and Mythology_:
> "First, only such statements about God are legitimate as express the
> existential relation between God and man.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joel W. Cannon | (724)223-6146
Physics Department | jcannon@washjeff.edu
Washington and Jefferson College |
Washington, PA 15301 |
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