Punctum Saliens

Rudolf Bultmann in Jesus Christ and Mythology writes:

This raises in an acute form the question: what is the importance of the preaching of Jesus and of the preaching of the New Testament as a whole for modern man?

For modern man the mythological conception of the world, the conceptions of eschatology, of redeemer and of redemption, are over and done with. Is it possible to expect that we shall make a sacrifice of understanding, sacrificium intellectus, in order to accept what we cannot sincerely consider true—merely because such conceptions are suggested by the Bible?

Or ought we to pass over those sayings of the New Testament which contain such mythological conceptions and to select other sayings which are not such stumbling-blocks to modern man? In fact, the preaching of Jesus is not confined to eschatological sayings. He proclaimed also the will of God, which is God’s demand, the demand for the good. Jesus demands truthfulness and purity, readiness to sacrifice and to love. He demands that the whole man be obedient to God, and he protests against the delusion that one’s duty to God can be fulfilled by obeying certain external commandments. If the ethical demands of Jesus are stumbling-blocks to modern man, then it is to his selfish will, not to his understanding, that they are stumbling-blocks.

What follows from all this? Shall we retain the ethical preaching of Jesus and abandon his eschatological preaching? Shall we reduce his preaching of the Kingdom of God to the so-called social gospel? Or is there a third possibility? We must ask whether the eschatological preaching and the mythological sayings as a whole contain a still deeper meaning which is concealed under the cover of mythology. If that is so, let us abandon the mythological conceptions precisely because we want to retain their deeper meaning. This method of interpretation of the New Testament which tries to recover the deeper meaning behind the mythological conceptions I call de-mythologizing—an unsatisfactory word, to be sure. Its aim is not to eliminate the mythological statements but to interpret them. It is a method of hermeneutics.

. . .

To de-mythologize is to reject not Scripture or the Christian message as a whole, but the world-view of Scripture, which is the world-view of a past epoch, which all too often is retained in Christian dogmatics and in the preaching of the Church. To de-mythologize is to deny that the message of Scripture and of the Church is bound to an ancient world-view which is obsolete.

This is something about which I’ve been thinking lately: if the Bible is the timeless, eternal Word of a timeless and eternal God then how can it depend on a particular time or world view or world philosophy? It absolutely must be able to speak to me, right now, right here and to you, right then, right there. This is only common sense. Therefore, while figuring out the exact intent of each word based on the writer’s time, place, and current mindset may provide some insight into what the passage meant for the writer and the writer’s contemporary audience, it really has precious little insight for me because I, in my time and place and mindset, am so completely different than the target audience. And forcing me to think of the text as if I were living in the time of the author only causes un-rational, un-defensible beliefs that must be defended at all cost because they are too fragile to be intelligently discussed.

Of course, the major problem I see with this is the four letter word myth. We have a difficult time using the word myth when talking about the Bible or Jesus or God. I’m hoping to discuss myth in more detail later but for now all I’ll quote Bultmann again:

Myths speak about gods and demons as powers on which man knows himself to be dependent, powers whose favor he needs, powers whose wrath he fears. Myths express the knowledge that man is not master of the world and of his life, that the world within which he olives is full of riddles and mysteries and that human life also is full of riddles and mysteries. … Mythology expresses a certain understanding of human existence. … Mythology speaks about this power inadequately and insufficiently because it speaks about it as if it were a worldly power. … Myths give worldly objectivity to that which is unworldly.

So, myth does not mean false, untrue, naive, or a fairy tale—even though that is how we commonly think about myth in this age of science. Myth means that there is a deeper, esoteric meaning beyond the outer, exoteric meaning. It turns the words into symbols charged with inner meaning and gives them eternal life because the inner meaning is able to speak to all times and not just when the words were written. The problem is that we need to learn how to deal with myth again, recognize the mythological nature of the Bible, and “rework” the myth to fit our world. This does not, as Bultmann says, mean rewriting the Bible or rejecting the Bible. It means applying the symbols of the Bible to our day and age.

More later …