"I have read enough Bultmann to agree with John Ashton's brilliant summary: '...yet over them all Rudolf Bultmann, unmatched in learning, breadth and understanding, towers like a colossus. Nevertheless, in spite of his pre-eminence, every answer that Bultmann gives to the really important questions he raises - is wrong ... if one were to try and distil the essence of Bultmann's achievement into a single word ... the best word, I think, would be penetration - the peculiar ability to see John clearly and to see him whole.' (Understanding the Fourth Gospel, 45)."
There is no doubting Bultmann's mastery of ancient sources, his pastoral concern for the human condition, his penetrating analysis of source and theological issues, but I still think he's so overrated. What I really don't like, well:
- I find his existential Deism nauseating.
- There is more to Romans than a diatribe.
- His History of the Synoptic Tradition asserted more than it argued and is methodologically defunct.
- There never was a Gnostic Redeemer myth nor was there ever any proof for it in the first place.
- He was wrong to cordon off Christianity into Palestinian, Hellenistic, and Gentile varieties.
- His depiction of Judaism as pure legalism is both inaccurate and has had horrendous effects in Pauline studies.
- His best book A Theology of the New Testament gives us 30 pages about Jesus and 120 about a fictitious Hellenistic Community.
Let me say that I do however like Bultmann's TDNT articles and he found a way to momentarily stop liberal protestants from becoming atheists and post-Christian secularists. In terms of twentieth-century Germans, give me Zahn, Schlatter, Pannenberg, Stuhlmacher, and Hengel any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
I dedicate this post to my good friend Jim West!
