871. On Bultmann's Treatment of God as Creator

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                                                                                   On Bultmann's Treatment of God as Creator

It seems clear that Bultmann assumes much too uncritically that "our destiny is God's appointment" (MP: 167). Thus he can say that "God gives us what comes to us, and no one has the right to complain about it and to demand more" (161). Also, "God uses us as he will, and so long as he has a use for us he will also preserve us. And if he sends us need and deprivation, he knows why even if we do not. . . . God's will has no why" (25).

Among the other unfortunate implications of this assumption is that it tends to result in just that confusion of the mystery of God for man with the enigmatic or unintelligible against which Bultmann himself elsewhere rightly protests. That is to say, it gives rise to the problem of evil in its classical insolvable form, which faith "nevertheless" affirms to be somehow solved.

I also seem to recall Bultmann's having taken issue with my statement that "each creature is what it is only by partly [sic!] reflecting or expressing in its being God's free decisions" (RG: 180). He apparently wanted to say, instead, that every creature is what it is wholly by virtue of the free decision of God.

25 October 1970