By Schubert Ogden
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If I get his point, then, what Bultmann means is that theology, understood as the conceptual explication of the knowledge given in revelation, or of the self-understanding of faith, is, in its content, a world view, whose genuineness, like that of any other world view, depends upon its springing up "ever anew within the changes of historical situations and encounters," which, in the case of theology, means, upon the act of faith's being realized, or the resolve of faith's being carried out, in it. So, at any rate, must one stipulate the condition of theology's genuineness relative to the theologian. Relative to the hearer or reader of a theology, on the other hand, one must presumably say that theology's objectifying finds its point – -- and in that sense is genuine – -- only in sublating the objectification, which is to say, only in hearing or reading it as (indirect) address (cf. Karl Jaspers and Rudolf Bultmann, Die Frage der Entmythologisierung: 96).
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But if theology, in its content, is a world view, the question of _its_ truth or legitimacy has to be decided by the same criterion. And Bultmann's own answer to this question is clear. "There can be no doubt," he says, "that a radical understanding of historicity has broken through in the Christian faith \-\- the way having been prepared in the Old Testament" (149 \[178\]). In other words, there can be no doubt that theology is true because, in its content as a world view, it expresses a radical understanding of historicity \-\- "radical" here being, as it often is in Bultmann's writings, a synonym for "right" or "true." |
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