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Unless I'm mistaken, Bultmann's discussion of the question of how the "legitimacy" of putative knowledge of God is to be determined (GV 2: 79) suffers from his failure to clarify sufficiently what is meant, exactly, by "legitimacy," or, as we might also say, I think, "validity." Does "legitimacy," or "validity," mean "appropriateness," or does it mean "credibility"?

Wiki MarkupIf it means the first, then, of course, Bultmann is right that "the standpoint for \ [_sc_. answering\] such a critical question can only be the knowledge that Christian faith has of God." But what if "legitimacy" means the second? In that case, I maintain, it is not in the least clear that he is right in simply rejecting the counterclaim of his imagined opponent, that the "critical standard by which your Christian knowledge of God must be measured" is "what we show you as God from nature and history."

I say "simply rejecting," because, taken just as it is, this counterclaim must indeed be rejected. It lies in the very logic of the Christian faith that it can never allow itself to be simply an object of normative decision about its credibility, but must insist upon also being a source of such decision, relative to which any other putative knowledge of God must allow itself to be an object. But because any other putative knowledge of God, like that of Christian faith, is itself both -- a source of normative decision as well as an object thereof -- Bultmann's simple rejection of its claim to be a source is itself too simple and insofar unwarranted, as is his correspondingly too simple assumption that Christian faith can only be the source, never an object, of such decision.

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