By Schubert Ogden
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At the heart of Bultmann's response to the question about the reform of theological studies is an understanding that converges closely with my own of (1) the relation between life and science; and (2) the proper office of the ministry that converges closely with my own. I find this convergence particularly clear in the following passage on the first point.
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"What should actually occur in the praxis for which the science of theology is the preparation? The minister as minister is not there for all sorts of loving activity, for Christian education, for counsel and consolation in all possible situations. In all such matters, if things are right, every person and Christian should be ready to be of help to the other. And if a claim to perform them is also often made on the minister, and if he does not wish to decline his service, he still ought to know that this is not his proper office. His proper office is the proclamation of Christian doctrine, preaching, even if, in modern life, this office can be discharged not only from the pulpit but in many different forms. And, in fact, this is also what people basically want from the minister: not a practical service in the usual sense, but instruction, theology. They want to know how it is with a man and his soul, with God and the world, with life and death – -- not in order to be able to do something practical rightly, but in order to gain clarity about themselves, about the meaning of their life. Basically, they want to understand themselves. And in truth this is not at all a theoretical need in the usual sense, but a genuinely practical one. For without understanding oneself, one cannot live in a genuine sense, and one's life becomes a pointless busyness.
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Even so, I also have difficulties with Bultmann's response. Some of them are not different, I judge, from those voiced in the Nachwort, although I certainly share Bultmann's concern that such practical training as the church rightly requires of its candidates for ministry beyond their university education in theology must not be allowed to injure it or detract from its importance – -- as there are always pressures for it to do, from students as well as from church leaders. But my more serious difficulties are mainly two:
(1) Bultmann quite fails to distinguish clearly and sharply, as one must, between the indirect form of Christian witness properly called "Christian teaching," on the one hand, and "Christian theology," properly so-called, on the other. (I might add that, in this response, at least, he also fails to distinguish sufficiently clearly between the direct and the indirect forms of Christian witness itself. It's one thing to proclaim "Christian doctrine," as he says, it's something else to proclaim "Jesus Christ," as he more typically says elsewhere. And it is not the first thing, but one of the two forms of the second that is rightly called "preaching"!)
(2) Bultmann quite fails to recognize, as one must, that the task of theology, as much as any of the other tasks he assigns to "every Christian," also belongs to the church as such, and so to each and everyone every one of its members. (True as it may be that what people look to the minister for is "theology" -- hopefully, as something distinct from, not simply the same as "teaching \ [_Belehrung_\]"\! -- what they want, or, at any rate _should_ want, is leadership in doing what they themselves must already be engaged in doing in direct proportion to the understanding and seriousness with which they are pursuing their calling as Christians.) Wiki Markup
1 December 2001