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According to Bultmann, understanding reports of events as acts, or the act, of God presupposes "a preunderstanding of what in general can be called God's act – -- as distinct, say, from the acts of human beings or from natural events" (NTMOBW: 87). Such a preunderstanding is possible because our existence is moved, consciously or unconsciously, by the question about God, and thus about God's act. "There is an existential knowledge of God present and alive in human existence in the question about 'happiness' or 'salvation' or about the meaning of the world and of history, insofar as this is the question about the authenticity of our own existence" (87).

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In Bultmann's view, then, to say of an event or process that it is an act of God, insofar as this is intended as in some way a differentiating statement, can only mean that it is and by right ought to be decisive for my self-understanding before God, that in it God Godself confronts me with the gift and demand of my authentic existence.

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