768. Myth, according to Bultmann ...

scanned pdf

Myth, according to Bultmann, intends to set forth a certain understanding of human existence. But what understanding, exactly?

It is an understanding according to which human existence is, in principle, "questionable" (fragwürdig), because it is lived in encounter with other persons and with destiny, continually has to decide in face of such encounters, etc.

But, then, it is this very understanding that Christian witness also sets forth, or, rather, presupposes. This comes out clearly and sharply in Bultmann's discussion of how Christianity meets a basic need of humanism-idealism by frankly and honestly dealing with the Fragwürdigkeit of human existence (GV 2: 143 ff.).

In this connection, I cannot but think of two other things I've noted: (1) what he says about his distinction between "humanistic" and "religious" individualism, which he takes to be unifiable, rather than "mutually exclusive opposites" (242); and (2) his apparent exclusion of humanists-idealists from the "community in the transcendent," of which he mentions as members not only Luther, Kierkegaard, and T. S. Eliot, but also mystics and Jaspers and even Nietzsche and Sartre (271).

From all of this, it would appear that Christianity, in Bultmann's view, is religious in a way in which humanism-idealism is not. In this respect, it is closer to mythical religion as well as to mysticism than it is to humanism-idealism. On the other hand, it is closer to the latter in being in principle demythologizing.

22 January 2002