806. If any passage makes clear ...

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If any passage makes clear that and how Bultmann's understanding of theology is significantly different from mine, it is what he says about "Christian 'wisdom'" in GV 1: 183 f.

This passage (1) asserts that such wisdom "can only be the explication of faith itself, which realizes itself or is actualized anew in it"; and (2) identifies wisdom, or "knowledge" (das Erkennen, die Erkenntnis) with "theological knowledge" (die theologische Erkenntnis), saying of the second that "legitimate theological knowledge implies the obedience of faith, just as, conversely, the latter founds the knowledge."

Of course, that Bultmann makes these same two moves elsewhere, especially in comparably earlier writings, is confirmed, e.g., in his essay on the concept of revelation in the New Testament by what he says about "the knowledge [das Wissen] given in revelation," (GV 3: 31 f.; EF: 88). Moreover, this second passage has the great value of clarifying the sense in which he understands theology, or theological knowledge, to be "dialectical."

The question, in any event, is whether this failure to distinguish "Christian 'wisdom,'" in the sense of the knowledge of faith explicated in Christian witness, from "theological knowledge," properly so-called, isn't entirely of a piece with the failure he admits to in the midst of the demythologizing controversy of "not having previously distinguished clearly between a scientific understanding of scripture and obedience to the kerygma" (GV 2: 212, n. 4 [NTM: 91, n. 4]). Arguably, the view expressed in his later writings is either ambiguous as between his earlier view and mine (i.e., my later view!), or else sufficiently close to mine to require a self-criticism and retraction of passages such as the above.

8 October 2001