818. For Bultmann, the change ...

scanned pdf

For Bultmann, the change that occurs in the event of coming to faith is the change from an understanding of oneself in anxious closure against the encompassing mystery as, at best, indifference and, at worst, hostility, to an understanding of oneself in trusting openness for the encompassing mystery as "nothing but love." Thus there is a clear convergence of Bultmann's understanding of this change with H. Richard Niebuhr's, even as their two positions clearly converge in their respective understandings of God -- and of faith in God.

According to Niebuhr, "a strange thing has happened in our history and in our personal life; our faith has been attached to that great void, to that enemy of all our causes, to that opponent of all our gods" (RM: 122). "When we say that we conceive faith in the great void and the great enemy, we mean that we have learned to count on it as friend. We have learned to rely on it as a cause to which we may devote our lives, as that which will make all our lives and the lives of all things valuable even though it bring them to death" (124).

Summer 1997