837. Formally, Bultmann's insistence ...

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Formally, Bultmann's insistence that faith is an existential self-understanding (NTMOBW: 103) is analogous to Schleiermacher's analysis of faith as a form of religion or piety, and hence of feeling as distinct from knowing and doing. I.e., the "ethics" from which Schleiermacher borrowed the theses comprising this analysis played very much the same role in his thought as existentialist analysis plays in Bultmann's.

Bultmann's point is that, in the very nature of the case, any theology does and must presuppose some such ontological understanding of human existence as clarifying the necessary conditions of the possibility of all of faith's claims and concepts.