840. According to Bultmann, "the question ...

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According to Bultmann, "the question about human existence" that properly guides interpretation of the Bible -- at least within the church -- is "a question I am driven to ask by the existential question about my own existence" (NTM: 106). That is, I am driven to ask one question by another, so that two questions are involved in existentialist interpretation: the existential question that orients such interpretation and the existentialist question that constitutes it.

The second is properly so-called because, like the question of existentialist analysis asked by philosophy, it abstracts from my own existential decision here and now in order to think and speak about something more general. This is not, as it is in the case of existentialist analysis, what it means to exist at all or in general, but rather, as it is in the case of interpreting meaning otherwise, what it means to exist in this particular way or that, and thus the possibility of so existing.

7 November 2006