We cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament. And if we suppose that we can do so ourselves, we must be clear that we can represent this as the attitude of Christian faith only by making the Christian proclamation unitelligible and impossible for our contemporaries.
He puts a fair challenge forward, though it sounds quite ridiculous to see the electric light as the sign of the enlightenment of modern man vis a vis the mythologies of the New Testament. He would say to us 'at least fundamentalists are consistent'! But the challenge is this: how do we account for the disjunction between our daily existence, where we operate without expectation of the miraculous and on the basis of the scientific world view, and our belief in the New Testament? Don't we all do some demythologising somewhere (unless you live on a mountain in Virginia and handle snakes)?
Bultmann's confidence in his own mastery of the past never seems to waver. He seems unaware that he is in effect re-mythologising the New Testament by casting it in terms of human existence and authenticity... Like Spong, he is remorselessly sceptical, except of his own scepticism. It is interesting, too, how he shares Spong's concern for apologetics/evangelism: that the modern person, busily switching his electric light bulb on and off, and listening to the wireless, despises the gospel as it is couched in mythological language.
4 comments:
Read a very nice critique of Bultmann just yesterday, the argument was basically that Bultmann is a gnostic. It's in The Beauty of the Infinite by David Bentley Hart. It's around p. 18 or so.
Sometimes I feel like I'm illiterate reading these quotes, and this is only from 1941, sheesh... heh, but anyway, that's a very, very interesting question Michael!
I've heard around the traps that we don't see evidence (overt evidence I guess) of the devil in our culture because he's trying to trick us into thinking he doesn't exist, but in "other cultures" (usually Africa) where people are more open to the supernatural (which includes miracles I guess) he is more apparent.
Of course this is a terrible explanation, but it's interesting to see how people explain away the disjunction between their own (modern, Western) experience & the events of the NT - it still happens (or can happen), just 'over there'.
I'm as comfortable as I'm going to be I guess leaving the miracles of the NT in NT times, and experiencing life as a fairly random/plan-less endevour in the present (which doesn't leave much room for the efficacy of prayer, I must admit), however it's interesting to see how your average joe types reconcile it for themselves.
For instance when people do claim some sort of supernatural/miraculous intervention, it's usually (imo) due to mistaking correlation for causation, and it makes me want to stamp "correlation != causation" in reverse on their foreheads, so people get more familiar with the idea (as simple as it is).
The amount of faulty/magical thinking that occurs as people attempt to write God's intervention and/or the miraculous into the day to day & solve the disjunction between modern day & NT experience is extraordinary, in my view, and has been quite disillusioning to witness so much of it here in the 'burbs.
Healing is an interesting touch point, for eg, because it's interesting to see how much harm is done by trying to bring the miraculous of the NT into today, what with all bad, bad ideas about healing out there.
Yet we still pray for our friends big toe or aunt's life threatening cancer as though God will jump in and right the situation - but does he?
We may live in modern times as modern people, but we still pray as though we were none the wiser...
My ignorance of Bultmann is lamentable, but I do know this passage of course (who doesn't?) and I have always thought that we are too quick to dismiss its argument. Just because it is summary and overstated does not mean that there isn't a real point.
Mere use of electric lights and radios does not of course precipitate one into an utterly different world from (what Bultmann supposes to be) that of the first century. But using the fruits of technology as individuals, in this saying, stands for our participation in the understanding of natural law that allows us (as a society) to design and create such things. To put it another way: simply by looking at the stuff we can make, it is clear that our understanding of the universe has radically improved over the last four hundred years, compared to anything that preceded them.
Speaking as a scientist: our understanding of the natural world is qualitatively better than that of the ancients, and in particular we have both deep and detailed experience to give us faith in the uniformity of nature, and its regularity, that they did not possess. So it is not idle to claim that it has become more problematic to believe in interruptions to nature's order. The stakes have been raised.
but I do know this passage of course (who doesn't?)
Well, me - until about 3 hours ago...
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