Chapter 17 of 404

Bultmann

For some time after Schweitzer’s critique, scholars generally showed much less interest in producing “lives” of Jesus or even producing much scholarship about Jesus’ life.⁵⁷ Schweitzer’s argument had decisively altered western liberal Jesus scholarship by producing a Jesus that seemed less useful to the theologians who made Jesus their primary concern. No longer did it appear possible to deny that Jesus’ worldview was apocalyptic; yet liberal western academia deemed the apocalyptic worldview no longer relevant. (In fact this worldview was flourishing outside those circles, especially since the spread of dispensational premillennialism in the U.S.; but when academia took notice of such circles, its notice was not positive.) How could theologians reclaim a Jesus whose message was deemed so irrelevant to good theology?

Rudolf Bultmann sought to find a way.⁵⁸ He employed the critical tools of his day⁵⁹ (though, like most of his predecessors, he did use material in addition to “Q” and Mark).⁶⁰ Nevertheless, he remained deeply interested in relevance.⁶¹ Whereas the “Aryan Christians” had tried to make Christianity relevant to a German nationalism recovering from international abuse after the first world war, Bultmann sought a different tack.⁶² Bultmann’s apologetic strategy was to demythologize Jesus’ message to make it “relevant” for his day. Yes, the form of Jesus’ message was apocalyptic, but the real nature of that message was existential: God coming as the demander.⁶³

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