International Journal of Systematic Theology Volume 10 Number 1 January 2008

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2400.2007.00329.x

Faith as Self-Understanding: Towards

a Post-Barthian Appreciation of
Rudolf Bultmann
BENJAMIN MYERS*

Abstract: The tradition of post-Barthian systematic theology has consistently

criticized Rudolf Bultmanns doctrine of faith. Following Barths critique,
contemporary theologians have argued that Bultmanns concept of faith as
self-understanding undermines the reality of God and reduces theology to
anthropology. This article argues that such arguments rest on a misreading
of Bultmann. Far from anthropologizing theological knowledge, Bultmann
identifies faith with self-understanding precisely in order to maintain the
distinctiveness of Gods reality. According to Bultmann, the locus of all true
knowledge of God is the living christological event of divinehuman encounter
in which God is both related to and differentiated from humanity. This
conception of God and faith remains relevant, and it offers valuable resources to
theological reflection today.

When [Gods] reality lights up before us, then the whole immeasurable world is
transformed for us and we too are transformed. Wilhelm Herrmann

In the tradition of post-Barthian systematic theology, Rudolf Bultmann tends to be

regarded with hostility, or at best with intense distrust. The reasons are not far
to seek. There is the radicalness of Bultmanns form criticism, which seemed to
undermine the historical reliability of almost everything in the Gospels. There
is his sharp division between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. There is
his infamous programme of demythologizing the New Testament. There is his

* Centre for the History of European Discourses, Forgan Smith Tower, Level 5, The
University of Queensland, Brisbane QLD 4072, Australia.
The author 2008. Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA.
22 Benjamin Myers

existentialist hermeneutic, so heavily reliant on Heidegger, which seemed to impose

alien philosophical categories on to the biblical witness. There is his identification of
Christs resurrection with the rise of faith in the early disciples, an identification
which seemed to leave no place for an objective event of resurrection.
Finally, there is Bultmanns interpretation of faith as a new self-understanding
(Selbstverstndnis), a new understanding of existence.1 According to Bultmann,
we cannot speak of an act of God without speaking simultaneously of our own
existence.2 Thus the question about God is precisely the question about the truth
of human existence;3 and Gods action is that action which bestows upon us
a new understanding of ourselves.4 Faith is therefore defined as a new self-
understanding, or as a new understanding of existence.5 The gospel calls us to
renounce our former self-understanding and to embrace the new self-understanding
of faith. This identification of faith with self-understanding is probably the most
frequently criticized aspect of Bultmanns thought; but, as I will argue in this article,
it is also perhaps the most widely misunderstood.
Karl Barth was one of the earliest and most influential critics of Bultmanns
doctrine of faith; later critics have often done little more than restate the basic
objections which Barth had already formulated. Barth claimed that Bultmanns
doctrine of faith reduces knowledge of God to a state of human consciousness, so
that, for Bultmann, theology becomes nothing more than anthropology. Against
Bultmann, Barth argued that the gospel calls us not to look at ourselves but to look
beyond ourselves to Jesus Christ. For Barth, there is a clear polarity between
self-knowledge and knowledge of God; speaking of our encounter with the New
Testament message, he can only say: I cannot see why this should involve an act
of self-understanding on my part.6 In Barths view, Bultmann inflexibly forces
the New Testament gospel into a set of preconceived conceptual categories. Barth
thus describes Bultmanns identification of faith with self-understanding as an

1 Rudolf Bultmann, Das Problem der natrlichen Theologie , Glauben und Verstehen:
Gesammelte Aufstze, 4 vols. (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 193365), vol. 1,
p. 297 (hereafter cited as GuV); ET Faith and Understanding, ed. Robert W. Funk
(London: SCM Press, 1969), p. 316.
2 Rudolf Bultmann, Bultmann Replies to His Critics, in Kerygma and Myth: A
Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch, trans. Reginald H. Fuller, 2 vols. (London:
SPCK, 195362), vol. 1, p. 199.
3 Rudolf Bultmann, Das Problem der Hermeneutik, GuV, vol. 2, p. 233; ET New
Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings, ed. Schubert M. Ogden
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), p. 88.
4 Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Charles Scribners Sons,
1958), p. 73.
5 Rudolf Bultmann, On the Problem of Demythologizing, in New Testament and
Mythology, p. 115.
6 Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann An Attempt to Understand Him, in Kerygma and Myth,
vol. 2, p. 86.
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Faith as Self-Understanding 23

anthropological strait-jacket,7 and even as a totalitarian interpretation.8 On the

basis of preconceived interpretive categories, Bultmann reduces all theology to
anthropology; he transmutes all theological statements into statements about the
inner life of the human.9
This objection to Bultmann has been raised repeatedly by theologians since
Barth. Helmut Thielicke has claimed that for Bultmann revelation is no longer
an objective reality, but only a change in the subjective consciousness of man.
Thielicke argues that Bultmann detaches the Christ-event from reality, so that we are
finally left only with the shadows of our own consciousness.10 Similarly, Thomas
Oden argues that Bultmann anthropologises the relation between God and man,11
while T.F. Torrance writes that in Bultmanns theology we are flung back upon
ourselves, so that the word God becomes merely a cipher for our relations with
God.12 In the same way, Helmut Gollwitzer has suggested that Bultmanns theology
raises the suspicion that the word God itself designate[s] merely a state of man.13
More recently, and even more bluntly, Donald Bloesch has remarked that Bultmann
transpose[s] theology into psychology, creating a faith that is simply knowledge of
the self, not knowledge of God;14 while Paul Molnar has condemned Bultmanns
compromise [of] the objectively real actions of God within time, a compromise
which finally leaves us without any genuine savior, creator, lord and redeemer.15
Even more pointedly, David Bentley Hart has described Bultmanns entire project as
a transformation of the gospel into a fable of the soul, whose true meaning is a
wisdom and peace vouchsafed inwardly in the selfs own inviolable subjectivity.16
Again and again, the same note is thus sounded: Bultmann transforms theology into
anthropology.
If such criticisms are correct, Bultmanns concept of self-understanding would
seem to be little more than a form of that perverse human disposition which Luther

7 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2, ed. T.F. Torrance and G.W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T.
& T. Clark, 1960), p. 446.
8 Barth, Rudolf Bultmann An Attempt to Understand Him, p. 115.
9 Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2, p. 446.
10 Helmut Thielicke, The Restatement of New Testament Mythology, in Kerygma and
Myth, vol. 1, p. 147.
11 Thomas C. Oden, Radical Obedience: The Ethics of Rudolf Bultmann (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1964), p. 131.
12 T.F. Torrance, Theological Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 327,
32930.
13 Helmut Gollwitzer, The Existence of God as Confessed by Faith, trans. James W. Leitch
(London: SCM Press, 1965), p. 28.
14 Donald G. Bloesch, Holy Scripture: Revelation, Inspiration and Interpretation (Downers
Grove: IVP, 1994), pp. 249, 254.
15 Paul D. Molnar, Incarnation and Resurrection: Toward a Contemporary Understanding
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), p. 19.
16 David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 22.
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24 Benjamin Myers

described as curvedness: instead of being directed outside ourselves (extra nos) to

the reality of God, we are sinfully and egotistically curved in on ourselves; instead of
being open to a knowledge of God in his self-revelation, we are open only to a new
knowledge of ourselves, a new self-understanding. But is this an adequate
evaluation of Bultmanns doctrine of faith?
It should be admitted at the outset that the concern expressed in this line of
criticism is in itself legitimate enough. It is clear that Bultmanns concept of self-
understanding can in fact be appropriated by those whose aim is a radical
anthropologizing of theological knowledge one need only think of some of
Bultmanns more radical left-wing pupils like Herbert Braun and Fritz Buri to
see how a translation of theological statements into statements of human self-
understanding may be pressed into the service of a dekerygmatizing of faith, or
even of a flat denial of the reality of God.17 But such an application of Bultmanns
method is by no means faithful to the impulse of Bultmanns own thought. Nor
does the criticism that Bultmann reduces theology to anthropology take seriously
enough the complex theological structure of Bultmanns doctrine of faith.
In the following exposition of Bultmanns thought I will suggest that the
typical anthropological criticism misses the mark entirely, and that Bultmanns
conception of self-understanding is in fact precisely an attempt to articulate the sheer
singularity of the reality of God in Jesus Christ. Properly understood, Bultmanns
identification of faith with self-understanding may provide contemporary theology
with important insights into the distinctiveness of Gods reality, the nature of faith,
and the divinehuman relationship.

II

What does Bultmann mean when he describes faith as self-understanding? In the

first place, it should be noted that self-understanding, for Bultmann, is not what
Schleiermacher called feeling (Gefhl) or consciousness (Bewutsein); it is not a
spiritual or psychological attitude,18 nor a general feeling of confidence in God
[Gottvertrauen].19 Rather, self-understanding is the act of faith in which ones very
being is constituted.20 Indeed, according to Bultmann, self-understanding rarely
takes place at the level of consciousness,21 since the determination of ones being is

17 See, for example, Herbert Braun, Gesammelte Studien zum Neuen Testament und seiner
Umwelt (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1962), pp. 243309.
18 Rudolf Bultmann, Die Eschatologie des Johannes-Evangeliums, GuV, vol. 1, p. 148; ET
Faith and Understanding, p. 179.
19 Rudolf Bultmann, Die Bedeutung des geschichtlichen Jesus fr die Theologie des
Paulus, GuV, vol. 1, p. 212; ET Faith and Understanding, p. 245.
20 Rudolf Bultmann, Gnade und Freiheit, GuV, vol. 2, p. 160; ET Essays: Philosophical
and Theological, trans. James C.G. Greig (New York: Macmillan, 1955), p. 180.
21 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 74.
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Faith as Self-Understanding 25

far more radical than consciousness. A change in self-understanding is a change in

ones entire existence; it is a fundamental disruption and alteration of the very
constitution of the existing self. In faith, I am constituted anew which is to say, I
receive a new self-understanding.
Bultmann elucidates this point with the illustration of marriage: when I marry,
I receive a new self-understanding through a decisive new encounter with another
person; in this event, the whole determination of my being is irrevocably altered.22
The new self-understanding received through marriage has nothing to do with a mere
isolated change in my personal consciousness; on the contrary, my whole situation
is transformed,23 and my whole existence is renewed.24 This renewal of my
existence includes a new understanding of the whole network of relationships within
which I have my being, with the result that the whole world takes on a new
character.25 In just the same way, Bultmann argues that faith is an act in which the
self and the relationships which constitute the self are understood together in a
wholly new way, so that ones entire being is reoriented and transformed.26
It is true that, at times, Bultmann speaks as though faith were grounded
ultimately in the human will; but we can understand Bultmann here only if we
realize that he speaks of the will simply as shorthand for human existence as a
whole. As John Macquarrie notes, the will is not a special faculty of the self, or
a ghostly phenomenon that operates somehow behind our outward acts. Rather,
The will is simply our way of describing the whole self in action.27 The new
self-understanding of faith is thus grounded not in some distinct part of the self, but
simply in the self as an acting agent. As Ernst Fuchs has said: In self-understanding
it is precisely the self that is at stake!28 Thus also the emphasis on the primacy of
decision (Entscheidung) in Bultmanns thought should not be taken as an
endorsement of any faculty psychology, or of a voluntarism which grounds faith in
a specific movement of human volition. On the contrary, Bultmann uses terms like
will and decision only in order to highlight the character of faith as a new
movement of the entire self. In short, the self-understanding of faith is nothing else
than a new way of existing.29

22 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 75.

23 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 75.
24 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 77.
25 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 75.
26 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 74.
27 John Macquarrie, Studies in Christian Existentialism: Lectures and Essays (London:
SCM Press, 1966), pp. 6364.
28 Ernst Fuchs, The Hermeneutical Problem, in James M. Robinson, ed., The Future of
Our Religious Past: Essays in Honour of Rudolf Bultmann (London: SCM Press, 1971),
p. 273.
29 Bultmann, Das Problem der natrlichen Theologie , GuV, vol. 1, p. 297; ET Faith
and Understanding, p. 316. It is thus strange that Otto Weber, Foundations of Dogmatics,
trans. Darrell L. Guder, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 19813), vol. 1, p. 541, can
attempt to correct Bultmann with the argument that the real issue in the New Testament
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26 Benjamin Myers

As a movement of the whole self, then, faith must be understood as a basic

determination of ones life.30 Bultmann expresses all this with his Pauline
formulation that faith is not a work (Werk) but an act (Tat). In a work, the doer
stands alongside what he or she does; while in an act both doer and action are
inseparable.31 Thus in an act, I become something for the first time: I find my being
in [the act], live in it and do not stand alongside it.32 As an act of this kind, faith is
nothing less than a constitution of the self; it is a movement in which the new self
constitutes itself in place of the old.33
The decision of faith is therefore not merely a work motivated by an abstract
human nature which stands behind it. Rather the self becomes itself precisely in
the decision of faith. The human does not stand behind the decision of faith
[Glaubensentscheidung], but in it.34 In the movement of faith, my entire existence is
thus taken up and transformed, so that my new self-understanding is not something
distinct from my existence, but it is precisely the full expression of my existing self.
In the words of Heinrich Ott: Man does not stand over against his understanding; he
is this very understanding itself for to understand means just to exist.35 Hence
a new understanding of the self is, quite simply, a new life.36
If faith is thus an act of the whole person in which the self is constituted anew,
it follows that faith can only be an ever-new event. According to Bultmann, faith in
God can never become a human possession;37 God can never be a mere Objekt which
we have grasped and mastered, nor can Gods Word ever be stored in the treasure-
house of human spiritual life.38 On the contrary, Gods Word to us remains always
a sovereign Word, and as such a Word which we shall never master and which
can only be believed as an ever-living miracle, spoken by God, and constantly
renewed.39 Here Bultmann makes it clear that he does not understand faith as any
kind of spiritual experience (Erlebnis) not even the experience in which one is

proclamation is not a new self-understanding but rather a new constitution of our

existence as a whole; and that it is not a change of our self-understanding but a
transformation of our existence. This is, of course, precisely Bultmanns point.
30 Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel, 2 vols.
(London: SCM Press, 19515), vol. 1, p. 328.
31 Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1, p. 316.
32 Bultmann, Gnade und Freiheit, GuV, vol. 2, p. 156; ET Essays, p. 175.
33 Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1, p. 316.
34 Bultmann, Gnade und Freiheit, GuV, vol. 2, p. 160; ET Essays, p. 180.
35 Heinrich Ott, Language and Understanding, Union Seminary Quarterly Review 21
(1966), p. 282.
36 See John Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology: A Comparison of Heidegger and
Bultmann (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 63.
37 Rudolf Bultmann, Die Krisis des Glaubens, GuV, vol. 2, p. 13; ET Essays, pp. 1415.
38 Rudolf Bultmann, How Does God Speak to Us through the Bible?, in Existence and
Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolf Bultmann, ed. Schubert M. Ogden (New York:
Meridian, 1960), p. 169.
39 Bultmann, How Does God Speak to Us through the Bible?, p. 169.
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Faith as Self-Understanding 27

converted to Christianity.40 If faith were such an experience, then one could look
back on it with satisfaction, perhaps hoping that it would occasionally repeat itself.
But as the movement and determination of ones whole existence, faith is never a
mere experience, and there is no moment in which the person of faith is released
from the obedience of constantly living out of the grace of God.41
Faith can be a determination of our existence only if it is always new, only if it
is an act in which we respond continually to the living Word of God. In the language
of the Fourth Gospel, faith is our abiding in Gods Word. And this abiding,
Bultmann writes, is not something that is appended to faith, but it is the very nature
of faith, so that faith can only be an ever-new act of fidelity.42 In Pauline language,
Bultmann similarly observes that faith is a how, a way of life itself, which becomes
valid only in the act of walking.43 Faith is thus authentic only to the extent that it is
enacted in each new moment not as a single experience, but as a continuing
movement of radical fidelity.
This means that we can never rest secure in any past experience of faith; we can
never turn Gods Word into an object by presuming that we have possessed it once
and for all. Because faith is self-understanding, because it is a constitution and
determination of ones existence as a whole, it can only be a new act which occurs
in each Now, just as Gods eschatological Word continues to address us in the krisis
of the present. The Word of God never becomes our property. The test whether we
have heard it aright is whether we are prepared always to hear it anew, to ask for it
in every decision of life.44
It should be clear by now, then, that for Bultmann faith is never the act of an
autonomous human subject.45 It is not as Bultmanns critics have often alleged
simply a decision in which the individual freely authenticates his or her own
existence. To interpret Bultmanns thought in this way would be to overlook one of
the most characteristic features of his theology namely, the identification of faith
with obedience. According to Bultmann, no person is in control of his or her own
existence. One cannot, as in existentialist philosophy, simply authenticate ones
own existence through a free decision. Even to attempt such an autonomous act
would be a manifestation of the fallen drive to self-justification. Faith, in contrast, is
the antithesis of all such self-justifying works, and exposes the fact that human

40 Bultmann, Die Bedeutung des geschichtlichen Jesus, GuV, vol. 1, p. 212; ET Faith and
Understanding, p. 245.
41 Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1, p. 324.
42 Bultmann, Die Eschatologie des Johannes-Evangeliums, GuV, vol. 1, p. 151; ET Faith
and Understanding, p. 182.
43 Bultmann, Die Bedeutung des geschichtlichen Jesus, GuV, vol. 1, p. 212; ET Faith and
Understanding, p. 245.
44 Bultmann, How Does God Speak to Us through the Bible?, p. 169.
45 See also the incisive explication of Bultmann in Eberhard Jngel, Justification: The Heart
of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey F. Cayzer (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2001),
pp. 23842.
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28 Benjamin Myers

existence does not in fact stand under human control.46 For faith is not an
achievement but a gift.47 We receive faith freely from God, and in receiving it we
acknowledge that we have everything from God and nothing from ourselves.
In the movement of faith, therefore, we renounce all trust in ourselves and turn
to God with the whole of our existence. Faith is precisely our turning away from
ourselves, our surrendering all security, our renouncing any attempt to be acceptable,
to gain our life, to trust in ourselves, and our resolving to trust solely in God who
raises the dead.48 Trust in God is, in other words, radical submission to God. It is an
act in which, in response to Gods Word, our existence becomes wholly determined
by God himself.49
In all this, it is again clear that Bultmann does not view faith as any kind of
introspective, self-authenticating work. For he regards faith precisely as the
movement in which human beings turn away from themselves and towards God in
obedience.50 And in true obedience, the whole person is in what she does she is
not merely performing an obedient work, but with her whole being she is essentially
obedient.51 Obedience goes all the way down: that is Bultmanns doctrine of faith.

III

We are now in a position to consider the objection most frequently brought against
Bultmann namely, that self-understanding undermines the reality of God. Is
Gods revelation stripped of its reality if faith is viewed as self-understanding?
Is faith reduced to an act of pure subjectivity, detached from any reality outside the
human self? Does Bultmanns interpretation of faith replace the miraculous event of
revelation with a mere psychological event within ones own inner consciousness?
These are important questions, and they are questions of which Bultmann
himself was by no means unaware. In fact, Bultmann asks pointedly: [if] to speak
of God means to speak of our own personal existence, i.e., if faith is self-
understanding, does it not follow that Gods action is deprived of objective reality,
that it is reduced to a purely subjective, psychological experience (Erlebnis); that
God exists only as an inert event in the soul, whereas faith has real meaning only if

46 Rudolf Bultmann, Zur Frage der Christologie, GuV, vol. 1, p. 111; ET Faith and
Understanding, p. 142.
47 Bultmann, Die Bedeutung des geschichtlichen Jesus, GuV, vol. 1, p. 212; ET Faith and
Understanding, p. 245.
48 Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology: The Problem of Demythologizing
the New Testament Proclamation, in New Testament and Mythology, p. 18.
49 Bultmann, Die Eschatologie des Johannes-Evangeliums, GuV, vol. 1, p. 137; ET Faith
and Understanding, p. 168.
50 Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1, p. 319.
51 Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, trans. L.P. Smith and E.H. Lantero (New York:
Charles Scribners Sons, 1934), p. 61.
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Faith as Self-Understanding 29

God exists outside the believer?52 Bultmann claims that this objection rests on a
complete misunderstanding of the nature of faith: it rests on the assumption that faith
is a psychological occurrence within the soul. But Bultmanns own theological
anthropology radically undermines such a conception of faith. In his view, a human
being is above all a historical (geschichtlich) being, a being which is constituted in
its concrete encounters with others. Human existence is always already a being-
in-togetherness (Miteinandersein) with others, and apart from this togetherness any
notion of humanity would be a mere abstraction.53 Human beings thus exist only in
the living togetherness of I and Thou.54
If our humanness is understood in this way, it becomes impossible to think of
faith merely as a subjective or psychological event. For faith can exist only in the
context of a living encounter and that means, for Bultmann, encounter with
the Word of God. Faith is the event in which I hear Gods Word through scripture
as a word which is addressed to me, as kerygma, as a proclamation.55
Precisely at this point we can see why Bultmann lays so much emphasis on the
kerygmatic character of Gods Word. The Word of God can never be a set of general
doctrinal propositions, nor simply a word from the historical past; it must be a
concrete word of address which encounters me here and now in my own personal
existence. Such a kerygmatic word must be addressed to the hearer as a self.56
When Bultmann describes faith as response to the Word,57 he is therefore speaking
of a personal response in which the whole course of my existence becomes
determined by the Word that addresses me. Faith is, in other words, never merely a
general trust in God, still less a general feeling of existential dependence; it is rather
belief in a definite Word proclaimed to the believer and this Word is always and
only Jesus Christ himself.58 In faith I hear this Word, the personal summons of Jesus
Christ, and with my whole being I respond. If my response is explicitly articulated,
it will therefore necessarily take a christological form:
Christology is the Word of God. That which corresponds to the Word is faith
faiths new self-understanding is the response to the proclamation. And if
this faith this new self-understanding, this response to the address is
expressed in words, it will take the form of christology.59

52 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 70.

53 Rudolf Bultmann, Geschichtliche und bergeschichtliche Religion im Christentum?
GuV, vol. 1, p. 81; ET Faith and Understanding, p. 111.
54 Bultmann, Zur Frage der Christologie, GuV, vol. 1, p. 109; ET Faith and
Understanding, p. 140.
55 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 71.
56 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 36.
57 Rudolf Bultmann, Die Christologie des Neuen Testaments, GuV, vol. 1, p. 261; ET
Faith and Understanding, p. 278.
58 Bultmann, Die Krisis des Glaubens, GuV, vol. 2, p. 10; ET Essays, p. 11.
59 Bultmann, Die Christologie des Neuen Testaments, GuV, vol. 1, p. 261; ET Faith and
Understanding, p. 278.
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30 Benjamin Myers

The event in which I respond to the summons of the Word of God is thus neither
subjective nor objective, but christological, for it is nothing other than the event
of Jesus Christs own living reality, encountering me personally in the kerygma.
Responding to his critics, Bultmann thus insists that [f]rom the statement that to
speak of God is to speak of myself, it by no means follows that God is not outside the
believer60 so long as we think of God as being outside us not in the way an object
is outside a subject, but only in the way a Thou is outside an I in any given event
of personal address.
This means, on the one hand, that faith is not objective it cannot be objectively
observed or verified, since it is always an event which takes place right here and now
in my own concrete existence. But nor, on the other hand, is faith merely subjective
it emerges not from my inner self, but from a living encounter with the God who
addresses me in the gospel.
Bultmann uses ordinary personal relationships to illustrate this point. I
encounter the love of another person as an event in my own living history. Such love
cannot be verified through any objective psychological observation but nor is any
such objectivity required, since I perceive the reality of love directly as a determining
element of my being. Indeed, no one would suppose that a lack of objectivity here
undermined the reality of love; for love has its reality purely in the concrete
encounter in which I am addressed by it and respond to it.61 In just the same way,
Bultmann argues, the fact that we relate to God only in faith through personal
encounter does not mean that [God] does not exist apart from faith.62
On the basis of this understanding of faith, Bultmann can thus conclude that a
lack of objectivity is not a weakness of faith; it is its true strength.63 If we were to
speak objectively of God, we would need to place ourselves outside God, to view God
from a distance. But in this very act of objectification God would cease to be the
all-determining reality of our existence and that means God would cease to be
God. For if God is truly God, we can no more place ourselves alongside him than we
can step outside our own existence.64 Further, if faith were objectively demonstrable,
if the relationship between faith and God were simply the relationship of a subject to
an object, then God would in fact be reduced to the level of an empirical object in the
world; God would be placed on the same level as the world,65 and just so he would
cease to be God. These lines of argument make it strikingly clear that Bultmanns

60 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 70.

61 This illustration is Bultmanns, but I have developed it more explicitly here. See Rudolf
Bultmann, Welchen Sinn hat es, von Gott zu reden? GuV, vol. 1, pp. 267; ET Faith and
Understanding, pp. 534.
62 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 72.
63 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 72.
64 Bultmann, Welchen Sinn hat es, von Gott zu reden?, GuV, vol. 1, pp. 2637; ET Faith
and Understanding, pp. 5365. For an analysis of this important early essay, see
Christophe Chalamet, Dialectical Theologians: Wilhelm Herrmann, Karl Barth and
Rudolf Bultmann (Zrich: Theologischer Verlag Zrich, 2005), pp. 16066.
65 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 72.
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Faith as Self-Understanding 31

intention all along has been to maintain the utter singularity and distinctiveness of the
reality of God. Indeed, it is only in order to affirm Gods reality that Bultmann so
emphatically denies Gods objectivity! It is in order to distinguish between God and
humanity that he so carefully seeks to correlate God and humanity.
In order to move beyond the subjectobject division and to express the
correlation between knowledge of God and knowledge of the self, Bultmann
thus defines faith as self-understanding. The pattern of thought involved here is
distinctively Lutheran in character, just as the whole of Bultmanns thought
is profoundly indebted to Lutheran conceptuality.66 It is a theological and
hermeneutical axiom of Luthers thought that faith and God belong together, so that
the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves must unfold simultaneously
and must remain correlated. If we want to express what faith is, we must speak about
God. And if we want to say who God is, we must speak of faith.67 This is essentially
what Bultmann means when he says that to speak of God is to speak of myself.68
We have already seen that the connection between knowledge of God and self-
knowledge cannot be grasped within the traditional subjectobject schema. For if
God and humanity are separated as an object is from a subject, then both God and
humanity are reduced to mere abstractions. In Macquarries words: A purely
subjective and a purely objective understanding are alike abstractions from the
selfworld correlation which alone makes possible any understanding whatsoever.69
It is therefore only in a single act of self-understanding that we can grasp the reality
both of God and of ourselves. We grasp Gods reality in relation to ourselves and our
own existence in relation to God.
We can best appreciate Bultmanns meaning here by turning to the thought of
Gerhard Ebeling perhaps the greatest of Bultmanns pupils who has developed in
detail the notion of the inseparability of divine and human knowledge. According to
Ebeling, God and humanity are not two theological themes, but one. If we
separate God and humanity, we have misunderstood both, since each can be known
only in its relation to the other. Thus: There can be knowledge of God only if thereby
the human comes to know herself, and the human can have self-knowledge only if
thereby God is known.70

66 Barth recognized this when, in Rudolf Bultmann An Attempt to Understand Him, p.

123, he perceptively remarked that Bultmanns work is inconceivable apart from his
Lutheran background, so that those who throw stones at Bultmann should be careful lest
they accidentally hit Luther, who is also hovering somewhere in the background.
67 This is Paul Althaus summary of Luthers position, in The Theology of Martin Luther,
trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), p. 45.
68 Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 70.
69 Macquarrie, Studies in Christian Existentialism, p. 36.
70 Gerhard Ebeling, The Nature of Faith, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Philadelphia:
Muhlenberg Press, 1961), p. 108. More recently, this theme has also been developed by
Hans Hbner, Evangelische Fundamentaltheologie: Theologie der Bibel (Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005).
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32 Benjamin Myers

Authentic knowledge of God is therefore a knowledge which grasps God in his

relationship to the rest of reality. A knowledge of God that was knowledge only of
one isolated aspect of reality would be knowledge of some object in the world, but
not knowledge of God. Knowledge of God must necessarily be knowledge of reality
as a whole. Ebeling therefore notes that the word God expresses the mystery of
reality as such; and he observes that this word would be used contrary to its meaning
if it denoted an isolated object instead of referring to reality as a whole. To speak
about God means precisely to speak about reality as a whole and therefore to
speak about humanity.71 Ebeling points out that none of this amounts, as Bultmanns
critics have so often claimed, to a mere anthropologizing of faith. Rather, faith really
has to do with God alone but for just that reason it also has to do with real
humanity. Any separation of God and humanity can only lead to an objectified God,
a God who is merely a supernatural ghost that has still to be added on to
reality . . . and is therefore after all only a part of reality as a whole.72 Simply put, the
separation of God and humanity leads inevitably to a God who is no longer God.
Only by understanding God in his relationship to humanity and to reality as a
whole can we truly come to know God in his own sui generis reality. And, likewise,
only by understanding humanity in the relationships which constitute it can we
understand humanity in its true distinctiveness. The self-understanding of faith is
thus on the one hand what Macquarrie calls a disclosure of the self to itself in every
aspect of its existence and in its relations to God and the world;73 and on the other
hand it is a disclosure to the self of the reality of God in his relations to humanity and
the world. And the event in which the self is related to God and God to the self is
precisely the event of Jesus Christ. In Ebelings words, [t]he interrelatedness of the
experience of God, the world, and the self has happened in the appearance of Jesus
Christ.74 Thus the whole structure of faiths self-understanding is christological: our
new self-understanding expresses the divinehuman relation that takes place in the
event of Jesus Christ.
Bultmanns identification of faith with self-understanding seeks, therefore,
neither to displace God from the centre of theological knowledge nor to undermine
the reality of God. Rather it seeks to think God as God, and in that way to maintain
and affirm the true deity of God in distinction from humanity.

71 Gerhard Ebeling, Introduction to a Theological Theory of Language, trans. R.A. Wilson

(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973), p. 55. See also Wolfhart Pannenberg, On Historical
and Theological Hermeneutic, in Basic Questions in Theology, vol. 1, trans. George H.
Kehm (London: SCM Press, 1970), p. 156: all authentic talk about God implies a
reference to the whole of reality, since God can be meaningfully conceived only as the
all-determining power. Thus [s]peaking about God and speaking about the whole of
reality are not two entirely different matters, but mutually condition each other.
72 Gerhard Ebeling, Faith and Unbelief in Conflict about Reality, in Word and Faith, trans.
James W. Leitch (London: SCM Press, 1963), pp. 3778.
73 Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology, p. 187.
74 Gerhard Ebeling, The Study of Theology, trans. D.A. Priebe (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1978), p. 162.
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Faith as Self-Understanding 33

Conclusion

Does Bultmanns doctrine of faith undermine the reality of God, as Barth claimed
and as theologians since Barth continue to allege? Does it reduce theology to
anthropology, the event of revelation to a state of human consciousness? I have tried
in this exposition of Bultmanns thought to indicate how wide of the mark such
criticisms are, and to demonstrate that the typical Barthian critique of Bultmann in
fact rests on a strong misreading. Indeed, Bultmann has himself complained that this
line of criticism rests on nothing but [a] complete lack of understanding of his own
position.75 The preceding discussion has confirmed that this is indeed the case.
Still, this does not mean that one can feel entirely satisfied with Bultmanns
proposal. In particular, we may question Bultmanns claim that the language of
subject and object must under no circumstances be employed in theological
discourse. Is it true that such language is inevitably and necessarily objectifying?
May we not use the term object without thereby placing God at a distance and
reducing his being to a mere part of reality? Although Bultmanns penetrating
analysis and critique of objectification are legitimate and necessary, it seems clear
that the terminology of object may still be used in non-objectifying ways. Notably,
Barth has used the term to designate precisely the active transcendence of God
in relation to humanity, and the initiative with which God actively gathers us into
relation with himself; here the language of objectivity does not place our own
existence outside the reality of God, but it indicates that the God who is with us and
for us in Jesus Christ is always the Lord God is always already there ahead of us,
grasping us in the depths of our existence and so remaining beyond our grasp or
control.
Notwithstanding this terminological reservation, I am convinced that
Bultmanns doctrine of faith has a great deal to offer theology today. In the first
place, even if we retain the language of subject and object, we would do well to
heed Bultmanns warning about the dangers of objectifying God, of turning God into
a mere part of reality and thus into an idol. Perhaps the most egregious example of
this kind of objectification is a form of apologetics in which God is reduced to the
outcome of an experiment or the conclusion of an argument. Similarly, all attempts
to conceive of God as some kind of anthropological or cosmological necessity are
guilty of securing a place for God only by first stripping God of his grace and
freedom, that is, of his very deity. Bultmanns conception of self-understanding, with
its articulation of personal relatedness to God as the locus of all true knowledge of
God, offers a mode by which such forms of objectification may be resisted. In the
movement of faith, God is known in his relatedness to and differentiation from
humanity which is to say, God is known in the living reality of his true deity.

75 Bultmann, On the Problem of Demythologizing, p. 115.

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34 Benjamin Myers

We might even venture the thesis that the fundamental theme of theology is the
distinction between God and humanity.76 At a time when much theology seems
calculated to erase precisely this distinction, Bultmann offers sharp insight into how
the Godhumanity distinction may be conceptualized and defended. According
to Bultmann, God and humanity are differentiated at the exact point of their
togetherness (Miteinander) namely, in the movement of faith which itself
corresponds to the event of Gods self-revelation in Jesus Christ. In other words, God
is distinguished from humanity precisely as the gracious God, the God who
addresses us and claims us in the gospel. This formulation which of course comes
very close to Barths understanding77 poses critical questions not only to overtly
objectifying theologies, but also to an ostensibly Barthian construal of the divine
freedom as sheer isolated autonomy over against the world.78 Paradoxically, while
such a conception aims to prevent the collapse of theology into anthropology,79 it
produces its own subtle collapse of the distinction between God and humanity, since
here Gods freedom functions as a projection of the post-Enlightenment autonomous
subject a subject whose relatedness to others is always set against the backdrop of
a much greater unrelatedness. In contrast, Bultmanns doctrine of faith offers a
resource for thinking the freedom and agency of the God of the gospel, the God
whose freedom has become an event in Jesus Christ, so that his distance from
humanity is solely and precisely the distance of grace.
Further, we can learn from Bultmann to speak of faith only as an act of the whole
person, an ever-new movement in which the whole self responds to the gracious
summons of the gospel. Once faith has been understood in this way, we will have put
behind us all superficial debates about whether faith is seated in the intellect or in
the will, or whether faith involves assent to specific propositional content. If faith is
a movement of the whole person, then it is pointless to ask whether it arises from any
particular location within the self, just as it is pointless to ask whether faith consists
in an objective set of beliefs which stands over against the self. For faith is nothing
other than the acting self, borne up by the divine address and transfigured in response
to that address. And just so, faith clearly involves specific content and knowledge,
even though it is never reducible to propositional content. Indeed, all attempts to

76 Here I am following Eberhard Jngel, for whom the distinction between God and
humanity is the central problem of dogmatic theology.
77 For Barth, the relation and differentiation of God and humanity have their locus in the
humanity of God. Formally speaking, this very different formulation is strikingly
similar to Bultmanns conception of faith: according to both Barth and Bultmann, God
and humanity can be properly distinguished only at the point of their togetherness and
this means, only in the event of Jesus Christ. Presumably a God who could be
distinguished from humanity in any other way would be a philosophical deity or a demon,
but not the gracious God and Father of Jesus Christ.
78 I am thinking here especially of Paul D. Molnar, Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of
the Immanent Trinity: In Dialogue with Karl Barth and Contemporary Theology
(London: T. & T. Clark, 2002).
79 Molnar, Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity, p. 64.
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Faith as Self-Understanding 35

reduce faith to any isolated factor must be resisted, since such attempts contradict the
very nature of faith as an active movement of the whole self in response to God.
Finally, and most importantly, we can learn from Bultmann to take seriously the
christological structure of faith. As the locus of the divinehuman encounter, faith
corresponds precisely to the living event of Jesus Christ for Jesus Christ is himself
the event of Gods relatedness to and differentiation from humanity. That is why, for
Bultmann, the kerygma is of prime importance: in the word of proclamation, Jesus
Christ himself addresses us and becomes an event in our own historical existence.
Indeed, if we take seriously the christological structure of faith, may we not
perceive some truth even in Bultmanns radical correlation between faith and
resurrection? Certainly the reality of resurrection precedes faith and is much more
than faith but can it be anything less? And, on the other hand, can faith be anything
less than resurrection if it is indeed faith in God? For to believe in God is to be wholly
grasped, gathered up into living relation with Christ and his community and what
can this mean except life from the dead? In the words of the Fourth Gospel: he who
hears my word and has faith in him who sent me has eternal life he does not come
into judgment, but has passed from death to life.80

80 Jn 5:24.
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