Kerygma and Myth

This seminal collection presents Rudolf Bultmann's controversial program of demythologization and the ensuing theological debate it provoked. The volume centers on Bultmann's 1941 essay "New Testament and Mythology," supplemented by his responses to critics and contributions from other theologians engaging his proposals. Bultmann argues that the New Testament's mythological worldview—with its three-tiered cosmos, supernatural interventions, and apocalyptic expectations—has become unintelligible to modern consciousness shaped by scientific understanding. He contends that Christian proclamation requires not elimination of myth but its existential interpretation through categories derived from Heidegger's philosophy.

The work advances a sophisticated hermeneutical argument about religious language and divine revelation. Bultmann maintains that myth expresses authentic human existence before God using objectifying language that modern theology must decode. His demythologization program seeks to preserve the kerygma's existential demand while abandoning its prescientific cosmology. This approach reframes the God question around human self-understanding rather than metaphysical speculation or supernatural causation. God becomes knowable primarily through the existential encounter of faith prompted by Christian preaching, not through objective proofs or historical investigation.

The volume documents fierce resistance from theologians who view Bultmann's project as reductionist. Critics argue he dissolves the objective reality of divine action into subjective human experience, effectively eliminating God's transcendent otherness. They contend his existentialist interpretation cannot preserve the scandal of particularity inherent in Christian claims about divine incarnation and resurrection. The debate illuminates fundamental tensions between modern epistemology and traditional theistic affirmations.

Bultmann's contribution significantly shaped subsequent discussions about religious language, hermeneutics, and the possibility of God-talk in modernity. His work forced theologians to confront the relationship between mythological expression and theological truth, between existential meaning and historical facticity. The volume demonstrates how the God question in twentieth-century theology became inseparable from questions of interpretation, language, and human existence. While Bultmann maintains Christian faith's legitimacy, his radical reinterpretation of its content troubled both conservative defenders of orthodoxy and liberal theologians seeking to preserve more robust divine transcendence. The collection thus marks a watershed in modern theology's attempt to articulate meaningful discourse about God within the constraints of contemporary intellectual culture.