What did Bultmann mean by “demythologisation,” and why does it conflict with orthodox Christianity?
Question 60083
Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) was a German New Testament scholar at the University of Marburg whose influence on twentieth-century theology was enormous and, from an orthodox evangelical perspective, largely destructive. His programme of demythologisation, set out most directly in his 1941 essay “New Testament and Mythology,” argued that the New Testament is embedded in a pre-modern mythological worldview that modern people can no longer accept.
The Demythologisation Programme
For Bultmann, the New Testament presents a three-tier universe — heaven above, earth in the middle, a realm of the dead below — populated by supernatural beings who intervene in human affairs, culminating in cosmic events such as the Second Coming, the resurrection of the dead, and the Last Judgement. His contention was that this entire framework is mythology: not fabrication, but a way of picturing reality that belongs to a pre-scientific age. Demythologisation was his proposed solution — strip away the mythological form to recover the existential message within.
The existential content Bultmann found beneath the mythology was drawn largely from Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of authentic human existence. For Bultmann, the “real” meaning of the resurrection was not a physical event in history but an inward transformation in the believer’s self-understanding — a movement from inauthentic to authentic existence. The cross meant accepting one’s own death and dying to the false self. “Faith” became an existential orientation rather than trust in historical events.
Why This Is Incompatible with Orthodox Christianity
The incompatibility is total, not partial. Bultmann’s starting point is not exegetical but philosophical: he assumed, without demonstrating, that the miraculous framework of the New Testament must be surrendered because modern science has made it intellectually untenable. This is not a conclusion reached by examining the evidence; it is an antisupernatural premise brought to the text before a single verse is read. The actual historical evidence for the resurrection — the empty tomb, the post-resurrection appearances, the testimony of hundreds of witnesses Paul cites in 1 Corinthians 15:6, the transformation of the disciples from hiding in fear to public proclamation at risk of death — receives no serious engagement, because Bultmann has already decided that bodily resurrection cannot be accepted.
Paul states in 1 Corinthians 15:17 that “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” This is not mythology. It is an argument that deliberately stands or falls on a historical claim. Paul’s entire case in 1 Corinthians 15 is that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is a publicly verifiable event attested by named witnesses. Bultmann’s reinterpretation of the resurrection as an inward existential experience is not a recovery of the authentic Christian message from beneath its mythological shell — it is a different message entirely, one that Paul would have recognised as the very thing he was refuting.
The further problem is that Bultmann’s hermeneutical method is internally arbitrary. He retained the cross as historically significant but relocated its meaning in existentialist categories. He demythologised the resurrection but did not demythologise Jesus’ ethical teaching, apparently finding that congenial to modern experience. No principled reason within his own framework explains why some elements are mythological and others are not. The selection appears to be governed by what fits the pre-existing philosophical framework rather than by consistent exegetical method.
Peter’s own testimony provides the most direct answer: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16). Luke’s preface to his Gospel makes the same claim in different terms — he investigated everything carefully from the beginning and wrote an orderly account of what the eyewitnesses reported (Luke 1:1–4). John insists that what he proclaimed was “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked at and touched with our hands” (1 John 1:1). These are not the self-descriptions of people offering mythological packaging for existential philosophy. They are claims to historical testimony, and the entire structure of their message depends on that testimony being true.
So, now what?
Christians encountering Bultmann’s ideas — whether in academic theology or in popular sceptical arguments — need to recognise that the real issue is not scholarship but presupposition. The antisupernatural assumption that drives the entire demythologisation project is itself not warranted by evidence; it is a philosophical commitment dressed in academic language. The exegetical and historical case for the reliability of the Gospel accounts and the historicity of the resurrection is far stronger than Bultmann’s framework allows. The safeguard is exactly what 2 Peter 1:16 provides — eyewitness testimony to real events, preserved in trustworthy documents, about a Christ who rose bodily and reigns bodily still.
“For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” 2 Peter 1:16
Bibliography
- Bultmann, Rudolf. New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings. Edited and translated by Schubert Ogden. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.
- Ladd, George Eldon. The New Testament and Criticism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967.
- Ridderbos, Herman. Bultmann. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1960.
