While the works of Rudolf Bultmann are probably the best known source for the position that little can be known about the historical Jesus, other critics have also held this view as well, including a number of his disciples. But as we said in Chapter 1, several reasons have accounted for the decline in the influence of this postion over the last thirty years. We will emphasize four important problems.
1.Historical grounding needed
As already mentioned, Bultmann’s own disciples noted the initial problem with their mentor’s approach. By de-emphasizing the historical basis for the life of Jesus, Bultmann failed to provide both early and modern Christians with the grounding that is indispensable for the founding and present existence of the Christian faith. If no such factual support exists, then this critique is not entirely effective. But if Bultmann’s position was due more to a philosophical bias, which many thought was the case, and if there is a historical foundation, then he was mistaken to proclaim otherwise.
The New Testament often claims to be based on historically accurate accounts.^7 Paul reminds us that, apart from a historical Gospel, there is no basis for faith whatsoever, since it would be vain and groundless (1 Cor. 15:1–20). The point here is that, without a historical core of knowledge concerning Jesus, Christianity would have little initial impetus to encourage faith in an otherwise unknown person.
This criticism was probably the single most influential contribution to the dissatisfaction with Bultmann’s thought. John Macquarrie, while supporting Bultmann in a number of areas, takes issue with him here: It is very doubtful whether the Christian faith could have been built upon the foundation of a historic Jesus who, as Bultmann presents him, was little more than a teacher of a practical philosophy with certain resemblances to existentialism, and who is stripped of the numinous characteristics which the Gospels attribute to him.^8
Many of Bultmann’s disciples agreed with this critique that there had to be some adequate historical knowledge of Jesus. We saw in Chapter 1 that the major thrust came from the “new quest for the historical Jesus” scholars like Ernst Käsemann,
5 Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, transl. by Louise Pettibone Smith and Erminie Huntress (New York: Scribner’s, 1934), p. 8.
6 Bultmann, Theology, vol. I, chapter I in particular.
7 For some instances, see Luke 1:1–4; John 1:14; 20:30–31; Acts 2:22–38; 17:30–31; Heb. 2:3–4; 2 Pet. 1:16–18; 1 John 1:1–3.
8 John Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology: A Comparison of Heidegger and Bultmann (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 23.
Gunther Bornkamm, and James Robinson.^9 While they did not emphasize historical facts as the basis for faith, they did agree that, without such data, violence is done both to the apostolic kerygma(the kernel of their message) and to the present understanding of Jesus.^10
Although Bultmann never endorsed the search for a historical Jesus, he was perhaps affected by some of these critiques, and in his later years he admitted more historical knowledge about Jesus.^11 Christianity proclaimed a historical basis for its message. If an investigation reveals that such a basis exists, then these facts must have a more important function than Bultmann allowed.
2.Assumption of myth
Second, the major problem for Bultmann in terms of this study is that he dismissed the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection without any investigation at all. Rather than consider the evidence, he simply rejected it a priori. Again it is Macquarrie, himself an eminent commentator on Bultmann’s thought, who sharply criticizes him on this point: And here we must take Bultmann to task for what appears to be an entirely arbitrary dismissal of the possibility of understanding the resurrection as an objective-historical event . . . . The fallacy of such reasoning is obvious. The one valid way in which we can ascertain whether a certain event took place or not is not by bringing in some sweeping assumption to show that it could not have taken place, but to consider the historical evidence available, and decide on that.^12
