Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FAITH AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS §5.4
tionalist and Liberal predecessors].... Rather the ideas are understood in the
light of the concrete situation of a man living in time; as his interpretation of
his own existence in the midst of change, uncertainty, decision; as the expression
of a possibility of comprehending this life; as the effort to gain clear
insight into the contingencies and necessities of his own existence. When we
encounter the words of Jesus in history, we do not judge them by a philosophical
system with reference to their rational validity; they meet us with
the question of how we are to interpret our own existence. That we be ourselves
deeply disturbed by the problem of our own life is therefore the indispensable
condition of our inquiry.
Here, as with Herrmann and Kahler, one cannot but be impressed by the degree
of personal involvement with the subject matter so evident in all Bultmann's theology;
that is what makes it such good theologising. But even so, we can hardly
avoid asking whether Bultmann's existentialist hermeneutic is any more valid
than Reimarus's rationalist hermeneutic or Harnack's Liberal hermeneutic. Once
again the flight from history caused no problem for what was essentially a
fideistic position (standpoint of faith), because faith had been rearticulated, or
better redefined, in terms of a contemporary philosophy 45 whose appeal was
hardly more enduring than the problematic historical-critical method itself. 'He
who marries the spirit of the age will soon find himself a widower'.
5.4. The Second Quest
Despite the huge influence of Bultmann, it was his pupils who most effectively
raised again the question whether some sort of quest of the historical Jesus ought
to be resumed. The old quest had been effectively declared both impossible and
illegitimate. 46 It was impossible because 'the Gospels are primary sources for the
history of the early Church, and only secondarily sources for the history of Jesus';
'the twentieth century presupposes the kerygmatic nature of the Gospels,
and feels really confident in asserting the historicity of its details only where
their origin cannot be explained in terms of the life of the Church'. It was illegitimate
because such historical inquiry runs counter to faith: 'whereas the kerygma
calls for existential commitment to the meaning of Jesus, the original quest was
an attempt to avoid the risk of faith by supplying objectively verified proof for its
"faith"'. 47 To the two questions Can we know anything about the life of the his-
45. See, e.g., Bultmann's interpretation of the cross and resurrection of Jesus ('New Testament
and Mythology' 35-43).
46. Robinson, New Quest ch. 2.
47. Robinson, New Quest 35, 37-38, 44.
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