Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FAITH AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS §6.3
claims made for the historical-critical method in such circumstances are unavoidably
excessive, as pretending to pronounce on what, as has since become
clearer, it is not capable of comprehending. The idea of what a hermeneutic of
scientific inquiry might mean has had to change, though the corollary is still too
little acknowledged.
Bultmann fell into the same trap. Even though the scientific paradigm shift
occasioned by Einstein's theory of relativity was well under way, 30 he still continued
to assert (1957) that 'the historical method includes the presupposition
that history is a unity in the sense of a closed continuum of effects in which individual
events are connected by the succession of cause and effect'. 31 It was the
objectivity which the scientific method assumed as possible of achievement
against which he so fiercely reacted in his demythologizing programme. 32 But as
Paul Ricoeur points out in his 'Preface to Bultmann', Bultmann was thereby in
effect ignoring the objectifying character of all language, the language of faith as
well as the language of myth. 33 Ironically, Bultmann's existentialism was a way
of avoiding the problem of objectifying language rather than a way of dealing
with it. Here again Gadamer appositely cites Edmund Husserl:
The naivete of talk of 'objectivity' which completely ignores experiencing,
knowing subjectivity, subjectivity which performs real, concrete achievements,
the naivete of the scientist concerned with nature, with the world in
general, who is blind to the fact that all the truths that he acquires as objective,
and the objective world itself that is the substratum in his formulas is his
own life construct that has grown within him, is, of course, no longer possible,
when life comes on the scene. 34
None of this is to deny the importance of the otherness of the past (§6.3a
above), or that historical data have a recognizable objectivity. It is, however, to
recognize that the movement from data to fact (§6.3b above) is a good deal more
30.1 refer particularly to Heisenberg's 'uncertainty principle' and Niels Bohr on the indeterminacy
of quantum physics.
31. R. Bultmann, 'Is Exegesis without Presuppositions Possible?', Existence and Faith
(ET 1961; London: Collins, 1964) 342-51 (here 345).
32. See, e.g., Keck, Future 50-52; J. D. G. Dunn, 'Demythologizing — The Problem of
Myth in the New Testament', in I. H. Marshall, ed., New Testament Interpretation: Essays on
Principles and Methods (Exeter: Paternoster, 1977) 285-307.
33. P. Ricoeur, 'Preface to Bultmann' (i.e., to the French edition of Jesus and the Word
and Jesus Christ and Mythology, 1968), Essays on Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1980) 49-72: 'Bultmann seems to believe that a language which is no longer
"objectifying" is innocent. But in what sense is it still a language? And what does it signify?'
(65-67).
34. Gadamer, Truth 249 (Husserl was writing with regard to Hume); see also 261.
108