A History of Christian Doctrine #3 - Online Christian Library

A History of Christian Doctrine
Bible means for our present experience with God. In
Bible days, people believed in angels, demons, and miracles,
so of course they wrote in those terms. But today, we
realize that these things are fanciful, so we need to translate
the stories into modern terms. We need to strip away
the mythological elements and focus on the true message
of Christianity. Bultmann called this process “demythologizing”
the Bible.
This method creates a huge problem, however: where
does one stop demythologizing? Who is to say what is
true and what is false, what is historical and what is not,
what is the true message and what is just the disposable
wrapping that surrounds the message? Who decides what
is the essential core? The bottom line is that no objective
determination is possible. The reader is the one who
decides subjectively.
At this point, it appears that we are almost back to
old-time Liberalism and its fallacies. If the Bible is God’s
revelation to humans, how can humans sit in judgment on
it? Once again, it appears that in trying to accommodate
to twentieth-century rationalism, theologians fatally compromised
the Word of God. Indeed, Bultmann discarded
the historical reality of the Incarnation, substitutionary
Atonement, Resurrection, and Second Coming. In
essence, he retained only “justification by (personal existential)
faith alone and not by history (the saving events
recorded in the Gospels).” 204
We cannot simply dismiss Bultmann as a Liberal,
however, because he did emphasize personal faith in
Jesus Christ. He taught the importance of a definite, personal
experience with God. He did not completely eliminate
the Cross or the uniqueness of Christ, but he
180