BULTMANN AND HEGEL

Author(s): J. C. O'Neill
Source: The Journal of Theological Studies, NEW SERIES, Vol. 21, No. 2 (OCTOBER 1970),
pp. 388-400
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23959277
Accessed: 18-10-2018 12:44 UTC

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 BULTMANN AND HEGEL

sees the fundamental difficulty in his own position. The diffi

NOT theculty
least sign
is this. ofthethe
Does not greatnessof the
demythologization ofNewRudolf Bultmann is that he
Testament also demand the elimination of the indispensability of Jesus
Christ ? By demythologization, every statement that attempts to objectify
God and God's actions in the world of nature and events is radically
reinterpreted in terms of the understanding of human existence that it
enshrines; but is not the exclusive importance the New Testament
attaches to Jesus Christ itself such a mythological assertion, which in its
turn needs to be radically reinterpreted and eliminated ?
This is how Bultmann himself puts the problem. (He is discussing the
significance of the Old Testament for Christian faith.) 'The distinctive
idea in the New Testament, in contrast to the Old, is ... to be described
as this: that the relationship of men to God is tied to the person of Jesus. Is
this idea mythology ? Certainly, expressions of the sonship of God in the
metaphysical sense and the Virgin Birth, of the pre-existence and the
return on the clouds of heaven at the Last Trump might be mythology.
But should the idea that God has achieved the world's forgiveness
through the cross of Christ also be eliminated as mythology ? Ought the
idea that God is only accessible in Jesus Christ to be eliminated ? Or does
the Christian faith stand and fall with that belief? Moreover, in making
this assertion, the New Testament asserts also that the new age has
broken in with Jesus Christ; that is, the New Testament divides the
whole of history into two halves of a basically different kind: prophecy
and fulfilment. How far is that mythology to be eliminated ? How far is
it essential for the Christian faith?'1
Bultmann does not proceed to what might have seemed the logical
conclusion; he does not eliminate Jesus Christ from the centre of
Christian faith. In fact his case is that God is only accessible to man in
Jesus Christ, and that the only task of preachers is to proclaim Jesus
Christ.
The problem is sharpened when we see that these two elements in
Bultmann's position, his insistence that God cannot be objectified and

1 ,Die Bedeutung des Alten Testaments fur den christlichen Glauben' in

GlaubenGlauben und Verstehen (G.u.V.), i (Tubingen, 1933), pp. 315-16; English
translation, ,The Significance of the Old Testament for the Christian Faith'
in The Old Testament and Christian Faith: Essays by Rudolf Bultmann and Others,
ed. B. W. Anderson (London, 1964), p. 11.

[Journal 0( Theological Studies, N.S., Vol. XXI, Pt. 2, October 1970]

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 BULTMANNBULTMANN AND HEGEL 389
that the relationship of men to God is tied to the person of Jesus, go hand
in hand. Bultmann affirmed that he was a dialectical theologian, and as a
dialectical theologian he rejected both old orthodoxy's version of fides
quae quae creditur and liberal Protestantism's fides qua creditur in favour of a
dialectical relationship between the two. The old orthodoxy presented a
God who could not be believed; as a proved God he was reduced to being
part of the world, and the propositions about him were made matters of
resolve to be accepted rather than believed.1 But Protestantism since
Schleiermacher had reduced theology to a discussion of what it is truly
to have faith, and had forgotten the question of the truth of the faith
itself. Theology that was only interested in fides qua creditur had lost its
reason for existence. But notice that Bultmann's statement of the dia
lectical theologian's objections to liberalism explicitly connects the
'dialectical' view of God with the indispensability of Jesus Christ. ,The
topic of theology is God, and the objection against liberal theology is this,
that it has dealt not with God but with man. God means the radical
denial and destruction (Aufhebung) of man; the theology whose topic is
God can for that reason have only the λόγος του στανροΰ as its content;
but this is a σκάνδαλον for man.'2
The objections to Bultmann's twofold insistence that theology cannot
make mythological statements about God, on the one hand, and that
theology must affirm that authentic existence becomes reality only as a
result of the Christ-event, on the other hand, are obvious. The two
positions seem clearly inconsistent. If theology cannot make mytho
logical statements about God, and 'express the other-worldly in terms of
this world, and the divine in terms of human life',3 theology must deny
the exclusive importance of Jesus Christ. Either Jesus Christ must
become one among many possible historical occasions for coming to a
true non-mythological understanding of God—this is Schubert Ogden's
solution to what he calls the 'structural inconsistency' of Bultmann's
thought4—or the indispensability of Jesus Christ must be maintained at
the expense of denying the other proposition and affirming that God can
be spoken of objectively.
However, Bultmann is well aware of the charge of inconsistency, as
the statement I quoted in the first paragraph of this paper has shown,

‫ י‬G.u.V. i. 85 ff.; Faith and Understanding, i, ed. R. W. Funk, trans. Louise

Pettibone Smith (London, 1969), pp. 116 ff.
2 G.u.V. i. 2; Faith and Understanding, i, p. 29.
3 Kerygma und Mythos: ein theologisches Gesprach, ed. H. W. Bartsch, vol. i
(Hamburg-Volksdorf, 1951), p. 22, n. 2; Kerygma and Myth: A Theological
Debate Debate (London, 1954), p. 10, n. 2.
4 Christ without Myth: A Study Based on the Theology of Rudolf Bultmann
(1961; London, 1962).

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 390 J. C. O'NEILL
and, despite that, he has never given
allegedly inconsistent positions. The
discover why Bultmann is able to m
and I shall look for the answer not in
of his works, but in a new picture of
thought. Indeed, it will be necessary
ately simple picture of his ideas in o
confidently to compare Bultmann's
predecessors. I hope that the attempt
ideas will in the end help to answ
whether or not his ideas are true.
Bultmann's thought has three simple parts. He states that if a man
would be free he must, first, see the world as the world of nature; second,
see the world as his world; and third, recognize that he is not free in his
world until he accepts the gift of God offered when Christ is preached
to him.
The first step is axiomatic for Bultmann.1 He asserts that nature is
causal, that natural events are completely at our disposal, that the uni
verse is endless and closed, and that therefore it is impossible to claim
to observe God's dealings with men as events in the natural world.
Miracles, in this sense, cannot happen, and any attempt to talk about
God's acts as observable events is mythology.
The second step is to assert that there is another equally essential way
of taking the world, and that is to take it as my world. Man has to
recognize that he lives in history and is both bound by decisions taken
before him and responsible for decisions about the future. When he
recognizes his historical situation he looks at nature and no longer sees
it as neutral nature to be mastered and manipulated; nature becomes
for him the godless existence in which he is bound.
The third step is to recognize his human situation of not being free
when he should be free, and to understand that freedom can come to him
only as a gift. Freedom is the miracle which comes from God when a man
believes in him. If a man tries to manufacture this freedom for himself
he misses the point, because the bondage consists in his trying to make
himself free. Man depends on revelation for his freedom.
These three simple steps represent the three steps of the dialectic
espoused by 'dialectical theology'. The first step is the denial of the
fides fides fides quae creditur expounded by old orthodoxy; the second step is the
recognition of the truth in the fides qua creditur of Protestantism since
Schleiermacher; and the third step is the overcoming of the subjectivity
1 See 'Zur Frage des Wunders', G.u.V. i. 214-28; Faith and Understanding, i,
pp. 247-61.

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 BULTMANN AND HEGEL 391
of that Protestantism by the assertion of the essentia
revelation.
I think all three steps can be found present in everything Bultmann
has written, in the early essays collected in the first volume of Glauben
undund Verstehen, in the two great works published in 1941, the commentary
on John's Gospel and the two essays published together as Supplement
No. 7 of Evangelische Theologie, which set off the demythologizing
debate, and in the later restatements. The repetition of the three basic
steps makes Bultmann's theology both monotonous and tremendously
persuasive. He is free to develop a detail with great subtlety because the
basic moves are almost axiomatic: the world is closed and endless; man
is not free and should be free; the only miracle is the miracle of revela
tion. Our task of tracing the historical roots of Bultmann's thought
should, then, be relatively simple. We can disregard the details and
concentrate on the three basic steps. As we trace back the history of the
ideas that Bultmann was able to regard as almost axiomatic, we shall also
be able to see why he regarded all attempts to objectify God as inadmiss
able while insisting that Jesus Christ is the only way to God and
freedom.
Bultmann himself has openly acknowledged one source of his ideas,
the man from whom he learnt so much, and with whom he disagreed so
profoundly, 'my truly honoured teacher, Wilhelm Herrmann'.1 The first
and second of the two steps are taken straight from Herrmann; on the
third they part company.
Herrmann argued that a God who is objectively proved would be
part of the world and therefore not God; but a God who is seen as the
fulfilment of the highest aspirations of human life is vulnerable to the
fatal objection that the idea of his existence is beautiful but not true. To
escape the dilemma Herrmann proposed to return to an early intuition
of Kant's, that 'religion is only to be found in the man who addresses
himself to action, or, in other words, in the life of man regarded from
the historical and not the merely naturalistic standpoint'.2 But the man
who addresses himself to action, if he is serious, finds life empty and
void because he never attains inward independence. He can only be
saved by a clear revelation of utter dependence that is at the same time
an act of free will. True historical existence is only attained in the act of
submission to revelation.
From Herrmann, Bultmann learnt his near-axioms, that nature is a
closed causal system, that man to live must address himself to action and

' G.u.V. i. 100; Faith and Understanding, i, p. 132.

2 Wilhelm Herrmann, Systematic Theology (Dogmatik), trans. N. Micklem
and K. A. Saunders (New York, 1927), p. 27.

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 392 J. C. O'NEILL

discover his godlessness, and that ma

of course, learnt the first and fund
a hint from Kant's earlier works as
But Bultmann disagrees too sharply w
that the search for the roots of his
taught that a man passed from the
came to know Jesus himself in his
himself to that being, and know Je
that Power which alone we can call God.3 Bultmann denied that
Herrmann had solved his own problem. Even if we could know Jesus'
personality (and we cannot), such knowledge would be no basis for
trust. However strong Jesus' faith may have been, it cannot be an
objective ground for our faith. Moreover, the New Testament itself
does not preach Jesus' faith; it proclaims the Word, that God has for
given me in Jesus Christ. The Word is its own authorization.4
Bultmann himself appeals over Herrmann's head to Luther, and it is
tempting to argue that everything in Bultmann can be derived from the
greatest German theologian of them all. Certainly Luther's theology of
the cross can appear like a plea for the demythologization of all attempts
to display God's glory in visible natural signs, and Luther's theology of
the Word is very like Bultmann's refusal to let the history of Jesus stand
in the way of our confrontation with the Word of forgiveness. One of
Luther's constant strains was 'it is not enough just to take the life and
work of Christ and preach it merely as a story and the chronicle of
events . . . Christ should be and must be preached so that, for you and
for me, faith grows out of the preaching and is received from the preach
ing.'5 Finally, Luther's theology of Law and Gospel provided the
language for Bultmann's second and third steps, the steps from bondage
to authentic existence.

But, however often Bultmann cites Luther, and however many

parallels he can draw between his themes and Luther's, the first axio
matic step remains different, and that step is fundamental for Bultmann's
thought. This contradiction between Bultmann's intention and Luther's
is easy to show. For example, in discussing the essential character of the

1 See 'Der Christ und das Wunder', a lecture delivered at a conference on

OffenbarungOffenbarung und Wunder in 1908, reprinted in Wilhelm Herrmann, Schriften zur
GrundlegungGrundlegung der Theologie, Part II (Munich, 1967), pp. 170-205. Cf. Bultmann's
essay, ,Zur Frage des Wunders', G.u.V. i. 214-28; Faith and Understanding, i,
pp. 247-61.
2 Cf. Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Second General Observation.
3 Systematic Theology (Dogmatik), pp. 50 f.
4 G.u.V. i. 105 ff.; Faith and Understanding, i, pp. 132 ff.
5 Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen (1520), W.A. vii. 29.

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 BULTMANN AND HEGEL 393
true miracle as against miracles that are supposed to int
laws of nature, Bultmann says, 'the assertion that an
miracle expressly contradicts the idea that this event c
as an event in the world' and cites Luther's Conclusio to Rom. viii. 26:
'Necesse est enim opus Dei abscond! et non intelligi tunc, quando fit.
Non autem absconditur aliter quam sub contraria specie nostri conceptus
seu cogitationis.'1 This looks impressive support, until we observe that
the context in Luther is a discussion of prayer, in which Luther shows
that God gives the opposite of what we ask in order to drive us to
passivity. Luther is arguing that God does a strange work in order to do
his own work (Isa. xxviii. 21), not that God's work is in the world of
encounter rather than in the world of natural events. Luther's illustra
tion of his point, given in the next sentence, is the strange work of the
Spirit announced to Mary by Gabriel (Luke i. 35).
Bultmann is, of course, perfectly aware of the gulf between him and
Luther, and knows that he has applied sola fide to the problem of nature
in a way not even open to Luther. He is probably right to see in Luther a
forerunner of his own ideas, but the connection between Luther and
Bultmann is too complex and too distant for us to hope to get more light
from it for our problem of the seeming inconsistency in Bultmann's
thought.
If Herrmann does not support Bultmann's third step, and Luther
does not support his first step, perhaps the other great figure in his
history, Kirkegaard, will support all three. Perhaps he does, but we
can hardly be sure, for Kirkegaard has renounced the cold analytic mode,
which is so important a part of Bultmann's discourse. Kirkegaard
rejected the attempt to objectify God in the structures of Christendom,
and mocked at the vanity of trying to prove God, but he did not, so far
as I know, dispassionately discuss whether or not the universe was a
closed and endless system. Kirkegaard taught Bultmann that there are no
disciples at second hand,2 but he did not want to teach the lesson of the
importance of preaching from the printed word and the importance of the
church that, perhaps surprisingly, is a key part of Bultmann's theology.3
Kirkegaard was a great influence on Bultmann, but I do not find in

1 G.u.V. i. 22ο; Faith and Understanding, i, p. 253. The citation from Luther
is in Johannes Ficker, Anfdnge reformatorischer Bibelauslegung, i (1908, 4th. ed.,
1930), 1930), p. 204; W.A. lvi. 376 f.; Martin Luther, Vorlesung iiber den RomerbriefRomerbrief
1315/1516, 1515/1516, ed. Martin Hofmann, vol. ii (Darmstadt, 1960), p. no; Luther:
Lectures Lectures on Romans, ed. Wilhelm Pauck (London, 1961), p. 242.
22 Bultmann, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Gottingen, 1941), p. 431, η. 1 et
passim.passim.

3 e.g.3 e.g.3 e.g. G.u.V. i. 110; Faith and Understanding, i, p. 141; Johannes, pp. 374-7
at 37s: 'he who is glorified is he who is at work in his church'.

621.2 C C

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394 J· C. O'NEILL

Kirkegaard, except indirectly, the t

thought. Where, then, do we find th
It will seem paradoxical to suggest t
whom Bultmann seldom mentions, a
turn to a philosopher for the structu
Heidegger ? Heidegger as an influenc
posed. Although Bultmann's friends
and 1928, when Heidegger taught at
on Bultmann, we have seen that the
thought were already present in Wil
with Herrmann on the third step wa
merely helped Bultmann to clarify
the fact that a philosopher like H
helpful to Bultmann suggests that B
sciously the heir of a philosophical t
so very little time.
The publication of Hegel's theologic
scripts in the Royal Library in Berli
he never hid in his later writings, th
ment's criticism of positive Christia
world of events is a closed system i
work. Miracles are impossible to the
condition is supposed to have been
occasion, or a reported observation w
the sphere of our experience, is abs
standing,standing, and decisions in mat
where the understanding is the so
conditions completely determinant of
these early works, now entitled The
probably in 1798-9, Hegel makes t
1 e.g. Johannes, p. 432, n. 3; History a
1955 1955 (Edinburgh, 1957), pp. 64, 67
22 See Bultmann's review of the 2nd e
ChristlicheChristliche Welt, xxxvi (1922), co
and cf. 369-71; reprinted in Jiirgen Molt
logie,logie, part i (Munich, 1962).
3 See the careful discussion of the influ
ger on Bultmann in Otto Schniibbe, Der
Bultmanns:Bultmanns: Ein Beitrag zur Interpreta
(Gottingen, 1959); the sentence in my
Schnubbe's on p. 16.
4 Early Theological Writings, trans. Τ.
On On Christianity: Early Theological Writi
pp. 165 f; Hegels theologische Jugendschr
Bibliothek in Berlin, ed. Herman Nohl (

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 BULTMANNBULTMANN AND HEGEL 395
against miracles, which appears so strikingly in Bultmann's argument
for the necessity of demythologization, that acceptance of miracles
actually contradicts the nature of God.
When a God effects something, it is a working of spirit on spirit. ... In
miracles, however, the spirit seems to be working on bodies. . . . Miracles
therefore are the manifestation of the most «ndivine, because they are the
most unnatural of phenomena. They contain the harshest opposition
between spirit and body, two downright opposites here conjoined without
any mitigation of their prodigiously harsh contradiction. Divine action is
the restoration and manifestation of oneness; miracle is the supreme
disseverance.1

It is not surprising that Bultmann's first step in the freedom of man

can be found also in Hegel; it could also be found in Kant and other
writers of the Enlightenment. But Hegel and Bultmann are united at a
much more important point, in their common rejection of the romantic
ism that regarded the God whom the Enlightenment had put beyond
understanding as accessible only to feeling.
Hegel held that the rational criticism of religion by the Enlightenment,
which had disrupted the old harmony between the credo and simple
conviction, was a good thing for religion.2 Reason had to be free. But it
was no solution to the problems of either philosophy or religion to
suppose that understanding of the merely temporal was sufficient, or
that the eternal could be left to feeling alone. The spirit that will not
confine itself to the triviality of the temporal is left to longing (Sehnen),
and that in which it longs to find peace has simply become The Beyond,
without form, without content, without distinction.3 Hegel's warning
against the dangers inherent in Schleiermacher's attempt to construct a
romantic Systematics was little heeded, and had to be revived again by
W. Herrmann and by the school of 'dialectical theology'. Bultmann's
slogan, which he made the title of his collected essays, Glauben und
Verstehen,Verstehen, catches exactly the philosophical intention of Hegel, who
published an important early essay entitled Glauben und WissenΛ
But if I have established that Bultmann's first step and his transition
to the second step are found in Hegel, it would seem much less likely
that the second and third steps in Bultmann are in any way parallel to
any further steps that might be found in Hegel. Does not Bultmann
depend so heavily on existentialism for his picture of man responsible
1 Ibid., Knox, pp. 296 f.; Nohl, pp. 338 f.
2 Vorrede zu Hinrichs' Religionsphilosophie (1822), Berliner Schriften, 1818
1831, 1831, ed. Hoffmeister (Hamburg, 1956), pp. 60 f.
3 Ibid., p. 66, and cf. the following pages.
4 In Kritisches Journal der Philosophic, 1802, repr. in Erste Druckschriften,
Hegels Sdmtliche Werke, vol. i, ed. Georg Lasson (Leipzig, 1928), pp. 221-346.

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 396 J. C. O'NEILL
but bound and of man freed that we wo
before the rise of existentialism, in vain
knew Schelling and dealt critically with
was Schelling—admittedly, after Hegel's
his own later philosophy—who coined th
Hegel was well aware of the issues at sta
language. The Hegelian history of the sp
into a contradiction which is overcome t
the expression in objective language of th
is the subject-matter of existentialist ph
The crown and summit of Hegel's syste
the crown and summit of Bultmann's the
passes from the second stage to the third
that moment as death and resurrection:'... not the life that shrinks from
death and keeps itself undefiled by devastation, but the life that endures
and preserves itself through death is the life of the spirit. Spirit gains its
truth only by finding itself in absolute dismemberment.'2 Only by
passing through and understanding all the forms of spirit does spirit
finally come to know itself. History understood is both the recollection
of everything and the Golgotha where everything seems lost; absolute
spirit attains the actuality, truth, and certainty of its throne, without
which it would die and remain alone, at this Golgotha.3
In other words, spirit comes to know itself, when it understands the
doctrine of the Trinity that lies at the heart of revealed religion, and app
lies it to itself. Religion is, after all, the sum of all the forms of the spirit,
but although revealed religion is the ,true structure (Gestalt)' of spirit,
this true structure must still be overcome in order to resolve the
objectivity of religion.4
For Hegel Christ is the axis on which the history of the world turns.
He says,

God is recognized as Spirit, only when known as the Triune. This new
principle is the axis on which the History of the World turns. This is the

1 Walter Kaufmann, Hegel: Reinterpretation, Texts, and Commentary (1965;

London, 1966), p. 180.
2 Trans. Walter Kaufmann, op. cit., pp. 406 f.; Phanomenologie des Geistes,
ed. Hoffmeister, Philosophische Bibliothek (5th and 6th ed., Hamburg, 1952),
PP· 29 f.
3 Cf. the last few lines of Phanomenologie des Geistes and Kaufmann's com
mentary, op. cit., pp. 161 f. Kaufmann is right about the atheism, but wrong to
say that the 'speculative Good Friday' of Glauben und Wissen is not followed
by resurrection in this passage.
4 Phanomenologie, pp. 476, 480; The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B.
Baillie (2nd ed., London, 1931), pp. 689, 694.

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 BULTMANN AND HEGEL 397

goal goal and the starting point of History. 'When the fu

come, God sent his Son,' is the statement of the Bib
The Recognition of the identity of the Subject and
into the World when the fulness of Time ivas come: th
identity is the recognition of God in his true esse
Truth is Spirit itself—inherent vital movement. T
pure Spirit, is manifested to man in the Christian Rel
Christ Christ has appeared,—a Man who is God,—G
thereby peace and reconciliation have accrued to th

The philosopher learns to do what God, Fath

Spirit does. Revealed religion is understood by the
self-identification of God with man and man with G
is able to take up religion into itself so that philo
pletely independent and free, able to look bac
knowledge.5 To put it another way, the philosopher
he becomes his own Christ.
There is no need to point out that Bultmann has no desire to put this
sort of philosophy at the summit of his system. His slighting references
to Hegel are patently meant. But perhaps Bultmann has unwittingly
taken over Hegel's basic structure of thought at this final stage of his
system, just as he has unwittingly echoed Hegel in the first two stages.
Bultmann wishes to speak about God and Christ right to the end, and
if the believer is called on to die with Christ in order to be born to free
dom, Bultmann could never be accused of wanting to make the believer
his own Christ. Nevertheless, we have to ask seriously, Why not ? The
answer seems to be that Bultmann will not make the believer his own
Christ because he will not make the believer his own God. Bultmann
steadfastly maintains that radical freedom is the gift of God's grace.

‫ י‬Lectures on the Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (London, 1857), p. 331;

GeorgGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophie der Geschichte,
ed. Eduard Gans, 3rd ed. Karl Hegel (Berlin, 1848), p. 388; Vorlesungen iiber die
Philosophie Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, ed. Georg Lasson (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1923), p. 722,
without the last sentence.
2 Philosophy of History, p. 335; Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 393; Philo
sophiesophie der Weltgeschichte, pp. 733 f.
‫ נ‬Philosophy of History, pp. 336 f.; Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 394; Philo
sophie sophie der Weltgeschichte, p. 735.
* * Encyklopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (3rd ed., 1830;
ed. Karl Rosenkranz, Berlin, 1845), § 564: 'God is only God in so far as he knows
himself; his self-knowledge of himself is furthermore his self-consciousness in
man, and man's knowledge of God, which proceeds to self-knowledge of man in
God.'
5 Ibid., §§ 572, 573. Cf. Karl Lowith, 'Hegels Aufhebung der christlichen
Religion' in Heidelberger Hegel-Tage 1962: Vortrdge und Dokumente, ed. Hans
Georg Gadamer, Hegel Studien, Beiheft 1 (Bonn, 1964), pp. 193-236.

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 398 J. C. O'NEILL
Radical freedom in history, the gift of God
he is responsible, entails that the gift co
particular historical occurrence that is Jes
step is individual, like Hegel's, a participatio
like Hegel's, and a movement into freedom
has refused to follow Hegel in taking up (a
God in this final Absolute Knowledge.
Now we are in a position to understand
problem, the problem about why Bultm
apparently inconsistent positions: the neces
language concerning God and the necessity t
indispensable. Bultmann knows that these
collide, but he never, so far as I know, dis
length, however often he insists on their un
My answer is to suggest that Bultmann h
course the crucial moves in Hegel's philo
proposition that the Trinitarian principle
history of the world turns. Bultmann, like
talk about God, and then saw, as part of th
importance of the doctrine of reconciliation
Hegel was convinced that the revealed relig
as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was the sum
of scorn both for those theologians who, as ch
emptied religion of its true content, and for
out of piety, reduced faith to the shibbole
shares the same scorn, and insists that 'we h
turtur to proclaim; we have not to produc
about personalities strong in faith and love
Just as the doctrine of the Trinity is the
which makes him assert that the moment in which that doctrine was
revealed marks the axis of world history, so the doctrine of the Incarna
tion is essential to Bultmann's system. This becomes clearest in his essay
on 'The Significance of the Old Testament for the Christian Faith'.4
He argues that in Israel man first saw the possibility of regarding the
world as 'history' rather than as just 'nature'; in Israel man learnt to

1 See Bultmann's reply to Schubert Ogden's attempt to maintain that Jesus is

'the decisive re-presentation of the truth of man's existence' or 'the God-man
relationship that is the essential reality of every human life' (op. cit., pp. 190, 189)
in in Journal of Religion, xlii (1962), pp. 225-7.
22 Preface to the 3rd edition of the Encyklopadie (1830; repr. Berlin, 1848),
p. xxviii. 3 G.u.V. i. in; Faith and Understanding, i, p. 142.
4 G.u.V. i. 313-36; The Old Testament and Christian Faith, ed. Bernhard W.
Anderson (London, 1964), pp. 8-35.

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 BULTMANN AND HEGEL 399
understand that he was responsible and faced with th
future. But although the Old Testament knew about g
about law, that knowledge was of no use to all men eve
the knowledge was mediated only through membersh
race. Men who did not belong to that race could not re
of God. But then God inaugurated the proclamation o
all, by the church's proclamation of Jesus Christ. Thi
not a reminder of past events, in the way the Old Test
Israel of past events in her history.
Jesus cannot be remembered like Abraham or Moses,
be remembered like the passage through the Red Sea or
Sinai. For he is the eschatological act of God which ma
folk-history.... The news of the forgiving grace of God
no historical report about a past event, but it is the procla
church,church, that now addresses every man directly as G
which Jesus Christ is present as the ,Word'. For God—
grace—encounters the individual immediately in this W

Bultmann, like Hegel, makes the church's proclamatio

in world history, rather than the Incarnation and the C
Both shift the axis to the church's proclamation b
acceptance of the necessity to demythologize.2 Spirit
bodies, as Hegel put it in his early unpublished writing
to discover the truth, and that truth is imaged in th
Trinity, in the Incarnation, in Golgotha, in the Resur
why neither Hegel nor Bultmann can speak of God w
The tragic possibility now comes plainly over the hor
Christian theologian Rudolf Bultmann has unconsciou
structure and much of the content of Hegel's thou

1 G.u.V. i. 332; The Old Testament and Christian Faith, p.

2 Hegel, Philosophy of History, pp. 337 f.; Philosophic der Gesc
Philosophic Philosophic der Weltgeschichte, pp. 737 f.: 'Christ dies; onl
to Heaven and sits at the right hand of God; only thus is he
the Feast of Pentecost were the Apostles filled with the H
Apostles, Christ as living was not that which he was to them
Spirit of the Church, in which he became to them for the first
their truly spiritual consciousness. On the same principle, we
right point of view in thinking of Christ only as an historical b
. . . Make of Christ what you will, exegetically, critically, hi
only concerning question is: What is the Idea or the Truth in
Nor does the miracle of the Divine Mission of Christ pr
Socrates likewise introduced a new self-consciousness on t
diverse from the traditional tenor of men's conceptions. The m
his Divine Mission but the revelation made in Christ and
mission.' In this passage Hegel refers to John xvi. 7, 13. Cf. P
edition of the Encyklopadie, pp. xxvii f., for his exegesis of J

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400 J. C. O'NEILL

accepted the logical conclusion entailed

One might perhaps defend Bultman
step. One might defend Bultmann's
against Hegel's picture of the philoso
where religion is finally overcome.
mann's picture rather than Hegel's
Bultmann's position within itself.
weight to a religion and theology
objectivity and subjectivity of Go
argued that a man can transcend re
religion to philosophy. One might be
Kierkegaard, that man is not permit
ment would be a side issue, for at a
point of transition between the firs
already made the assumption that re
his system almost unavoidable.
Bultmann has assumed, with Hegel,
Jesus Christ as the reconciler of th
history. But Hegel has already decide
history of the various forms assume
tion of revealed religion, which m
destroyed by philosophy. Bultma
moment is for him the first moment
But if it was God's gift, it cannot h
history of the spirit. If it was God's
have pointed to a miracle in nature a
in the history of the spirit, a mira
Israel, as well as a new miracle.
Bultmann has stubbornly refuse
speaking of Jesus Christ. In this he
Hegel. But the axiom both Hegel and
ment, that God cannot work visibly
him to avoid the like charge of athe
of God's actual gift in time to all me
to objectify God, to speak of the ch
event and a moment, but is it a mom
men, or is it merely a moment in the
has given his answer, clearly enough
answer this question, and speak simp
men, means working not only beyo
Hegel, Kant, and J. C. above
Hume; O'Neill

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