In this essay no attempt is made to discuss Bultmann’s important contribution to Formgeschichte, which is, perhaps, the work for which he will be remembered. The purpose of the essay is rather to examine some of the assumptions that enter into Bultmann’s thought; assumptions that serve to shape, at the very least, his approach to Scriptural, and other problems.

This can be best understood if one of Bultmann’s typical preoccupations is considered. In his essay ‘New Testament and Mythology’ he attempts to explain in what sense he regards the New Testament as an historical document, in view of the amount of figurative language it contains. His explanation raises, among other problems, the question of what is meant by history, and this question in its turn, for Bultmann, forces the discussion into the realm of philosophy.

It is, perhaps, useful at this point to summarize Bultmann’s position about history, as set out in his History and Eschatology. History only begins when man frees himself from participation in a world that is full of gods; a world that he pictures, rather than analyses, in story forms that reflect both the regularity or rhythm of nature, and the irruption of awesome event. It is only when a human group becomes conscious of the processes that shape its experience that history, as self-conscious reflection on human relationships within a group, can be said to emerge. Both chronicle, with its selective character, and narrative, with its patterning of events, emerge from a reflection on, and an evaluation of, the causes and the interconnection of events regarded as significant in the experience of a people.