Volume 10, Tome I: Kierkegaard's Influence on Theology

German Protestant Theology

Jon Stewart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409444787
• eBook ISBN: 9781351875448
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Kierkegaard has always enjoyed a rich reception in the fields of theology and religious studies. This reception might seem obvious given that he is one of the most important Christian writers of the nineteenth century, but Kierkegaard was by no means a straightforward theologian in any traditional sense. He had no enduring interest in some of the main fields of theology such as church history or biblical studies, and he was strikingly silent on many key Christian dogmas. Moreover, he harbored a degree of animosity towards the university theologians and churchmen of his own day. Despite this, he has been a source of inspiration for numerous religious writers from different denominations and traditions. Tome I is dedicated to the reception of Kierkegaard among German Protestant theologians and religious thinkers. The writings of some of these figures turned out to be instrumental for Kierkegaard's breakthrough internationally shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. Leading figures of the movement of 'dialectical theology' such as Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann spawned a steadily growing awareness of and interest in Kierkegaard's thought among generations of German theology students. Emanuel Hirsch was greatly influenced by Kierkegaard and proved instrumental in disseminating his thought by producing the first complete German edition of Kierkegaard's published works. Both Barth and Hirsch established unique ways of reading and appropriating Kierkegaard, which to a certain degree determined the direction and course of Kierkegaard studies right up to our own times.

Rudolf Bultmann:
Faith, Love, and Self-Understanding

Heiko Schulz

Rudolf Bultmann was born on August 20, 1884, in Wiefelstede, a small town in the former German state of Oldenburg, as the eldest son of a Lutheran pastor. He attended a humanistic secondary school and in 1903 began to study Protestant theology at Tübingen university. Further theological studies were carried out at the universities of Marburg and Berlin, where Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), Wilhelm Herrmann (1826–56), Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932), and Johannes Weiss (1863–1914) rank high among the academic teachers who influenced Bultmann.

His dissertation degree was awarded in 1910, followed by a habilitation in 1912. Soon afterwards he was admitted at Marburg as a lecturer on the New Testament (1912–16). After a lectureship at Breslau, today Wrocław (1916–20) and a brief stint as a full professor at Giessen (1920–21), he returned to Marburg in 1921 as a full professor for New Testament studies, a position he retained until his retirement in 1951. Throughout his long and successful career as a scholar, teacher and actively participating member of the church, Bultmann left a lasting impression on several generations (not only) of theology students, many of whom became friends, later colleagues and prominent scholars in their own right—for example, Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, Ernst Käsemann, Günther Bornkamm, to name but a few.

Before and during World War II Bultmann belonged to the most outspoken members of the “Confessing Church” in Germany, which refused to follow the “German Christian” clergy in supporting Hitler’s non-Aryan exclusion policies. Consequently he criticized his former colleague at Marburg and lifelong friend Martin Heidegger for the latter’s involvement with the Nazis in 1933. From autumn 1944 until the end of the war he took into his family (the later church-critical theologian) Uta Ranke-Heinemann (b. 1927) who had fled the bombs and destruction in her hometown Essen.

Before and after his retirement Bultmann was frequently invited to lecture and teach in other countries: the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Switzerland, England, Scotland and the U.S. In 1955 he delivered the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh. Bultmann died on July 30, 1976, four years after his wife Helene Feldmann (1892– 1972), whom he had married in 1917; they were survived by three daughters.

Bultmann’s numerous writings¹ are marked by their overall intention to reclaim the relevance and authority of the Christian gospel for human existence under the conditions of secular post-Enlightenment thought. Strongly influenced not only by systematic theologians (like Wilhelm Herrmann) but also by philosophers (Martin Heidegger, in particular), Bultmann sought to bring systematic and exegetical perspectives into a closer, mutually fruitful relationship—and this in the service of authentic human personhood, as it is, in his opinion, made possible by Christianity, in particular. The many books and articles he wrote were widely recognized, yet also often vehemently opposed, especially in conservative Christian circles. It is obvious that Bultmann belonged to that remarkably small number of theologians in the twentieth century who possessed both the instinct and erudition and also the courage to pose the right questions at the right time—and in the right (that is, controversial) way.

I.

A.

In 1914 the German theologian Erich Schaeder (1861–1936) matter of factly stated: “Kierkegaard erlebt einen neuen Tag.”² Up until then, the reception-historical situation concerning the Danish thinker had appeared rather simple and straightforward: a couple of catalysts or key figures, often known for and because of their translations (Albert Bärthold (1804–1892), Christoph Schrempf (1860–1944), Rudolf Kassner (1873–1959), Theodor Haecker (1879–1945)); in addition, there were some more or less prominent appropriations on a purely personal level, without any considerable amount of implicit, much less explicit output (Rainer Maria Rilke, Georg Lukács et al.), plus, finally, a rather unimpressive number of secondary sources of highly uneven quality. All of a sudden and almost overnight things changed dramatically: An explosion took place, as it were, both in terms of a productive reception and a receptive production of Kierkegaard’s thought, at least in Germany.³ This development— accompanied, supplemented and fostered by a steadily growing number of German translations—intensified over the next couple of years and reached its preliminary climax in the years immediately after 1918, that is, following the end of World War I. Bultmann was right in the middle of these exciting events, due in particular to the fact that he (next to Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Friedrich Gogarten (1887– 1967)) quickly became one of the key figures in a new theological movement in Germany called—for lack of a more appropriate term—“dialectical theology.” It is obvious, however, that Bultmann was and remained much more steeped in the liberal tradition that he grew up with (especially the theology of his former teacher Wilhelm Herrmann) than, say, Barth. And to a certain extent this is true also of his original and highly productive appropriation of Kierkegaard—an appropriation, which Barth, for this very reason, could just as little approve of as certain strands in Bultmann’s theology in general. In any case, it can hardly be denied that in comparison to the rest of his fellow “dialectical theologians,” Bultmann integrated the Kierkegaardian resources that he found himself drawn to into his own exegetical and systematical thinking in a much more substantial and overall consistent way.

Now, precisely because of the literal omnipresence of Kierkegaard within German culture after, say, the first 15 years of the twentieth century, it is hard to determine exactly, when, under which circumstances and under whose guidance Bultmann took notice of the Danish thinker for the first time. Three points of reference stand out as undisputable, though. First, the years 1916–20, Bultmann’s Wrocław-period: Here he made friends with, among others, Ernst Moering, a pastor (and former student of Ernst Troeltsch), “der sein Predigtamt mit einem dem Christentumsverständnis Søren Kierkegaards verpflichteten Ernst und mit großem homiletischen Geschick auszuüben verstand.”⁴ In fact, two published...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Karl Barth: The Dialectic of Attraction and Repulsion
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Standing "in the Tradition of Paul, Luther, Kierkegaard, in the Tradition of Genuine Christian Thinking"
• Emil Brunner: Polemically Promoting Kierkegaard's Christian Philosophy of Encounter
• Rudolf Bultmann: Faith, Love, and Self-Understanding
• Gerhard Ebeling: Appreciation and Critical Appropriation of Kierkegaard
• Emanuel Hirsch: A German Dialogue with "Saint Soren"
• Jürgen Moltmann: Taking a Moment for Trinitarian Eschatology
• Franz Overbeck: Kierkegaard and the Decay of Christianity
• Wolfhart Pannenberg: Kierkegaard's Anthropology Tantalizing Public Theology's Reasoning Hope
• Christoph Schrempf: The "Swabian Socrates" as Translator of Kierkegaard
• Helmut Thielicke: Kierkegaard's Subjectivity for a Theology of Being
• Paul Tillich: An Ambivalent Appropriation
• Ernst Troeltsch: Kierkegaard, Compromise, and Dialectical Theology
• Index of Persons
• Index of Subjects