According to Bultmann

According to Bultmann ([1948–1952] 2007, 1:42–43 [§7.1]),

the kerygma of Jesus as Messiah is the basic and primary thing which gives everything else—the ancient tradition and Jesus’ message—its special character. All that went before appears in a new light—new since the Easter faith in Jesus’ resurrection and founded upon this faith. But if Jesus’ person and work appear to them in the light of Easter faith, that means that his significance lay neither in the content of what he had taught nor in some modification of the Messiah idea. It does mean, though, that Jesus’ having come was itself the decisive event through which God called His Congregation (Church). It means that Jesus’ coming itself was already eschatological occurrence. Indeed, that is the real content of the Easter faith: God has made the prophet and teacher Jesus of Nazareth [to be] Messiah!

In short, according to Bultmann, the earliest (pre-NT) church gave Jesus’s prophecy and teaching significance by proclaiming him to be the Christ; it was not Jesus’s prophecy and teaching that bore evidence of his being the Christ beforehand. (All the NT material that appears to do so, according to Bultmann, has been put in Jesus’s mouth by the later church.)

However

In addition to the fact that Bultmann, by excluding the witness-character of the NT, has no idea what the “earliest” church would have held, he has the problem of discontinuity. (For the united characterization of the NT as kerygma, witness, and teaching—not to be separated—see Ridderbos [1955] 1988, 49–76.) Bultmann obscures the connection between “the prophet and teacher Jesus of Nazareth” and the later proclamation that he is the “Messiah.” Bultmann, who refuses to acknowledge the simple historicity of the resurrection, cuts off all reasons for the church ever to have embraced an “Easter faith” in the first place. Why bother any longer with the crucified Jesus if there was no “special character” to his prophecy and teaching? Why invent the “Easter faith” in the risen Christ after the death of the historical Jesus? Bultmann claims that his theological synthesis has united the death and resurrection into one event, but it seems rather that he has severed the organic connection between them when he severed the connection between the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the proclaimed risen Christ.

But the organic connection is a historical connection. And it is not only a connection between the historical death and the historical resurrection but also a connection between the entire historical life of Jesus prior to his death and resurrection and the entire, yes, historical life of Jesus after his death and resurrection. There is an organic connection between Jesus’s historical estate of humiliation or suffering and Jesus’s historical estate of exaltation or glory.

As an aside, what holds together this organic, historical connection is the continuity and constancy of the eternal person of Jesus Christ (Heb 13.8), the eternal Son of God (Mark 1.1), the Word who is God and is with God (John 1.1).

Back to the point against Bultmann: Jesus’s pre-crucifixion prophecy and teaching lays the groundwork for the church’s faith. The NT is the only available witness to the “earliest” church’s kerygma, and there we learn that Jesus is the exalted Christ not merely because of the amazing miracle of the resurrection (the “Easter faith”) but also because of who he is and everything that he did leading up to the resurrection. Alongside the kerygma of the resurreciton is the clear teaching that the unique and unqualified perfection of Jesus’s obedience in his estate of incarnate humiliation is the only warrant for his resurrection (see Crowe 2021)! And a key aspect of Jesus’s obedience and faithfulness is his own prophesying and teaching. Furthermore, when Jesus is raised from the dead, when he receives “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt 28.18), he does not issue a revised edition of his prophecy and teaching but rather commands his disciples to teach new disciples to keep all that he had prophesied and taught prior to the resurrection (v. 20).

The unique and unqualified perfection of Jesus’s obedience in his estate of incarnate humiliation is the only warrant for his resurrection.

Of course, Bultmann would just see all of the things that Jesus prophesied and taught as things that the church retrojected to his earlier ministry. But again, Bultmann’s reasoning is fallacious: if none of that “special” prophecy and teaching were there, then would the later church ever have cared enough about Jesus to retroject these “special” things? Bultmann has no good answers for his fabrication of a gap between the historical Jesus and the proclaimed Christ. Bultmann admits, “How this act of decision took place in detail, how the Easter faith arose in individual disciples, has been obscured in the tradition by legend and is not of basic importance” ([1948–1952] 2007, 1:45 [§7.3]). Not of basic importance? It is of such basic importance that his theological and historical house of cards lacks a table on which to stand so long as the “how” is unanswered.

Thankfully, we have the apostolic kergyma, witness, and teaching. We can trust the apostlic reporting on the “how”: the historical Jesus lived a perfect life in which (among other things) he prophesied about himself and taught his disciples; the historical Jesus died as a ransom for many; the historical Jesus rose from the dead; the historical Jesus ascended into heaven; the historical Jesus poured out his Spirit, who is the Spirit of God, onto the church; and the historical Jesus yet reigns from the right hand of the Father in heaven until he returns bodily to judge the living and the dead.

Works Cited

• Bultmann, Rudolf. 2007 Theology of the New Testament. Translated by Kendrick Grobel. 1951–1955. Repr., Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.
  • German original: 1948–1952. Theologie des Neuen Testaments. 2 vols. Tübingen, J. C. B. Mohr.
• Crowe, Brandon D. 2021. Why Did Jesus Live a Perfect Life?The Necessity of Christ’s Obedience for Our Salvation. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
• Ridderbos, Herman N. 1988. Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures. Translated by H. De Jongste. Revised by Richard B. Gaffin Jr. 2nd rev. ed. Biblical and Theological Studies. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed.
  • Dutch original: 1955. Heilsgeschiedenis en Heilige Schrift van het Nieuwe Testament. Het Gezag van het Nieuwe Testament. Kampen: J. H. Kok N.V.