Essays on Biblical Interpretation by Paul Ricoeur
Chapter 1: Preface to Bultmann
II. DEMYTHOLOGIZATION
ancient culture, what has been unique and extraordinary in this hermeneutic situation since the beginning.
of the mythological representation of the world by a modern man and to make apparent the true scandal, the folly of God in Jesus Christ, which is a scandal for all men in all times.
Here the question of demythologization refers back to the other
question, which I have called the hermeneutic circle. The hermeneutic circle can be stated roughly as follows. To understand, it is necessary to believe; to believe, it is necessary to understand. This formulation is still too psychological. For behind believing there is the primacy of the object of faith over faith; and behind understanding there is the primacy of exegesis and its method over the naive reading of the text. This means that the genuine hermeneutic circle is not psychological but methodological. It is the circle constituted by the object that regulates faith and the method that regulates understanding. There is a circle because the exegete is not his own master. What he wants to understand is what the text says; the task of understanding is therefore governed by what is at issue in the text itself. Christian hermeneutics is moved by the announcement which is at issue in the text. To understand is to submit oneself to what the object means. Here Bultmann rejects Dilthey’s view that understanding the text means grasping in the text an expression of life. This means that the exegete must be able to understand the author of the text better than the author has understood himself. Bultmann says no. It is not the life of the author that governs understanding, but the essence of the meaning that finds expression in the text. Here Bultmann agrees perfectly with Karl Barth, who says in his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, that understanding is under the command of the object of faith. But what distinguishes Bultmann from Barth is that Bultmann has perfectly understood that this primacy of the object, this primacy of meaning over understanding, is performed only through the understanding, through the exegetical work itself. It is necessary
therefore to enter the hermeneutic circle. Only in the understanding of the text do I in fact know the object. Faith in what the text is concerned with must be deciphered in the text that speaks of it and in the
confession of faith of the primitive church which is expressed in the text. This is why there is a circle: to understand the text, it is necessary to believe in what the text announces to me; but what the text announces to me is given nowhere but in the text. This is why it is necessary to understand the text in order to believe.
These two series of remarks, one about demythologization and the other about the hermeneutic circle, are inseparable. Indeed, by cutting into the letter, by taking off the mythological wrappings, I discover the
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summons which is the primary meaning of the text. To separate
kerygma from myth is the positive function of demythologization. But this kerygma becomes the positive side of demythologization only in the movement of interpretation itself. That is why it cannot be fixed in any objective statement that would remove it from the process of
interpretation.
We are now in a position to confront the errors and mistakes which Bultmann’s demythologization has occasioned. In my opinion all of these come from the fact that attention has not been paid to the fact that demythologization is operative on several strategically different levels.
In what follows I want to distinguish the levels of demythologization in Bultmann as well as the successive definitions of myth which
correspond to these levels.
At a first level, the most extrinsic and superficial one and hence the most obvious, it is modern man who demythologizes. What he
demythologizes is the cosmological form in primitive preaching. In fact, the conception of a world composed of three stories — heaven, earth, and hell — and peopled with supernatural powers which descend down here from up there is purely and simply eliminated, as out of date, by modern science and modern technology as well as by how man
represents ethical and political responsibility. Everything that partakes of this vision of the world in the fundamental representation of the events of salvation is from now on void. And at this level Bultmann is right in saying that demythologization must be pursued without reserve or exception, for it is without a remainder. The definition of myth which corresponds to this level of demythologization is that of a prescientific explanation of the cosmological and eschatological order, an
explanation which for modern man is unbelievable. It is in this sense that myth is an additional scandal, added to the true scandal, which is the "folly of the Cross."
But myth is something else than an explanation of the world, of history, and of destiny. Myth expresses in terms of the world — that is, of the other world or the second world — the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence.
Hence to demythologize is to interpret myth, that is, to relate the
objective representations of the myth to the selfunderstanding which is both shown and concealed in it. Again, we are the ones who are
demythologizing, but according to the intention of the myth, which aims
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at something other than what it says. Myth, then, can no longer be defined in opposition to science. Myth consists in giving worldly form to what is beyond known and tangible reality. It expresses in an
objective language the sense that man has of his dependence on that which stands at the limit and at the origin of his world. This definition sets Bultmann in complete opposition to Feuerbach. Myth does not express the projection of human power into a fictitious beyond but rather man’s grasp on his origin and end, which he effects by means of this objectification, this putting in worldly form. If myth is really a projection on the level of representation, then it is first of all the reduction of what is beyond to what is on this side. Imaginative projection is only one means and one stage of the giving of a worldly form to the beyond, in terms of the here and now.
At the second level, demythologization is no longer the exclusive work of the modern spirit. The restoration of the myth’s intention, counter to its objectifying movement, requires an existential interpretation, such as Heidegger’s in Sein und Zeit. Far from expressing a necessity of the scientific spirit, this existential interpretation challenges the philosophic and in itself unscientific pretension to exhaust the meaning of reality by science and technology. Heidegger’s philosophy furnishes only the philosophical preliminary of a criticism of myth which has its center of gravity in the process of objectification.
But this second level is not the final one. For a Christian hermeneutics, it is not even the most decisive one. Existential interpretation is
rightfully applicable to all myths, as Hans Jonas’s work indicates. Jonas first applied it, not to the Gospels, but to Gnosticism, in his Gnosis und spatantiker Geist, a work published as early as 1930, with an important preface by Rudolf Bultmann. At the first level this myth had no
specifically Christian aspects. This is still true at the second level. Thus Bultmann’s entire undertaking is pursued on the assumption that the kerygma itself wants to be demythologized. It is no longer modern man, educated by science, who calls the shots. It is no longer the philosopher and his existential interpretation applied to the universe of myths. It is the kerygmatic core of the original preaching which not only requires but initiates and sets in motion the process of demythologization.
Already in the Old Testament the creation stories effect a vigorous demythologization of the sacred cosmology of the Babylonians. More fundamentally still, the preaching of the "name of Yahweh" exercises a corrosive action on all the representations of the divine, on the Baals and their idols.
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The New Testament, despite a new recourse to mythological representations, principally to those of Jewish eschatology and the mystery cults, begins the reduction of the images which serve it as a vehicle. The description of man outside of faith puts into play what can already be called an anthropological interpretation of concepts like
"world," "flesh," and "sin" which are borrowed from cosmic mythology.
Here, it is Saint Paul who begins the movement of demythologization.
As to eschatological representations in the proper sense, it is John who goes farthest in the direction of demythologization. The future has already begun in Jesus Christ. The new age has its root in the Christic now. From now on, demythologization proceeds from the very nature of Christian hope and from the relation that the future of God maintains with the present.
I think that this hierarchy of levels, in demythologization and in myth itself, is the key to reading Bultmann correctly. If these different levels are not distinguished, Bultmann will be accused either of being
inconsistent or of doing violence to the texts. On the one hand, he will be accused of wanting to save a remnant, the kerygma, after having said that demythologization must be brought to its conclusion, without
reservation or attenuation. On the other hand, he will be reproached with imposing alien preoccupations on the texts — those of modern man, the heir of science, and those of existential philosophy, borrowed from Heidegger. But Bultmann speaks in turn as a man of science, an
existential philosopher, and a hearer of the word. When he occupies this last circle, he preaches. Yes, he preaches; he makes the Gospel heard.
Hence it is as a disciple of Paul and Luther that Bultmann opposes justification by faith to salvation by works. By works man is justified and is glorified, that is, man sovereignly determines the meaning of his own existence. In faith he divests himself of his pretension of being self- determined. So it is the preacher who gives the definition of myth as a work wherein man determines God instead of receiving from God his justification. The preacher here turns against the mythmaker, against the man of science, and against the philosopher himself. If the philosopher claims to find something else, in his description of authentic existence, than a formal and empty definition, a possibility for which the New Testament announces the realization, then the philosopher himself falls under the blow of condemnation. Because he declares that he knows how authentic existence becomes realized, he too claims to determine himself. Here is the limit of existential interpretation and, in general, of the recourse to philosophy. This limit is perfectly clear. It coincides with the passage from the second interpretation of myth to the third, that is, to
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the interpretation which begins from the kerygma itself. More precisely, it begins from the theological core of justification by faith, according to the Pauline and Lutheran tradition.
If, therefore, Bultmann thinks he can still speak in nonmythological terms of the Christ-event and of the acts of God, it is because, as a man of faith, he makes himself dependent on an act which determines him.
This decision of faith is thus the center from which the previous definitions of myth and demythologization can begin to be taken up again. Consequently a circulation is set up among all the forms of
demythologization — demythologization as work of science, as work of philosophy, and as proceeding from faith. By turns, it is modern man, then the existential philosopher, and finally the believer who calls the shots. The entire exegetical and theological work of Rudolf Bultmann consists in setting up this great circle in which exegetical science, existential interpretation, and preaching in the style of Paul and Luther exchange roles.