Philip Arthur Bence PhD Thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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recorded words of Scripture are, in an objective manner,
God's Word.
Bultmann, however, came closer than Tillich to
giving Scripture a distinct place above other books.
Bultmann wrote,
The tradition and the preaching of the Church
tells (sic) us that we are to hear in the Bible
authoritative words about our existence. What
distinguishes the Bible from other literature
is that in the Bible a certain possibility of
existence is shown to me not as something which
I am free to choose or to refuse."
Taking his statement only that far, Bultmann sounds as
though he could be a spokesman for conservative
orthodoxy. (Though he might change the wording, even
Lloyd-Jones would have agreed with those thoughts.) But
Bultmann went on,
Rather, the Bible becomes for me a word
addressed personally to me, which not only
informs me about existence in general, but
gives me real existence. This, however, is a
possibility on which I cannot count in advance.
It is not a methodological presupposition by
means of which I can understand the Bible.13
With those sentences. Bultmann moved away from
conservative orthodoxy. The Bible is not God's Word in
any objective way, but only becomes God's Word when an
individual encounters it as such.
In order to help contemporary man hear God's Word,
Bultmann 'demyth- ologized' Scripture." This, he
believed, enabled man to grasp the Biblical message as a
word from God, or revelation. Thus. Scripture's obsolete
external trappings had to be 'translated' in order that
people today might hear the true Biblical message and