Philip Arthur Bence PhD Thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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meaning. The word "sin" makes a good first example. For
Bultmann, this word held little relation to a traditional
definition, i.e., "the transgression of a law;" he
defined sin as "the old quest for visible security, the
hankering after tangible realities, and the clinging to
transitory objects.":3
Living in a world full of fearful possibilities
fills man with anxiety. His uncertainties drive him to a
search for Security. Seeing no other viable option, man
chooses to build his own security. Each person willfully
rejects the way of the Unseen. This is sin. "The whole
man is evil if his will is evil.".4
In his effort to find security in the visible world,
he always fails. His failure produces guilt. This guilt
from the past compounds his anxieties concerning the
future. Contemporary man lives as one . .
who knows from bitter experience that the life
he actually lives is not his authentic life,
and that he is totally incapable of achieving
that life by his own efforts. In short, he is
totally fallen being.
This means, in the language of the New
Testament, that man is a sinner.'5
In the midst of futile efforts to find fulfillment,
man longs for escape into freedom. "Man's life is
pervaded by the guest for reality (aletheia), the quest
for life. . . . Human existence knows, overtly or
covertly, of its dependence upon that from which it can
live. It hungers and thirsts, for it has a will to
live." To deal with this desire, man postulates an
eschatological existence or a "transcendent world .