Bultmann, "Exegesis without Presuppositions?"

One assignment for the second day of hermeneutics class was to read Rudolf Bultmann's classic article, "Is Exegesis without Presuppositions Possible?" It was first published in 1957 in Theologische Zeitschrift and then later in Existence and Faith in English in 1965.

I.
1. Bultmann's answer, in the sense that he means "presuppositions," is no. No one is a blank slate. There is another sense of presupposition, meaning prejudging what the text means, is yes. As a good modernist, he rejects allegorical interpretation. But that is not what he is really writing about.

2. Prejudgments are often involved even when one intends to do exegesis. He mentions the assumption that Matthew and John were written by the disciples Matthew and John. He says the same for the assumption that Jesus thought he was the Messiah. "Every exegesis that is guided by dogmatic prejudices does not hear what the text says, but only lets the latter say what it wants to hear."

II.
1. Such prejudgments are not however the interest of the article.

The historical method is an essential presupposition, from his perspective. There seem to be overtones of Ernst Troeltsch here. The exegete must presuppose the continuity of cause and effect. Bultmann might reminds you here of David Hume in presupposing that miracles are not allowed to be part of exegesis or what he calls "historical method." This may also hint at Troeltsch's principle of analogy. If we don't see miracles today, we should not assume there were miracles then.

He does not deny anyone the right to believe in miracles, however, He simply denies that their allowance can be part of historical method. I also heard overtones at the beginning of the article of Troeltsch's other principle--the idea that historical conclusions are always revisable. This concept appears later in the chapter as well.

2. "In every effort to achieve a unified view the individual historian is guided by some specific way of raising questions, some specific perspective."

Bultmann did not believe that this dynamic falsified the historical picture, but it was a factor of which the historian should be self-aware. "Historical phenomena are many-sided."

Bultmann seems confident in human understanding of ideas like "man and his possibilities for action" or "what economy and society in general mean."

An interpreter must have some relation to the subject matter. "Only he who has a relation to music can understand a text that deals with music." A "life-relation" to the text is necessary for understanding, an appropriate "pre-understanding."

"The historical picture is falsified only when the exegete takes his pre-understanding as a definitive understanding." "To understand history is possible only for one who does not stand over against it as a neutral non-participating spectator, but himself stands in history and shares in responsibility for it." This is what he calls an existentiell encounter with history.

"This existentiell relation to history is the fundamental presupposition for understanding history." "Historical knowledge is never a closed or definitive knowledge." In its existential aspects, the meaning of an event belongs to the future. "What a historical event means always first becomes clear in the future."

3. "The understanding of the text is never a definitive one, but rather remains open because the meaning of the Scriptures discloses itself anew in every future."
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This chapter is not what I expected. It is a mixture of the historical and the existential. It seems to me that he speaks of two different kinds of understanding. There is historical understanding. Then there is existential appreciation or "understanding."

Paul, Athens, Evidence, Presuppositions

... Paul doesn’t seem to make much headway at Athens. Some have used this fact to try to argue against education. The gospel, so the scenario goes, doesn’t play very well around the “educated.” Some pit education against a deep faith. “Don’t go to seminary or you’ll lose your faith.” “Don’t go to a secular university or a Christian liberal arts college—you’ll lose your faith.”

There is something deeply troubling about this kind of argument. Is true Christian faith really this vulnerable to thinking? Wouldn’t the most natural implication of that line of argument be that Christianity isn’t true, and that you have to be ignorant to have faith? Surely Christianity is in trouble if learning inevitably makes you lose faith!

There are probably educational institutions that are only interested in listening to new ideas, as Luke describes Athens (Acts 17:21). Perhaps they are more interested in unraveling your ideas than in building up an understanding of the world that works and is helpful. We can hope most Christian universities are places where the exploration of truth is done in the context of faith—faith seeking understanding. Hopefully, ideas are built up and not only subjected to scrutiny.

At the same time, the law of averages suggests that all of us inevitably grow up believing in a mixture of true and false things. At least some of what we start out centering our faith on must surely be in need of correction, just given the law of averages. Education, when it is done well, allows us to look at what we believe with a critical eye. It should allow us better to distinguish between what is solid and what is flimsy.

True faith is not afraid of questioning, because it has a confidence that what it believes will hold up against the evidence. And if we believe that God is a God of truth, then we must believe that God generally stands on the side of the most likely conclusion. There are potential pitfalls here. Sometimes the evidence is misleading. Sometimes we do not have enough evidence to draw a firm conclusion. It is completely appropriate to suspend judgment in some circumstances, especially on the issues of most importance or when we do not feel equipped to make a judgment.

There are those who would say that truth is not a matter of evidence at all, but that we must simply stand on certain assumptions—“presuppositions”—that we will not change no matter what amount of evidence may come against them. Again, this approach makes sense to a point, but what if our assumptions are wrong? Even our assumptions about the Bible are filled with traditions we have inherited from other people. I’ve never heard of any recent theologian to whom God appeared in person to tell them which presuppositions were unassailable. Rather, these theologians have inherited these presuppositions from other theologians, including presuppositions about the Bible.

There must surely be a point, then, when the evidence seems to mount to such an extent that we must re-examine even our presuppositions. Otherwise, we run the risk of mistaking human traditions for God’s truth. We should never examine our presuppositions carelessly or rebelliously, but cautiously and collectively alongside God’s people. We work out our understanding with faith, fear, and trembling (Phil. 2:12). We start with faith and seek additional understanding. God is a God of truth, so the truth cannot unravel our faith if our faith is legitimate...