Overview

Rudolf Bultmann remains the most influential New Testament scholar of the twentieth century. He weds rigorous source and form criticism to an unrelenting historicism while still articulating a robust, challenging, and relevant theology. Bultmann's grand achievement is not that he convinced everyone. Rather, it is that his work still remains the measuring stick for the study of the New Testament and early Christianity. Bultmann was no mere historian, technical critic, or New Testament theologian. Bultmann's geniusâand some think his Achilles heelâresides in his strategic use of existential philosophy as a means of interpreting the significance of Christianity. In History and Eschatology , first presented as the 1955 Gifford Lectures, Bultmann steps back to address larger philosophical questions about the relationship between history and the Christian future and then expands to consider how meaning exists within history. Bultmann begins with a discussion of ancient cyclical understandings of history before exploring the fundamental eschatological shift in historical understanding. Bultmann credits the Judeo-Christian tradition with reconceptualizing history as linear with a clear end, culminating in the second coming of Christ. But, as Bultmann argues, this new understanding of history was not without its own problems. The early church's profound disappointment in Christ's failure to return forced a Christian reinterpretation of historyâa teleological oneâthat flourished in the Renaissance and eventuated, surprisingly, in Marxism. According to Bultmann, this teleology neglects the individual's participation in the Christ event. In the end, Bultmann draws on Paul and John to challenge this purely teleological approach and ground a Christian understanding of history and eschatology in the historical event of Christ that is both timeless and immediately present. Only through this Christ event, both in the past and future, does life find eternal meaning.

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In critical discussion with Collingwood, Loewith, and, in particular, Heidegger, Bultmann discusses the attempts of finding 'meaning' in history. History and Eschatology is one of the densest approaches to the understanding of history in the perspective of Christian theology. Although times have changed, and today's presuppositions are quite different, the book is still a valuable exercise in theological thinking and a 'must' for anyone who wants to understand Bultmann as exegete and theologian. Joerg Frey, Professor of New Testament Studies, University of Zurich History and Eschatology constitutes a real contribution to the discussion of the subjects with which Bultmann deals. We cannot judge him in these lectures either as theologian or as philosopher, but rather as one who, by the very exaggerations and perversities of which he is unquestionably guilty, shows us in occasional brilliant flashes of perception something of the inwardness of the way of faith. D. M. MacKinnon, The Journal of Theological Studies

History and Eschatology constitutes a real contribution to the discussion of the subjects with which Bultmann deals. We cannot judge him in these lectures either as theologian or as philosopher, but rather as one who, by the very exaggerations and perversities of which he is unquestionably guilty, shows us in occasional brilliant flashes of perception something of the inwardness of the way of faith. --D. M. MacKinnon The Journal of Theological Studies

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"Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) was professor of New Testament at the University of Marburg. A German Lutheran theologian and pinnacle figure of liberal Christianity, he is best known for his popularization of form criticism in New Testament studies, his ""demythologization"" project, and his influential contributions to Jesus research. He is also the author of Theology of the New Testament."

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