Rudolf Bultmann Quotes

Contemporary Christian proclamation is faced with the question whether, when it demands faith from men and women, it expects them to acknowledge this mythical world picture from the past. If this is impossible, it has to face the question whether the New Testament proclamation has a truth that is independent of the mythical world picture, in which case it would be the task of theology to demythologize the Christian proclamation. ~ Rudolf Bultmann

Man is always on the way. ~ Rudolf Bultmann

The great Christian theologian Rudolf Bultmann liked to say that the quest for the historical Jesus is ultimately an internal quest. Scholars tend to see the Jesus they want to see. Too often they see themselves - their own reflection - in the image of Jesus they have constructed. ~ Reza Aslan

The motive for criticizing myth, that is, its objectifying representations, is present in myth itself, insofar as its real intention to talk about a transcendent power to which both we and the world are subject is hampered and obscured by the objectifying character of its assertions. ~ Rudolf Bultmann

I sent the first half of the dissertation to Rudolf Bultmann [major figures of early 20th century biblical studies and a prominent voice in liberal Christianity] as a courtesy with an invitation to respond to any points in my analysis and critique if he wished. I was speechless when I received a long letter from Bultmann, who had diligently examined the details of my arguments. His letter became a featured part of the publication in 1964 by Westminster Press of Radical Obedience: The Ethics of Rudolf Bultmann: With a Response by Rudolf Bultmann.
That book, more than any other , launched my career as a serious theologian. But it also led to my reputation as a situation ethicist, ironically just about the time I was beginning to disavow situation ethics. ~ Thomas C. Oden

There is something precious in our being mysteries to ourselves, in our being unable ever to see through even the person who is closest to our heart and to reckon with him as though he were a logical proposition or a problem in accounting. ~ Rudolf Bultmann

Myth does not want to be interpreted in cosmological terms but in anthropological terms or, better, in existentialist terms. ~ Rudolf Bultmann

The mythology of the New Testament, also, is not to be questioned with respect to the content of its objectifying representations but with respect to the understanding of existence that expresses itself in them. ~ Rudolf Bultmann

It is impossible to repristinate a past world picture by sheer resolve, especially a mythical world picture, now that all of our thinking is irrevocably formed by science. A blind acceptance of New Testament mythology would be simply arbitrariness; to make such acceptance a demand of faith would be to reduce faith to a work. ~ Rudolf Bultmann

Little is accomplished if one tries to understand these words theoretically. Much more can be gained when one creates sacred moments in life when one is willing to energetically fill one's soul with the living content of such words. ~ Rudolf Steiner

Order is a necessary condition for anything the human mind is to understand. ~ Rudolf Arnheim

Anything you can do, I can do meta ~ Rudolf Carnap

Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe ... Anthroposophists are those who experience, as an essential need of life, certain questions on the nature of the human being and the universe, just as one experiences hunger and thirst. ~ Rudolf Steiner

Anarchism is no patent solution for all human problems, no Utopia of a perfect social order, as it has often been called, since on principle it rejects all absolute schemes and concepts. It does not believe in any absolute truth, or in definite final goals for human development, but in an unlimited perfectibility of social arrangements and human conditions which are always straining after higher forms of expression, and to which for this reason one can assign no definite terminus nor set any fixed goal. ~ Rudolf Rocker

Pathology, probably more than any other branch of science, suffers from heroes and hero-worship. Rudolf Virchow has been its archangel and William Welch its John the Baptist, while Paracelsus and Cohnheim have been relegated to the roles of Lucifer and Beelzebub ... Actually, there are no heroes in Pathology-all of the great thoughts permitting advance have been borrowed from other fields, and the renaissance of pathology stems not from pathology itself but from the philosophers Kant and Goethe. ~ Harry S.N. Greene

It is therefore utterly false to say that Marx revokes the law of value as far as individual commodities are concerned, and maintains it in force solely for the aggregate of these commodities. ~ Rudolf Hiferding

Power always acts destructively, for its possessors are ever striving to lace all phenomena of social life into a corset of their laws to give them a definite shape. Its mental expression is dead dogma; its physical manifestation of life, brute force. This lack of intelligence in its endeavours leaves its imprint likewise on the persons of its representatives, gradually making them mentally inferior and brutal, even though they were originally excellently endowed. Nothing dulls the mind and soul of man as does the eternal monotony of routine, and power is essentially routine. ~ Rudolf Rocker

At one of the annual conventions of the American Society for Aesthetics much confusion arose when the Society for Anesthetics met at the same time in the same hotel. ~ Rudolf Arnheim

For me, purity of movement wasn't enough. I needed expression, more intensity, more mind. ~ Rudolf Nureyev

In the future every human shall see a hidden divinity in every fellow human. ~ Rudolf Steiner

Belief has no place as far as science reaches, and may be first permitted to take root where science stops. ~ Rudolf Virchow

Nowhere is it more true that "prevention is better than cure," than in the case of Parasitic Diseases. ~ Rudolf Leuckart

Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force. ~ Rudolf Rocker

The dogmatist will listen to everyone's opinion, and then affirm to himself his godliness. ~ Rudolf Hess

The beauty of a game of chess is usually assessed according to the sacrifices it contains. ~ Rudolf Spielmann

The condition of the wounded touched my heart deeply. ~ Christiaan Rudolf De Wet

Our task is to harvest from the mortal world fruits for the immortal. ~ Rudolf Steiner

Medical education does not exist to provide students with a way of making a living, but to ensure the health of the community. ~ Rudolf Virchow

History is not ended. It will sooner or later take up the threads apparently broken off forever and knit them together in a new pattern. ~ Rudolf Hess

Metaphysicians are musicians without musical ability. ~ Rudolf Carnap

The healing power of medical drugs is the Ur-power of their original essence in conjunction with the power of Ur-vibrations of the human-Divine combination that is composed of body, soul and spirit. ~ Rudolf John Gorsleben

Just as a chemist "isolates" a substance from contaminations that distort his view of its nature and effects, so the work of art purifies significant appearance. It presents abstract themes in their generality, but not reduced to diagrams. ~ Rudolf Arnheim

The only positive finding which could be drawn from the first series, was the conclusion that the relationships obviously had a more complicated lay-out than had been thought, for the effects were so varied that no obedience to any law could be discovered. ~ Walter Rudolf Hess

When the thing observed ... is seen as an agglomeration of pieces, the details lose their meaning and the whole becomes unrecognizable. This is often true of snapshots in which no pattern of salient shapes organizes the mass of vague and complex nuances. ~ Rudolf Arnheim

To see this place would truly be worth a trip to India in itself, and from the spirit of the religion that lived here one can learn more in an hour of viewing than from all the books ever written. ~ Rudolf Otto

I don't care if Margot is a Dame of the British Empire or older than myself. For me she represents eternal youth; there is an absolute musical quality in her beautiful body and phrasing. Because we are sincere and gifted, an intense abstract love is born between us every time we dance together. ~ Rudolf Nureyev

To my mind, healing means returning
a malfunctioning human body to full
unrestricted function, not to remove
parts of it by operation or amputation ~ Rudolf Breuss

The Greeks had the greatest architectonic gifts. Every art has its climax at some point, and here architecture had its high point. Modeling and painting reached their climax elsewhere. Despite the gigantic pyramids, the most wonderful architecture appears in the Greek temple. ~ Rudolf Steiner

Into our inner being
The riches of the senses pour.
The Cosmic Spirit finds itself
Reflected in the human eye,
Which ever must renew its strength
From out that spirit source. ~ Rudolf Steiner

Thoughts that deny reincarnation are transformed in the next life into an inner unreality, an inner emptiness of life; this inner unreality and emptiness are experienced as torment, as disharmony. ~ Rudolf Steiner

The transformation of environment has become the purpose of human life; life seems real only insofar as it deals with things. ~ Rudolf Christoph Eucken