Abstract

Bultmann's treatment of ecclesia was strikingly inadequate. This fact marks not only a lacuna in his theology; it constitutes a plain inconsistency vis-a-vis his own initial conception of the requirements of constructive theology. His interpretation of the phenomenon "eschatological existence" consisted of existentially conceived accounts of the unitary occurrence of revelation and faith, human being prior to and apart from the possibility of eschatological existence, and human being as eschatological existence. By his own pre-systematic account, an adequate interpretation of eschatological existence must also include an existential interpretation of ecclesia. The dissertation investigates the genesis and subsequent development of Bultmann's inconsistency at precisely this point. The thesis involved is that Bultmann's conception of the science "theology," a phenomenology of the occurrence "eschatological existence," and his enactment of this science as an existential hermeneutic of New Testament texts, had the effect of foreclosure upon the possibility of an adequate treatment of ecclesia. ;The historical setting of Bultmann's thought provides the essential component in an account of his shortcoming in the area of ecclesiology. His theology is Christian apologia directed to the crisis posed for faith and theology by methodically articulated historical inquiry. His aim was to clarify the meaning of Christian claims and to disclose the reality-status of the referents of those claims. This was the sum and substance of Entmythologisierung, or existential hermeneutic. As such, his theology was a perpetuation of the Wesen des Christentum trajectory identified with Schleiermacher. Bultmann identified the occurrence of eschatological existence as the "essence of Christianity." On the other hand, he significantly modified Schleiermacher's program. He replaced the latter's cognitive paradigm of the occurrence of redemption with an existentially conceived conative paradigm. The historical situation which determined the shape of Bultmann's apologia was his position-taking between the liberal Protestant theologies and Barth's krisis theology