15 quotes
Myth does not want to be interpreted in cosmological terms but in anthropological terms—or, better, in existentialist terms.
New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941)
By no means are we at the mercy of those who doubt or deny that Jesus ever lived.
To de-mythologize is to deny that the message of Scripture and of the Church is bound to an ancient worldview which is obsolete.
Christian life is not realized in developing the personality or in shaping human community and somehow changing the world but in turning away from the world and becoming free of it.
New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941)
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.
New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941)
Freedom from the world is, in principle, not asceticism, but rather a distance from the world for which all participation in things worldly takes place in the attitude of “as if not.” (1 Cor. 7:29-31)
New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941)
We cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament.
New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941)
Can there be a demythologizing interpretation that discloses the truth of the kerygma as kerygma for those who do not think mythologically?
New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941)
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.
New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941)
Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community.
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.
New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941)
Christian preaching … does not offer a doctrine which can be accepted either by reason or by a sacrificium intellectus. Christian preaching is kerygma, that is, a proclamation addressed not to the theoretical reason, but to the hearer as a self.
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.
New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1984)
Can the Christian proclamation today expect men and women to acknowledge the mythical world picture as true? To do so would be both pointless and impossible. It would be pointless because there is nothing specifically Christian about the mythical world picture, which is simply the world picture of a time now past which was not yet formed by scientific thinking. It would be impossible because no one can appropriate a world picture by sheer resolve, since it is already given with one’s historical situation.
New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941)
According to mythological thinking, God has his domicile in heaven. What is the meaning of this statement? The meaning is quite clear. In a crude manner it expresses the idea that God is beyond the world, that He is transcendent. The thinking which is not yet capable of forming the abstract idea of transcendence expresses its intention in the category of space.