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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.

— Rudolf Bultmann

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More quotes by Rudolf Bultmann

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To de-mythologize is to deny that the message of Scripture and of the Church is bound to an ancient worldview which is obsolete.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)

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Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

Wilhelm Reich Philosophy : An Introduction to the Art of Wondering (2005)

When the mind is not dissipated upon extraneous things, nor diffused over the world about us through the senses, it withdraws within itself, and of its own accord ascends to the contemplation of God.

Basil of Caesarea

Once you accept the existence of God — however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him — then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things.

Morris West The Clowns of God (1981)

God seeks comrades and claims love,
the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.

Rabindranath Tagore Fireflies (1928)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Rudolf Bultmann (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.