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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 New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941)

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To de-mythologize is to deny that the message of Scripture and of the Church is bound to an ancient worldview which is obsolete.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