Evolving Thoughts

Science as atheistic

If God is conceived as a being who belongs to the world of beings, even as the highest being, then the science whose object of research is precisely this world is of necessity atheistic. For its research takes account solely of phenomena that are objectifiable and at the disposal of its kind of thinking; and a God who could be disposed of by objectifying thinking would not be God. Which is not to say that the scientific study of beings denies the reality of God altogether. It is atheistic only insofar as it neither says nor can say anything about God, since he simply does not belong to the realm of the real accessible to it, namely, the realm of beings.

Bultmann, Rudolf. 1972. Protestant Theology and Atheism. The Journal of Religion 52 (4):331-335.

Philosophy Religion Science

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Comments (6)

  1. This was the kind of thing I had to write essays on in university,* but all I wanted to write in reply was I SEE WHAT U DID THER.

    * if it had been written by John Duns Scotus

  2. Ah, Bultmann… I think his star was higher in the 1960s than it is now: he was a key influence on the “Death of God” theological movement (in Protestant seminaries) that hit the headlines in that decade: cf. (Bishop) John Robinson’s popular book “Honest to God.” Bultmann in particular wanted to “demythologize” Christianity.

    My impression is that people like Bultmann and Tillich did a lot of fancy verbal footwork to disguise (perhaps even from themselves) the fact that when it came down to literal propositional content the versions of Christianity they believed were indistinguishable from atheism. … I hadn’t heard much of Bultmann in recent years, but earlier this year “Good Weekend” (weekend magazine of the Melbourne newspaper “The Age,” for non-Melbournians reading) had an article on the theologically liberal minister of St. Michael’s Uniting Church in downtown Melbourne, in which he was quoted as listing Bultmann and psychoanalysis as influences: he would have been a theology student back when…

    1. He was still influential when I was a theology student in the late 70s. But your comment reminds me that theology is largely without critical filters so long as whatever source used can be employed to support some theological position. That is why Jung is still so influential in theology. McNab is a well known 60s liberal, yes. I can recall evangelicals muttering darkly about his being not a Christian. 🙂

  3. I think I know what Bultmann is trying to say here, but I don’t like the way he says it. He’s not talking about about the study of “objects”, which are, of course, objective. He’s talking about “beings”, which have objective and subjective components. Science studies “beings” objectively, but has a hard time with the subjective. This distinction reminds me a bit of Bertrand Russell’s philosophy of mind – a kind of neutral monism where all things are asserted to have objective and subjective properties. But science can only study the objective aspects of them.

    he simply does not belong to the realm of the real accessible to it, namely, the realm of beings.

    It depends on how “the realm of the real” is defined. If it is the realm of objects or the objective, then I agree.

    1. Remember, Bultmann is an existentialist theologian. God’s being is not “objectively identifiable”, which means that it is not investigable. But being preceeds essence for existentialism, and so God’s being is something that does not need to have an essence which can be studied. God is free from such constraints.

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