My View

In his program for demythologization of Scripture, the great German theologian Rudolf Bultmann argued that the world-view of the Scriptures was hopelessly outmoded. If one wanted to communicate a biblical message in the modern world, it must be translated into an acceptable, modern idiom.

Bultmann’s idiom was existential philosophy, but this philosophical fad is largely passing now, and Bultmann’s philosophical influence has concomitantly waned. Nevertheless, Bultmann’s contention that the world-view of the Bible is hopelessly outmoded is almost universally affirmed by our leading cultural and intellectual institutions.

But I wonder.

Any empiricist will acknowledge that the house of cards called the “inerrancy of Scripture” has long ago tumbled down. But many empiricists have gone further and accepted the proposition that the universe is a closed system—that God does not interfere in human affairs in such a way as to violate “natural” order. But the abandonment of inerrancy hardly requires agreement with this second proposition.

My career in teaching theological seminary students as well as ministering to lay people led me to suspect that experiences of the supernatural—angels, voices, prophetic dreams—were far more common than my formal education had led me to believe. Moreover, the many people over the years who reported to me their extraordinary experiences were not otherwise unusual; certainly they could not be called mentally unbalanced.