Demythologized, myth ceases to be about the world and turns out to be about the human experience of the world. Demythologized, myth ceases to be an explanation at all and becomes an expression, an expression of what it ‘feels’ like to live in the world. Myth ceases to be merely primitive and becomes universal. It ceases to be false and becomes true. It depicts the human condition. In Bultmann’s words,
Myth
The real purpose of myth is not to present an objective picture of the world as it is, but to express man’s understanding of himself in the world in which he lives. Myth should be interpreted not cosmologically, but anthropologically, or better still, existentially.
(Rudolf Bultmann, ‘New Testament and Mythology’, p. 10)
Taken literally, the New Testament in particular describes a cosmic battle between good and evil beings for control of the physical world. These supernatural figures intervene not only in the operation of nature, as for Tylor, but also in the lives of human beings. The beneficent beings direct humans to do good; the malevolent ones compel them to do evil. Taken literally, the New Testament describes a pre-scientific outlook:
The world is viewed as a three-storied structure, with the earth in the centre, the heaven above, and the underworld beneath. Heaven is the abode of God and of celestial beings – the angels. The underworld is hell, the place of torment. Even the earth is more than the scene of natural, everyday events, of the trivial round and common task. It is the scene of the supernatural activity of God and his angels on the one hand, and of Satan and his daemons on the other. These supernatural forces intervene in the course of nature and in all that men think and will and do. Miracles are by no means rare. Man is not in control of his own life. Evil spirits may take possession of him. Satan may inspire him with evil thoughts. Alternatively, God may inspire his thought and guide his purposes.
(Bultmann, ‘New Testament and Mythology’, p. 1)
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Demythologized, the New Testament still refers in part to the physical world, but now to a world ruled by a single, non-anthropomorphic, transcendent God, who does not look
like a human being and who does not intervene miraculously in the world:
Mythology expresses a certain understanding of human existence. It believes that the world and human life have their ground and their limits in a power which is beyond all that we can calculate or control. Mythology speaks about this power inadequately and insufficiently because it speaks about it as if it were a worldly [i.e., physical] power. It [rightly] speaks of gods who represent the power beyond the visible, comprehensible world. [But] it speaks of gods as if they were men and of their actions as human actions . . . It may be said that myths give to the transcendent reality an immanent, thisworldly objectivity.
(Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 19)
Demythologized, God still exists, but Satan becomes a mere symbol of the evil inclinations within humans. Damnation refers not to a future place but to one’s present state of mind, which exists as long as one rejects God. Salvation refers
to one’s state of mind once one accepts God. There is no physical hell. Hell symbolizes despair over the absence of God. Heaven refers not to a place in the sky but to joy
in the presence of God. The Kingdom comes not outwardly, with cosmic upheavals, but inwardly, whenever one embraces God.
Overall, the New Testament, when demythologized, presents the opposing ways in which the world is experienced: the alienation from the world felt by those who have not yet found God versus the at-homeness in the world felt by those who
have found God. For those without God, the world is cold, callous, and scary. For those with God, the world is warm, inviting, and secure.
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Taken literally, myth, as a personalistic explanation of the physical world, is incompatible with science and is therefore unacceptable to moderns:
Myth
Man’s knowledge and mastery of the world have advanced to such an extent through science and technology that it is no longer possible for anyone seriously to hold the New Testament view of the world – in fact, there is no one who does. . . . We no longer believe in the three-storied universe which the creeds take for granted.
(Bultmann, ‘New Testament and Mythology’, p. 4)
Once demythologized, however, myth is compatible with science because it now refers at once to the transcendent, nonphysical world – as modern religion without myth does for Tylor – and, even more, to humans’ experience of the physical one.
Bultmann the theologian does not merely urge modern Christians to accept the New Testament but actually shows them how to do so – by translating the New Testament into existentialist terms. His justification for the translation is not, however, that otherwise moderns could not accept the Christian Bible but that its true meaning has always been existential.
Still, to say that myth is acceptable to scientifically minded moderns is not to say why it should be accepted. In providing a modern subject matter of myth, Bultmann provides no modern function. Perhaps for him the function is self-evident: describing the human condition. But why bother describing that condition, and why use myth to do so? Bultmann cannot contend that myth discloses the human condition, for he himself enlists philosophy to find the same meaning in myth.
Moreover, myth, even when demythologized, is acceptable to moderns only if the existence of God is. As eager as Bultmann is
to make myth acceptable to scientifically minded moderns, he is not prepared to interpret away – to demythicize – God altogether. To accept the mythology, one must continue to believe in God, however
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sophisticated the conception. Compatibility with science may be necessary for the espousal of myth today, but it is far from sufficient.
What would Bultmann say of the myth of Adonis? Surely he would contrast the worlds in which Adonis finds himself. Adonis, never out of the hovering presence of a smothering goddess, is nurtured in a womb-like world, one wholly safe and sheltering. So immersed in it is he that the dangers from the ‘real’ world which, in Ovid’s version, Venus desperately tries to impress on him simply do not register. Demythologized, the myth describes opposing experiences of the world – here not secular versus religious but infantile versus adult.
For the record, Bultmann is in fact inconsistent. Despite his seeming characterization of myth per se as a symbolic expression of the human condition, he takes literally the ancient mythologies out of which Christianity arose: those of Jewish apocalyptic and
of Gnosticism. Bultmann thus seems to be restricting demythologization to Christianity, yet with further inconsistency he acknowledges his debt to fellow existentialist Jonas’ pioneering demythologization of Gnosticism!
religion and Myth
Hans Jonas
Hans Jonas argues that ancient Gnosticism presents the same fundamental view of the human condition as modern existentialism – but of atheistic rather than, as for Bultmann, of religious existentialism. Both Gnosticism and existentialism stress the radical alienation of human beings from the world:
the essence of existentialism is a certain dualism, an estrangement between man and the world . . . There is [only] one situation . . .
where that condition has been realized and lived out with all the vehemence of a cataclysmic event. That is the gnostic movement.
(Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, p. 325)
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Myth
But unlike Bultmann, who strives to bridge the gap between Christianity and modernity, Jonas acknowledges the divide between Gnosticism and modernity. He is therefore not seeking to win modern converts to Gnosticism. Because ancient Gnosticism, unlike mainstream Christianity, sets immateriality against matter, humans remain alienated from the physical world even after they have found the true God. In fact, that god can be found only by rejecting the physical world and its false god. Gnostics overcome alienation from this world only by transcending it. But then for Gnostics estrangement is only temporary, where for moderns it is permanent. Yet for Jonas, Gnostic mythology can still speak to moderns, and not to modern believers, as for Bultmann, but to modern sceptics. The mythology can do so because, rightly grasped, it addresses not the nature of the world but the nature of the experience of the world – that is, of this world. Like Bultmann, Jonas seeks to reconcile myth with science by re-characterizing the subject matter of myth.
To make ancient Gnosticism palatable to moderns, Jonas, like Bultmann, must bypass those aspects of the myths that encroach on science by presenting either the origin or the future of the world. The fact of human alienation from the world, not the source of it or the solution to it, is the demythologized subject of myth. Ignored, therefore, are Gnostic descriptions of the godhead, the emanations, the creator god, and the material world. Ignored above all is the Gnostic prospect of escape from the material world. In short, the bulk of Gnostic mythology is reduced to mere mythology – to be discarded, or demythicized, just like all of mythology for Tylor.
No more than Bultmann does Jonas offer any function of myth for moderns. Even if myth serves to express the human condition, why is it necessary to express that condition at all, let alone through myth, and again when philosophy already does so? Jonas does not say. Both he and Bultmann limit themselves to the meaning, or subject matter, of myth.
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