The Event of Faith: The Transformation of Philosophy by Theology in Rudolf Bultmann

This article suggests that Rudolf Bultmann can be seen to reconfigure Heidegger’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy and theology in terms of a transformation of philosophy by theology. In that sense, though Bultmann is often understood to be in line with the early Heidegger on this issue, it seeks to think with Bultmann beyond Heidegger by showing how Bultmann’s theology, precisely as theology, can be used to address critiques (articulated by contemporary French phenomenologists) of Heidegger’s understanding of the related notions of possibility and event. In doing so, it will become evident that, although he himself sets up his understanding of the relationship between philosophy and theology as fitting Heidegger’s broader methodological framework, we can nevertheless find in Bultmann the keys to the thinking of philosophy in relation to theology in terms of the transformation of one by the other that this article seeks to develop