Ернст Касирер и Рудолф Бултман о односу мита и религије
Ernst Cassirer And Rudolf Bultmann On The Relationship Between Myth And Religion

Summary/Abstract: An important issue in contemporary Christian theology is the relationship between religious and mythological thinking. It was not only Rudolf Bultmann’s call for demythologizing of the New Testament, but also the question of the relations between natural sciences and theology that brought this matter into prominence. There are two mutually exclusive positions regarding this issue: one position is that almost entire Bible is mythological in nature, while the other position is that myth is completely absent from the Bible. However, both positions base their arguments on a very suspicious rationalistic theory of myth as a product of primitive cultures. According to this theory, which was fully embraced by Bultmann, a myth is a form of ancient science, an attempt of primitive man to understand natural events. On the other hand, Cassirer approaches myth with far less prejudices then Bultman; he is able to appreciate myth as a legitimate symbolic form that has its own kind of truth. Closer examination of both Cassirer’s and Bultman’s theories and their comparison, without claiming that any of them is entirely true from the beginning, is a good way to reach better understanding of the role that mythological thinking plays in religion, specifically in Christianity.

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