“We have at our disposal no pneuma which is not bound to the word. Exegesis can proceed only from the interpretation of the word. Since exegetical work is work with concepts, and since the word of the text is never the subject matter itself, but its expression, this subject matter becomes available to the exegete only if he understands the word.”– The Problem of a Theological Exegesis of the New Testament (1925)
This is not a new idea on this blog, but it I find it important to begin with basic hermeneutic principles. Our ability (inability really) to do theology out of a New Testament reading is structured and severely limited by our words and the words before us in the text. But because of Bultmann’s statement here, we can see, although he finds much theology problematic, he still holds a high view of Scripture. In essence, he is saying that both theological (and anthropological) interpretation and subsequent possible “revelation” is necessarily bound to the text, namely of the New Testament. Of course, Bultmann’s committment to the text is social and external to Bultmann himself, yet his committment to the text, and to the Church for that matter, must be held in high regard, before we can even begin.
Ah, the lecture Bultmann gave at Gottingen, when they invited him so they could make Barth uncomfortable. It didn’t work. Barth writes a good deal about that event to Thurneysen — including about their public discussion and private conversations afterward. Public reactions to the Roemerbrief aside, they were very close on this point even in 1925. Over the next 7 years leading to the Church Dogmatics, they get closer. (Barth also becomes a better exegete over that time than he had been as the pastor of Safenwil — a university post demands it!)
What I hear Bultmann doing here is a very Lutheran thing — opposing the spiritualism of the “Schwaermer” to the confessionally-bound exegesis of the text as the Word of God. But it is also a sort of middle-ground apologetics for the “dialectical theology” project of subjective interpretation. The basic move from “what the text says” to “what the text means,” and then to what the text means for us. From historical “objective” hermeneutics to faithful “subjective” interpretation for the believing community.
But for that reason, reading the whole piece and not just your excerpt, I have to disagree with you about our “inability” to do theology from a NT reading. The “problem” Bultmann speaks to is not a negation of theological exegesis of the NT — it is a question of what kind, in the face of a historical-critical negation of theological exegesis. (Which is an avalanche that Barth brought down upon himself, and also his colleagues.) Bultmann’s is a negation of theological exegesis that presumes to proceed from self-possession rather than submission to revelation, as he says before this bit: “Since there is no direct encounter with God, but his revelation is hidden in the word, there can be no appeal to an inner light for exegesis, no “pneumatic exegesis” which counts on the pneuma as a possession previously bestowed on the exegete.”
So there is no so-called “pneumatic exegesis” which can proceed as though the Spirit were not in the text, or as though there were a spiritual key external to the text that we require to unlock it. We encounter the Spirit in the same place we encounter the Son and the Father — hidden underneath witness to revelation. Revealed strictly by that witness, but not involuntarily. But for that reason theological exegesis is entirely possible from the text! And so I will agree with you that the text structures and limits our theology — but not “severely”! And so also our social situation structures and limits our theology. I find Bultmann reaching for the same thing Barth is at the time: a faithful exegesis of the text that is faithful to its meaning for our existential situation. Such theological interpretation is preaching before it is anything else.