Demythologization Quotes

“Secularization”

“Disenchantment”

“Allegorical interpretation of the Bible”

“Relationship between religion and science”

“Demythologizing is thus a hermeneutic that seeks to liberate God-talk from constantinianism.”

“demythologization”

“Wikipedia: Demythologization”

“Myth does not want to be interpreted in cosmological terms but in anthropological terms—or, better, in existentialist terms.”

“To de-mythologize is to deny that the message of Scripture and of the Church is bound to an ancient worldview which is obsolete.”

“In the religiosity of Zen Buddhism, demythologization of the mythical and existentialization of the scientific belong to one and the same process.”

“We cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament.”

“A miracle, whether in contravention to, or beyond, nature, is a mere absurdity; and, therefore, … what is meant in Scripture by a miracle can only be a work of nature, which surpasses, or is believed to surpass, human comprehension.”

“Not to return to the old … can be the task of our time, but to clothe the spirit of Christianity, its religious-ethical principle, which lay as a compelling force at the basis of all preceding developments, in the fitting and intelligible form for our age.”

“The motive for criticizing myth, that is, its objectifying representations, is present in myth itself, insofar as its real intention to talk about a transcendent power to which both we and the world are subject is hampered and obscured by the objectifying character of its assertions.”

“Kierkegaard said that the only way we can be released from the enchantment, the siren song of the myths, is to play the music through backwards. To break the spell of the ego I must recover my personal and political history, I must demythologize the private, family, and public myths that have informed me.”

“It is impossible to repristinate a past world picture by sheer resolve, especially a mythical world picture, now that all of our thinking is irrevocably formed by science. A blind acceptance of New Testament mythology would be simply arbitrariness; to make such acceptance a demand of faith would be to reduce faith to a work.”

“If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus' resurrection, also is not believable.”

“The move towards "demythologization," for example, is largely motivated by the wish to avoid any clash between Christianity and scientific ideas. If such a clash occurs, then science is certainly right and Christianity wrong. Pursue this investigation further and you will see that science has now become as oppressive as the ideologies it had once to fight.”

“Stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith.”

“Christian preaching … does not offer a doctrine which can be accepted either by reason or by a sacrificium intellectus. Christian preaching is kerygma, that is, a proclamation addressed not to the theoretical reason, but to the hearer as a self.”