# Joke about Rudolf Bultmann



## RamistThomist (Dec 16, 2014)

A group of Rudolf Bultmann's disciples supposedly found him the perfect sixtieth birthday present: the original manuscript of John's Gospel, before the series of churchly and other "redactors" had worked on it, recently found on Patmos. Unrolled, the scroll contained one sentence: _"Entscheide dich_


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## PuritanCovenanter (Dec 16, 2014)

Choose?


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## RamistThomist (Dec 16, 2014)

Bultmann's whole theology can be reduced to an existential decision of "the Now" (think of a vaguely Christianized Heidegger). The joke is to show how Bultmann read his own Heideggerianism into the New testament.


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## DMcFadden (Dec 17, 2014)

VERY nice, Jacob! Bultmann reduces all to existential urgency and decision.

Here are a bunch of other ones from the internet:

*Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? *

Greg Boyd: It’s a possibility that the chicken crossed the road.
Rick Warren: The chicken was purpose driven.
Pelagius: Because the chicken was able to.
John Piper: God decreed the event to maximize his glory. OR . . . it was an act of Christian hedonism. The chicken realized that his greatest joy would only be found on the other side.
Irenaeus: The glory of God is the chicken fully alive.
C.S. Lewis: If a chicken finds itself with a desire that nothing on this side can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that it was created for the other side.
Billy Graham: The chicken was surrendering all.
Pluralist: The chicken took one of many equally valid roads.
Universalist: All chickens cross the road.
Martin Luther: The chicken was fleeing the Antichrist who had stolen the Gospel with his papist lies.
Tim LaHaye: The chicken didn’t want to be left behind.
James White: I reject chicken centered eisegesis.
John Wesley: The chicken’s heart was strangely warmed.
Rob Bell: The chicken. Crossed the road. To get. Cool glasses.
Joel Osteen: The chicken crossed the road to maximize his personal fulfillment so they he could be all that God created him to be.
Roger Olson: The chicken recognizes no clear evangelical boundries.
Driscoll: A [bleeping] chicken crossed the road to go get a beer.
Gary Demar: The chicken was fleeing the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. That’s it.
Jim Wallis: The chicken is an organizer for Occupy Barnyard.
Emergent: For this chicken, its not the destination that’s important. Its the journey itself.
N.T. Wright: This act of the chicken, which would be unthinkable in British barnyards, reeks of that American individualism that is destructive to community.
Al Mohler: When a chicken begins to think theologically, he has no other alternative but to come over to the Calvinist side of the road.
Michael Horton: The chicken was forsaking the kingdom of this world to live solely in the Kingdom of Christ.
John Frame: The chicken had an existential need to change its situation according to a new norm.
T.F. Torrance: The inner logic of the incarnation proved an irresistible draw to the other side of the road.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: He was abandoning cheap grace for the costly discipleship of risking the dangers of crossing the road.
Karl Barth: The crossing of the road, like all true theology, was done for profoundly Christological reasons. Because Christ came as the judge to be judged, all chickens cross the road in the end.
Paul Tillich: Because he sensed that the other side of the road represented the ground of all being.
New Ager: Because he saw the light beckoning him forward.
Fundamentalist: Because his pastor told him so.
Elevation Church: Because Pastor Furtick told him to get in the line on the other side for a spontaneous baptism.


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## PuritanCovenanter (Dec 17, 2014)

Now that is funny.


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## jambo (Dec 17, 2014)

Very good and very clever.


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## Reformed Covenanter (Dec 17, 2014)

DMcFadden said:


> Driscoll: A [bleeping] chicken crossed the road to go get a beer.


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## Philip (Dec 17, 2014)

Bultmania (n.): the delusion that one is a mythbuster


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## RamistThomist (Dec 17, 2014)

Reformed Covenanter said:


> DMcFadden said:
> 
> 
> > Driscoll: A [bleeping] chicken crossed the road to go get a beer.



That's the PG-13 version; it could have been a lot...cruder, to put it delicately.


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## jwithnell (Dec 17, 2014)




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## DMcFadden (Dec 17, 2014)

Some more . . . 

EP Presbyterian - because he heard Psalm singing coming from the other side of the road.
Bio Logos - he evolved into it.
Misc. Reformational Christians - because everyone on the other side was using the ESV.
Emergent - to get to the tattoo parlor on the other side.
Broad evangelicals - because polls show that a majority of Americans prefer the other side of the road.
Confessional Lutheran - because the Book of Concord says that it is what you "believe, teach, and confess."
Confessional Presbyterian - because crossing the road could be deduced by "good and necessary consequence."
Pope Francis - because he thought it was the humble thing to do
Hillsong - it was the first step "across the earth" to get "before the throne."


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## arapahoepark (Dec 18, 2014)

DMcFadden said:


> VERY nice, Jacob! Bultmann reduces all to existential urgency and decision.
> 
> Here are a bunch of other ones from the internet:
> 
> ...



Martin Luther onward was the funniest!


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## Mushroom (Dec 18, 2014)

Sadly, though, Driscoll had the best idea...


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## Zork (Jan 14, 2015)

DMcFadden said:


> VERY nice, Jacob! Bultmann reduces all to existential urgency and decision.
> 
> Here are a bunch of other ones from the internet:
> 
> ...



Very Funny.


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