Rudolf Karl Bultmann

All such desires are cut short by the statement: the Word became flesh. It is in his sheer humanity that he is the Revealer. True, his own also see his δ_ξα (v.14b); indeed if it were not to be seen, there would be no grounds for speaking of revelation. But this is the paradox which runs through the whole gospel: the δ_ξα is not to be seen alongside the _ά_ξ as through a window; it is to be seen in the _ά_ξ and nowhere else. If man wishes to see the δ_ξα, then it is on the _ά_ξ that he must concentrate his attention, without allowing himself to fall victim to appearances. The revelation is present in a peculiar hiddenness.

Can Christian preaching expect modern man to accept the mythical view of the world as true? To do so would be both senseless and impossible. It would be senseless, because there is nothing specifically Christian in the mythical view of the world as such. It is simply the cosmology of a pre-scientific age.

The historical method includes the presupposition that history is a unity in the sense of a closed continuum of effects in which individual events are connected by the succession of cause and effect....This closedness means that the continuum of historical happenings cannot be rent by the interference of supernatural transcendent powers and that therefore there is no "miracle" in this sense of the word.

When reason has followed its road to the end, the point of crisis is reached and man is brought to the great question mark over his own existence.