The Young Bultmann

The Author: William D. Dennison is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. In addition, he is Visiting Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at Northwest Theological Seminary in Lynnwood, Washington, and serves as Instructor in Apologetics for MTIOPC (Ministerial Training Institute of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church). He received his Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies (theology, philosophy, history) from Michigan State University and his Th.M. and his M.Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary. Dennison is the author of Paul's Two-Age Construction and Apologetics (1986) and A Christian Approach to Interdisciplinary Studies: In Search of a Starting Point and Method (2007).

"In this groundbreaking study William D. Dennison moves beyond interpreting the history of theology simply as a phenomenon in the history of ideas and instead sees theology as developing within the broader historical and cultural movements of its time. He draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources to locate Rudolf Bultmann's theology in its social, historical, philosophical, and theological context. In what is the most impressive English-language study of Bultmann's early theology, Dennison persuasively argues that Bultmann remained deeply influenced by the tradition of the mediating theology of Schleiermacher that sought to connect the findings of scholarship with pastoral and parochial theology. The influences of the History of Religion School, the early dialectical theologians, including Karl Barth, as well as the philosophy of the Marburg neo-Kantians and later of Heidegger, are discussed in detail alongside Bultmann's background in a rural parsonage that decisively shaped his approach to theology and religious experience. This clearly written and accessible book makes an important contribution to the study of the development of German theology in the early twentieth century." (Mark Chapman, Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford University; Editor, 'Journal for the History of Modern Theology')