Hermeneutics of the phenomenon of death in Rudolf Bultmann's existential theology

The article discusses the hermeneutical basis for understanding the phenomenon of death in the theological system of Rudolf Bultmann, the outstanding Protestant thinker of the 20th century. Bultmann’s thanatology is an organic part of his program for the demythologization of Christian proclamation in the categories and methods of existential analysis, the structure of which is borrowed by the thinker from M. Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. Using the Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein R. Bultmann takes it not in the sense of its content, but its frame structure, which he fills with Christian meanings. According to Bultmann, Christian understanding of death should be carried out on the basis of the evidence of the existential phenomena themselves, which will confirm what the early Christian tradition, as recorded in the texts of the New Testament, speaks, and thereby receive its legitimacy. A person in a state of faith remains involved in the ontological structures of the world, therefore, becoming free from the world in the act of accepting faith, he nevertheless remains part of it, which makes physical death inevitable...