ABSTRACT
In a 2012 article, R. W. L. Moberly brought Bultmann into conversation with Augustine around the question of hermeneutical presuppositions. The article affirmed Bultmann's emphasis on "existential openness" but criticized his apparent disregard for the church as the primary presupposition for biblical interpretation. Moberly's article misreads Bultmann, however, and misses the deeper logic at work in Bultmann's apparent lack of attention to ecclesiology. The community, as the bearer of the kerygma, is included within the event that it proclaims. Ecclesiology is therefore indirectly present, so that, as Bultmann states regarding John, "one may not conclude from this that interest in the church-community is completely absent. On the contrary, there is a very lively interest in it."
