Freedom from the world is, in principle, not asceticism, but rather a distance from the world for which all participation in things worldly takes pla… - Rudolf Bultmann

Can the Christian proclamation today expect men and women to acknowledge the mythical world picture as true? To do so would be both pointless and impossible. It would be pointless because there is nothing specifically Christian about the mythical world picture, which is simply the world picture of a time now past which was not yet formed by scientific thinking. It would be impossible because no one can appropriate a world picture by sheer resolve, since it is already given with one’s historical situation.

Myth does not want to be interpreted in cosmological terms but in anthropological terms—or, better, in existentialist terms.

We cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament.