Rudolf Bultmann is a name not known to many but has been a distinct and powerful influence on modern Theology worldwide. Father of the "Higher Criticism" School, he was born in 1886 and died in 1976. Known as an eminent German Extentialist, influenced extensively by the works of Martin Heidegger, he was educated at universities of Tübingen, Berlin, and Marburg, and later taught at Marburg. Heidegger and other existentialists of the time had a motto of "Back to the things themselves" dating to Husserl. Bultmann adopted this atheistic or agnostic philosophy to apply to the New Testament account of the Gospels. He is known for what he and his advocates referred to as the "demythologizing" of the New Testament, and the concept of Higher Criticism basically placed human rationale over revealed truth in the Scriptures. Bultmann and his followers 're-interpreted' the Gospels as metaphor whenever in their view reason (of theologians and modern man) did not meet a comfort level with supernatural descriptions. He in effect gutted the Gospels of miracles as divine transactions, interpreting them instead as metaphor applicable to modern life. In an atmosphere of unbelief and cold , philosophical Christianity which was losing ground to the new European Existentialists² Bultmann offered the German Churched an alternative to both: an existential christianity devoid of the points of faith hard to believe and the ability to stay churched in unbelief. While for modern theologians many saw this as a brave and positive move, the effect on the German Church was devastating. Influenced by Bultmann, the European Existentialists, the emerging Social Gospel in America and abroad, the Church on the verge of the Third Reich was more a Social organization than a religious one, though steeped in tradition. The remnant of belief in the Confessing Church, headed by Bonhoeffer and Neimoller, stood not only against Hitler, but a German Theology which had been greatly changed by Bultmann's Higher Criticism.