Tuesday, April 17, 2007
What's Historical About Jesus
What can we actually know, prove, or otherwise confirm about the historical person of Jesus? My thought is very little, yet I am left wanting to gain some insight into what he would of been like as a child or other "historical" facts about His everyday life. The historical reality of Jesus is, however, clear. There is no doubt, as Bultman confirmed, that Jesus was. For the person of Jesus to simply be some kind of mystical sage or some other kind of delusional prophet the world would not of been changed because of his death, burial, and resurrection. This is the message of the Gospel that is confirmed by the apostle Paul and other leaders of the early church. Does it really matter, or shake the foundations of Christian faith if what is recorded in the Gospels is not some kind of word for word account of the event. Of course the writers had a theological agenda rather than a historical one. Faith is not built on proof, but rather the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things unseen.
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5 comments:
That was a very misty way of saying nothing. Jesus was real but so what if we can't prove it? Of course "Jesus was," but that says nothing. The fact that He was does not make a religion heracy or truth. Was the world changed because of his death, burial, and resurection or was it because crazy people went around claiming that it was changed? Most of the world does not believe our Gospel and to those people the historical facts mean something and our goose bump faith is meaningless. I think it is for those people that there is a renewed pursuit to find hard facts to present unbelieving. I am kind of playing the devils advocate, I do not really stand that juxtaposed to Michaels opinion. I just want him to think before he sinks into mental weakness/ comfortability.
The historical Jesus is a very interesting person to see, In the same sense as Micheal I wish I could know more about Jesus' earlier days and what things happened up to what we see in the bible. a little bit can be seen and even guessed at a little but, we can only guess at the rest. I still find it interesting to think about and try to understand it though but that is sometimes hard to wrap our minds around.
What about adoptionism, the idea that Jesus was not God until his baptism where God "adopted" him and he THEN became fully God? (I feel special because I got to use one of the fancy terms we talked about in Doctrine!) Personally I think that this theory holds absolutely no validity whatsoever; nonetheless, I believe that if we are going to talk about the issue of the humanity of Christ in relation to the "historical Jesus" these ideas (heresies) must be, at least, discussed. If this idea is taken, a whole new spin is put in our quest of history. I am in no way trying to negate anything anyone has talked about here, but am simply trying to wrap my head around these ideas as well.
Personally I really don't think it matters if they find out that much more about the historical Jesus. I have enough right now to go on that I believe he came to save all man kind. I certaintly don't want to base my view on Jesus on the Gospel of Thomas and other Q documents. Who really cares about Christ's childhood, I think its irrevalent on who he became. I don't want to know that Jesus killed his first deer when he was eight!
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