Okay

So, I am not the best hymn writer. I think I will stick with regular, non rhyming words from now on. I have been doing some writing, some thinking, and some reading, and I have stumbled onto a couple of questions.

What if our presuppositions were cause for a greater Christ? What if our presuppositions led us to a contextual Christ? Is the historical Christ more important than our contextual Christ? Or are they both on equal playing fields?

For example, clearly Christ has not lived in the twenty first century. Now spiritually he has lived through the Spirit, but I am talking about being born, living through the treacherous adolescent years, and eventually dying. Jesus Christ actually lived and died back in the first century. The question I am pondering has to do with the importance of the historical Jesus in regards to our own presuppositions. Most of us did not grow up with an indoctrinated view of the historical Jesus. Most of us grew up in Sunday morning kid's church, learning about the great miracles of Jesus, and about how God love's all the little children of the world, no matter what color you are.

So, we grow up and maybe some of us never come to terms with this 'historical' Jesus. Maybe some of us live in the spiritual world of miracles, and love, and grace, and forgiveness. But, the historical Jesus lived. Thanks to Josephus we know that there was an actual Jesus who was called the Christ.

However, because we cannot time travel out of our own living contexts and into the first century we do not hear Jesus' words first hand and we do not know this living dying, living Jesus.

All that rambled, the question I have is; who is more important to our theology, the historical Jesus or our own contextual Jesus?

Now, this question, from a logical and restored stand point is easy. Everyone who chooses to study the Bible is called to understand the historical implications of scripture. Because a parable about farming within the first century might look and feel different than a Midwestern farming today. However, when we unveil the historical side of scripture, does it really matter. Does that Midwestern farmer in the pulpit say, wow that parable has nothing to do with the drought I am facing with, this scripture really means this....

When we are facing our own despair do the historical implications matter? Let's be honest, we cannot actually 'know' the truest historical situation, without the historian's presuppositions of history anyway, so does this historical Jesus truly matter to our theology? Can we ever get through the layers of everyone's presuppositions to reach a pure, untainted view of Jesus? Or is this historical Jesus a scapegoat for our spiritual apathy? Do we cling to the history behind the text so that we do not truly have to live out the text in our own context?