Question: In spite of the difficulties in recovering the historical Jesus, why do most contemporary theologians believe that grasping a basic knowledge of Jesus’ life is decisive for Christology?

Thesis: Without a basic knowledge of Jesus, rooted in history, Christianity and its adherents run the risk of following, not only a faith, but a person based on mere legend and fantasy.

Unfortunately it is often this Jesus based on the simple piety of the faithful that is more often than not encountered in their praxis and their prayer.  At best it is a “faith divorced from history” (Wright, p. 16) which puts them in the attic rather than the dungeon.  Often times in the practice of preaching to the faithful I have fond the need and the desire to inform them that there is a historical Jesus.  When it comes to matters that are sensitive to their faith, whether or not Jesus said something, which they have clung to for most of their lives, there is much resistance.  If on the other hand if the fact is something new to them it is welcomed as a means to help them understand the Lord better.  For instance using the same event, Jesus calming the waters and the storm of Lake Genessaret, can be viewed as something quite far-fetched.  If on the other hand there is evidence available (as occurred to me first-hand) that the waters, at any given moment can be stirred up because of the wind sweeping across the plains of Galilee, and in another moment stop because the wind has died down, the story becomes that much more real and palatable.  The current events give credence to the historical stories of some miracles and put them in a context for acceptance if not belief. 

            Again the story of the feeding of the multitudes is given a much better understanding after having visited the place of the miracle.  I am told that one should not disparage the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes by explaining away that perhaps the miracle was that Jesus opened the minds and hearts of those present to be generous with the food they had obtained at market.  With the self-centeredness and ego of some people it is not hard to imagine the miracle it took to make them generous.  In addition looking at the same place where the sermon took place it is also not hard to imagine why Matthew, writing to a Jewish community would place Jesus at the top of the hill looking down as it were from a mountain.  In Luke, having no tradition of God speaking from on high he would describe, as if looking across rather than down from the peak of the Mount of Beatitudes or looking up from the sea as a plain and not a mount. 

            All of this is to reiterate what Rausch states when he says that the “object of faith … must always be the Christ of Faith” (Rausch, p. 12) and not the “historical Jesus.” “But that faith must be rooted in the Jesus of history, lest it become a mere mythologization of the founder of Christianity.” (Rausch p. 12)