JESUS OUR CONTEMPORARY
Woodrow E. Walton
There is a critical flaw, from Renan to the present, in the so-called quests for the
historical Jesus whether done by the Jesus Seminar on the left, by evangelicals on the right, or
anyone in the center. The flaw is in the use of the word "historical." That term defines Jesus as
a figure from the past and not of the present. His resurrection makes Jesus contemporary. To
even speak of an historical Jesus is to treat Him as though no resurrection ever occurred.
1
There
are those who question the resurrection but they are few. There is not a Jesus to be recovered
but a Jesus to be covered as a journalist might record a present occurrence. Who Was Jesus? is
the title of a book written by Paul Copan and Craig A. Evans in 2001.
2
Who of the past still stirs
controversy as does Jesus? Who of the past continues to have direct impact upon human lives.
The choosing of the title "Jesus Our Contemporary" has no relationship to the book Jesus
Our Contemporary written by the English minister Geoffrey Ainger in 1967
3
Aingers book goes
in another direction from what is here attempted. Ainger sought to modernize, or up-date, Jesus.
The synoptic gospels, as well as the Fourth Evangelist, speak of Jesus as a contemporary.
The gospel is proclaimed in the present tense, not the past. Jesus is known in his
contempraneity, not his legacy. Even in the epistles and the Revelation, Jesus is spoken of in the
present tense, not in the past.
1
Back in 1942 W.A. Smart wrote "At times we think that we have Him securely shut up in his
first century Palestine, and then we discover him walking beside us." The Contemporary Christ
(New York and Nashville, TN: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1942), p. 163.
2
Paul Copan & Craig A. Evans, ed. Who Was Jesus?: A Jewish-Christian Dialogue (Louisville,
KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001).
3
Geoffrey Ainger, Jesus Our Contemporary (New York: Seabury Press, 1967).