This seems a good spot to enter something I wrote recently that is not directly responsive to Mr. Carr, since it was addressed to Andrew in any event, but espresses some thoughts on the content of Mr. Carr's post.

Christianity is founded on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus was a human being and therefore, by definition, existed in history. But beyond what Rahner calls profane history, the life and ministry of the historical Jesus is important. To cut off Jesus from his place and time, to place him outside of history and to ignore the context within which he acted and spoke is to render the ministry and life of Jesus devoid of all human content and, therefore, unreal.1 At the same time, we cannot ignore that which is “deep and universal”, for to do so would fail to respect and do justice to the Jesus that is the Divine Christ.2

Moreover, to solely contextualize Jesus, to place him as a Jew, talking only to a Jewish community, delivering a message having meaning only to Jews, as God’s chosen people, threatens to leave no meaning left for those of us today, in the here and now, trying to follow Jesus’ narrow pathway. The paradox, then, is to tell the truth about Jesus but to do it in such a way that has meaning in the here and now.3

1. 1. Gustavo Guiterriez, “Eschatology and Politics” in Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1988), 130-135.
2. 2. Ibid.
3. 3. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Crossroad, 1978), 178-180.