Salvation history doesn't need to be carbon-dated

I recently read Lutheran theologian Rudolf Bultmann’s 1953 publication, Kerygma and Myth. While I don't necessarily agree with every point he was trying to make, I did find many of his arguments to be quite compelling, especially his thoughts regarding the irrelevance of history to the practice of religious faith. Briefly, Bultmann argued that relegating a person or event to the annals of history is tantamount to issuing a death sentence. Nothing lives in the past. On the contrary, anyone or anything that truly belongs to yesteryear is by definition over, finished, dead.

Yet, it’s very fashionable nowadays to go looking for the “historical Jesus.” Archeologists, anthropologists, and other students of lost worlds have gone in search of ancient, physical artifacts to prove—or not—that a man known as Jesus Christ at one time walked the earth. The pursuit of this sort of knowledge is not without value; but if not kept within perspective, it can seriously undermine Christian faith. If we attempt to carbon-date the elements of salvation history, then we are thinking like Atheists. Said differently, over-concern with the historicity of the New Testament is antithetical to belief in a living faith.

I'll try to explain what I mean with an analogy:

When I was a sophomore in high school, I took a photography class. Though I can't recall much of what I learned there, one particular lesson has stayed with me: When framing an action shot, perhaps a portrait of a runner, position the subject off-center, leaving more space ahead than behind. The motion becomes more real—more alive—if the runner is given some place to go.

In His portrait of humanity, God likewise provides us with a leading space: hope. And hope, like its close cousin redemption, and its ultimate effect transcendence, is an experiential manifestation of the Resurrection. But the Resurrection cannot be understood in isolation from the Crucifixion that preceded it. By sacrificing Himself on the Cross, Jesus freed us from our own history of sinfulness; He truncated the space behind us to make room for the better life that lies ahead. Were we to confine Jesus' dying and rising to a circumscribed period in the past, our very real and present day experience of the Crucifixion and Resurrection would not be possible.

For a time, Jesus lived as a man and walked among us. Accordingly, He more than likely left behind some artifactual evidence of that life: the clothes He wore, the tools He used, the cup from which He drank. Our faith, however, is not a dead faith that is based upon artifacts that can be studied, dated, and assigned to a specific era in history. Rather, our faith is very much alive; an extension of the ministry that Jesus taught us; a promise of eternal life with our Father in Heaven. Our job as members of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church is not to search for proof to substantiate the "wheres" and "hows" of the Gospel narrative. Rather, our job is to be the proof of its everlasting message.