It is important to remember that the whole of our Christian faith is based on publicly testified witness of historical experience, not on religious speculation or theorizing, however spiritual. The gospel is good news about something that has happened; it is not a good idea or good advice.
Further on...
When we talk, then, about part of the mission of God’s people being to share what they know about God, it is not some kind of esoteric or speculative opinion about God, or the results of some prolonged spiritual pilgrimage, or the fruit of eons of religious reflection. Whatever we know, we know on the basis of things that have happened and the understanding of them that is given to us in Scripture.
The gospel we share is good news about real events. There is a “having-hap- pened-ness” at the core of the gospel. There is a story to tell, about real people, and above all about the real person, Jesus of Nazareth.
This is one reason why confidence in the Bible is also so important. For that is where we have the recorded testimony of those who experienced these events first- hand. Peter and John could speak about “what we have seen and heard”, because they were there. We can’t speak in exactly the same way. So we depend on their testimony, and that testimony is in the Bible–and indeed that was the very reason why John says he wrote his gospel (John 20:30 – 31; 21:24).
- Dr. Christopher Wright,
The Mission of God's People: A Biblical Theology of the Church's Mission, 154 and 156
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