I have heard professing Christians of our own day speak as 
though the historicity of the Gospels does not matter--all that 
matters is the contemporary Spirit of Christ. I contend that 
the historicity does matter, and I do not see why we, who live 
nearly two thousand years later, should call into question an 
Event for which there were many eye-witnesses still living at 
the time when most of the New Testament was written. It was no 
"cunningly devised fable" but an historic irruption of God into 
human history which gave birth to a young church so sturdy that 
the pagan world could not stifle or destroy it.

 -- J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), Ring of Truth