It would be clearly quite wrong to see these stories as mere illustrations of truth that could, in principle, have been articulated in a purer, more abstract form. Theological terms are late constructs, convenient shorthands for sentences with verbs in them… Sentences with verbs in them are the real stuff of theology, not mere childish expressions of a “purer” abstract truth.

~ N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 77-78; Godawa, 71.