Though the knowledge of God is intimate and personal it does not come to us directly; it is always mediated, usually through another human being. Whether this be a mother teaching her child the Lord's Prayer, a bishop expounding a passage from the gospels, a missionary explaining the words of the Apostles' Creed, or someone telling a friend how her life has been changed by Christ, the truth that Christians confess is transmitted through other persons, through the Christian community, the church.
--Taken from The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, Robert Louis Wilken
