Why four Gospels? Why only four?

It has to be admitted that the issue in the second half of the second century was not as finalised as we might like to think. The credit for finalising the issue can be accorded to Irenaeus. In his great Against Heresies, he states definitively:

It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds . . . it is fitting that she (the Church) should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh.

He goes on to give his famous identifications: of Matthew as a lion ‘symbolizing His [Jesus’] effectual working, His leadership, and royal power’; of Mark, ‘like a calf, signifying His sacrificial and sacerdotal order’; of Luke, who ‘had, as it were, the face as of a man – an evident description of His advent as a human being’; and John ‘like a flying eagle, pointing out the gift of the Spirit hovering with his wings over the Church’ (adv. haer. III.11.8).

How was it that Irenaeus could be so emphatic on the point that there are only four Gospels worthy of consideration? He certainly knew of other views on the matter and devotes his major work to refuting them. But should we be so dismissive of these others? In several cases we do not have a copy of the text itself, only some scattered allusions and fragments – the Jewish-Christian Gospels being a significant case in point. Others, like the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Truth, draw on some Jesus tradition but have clearly been heavily influenced by Gnostic views – as evident, for example, in the Gospel of Truth’s repeated emphasis on knowledge, as bringing enlightenment to those shrouded in a fog, lost in ignorance and darkness, drunk or sunk in a sleep. They show how the early Jesus tradition was elaborated by what became a strong second-century movement of thought which we generally put under the heading of Gnosticism, whose characteristic features cannot be traced back to Jesus. The opening words of the Gospel of Judas – ‘the secret revelatory discourse in which Jesus spoke with Judas Iscariot for eight days, three days before he celebrated Passover’ (Judas 33:1–6) – are typical of a message which cannot claim to be drawn from earlier Jesus tradition and can only attribute its teaching to Jesus by claiming that it was given secretly.⁽⁴⁾

The fact that so many of these documents were retained and are accessible to us only through the quotations and references made by Church Fathers probably tells its own story: that none of these documents made a wide and sustained appeal in the early centuries, in each case being treasured by only a few. The most interesting of them is the Gospel of Thomas, discovered in a complete form as part of the Gnostic library at Nag Hammadi in 1945–46. This contained a collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, without narrative framework. What caught the attention was the substantial overlap between the Thomas sayings and the Synoptic tradition. Of the 114 Thomas sayings, 42 contain close parallel material to the Synoptic material. If the less-close parallels are included, that takes the comparable number to 63 sayings within Thomas’ 114. Since the Thomas sayings usually include more material, the actual percentage of the parallel is less than 50 per cent; something over 50 per cent of Thomas’ sayings lack parallel with the Synoptic tradition. That is still a significant number, and, not altogether surprisingly, there was a move to regard Thomas as of equal or nearly equal significance with the four canonical Gospels. Given the degree of parallel material, should not Thomas be set alongside Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and included in a revised New Testament? Thomas shows that we are not limited to the four New Testament Gospels; should we not include the Gospel of Thomas with them – a fifth canonical Gospel?⁽⁵⁾ Hence the questions which make up our title: Why four Gospels? Why only four?

It’s when we look at Thomas’ distinctive material that the questions begin to arise.⁽⁶⁾ First, Jesus is presented as ‘the Living One’. His significance is that he brought saving revelation. Jesus’ death and resurrection hardly feature. Thomas focuses almost exclusively on the revelation attributed to Jesus, his gospel introduced as ‘the secret words which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymus Judas Thomas wrote down’.⁽⁷⁾

Second, Thomas proclaims a characteristically Gnostic message. It speaks for those who believed that their true nature and spiritual home is different from their existence in this world. They have come from the light and have been caught in the corruption of the flesh.⁽⁸⁾ The problem addressed by Thomas is that so many are unaware of their true nature and origin, lacking knowledge of the contrast between their true nature and their present existence.⁽⁹⁾ Hence the characteristic Gnostic message: the good news is for those imprisoned in the fleshly physicality of this world, who need to be released by the knowledge of their true being and counselled on how to act now to ensure their return to that kingdom.

What a close study of the Gospel of Thomas reveals, then, is that whereas Thomas has taken over a good deal of the Jesus tradition which we find also in the Synoptics, Thomas’ primary gospel is drawn from a different source. It is drawn from an analysis of the human condition which we do not find in the earlier Jesus tradition and offers a different solution. There are points of contact, of course; otherwise Thomas could not have drawn in as much Jesus tradition as it has. Themes of light and life provided a common currency. But the central message of Thomas was not that of Jesus or of the Jesus tradition, even though it could take over so much of the Jesus tradition. The basic narrative which holds the Thomas tradition together is distinctly other than what we find in the Jesus tradition of the New Testament. The distinctive message of Thomas comes from a source and an explanation of the human condition which is not to be found elsewhere in the Jesus tradition of the New Testament Gospels. The recognisable Jesus tradition in Thomas was essentially a bolt-on addition to a framework which originated from a different perception of reality from that of the Jewish scriptures which provided the context of both Jesus’ message and that of the New Testament writers. In short, the basic narrative of Thomas is too distinctive and too different from the other first-century indications of the impact made by Jesus for us to find a root for the Thomas perspective in either Jesus’ mission or the early Jesus tradition of the New Testament Gospels.

The historical reality, then, is that the Gospel of Thomas has probably made a bigger splash in the twentieth century than it did in the second. Our lack of knowledge of it prior to its discovery at Nag Hammadi in the 1940s strongly suggests that it did not have much impact in early Christianity. The fact that it never seemed even to occur to Irenaeus to include Thomas in his list of Gospels, even as a claim which had to be refuted, suggests that we have given Thomas far more status and significance than it actually achieved in the early centuries. At any rate Thomas does not require us to alter our main questions: Why four Gospels? Why only four? For us it is more interesting to know why Thomas was rejected.

If one of the fascinating features of early Christianity is that the leaders refused to count as Gospels any more than four, it is equally interesting to know why they chose as many as four. Why not a single Gospel, proclaiming that there is only one gospel? ‘This, and this alone is the true gospel’; ‘This is the only message of salvation!’ We know that there were indeed some attempts to come up with a single Gospel. Irenaeus tells us that Tatian ‘separated himself from the church’ and evidently returned to Syria, where he probably composed his Diatessaron, the first (preserved) harmony of the four canonical Gospels, dated probably in the period 170–175. It became the standard Gospel text in the Syriac-speaking churches till the fifth century, when it was replaced by the Peshitta version of the four separate Gospels, because its author had been dismissed as a heretic. Then there was Marcion, who wanted to split his version of Christianity away from the Old Testament, who took Paul as his great hero, and who accepted only one Gospel, a diminished version of Luke, setting aside Jesus’ confession that the Maker of the universe is his Father. I confess to not a little unease when the Old Testament is so often bypassed and ignored in church services today, remembering that a direct line can be drawn from Marcion to the Holocaust. An alternative could well have been to focus on Matthew – Matthew who provided the basis for regarding Peter as the chief disciple and the rock on which the Church should be founded (Mt 16:18–19), in effect, the first pope. Should not Matthew be regarded as the Gospel?

The answer is no! Matthew’s status certainly was very firm in a church which came to regard Peter as its first pope and Rome more and more as its central base; but in the first two centuries there were several different centres of the new movement. Mark, although little quoted in the second century, was probably saved by the historical memory of Mark’s association with Peter, and perhaps as a collection of Peter’s own teaching. Tatian had no hesitation in including Mark in his Diatessaron. Luke, as the first of a two-volume work, Luke-Acts, was too much associated with Paul to be passed over, despite Marcion, Paul being more famous even than Peter for his mission work in spreading the gospel to Gentiles. And John, not least by virtue of his somewhat uncertain identification with the disciple whom Jesus loved,⁽¹⁰⁾ though later than the other three Gospels, could hardly be set aside. And so we find, looking through the second century, that it is these four Gospels which are most often cited and drawn on, with others in comparison only rarely referred to.⁽¹¹⁾ These, these four, were the Gospels.

An important and indeed decisive factor is given in the history of the word ‘gospel’. The noun ‘gospel, good news’ (euangelion) is one of several terms which Christianity owes to Paul: 60 of its 76 occurrences in the New Testament appear in the Pauline corpus. Indeed, it is very likely that we owe the use of the word in Christian vocabulary to Paul. He probably derived it from the Hebrew verb, bsr, ‘to bring good news’, especially as used by Isaiah. Much reflected on, at Qumran⁽¹²⁾ and evidently by Paul, were two of Isaiah’s verses:

Isaiah 52:7 – ‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces (euangelizomenou) peace, who brings good news (euangelizomenos agatha), who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns”. ’

Isaiah 61:1 – ‘The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news (euangelisasthai) to the poor . . .’

And Jesus was evidently much influenced by the same passages if Luke’s account of his preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth is anything to go by (Lk 4:16–21) – as is probably confirmed by the memory of his reply to the Baptist’s query as to Jesus’ mission: ‘Tell John . . . the blind receive their sight, the lame walk . . . and the poor have good news brought to them (euangelizontai)’ (Mt 11:5; Lk 7:22). So Paul was no doubt stimulated by both Isaiah and the Jesus tradition in drawing a noun from the verb, euangelion from euangelizesthai, a noun which summed up the good news brought by Jesus, which summed up the significance of what Jesus had done. Paul would also no doubt have been aware that the noun was used in his own day, usually in the plural and especially of the good tidings of Caesar’s doings. But for Paul it was the singularity of the good news of Jesus which was the focus of his attention – the gospel.

What is interesting for us at this point is the fact that Mark takes over this word euangelion ‘gospel’ and uses it to sum up the story he was about to tell. He introduces his account of Jesus’ ministry with the words, ‘The beginning of the good news/the gospel of Jesus Christ’ (Mk 1:1). It is as though he was reacting to Paul’s use of the word to focus his message regarding Jesus’ death and resurrection. Mark’s reaction was in effect to say: the good news/the gospel of Jesus does not focus exclusively or entirely on his death and resurrection. Jesus’ whole ministry – from his baptism by John, climaxing in his death and resurrection – is an integral part of the good news. And Mark emphasises the point in several places in his narrative, by inserting into the tradition of Jesus’ teaching references to ‘the gospel’. So, for example, he summarises Jesus’ preaching as a call to ‘repent’, with the addition, ‘and believe in the gospel’ (Mk 1:15).⁽¹³⁾

So Mark marks the transition from the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection to the good news of his whole ministry. And indeed by introducing his account as ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ’ (1:1), he also marks the beginning of the transition from the good news of Jesus’ mission to the good news which is the account of that mission. Because of Mark’s use of the term ‘gospel’ to sum up Jesus’ mission, and his account of that mission, we can begin to speak of the Gospel of Mark. So it is to Mark in particular that we owe our understanding of the gospel as the good news of Jesus’ ministry, climaxing in his death and resurrection. And as with Paul, it is always the singular, the good news focused on Jesus’ mission climaxing in his death and resurrection.

And this is precisely the point where the canonical Gospels are to be distinguished from the so-called Gospels which came later. Matthew, Luke and John followed Mark’s lead in presenting the good news of Jesus as an account of his ministry leading up to his passion and rising again, whereas the other Gospels that came later consistently focused on Jesus’ teaching – as though the good news was primarily knowledge (gnōsis) that would dispel ignorance. Should they even be called ‘Gospels’? Probably not, since it was Paul and Mark who gave the term its technical Christian meaning, as a summary reference to Jesus’ mission climaxing in his death and resurrection – the good news for sinners, not just for the ignorant. And of the candidates for the title ‘Gospel’, only four, the canonical four, meet that qualification.

One of the most interesting things a student of the Gospels can do is to sit down with a synopsis of the Synoptic Gospels, the first three Gospels in the New Testament canon. In a synopsis the three Gospels are set down side by side, in three columns, with the same passages in the two or three Gospels set out in parallel.⁽¹⁴⁾ Some of these parallels are more or less word for word, one Evangelist either copying the other or both drawing on a common source. Others have much less word-for-word agreement, but it is the same story or teaching that has been recorded. When I studied the Synoptic tradition intensely years ago the phrase which kept coming to me was ‘the same yet different’. Evidently it was the same story, the same teaching, but the Evangelist or his sources had told or used it differently. What also became clear was that often the chief point of the story or teaching was more or less word for word. But the introduction and the conclusion were different, more distinctive to the context in which the Evangelist was recording the tradition or to the point that he wanted to draw from it.

A classic example for me was the story of Jesus healing the centurion’s servant, in Matthew 8:5–13 and Luke 7:1–10. It is clearly the same story that they are telling: the centurion asking for Jesus to minister to his sick slave; with the exchange between the centurion and Jesus being more or less word for word, climaxing in Jesus’ amazement that ‘not even in Israel have I found such faith’ (Mt 8:10; Lk 7:9). And yet, the two tellings of the same story are different. In Matthew the centurion comes to Jesus personally to beseech his help, whereas in Luke the centurion does not come personally, counting himself as not worthy to meet Jesus face to face. The endings of the two accounts are different again, with Matthew incorporating some teaching from elsewhere in the Jesus tradition, before agreeing with Luke that the slave had indeed been healed.

What do we learn from this, and from many other examples like it? We learn, first of all, that the Evangelists were not concerned to record the Jesus tradition with pedantic accuracy. They could draw from the same recalled episode in Jesus’ life different lessons: here, for example, for Matthew it was a story of faith, for Luke a story of humility. Whether the centurion actually came personally to speak to Jesus or only sent some friends with his message was not very important. What mattered was that his plea for help and Jesus’ response were retained word for word in the different tellings. It was the same story, but told differently – and so differently that the two accounts were technically irreconcilable. Did the centurion come personally, or did he not? That is a question which could trouble fundamentalists, but it evidently did not trouble Matthew or Luke.

This is precisely what we should expect, after all. The Jesus tradition was being recited and reflected on in many different parts of Palestine, Syria and modern-day Turkey, etc. It was being interpreted and applied, different stories and teachings variously combined to provide instruction and guidance. Mark, for example, has clearly drawn on memories of a day in Jesus’ life in 2:1—3:6. He goes on to provide a sequence of parables, including Jesus’ rationale in telling so many parables (4:1–34), then a sequence of miracle stories set round the Sea of Galilee (4:35—5:43; 6:32–52). But through all these variants a clear picture of the one being remembered emerges. The impact made by Jesus on his first disciples is clearly evident in the stories they told and the teaching they rehearsed.

The distinctive message of each Evangelist is clearly to be seen, along with the different ways they wanted the good news of Jesus to impact the hearers when their Gospel was read to them.

Many people assume that John is a Gospel just like the Synoptics. They do not seem to be aware of how different John is from the Synoptics. Let me remind you of how different John’s Gospel is. For example:

In the Synoptic tradition Jesus is remembered as speaking typically in aphorisms and parables. In contrast, in John, Jesus engages in lengthy dialogues and circuitous discussions and does not use parables.⁽²⁹⁾

Confronted by such differences it is not credible to explain them simply by assuming that the Evangelists drew differently from a wider and more generally known Jesus tradition. Is it credible to argue that the Synoptics completely ignored the lengthy dialogues which John uses, and also most of the Johannine Jesus’ talk of eternal life, while John ignored almost all of the tradition of Jesus speaking about the kingdom of God, even though it was the principal theme of Jesus’ preaching according to the Synoptics? Above all, is it credible to assume that the Synoptic tradition was unaware of the great Johannine ‘I am’ assertions or ignored them? Quite frankly, the only obvious answer to both questions is No! John certainly retains the Gospel format first given by Mark, beginning with Jesus’ encounter with the Baptist and climaxing in the Cross and Resurrection. But evidently he saw his task as different from that of the Synoptics – not so much simply to recall what Jesus had said and done during his mission, but to bring out the significance, we could justifiably say the significance of Jesus’ mission.⁽³¹⁾

He does this partly by giving further emphasis to what the Synoptics had already claimed for Jesus. That Jesus is Messiah is a more central theme in John than in the Synoptics. In the opening chapter he is already acclaimed Messiah by Andrew in speaking to Peter (1:41). In speaking to the Samaritan woman whom he encountered at the well, Jesus confesses to be Messiah (4:25–26). Jesus’ messiahship is debated throughout the second half of John 7. To affirm that Jesus is Messiah has already become a ground for expelling someone from the synagogue (9:22). Martha confesses Jesus as Messiah in 11:27. And John states as his reason for writing his Gospel ‘so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah’ (20:31). So John greatly strengthens that motif.

Even more he strengthens the theme of Jesus as the Son of God. In a unique phrase, he emphasises that Jesus is ‘the one and only Son’.⁽³²⁾ And in John God as Jesus’ ‘Father’ is vastly more prominent than in the Synoptics.⁽³³⁾ Equally striking are the distinctive notes in John. The Baptist testifies, ‘I have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God’ (1:34). In the same opening chapter, Nathanael confesses, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God!’ (1:49). Martha’s full confession is, ‘I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God’ (11:27). And a consistent note throughout John is that Jesus has been authorised and sent by the Father.⁽³⁴⁾

If these christological assertions are shared with the Synoptic Evangelists, but strengthened by John, a further Johannine emphasis is quite distinctive. It is that Jesus not only brought the word from God, he was the Word of God incarnate. John makes this clear in the Prologue to the Gospel. Unlike Matthew and Luke he begins not with the birth of Jesus, but with the Logos (Word) as the agent of creation. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . All things came into being through him’, climaxing in, ‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth’ (1:1, 14). The genius of this identification was that Logos was familiar to both Jew and Greek. Jews were long accustomed to their scriptures’ talk of the word coming to patriarch and prophet, and of the heavens made ‘by the word of the Lord’ (Ps 33:6). And in Greek thought logos was a term ideally suited to refer with equal facility both to the word unexpressed and the word expressed. This is what the term enabled John to indicate: that Jesus was the mind of God expressed, expressing the inexpressible and making the unknowable known. John used it to indicate not simply that Jesus brought the word from God, like the prophets of old, but that the word became flesh in Jesus. No one had ever made such a claim before. It took the gospel into a new dimension, addressing minds trained in Greek philosophy, challenging them to a degree that surpassed all that Hellenistic Judaism had attempted thus far. This was not an Evangelist simply trying to preserve and pass on what Jesus and the first disciples had first proclaimed. This was an attempt to draw out the full significance of Jesus for a different and more sophisticated audience. It is John 1:14 that shows most clearly that John was not content simply to provide another Synoptic recollection of Jesus’ ministry. His aim was to show that Jesus spoke not simply to Jewish teachers and disciples but also to minds seeking to explore what the true reality of the world was. But he did it, we should not forget, within the framework of a mission of Jesus which began with John the Baptist and climaxed in his death and resurrection. This is gospel indeed, not simply looking back, but looking forward to new audiences, and not simply repeating the Jesus tradition already established by the Synoptic Evangelists, but seeking to re-express it for a new and changing audience.

Somewhat surprisingly John did not extend the Logos Christology explicitly through the rest of his Gospel. Instead he developed the equivalent thought of Jesus as the embodiment of divine Wisdom. This was a more familiar Jewish way of speaking of God’s interaction with his creation and his people – more familiar particularly in Jewish Wisdom tradition. Thus Proverbs 3:19 – ‘The Lord by wisdom founded the earth’ – and the great Wisdom hymn of Proverbs 8, where Wisdom declares: ‘When he established the heavens, I was there . . . Then I was beside him, like a master worker’ (8:27, 30). Most striking is the way Wisdom is explicitly identified with Israel’s scriptures. In ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus), ‘Wisdom praises herself’ and there follows a hymn in praise of Wisdom, climaxing in the identification: ‘All this is the book of the covenant, the law’ (Sir 24:1, 23). Similarly in Baruch, a lengthy hymn in praise of divine Wisdom (Bar 3:9–37) concludes: ‘She (Wisdom) is the book of the commandments of God, the law that endures for ever’ (4:1).

In John the echoes of what is said about Wisdom are frequent. Wisdom 9:17– 18 celebrates how Israel ‘was saved by wisdom’, and John celebrates that God ‘sent his Son in order that the world might be saved’ (Jn 3:17). Ben Sira rejoices that Wisdom will give those who fear the Lord ‘the water of wisdom to drink’ (Sir.15:3), and Wisdom affirms that ‘Those who eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for more’. In John 4, Jesus says to the woman at the well, ‘Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty’ (4:14). In Proverbs Wisdom makes the invitation, ‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine that I have mixed’, and ben Sira gives assurance that ‘She [Wisdom] will feed him with the bread of learning, and give him the water of wisdom to drink’ (Sir 15:3). What else can the Johannine Jesus be referring to when he gives his invitation in similar terms: ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me shall never be thirsty’ (John 6:35)? That the Johannine Jesus is presented as the incarnation of divine Wisdom is even more apparent than that he is the Word become flesh.

There are several other distinctively characteristic emphases of John’s presentation of Jesus which should not escape notice. It is in John that Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment: ‘that you love one another, just as I have loved you’ (13:34–35).⁽³⁵⁾ Distinctively Johannine is his individualism: each eats Jesus’ flesh and drinks his blood (6:53–58); each believer drinks the water he gives (7:37–38); each sheep hears his voice (10:3–4, 16); each branch is rooted in the vine (15:4–7). The Johannine Jesus emphasises to the woman at the well that worship is not tied to a specific cultic centre: ‘The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem ... But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth’ (4:21–23). Notably there is no mention of apostles or prophets or teachers. Instead Jesus quotes Isaiah 54:13: ‘They shall all be taught by God’ (Jn 6:45). And the promise of the Spirit is that ‘he will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you’ (14:26). Even more noticeable is the fact that John seems to play down Jesus’ baptism and last supper, passing over each without mention, and that he qualifies the great bread of life discourse in chapter 6 with the terse reminder that ‘It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life’ (6:63). It is this absence of reference to what were presumably already well-established features of corporate church gathering and worship which has suggested to some that John practised and commended what later would be called conventicle Christianity, a less structured and more individualistic worship.

In the light of these distinctive features the question inevitably arises whether John in his reworking of the Jesus tradition went too far. The question is reinforced by the fact that John’s Gospel appealed to the Gnostics more than did the others – the Gnostics working with a sharp polarisation of flesh and spirit, seeking for delivery from physical fleshliness, and assuming that salvation could only mean release from the flesh. So the question arises whether John, in his representation of the good news of Jesus, overemphasised Jesus’ divinity and played down his humanity. Did he so emphasise Jesus’ divinity that his humanity was only apparent? The answer is a definite No! The emphasis of John 1:14 is clear: ‘the Word became flesh’. John did not say what the Gnostics would have liked: that the Word appeared as flesh, in fleshly guise. No! ‘The Word became flesh.’ Those who have accused John of ‘naive docetism’, putting the primary emphasis on the following clause – ‘and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son’⁽³⁶⁾ – have ignored or played down John’s primary emphasis. The glory that was seen was that of the incarnate Jesus, the Word become flesh, whose ministry climaxed in his death, a genuine death, and his resurrection. That was his glory.⁽³⁷⁾

All this shows someone who was prepared to take some risks to ensure that the gospel is heard to speak to all conditions and situations. This was an attempt to speak meaningfully well beyond the original context of Jesus’ mission, an attempt to show that the gospel of Jesus was immediately relevant to those caught up in the fashionable philosophising of the day. It was dangerous, as the history of John’s acceptance within the New Testament canon clearly shows. The fact that the first known commentary on John was written by the Gnostic Heracleon in the latter half of the second century is a clear indication that John drew very near to the boundary which other and later treatments of Jesus transgressed. But it was precisely his insistence in John 1.14, that the Word became flesh, and his presentation within the structure provided by Mark, climaxing in Jesus’ death and resurrection, which ensured that John was retained within emerging Christianity as what we might call a canonical restatement of the gospel.

The interesting question which John raises, then, is this: which is the best precedent for today – the Synoptics’ presentation of Jesus, or John’s?

So the answers to our questions become clear. Why four Gospels? Why only four?

First answer: why four Gospels? Because the term ‘gospel’ was given its distinctive definition by Paul focusing on Jesus’ death and resurrection. Mark expanded that definition to include the mission of Jesus climaxing in Jesus’ death and resurrection. And the other Evangelists who followed suit were deemed to define and express the good news of Jesus definitively.

Second answer: why four Gospels? Because the Synoptic Gospels showed that the gospel could not be confined to one format or version. The Synoptic Gospels showed that integral to the gospel focused on Jesus is its character as the same yet different. To limit the story of Jesus as though only one version is authentic is to strangle it. The Synoptics highlight the danger of a fundamentalist approach, as though only one version could be truly authentic. They show that even when the gaze is directed backwards, what is to be clearly seen is that Jesus – the same Jesus – was remembered differently, and that the story of Jesus could be told diversely, even when sticking to the gospel form.

Third answer: why a fourth Gospel? Why John? Because John shows how far the ‘same yet different’ formula could be extended. John shows that in reaching out to audiences further removed from the Palestinian context of the Synoptics’ accounts there has to be a bold restatement of the gospel. To reach a more diverse and diversely educated audience there has to be some willingness to take risk – to retell the story of Jesus in terms which might be misinterpreted, but with the climactic account of Jesus’ death and resurrection always as ensuring that the feet remain firmly on the ground.

Fourth answer: why only four Gospels? Because the four Gospels – Mark Matthew, Luke and John – quickly established themselves as the authoritative records of Jesus’ ministry, and became definitive of what a written Gospel should be. And because others which followed, like the Gospel of Thomas, precisely by neglecting the character of a Gospel as a ‘passion narrative with an extended introduction’, effectively gave up the claim to be rightly called a ‘Gospel’.

These answers should be important for Methodists, not simply because they show how justified John Wesley was in seeking to bring the gospel to those whom it had passed by, and to bring it out in faithfulness to its essential character. But also because they provide a challenge to all Christians today – Methodists included – to bring out the relevance of the good news of Jesus to the changing circumstances of today, just as the New Testament Evangelists sought to demonstrate how clearly and fully the good news of Jesus spoke to their own day. This is the wisdom and strength of our New Testament with its four Gospels, providing both an example of how diversely the same gospel could be told, and a challenge to us to retell the good news of Jesus today with equal or equivalent effect.