The Harmony of the Gospels

¹¹ John remains, between whom and others there is left no comparison to be instituted. For, however the evangelists may each have reported some matters which are not recorded by the others, it will be hard to prove that any question involving real discrepancy arises out of these. Thus, too, it is a clearly admitted position that the first three— namely, Matthew, Mark, and Luke— have occupied themselves chiefly with the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to which He is both king and priest.

And in this way, Mark, who seems to answer to the figure of the man in the well-known mystical symbol of the four living creatures, either appears to be preferentially the companion of Matthew, as he narrates a larger number of matters in unison with him than with the rest, and therein acts in due harmony with the idea of the kingly character whose wont it is, as I have stated in the first book, to be not unaccompanied by attendants; or else, in accordance with the more probable account of the matter, he holds a course in conjunction with both [the other Synoptists].

For although he is at one with Matthew in the larger number of passages, he is nevertheless at one rather with Luke in some others. And this very fact shows him to stand related at once to the lion and to the steer, that is to say, to the kingly office which Matthew emphasizes, and to the sacerdotal which Luke introduces, wherein also Christ appears distinctively as man, as the figure which Mark sustains stands related to both these. On the other hand, Christ's divinity, in virtue of which He is equal to the Father, in accordance with which He is the Word, and God with God, and the Word that was made flesh in order to dwell among us, in accordance with which also He and the Father are one, has been taken specially in hand by John with a view to its recommendation to our minds.

Like an eagle, he abides among Christ's sayings of the sublimer order, and in no way descends to earth but on rare occasions. In brief, although he declares plainly his own knowledge of the Lord's mother, he nevertheless neither unites with Matthew and Luke in recording His nativity, nor associates himself with all the three in relating His baptism; but all that he does there is simply to present the testimony delivered by John in a lofty and sublime fashion, and then, quitting the company of these others, he proceeds with Him to the marriage in Cana of Galilee.

And there, although the evangelist himself mentions His mother by that very name, He nevertheless addresses her thus: “Woman, what have I to do with you?” In this, however, [it is to be understood that] He does not repel her of whom He received the flesh, but means to convey the conception of His divinity with special fitness at this time, when He is about to change the water into wine; which divinity, likewise, had made that woman, and had not itself been made in her.