The Fourfold Gospel, Volume 1

A Formational Commentary on Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John: From the Beginning to the Baptist

John DelHousaye

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781532683640
  9781532683657
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532683664
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

In the spirit of Ludolph of Saxony (c. 1295-1378) and Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), The Fourfold Gospel invites the reader into the mystery of God's redemption in Jesus Christ. All the parallel passages in the Gospels are glossed together, along with the unique material, using a medieval interpretive approach called the Quadriga or the acronym PaRDeS in Hebrew. Meditating on the literal, canonical, moral, and theological senses of Scripture offers a scaffolding for the spiritual formation of the reader. This volume, in addition to a thorough introduction to the method and the Gospels, focuses on the beginning of the story--the birth, baptism, and temptations of Christ.

1

Entering the Gospels

The Gospels invite their readers, whether they are hearing about Jesus for the first time or are old disciples, into their story, which was typical in contemporary rhetoric and Jewish religious life.1 We often encounter the invitation to “look” (idou, ἰδού) at what is presented:2

Look: an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream . . . (Matt 1:20; 2:13, 19)

Look: magi from the eastern regions came to Jerusalem . . . (2:1)

Look: the star that they saw in the east was going before them . . . (2:9)

The evangelists often employ the present tense, which is obscured in translation, to draw the reader into the story.3 The English Standard Version renders παραγίνεται ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἀπὸ τῆς Γαλιλαίας ἐπὶ τὸν Ἰορδάνην as “Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan”; a more natural translation is “Jesus appears from the Galilee at the Jordan” (Matt 3:13). Instead of merely summarizing an action, the story slows down for us to inhabit the scene. Matthew and John came to Jesus; Mark and Luke, later disciples, also came imaginatively with the Holy Spirit; and now we, their readers, are summoned. The proclaimed becomes the proclaimer.

Mystagogy

The Gospels may be received like a film with moving, connected images of Jesus Christ, who elicits action from the center. Jesus is the protagonist and focal point of nearly every scene. But they go even further, inviting readers to see with Jesus:

Look: the heavens were opened [to him], and he saw [the] Spirit of God descending like a dove [and] coming upon him. (Matt 3:16)

This way of discipleship came to be called mystagogy, “the gradual initiation of the believer into the mystery of the indwelling Christ by a master who is capable of communicating some experience of this mystery.”4 The apostle Paul bases his teaching on the presupposition that his readers possess “the mind of Christ,” who, despite their immaturity, are nevertheless enabled by the Holy Spirit to perceive with Jesus (1 Cor 2:16).

Meditating in the Gospels invites a life centered on Christ. We begin to see our own every-day scenes—work, rest, worship—differently. Ludolph of Saxony (c. 1295–1378), a Carthusian monk who wrote an entire discipleship manual, The Life of Christ (Vita Christi), from this approach, claims, “Of all the many kinds of spiritual exercise, I believe this is the one that is the most necessary, the most beneficial, and the one that can lead you to the greatest heights.”5 Queen Isabella (1451–1504) was so taken by the work that she ordered the Franciscan poet Fray Ambrosio Montesiano (c. 1444–1514) to translate it into Castilian for all her people. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), the founder of the Jesuits, was deeply impacted by the Life of Christ and incorporated the method into his Spiritual Exercises, a month-long retreat that helped novitiates in his order to discern the Lord’s calling.6 After a preparatory prayer seeking “the grace that all our energies and activities be sincerely directed to His glory and worship” for the first Exercise, Ignatius evokes the imagination of the reader:

The first prelude consists of a certain mental re-creation of the place. It should be observed in this regard that during any meditation or contemplation of a corporal entity, for example of Christ, we shall see with a sort of imaginary vision a physical place representing what we are contemplating, for instance a temple or a mountain where we could find Christ Jesus or the Virgin Mary, and everything else that is related to the theme of our contemplation.7

Especially among the Orthodox, the Gospel Book, a codex conjoining Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, is read like an icon. Theodore the Studite (759–826) describes the Gospels as “written in ink”; icons, “in gold.”8 Icons are to be read, not just seen. The reader is invited to look at and through the surface to t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Entering the Gospels
• Beginnings
• Birth
• Baptism
• Bibliography