By Water & Blood

Panarion 51, Chapter 19: John’s place among the four evangelists

For the blessed John, coming fourth among the evangelists in succession—though he was first in the calling after Peter and Andrew, together with James his brother, yet last in time in publishing a gospel—did not take care to set forth again what had already been well arranged before him, but anticipates what had been left unsaid among the things already spoken, and so discourses.

For Matthew begins from Abraham, and after the beginning, and after two years from the birth, he again makes his narrative. Mark begins from the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, not recounting the middle period after the beginning. But Luke brought forward a beginning before the beginning—the account concerning Elizabeth and Mary that took place before they were with child.

But John, though earlier in the calling, yet preaching after these, secures the account that precedes the incarnate presence. For most of what he said was spiritual, the things of the flesh having already been secured.

Therefore he makes his narrative spiritually of the gift that came to us from above from the Father who is without beginning, administered according to the Father’s good pleasure in the womb of the holy virgin.

And what is necessarily sought he did not pass over in silence; but moved by the Holy Spirit he introduces the God Word who exists before the ages, begotten of the Father without beginning and without time, and declares that he has come in flesh for our sake, so that from the four evangelists we may hold accurately the whole knowledge both according to the flesh and according to the divinity.