XVIII. The Four Faces, The Four Gospels

Six centuries apart, two prophets describe the same vision. Ezekiel 1, by the river Chebar in exile around 593 BC, sees four living creatures around the throne of God, each with four faces — a man, a lion, an ox, an eagle. Revelation 4, written by John on Patmos around AD 95, describes four living creatures around the same throne, each with one of the same four faces, crying holy, holy, holy before Him.

The faces are not arbitrary symbols. They are the fourfold portrait of Christ — and Church tradition from the second century onward has read them as the fourfold structure of the gospel itself.

Same throne. Same four faces. Six hundred years apart. And the creatures who guarded the throne in Ezekiel are the creatures who worship at the throne in Revelation — the same beings, now in light, ceaselessly praising the Lamb.

By the late second century, the Church had recognized something startling about this. Irenaeus of Lyons, in Against Heresies IV.11.8 (c. AD 180), argues that there must be exactly four Gospels — neither more nor fewer — because: