In the early centuries of the Christian movement there were many gospels (homiletic-theological tracts), epistles, etc. There were many visions about what being a Christian meant, what being Christ meant. There was the usual cultural divide between East and West which in the early days centered about Alexandria and Antioch.
There were as well the usual and charitable denunciations and excommunications of one another. Of course, this is evidenced in Christian Scripture itself—Paul condemning those who tried to hold onto Jewish practices, John bemoaning his being ostracized by anti-christs in his churches, etc. Christianity is, as is the case with every philosophical and religious movement, not, and never has been, a homogenous entity.
When Christianity gained a dominant position in society, the astute emperor saw fit to keep his empire cult-urally homogenous. He was not about to have his military prowess and political power undermined by religious strife over issues he saw as nit-picking. He called together the leaders of the church communities and demanded they sit down and devise an organizational plan and a coherent and comprehensive statement of faith. The several councils that worked to accomplish this had to prune and weed, and many early writings did not make it into the canon of scripture, into the collection of documents officially received as exhibiting the proper vision of the faith. I realize this compresses a great deal of history into a few lines, but I believe this sketch captures the heart of the matter.
We know, by name at least, nearly two dozen gospels, and at least a half-dozen each non-canonical epistles, acts and apocalypses. For one reason or another, none of them was chosen as part of the canon. Often it is easy to understand why. Thomas’ gospel, really no more than one of many ancient lists of sayings and proverbs, was deemed too close to a philosophical threat of the day—gnosticism. The Gospel according to John was long deemed questionable because of its dualistic aspects, but undoubtedly saved by its high Christology. The Shepherd of Hermas, a long series of meditations on the moral life, was very popular and often treated on a par with the canonical Pauline writings, but failed to secure a place, possibly because of its strong legalistic tendencies. Many things were in some way lost, needed to be lost, because the effort to unify the creedal statement meant not only the production of a singular text but the suppression (occasionally, the destruction) of that which spoke to its contrary.
All in all, I do not think anything of enduring value is lost in terms of vision. In so far as many of these “lost” works have been lost to our use for centuries, they have become celebrities, but their value and worth rest on the history and culture they evidence rather than on any spiritual insight or divine revelatory power. I think the greater loss is in the philosophical and theological tracts that were deemed heretical and destroyed. These writings were aimed at an educated audience and were consequently exposed to criticism by them that had the power to not only argue against them, but elide them.
In general, the various gospels were not as susceptible to such censure. As texts meant to present a picture or tell a story, as theological visions intended for preaching, they could be indulged a greater latitude. That, in part, is why the four gospels in the canon are so varied. Matthew and Luke may share the bulk of words, but how they present Christ and his mission is quite different. John is so far removed from Mark as to be seemingly about a completely different situation. Yet these four try to present—to their time and place—a vision of what it is to be Christ, what it means to be a disciple.
I must stress the fact that the four canonical gospels were each created for a distinct time and place. We tend to think that because they all come from the first or early second century and were all produced in the area of the Mediterranean, they are of one time and place. They are not. Despite a certain socio-political uniformity overlaid upon diverse peoples and nations by the empires of Greece and later Rome, very real and deep distinctions remained, especially in the lower classes wherein Christianity had its earliest impact. Likewise, a decade could witness a significant attitudinal shift. In our own time we know how quickly a society can reposition its relationship with another, how quickly values can be transformed from triumphal to isolationist, from liberal to conservative. In its early days, Christianity was seen by many as one of a considerable number of religious movements or sects within Judaism. The first believers were Jews or Jewish proselytes. They were in regular attendance at synagogue and temple. They believed Jesus was the promised Messiah of Israel. In 70 AD Rome crushed a Jewish uprising, obliterated all hope of home-rule, destroyed the temple, and therein the temple cult. As is characteristic of a time of crisis, there was a swing to the right; the mind of Judaism coalesced and solidified around the conservative Pharisees. Christianity was no longer open to being interpreted as a Jewish movement, sect or heresy; it was a new and distinct religion. The progressive deterioration of relations between the followers of Jesus and the larger Jewish community that culminate in this situation is reflected in the gospels and epistles. By the time the last gospel written reaches its final form, John can refer to Jesus, the Jew, in conflict with “the Jews” because the various groups that confront and challenge Jesus or his disciples in the earlier gospels, in Acts, and in the Pauline epistles (scribes, Pharisees, elders, rulers, Sadducees) have now ceased to exist. Christianity is no longer a type of “reformed” movement within Judaism, but an entity unto itself. Judaism had rejected Christianity as a legitimate expression of its vision and understanding of God and his work. There are now Christians and Jews. The two religions now exist side by side with all the acrimony that one would expect in a divorce. Attempts by early Christian writers to depict that adversity in a manner relevant to their particular audiences have become the ground for misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and misuse. Thus, an ancient conflict betwixt an emerging religion and its parent religion has been misguidedly requisitioned to subvert and extirpate millions.
Nevertheless, the selection of the four canonical gospels exhibits a certain genius. They evidence four very different perspectives of Christ, reading like blueprints of four elevations: a view from above, from the foundations, from the inside out, and from the outside in. They posit four co-ordinate points directing us to Christ. Art often captures this. Countless gospel books, church domes, reredos, etc. are decorated with an image of Christ occupying a central frame, adjoined by four peripheral frames each depicting an evangelist. It is worthy of note here that the four merely define the edges of the Christ figure, that the Christ figure is always central and immediate to the viewer. This is a theological statement as complete as any gospel, for it establishes a Christ present to the viewer–without filter or intermediary. It declares, to the eye of faith, that Christ is here, the same Christ witnessed to by the evangelical four, and a Christ greater than any one of the four can envisage from his respective corner.
Likewise, the epistles, or letters as now they are called, each speak to a time and place. They too, in general, had a certain structural protection from censure as pastoral and homiletic works responding to specific communities and circumstances. Despite the fact that countless have stood reality on its head and argued that Paul had a systematic theology, he plainly did not. He answered questions and gave directions, as would any good rabbi or minister, according to the situation in which the question arose. The same ought to be noted regarding James, John, Peter, et al.
Were these proper and particular natures of gospels and epistles kept in mind, there would not exist so many and needless tensions between East and West, between Protestant and Catholic, between them that champion Paul’s teaching that salvation is by faith and them that stand with James’ teaching on the need for good works.
Whether you are content with the four canonical gospels or not, one historical truth prevails. There is not any one all-embracing vision of Christianity; there never has been. The early councils put bounds beyond which one ought not to venture, not definitions that contain the exhaustive truth. How could they do otherwise? Who dares define the indefinable divine, the inexpressible prayer, the spiritual bravado of under-standing oneself to be the agent, the very child of the Creating One? How can there be a pragmatic boundary to Christianity when Christ is always an encounter with the world and the world a changeable, an ever changing, entity?