The Gospel of Luke.
The Gospel of Luke.
§ 245. Irenaeus, bk. 3, c. 14, p. 198: “Luke was inseparable from Paul and was his co-worker in the Gospel.” Chapter 11, p. 181: “Luke was a follower and disciple of the apostles.” Tertullian (Adv. Marcion., bk. 4, p. 224) likewise calls him “a follower of Paul,” from which it is by no means incorrect to believe that he wrote his Gospel account at the command of the apostle Paul. As a result, some think that Paul calls this “his Gospel” (Rom. 2:16; 2 Tim. 2:8). Eusebius testifies (Hist. eccles., bk. 3, c. 21): “The Gospel of Luke, no less than those of Matthew and Mark, was approved by John.” This Luke is mentioned in Col. 4:14; 2 Tim. 4:11; Philem. 24; and especially, according to the opinion of some, in 2 Cor. 8:18: “With him we have sent the brother whose praise is in the Gospel among all the churches.” From this, one gathers that the Gospel of Luke was known and approved in the Church already at the time when, under Claudius, Paul was going from Macedonia to Jerusalem. Irenaeus (bk. 3, c. 14, p. 198) mentions everything that Luke recorded as compared with the rest of the evangelists.
He was a native of Antioch, a physician by profession, according to Eusebius (Hist., bk. 3, c. 4) and Jerome (Catalog. script.), which agrees with Col. 4:14. If we have confidence in Nicephorus (Hist., bk. 6, c. 6), he added the ability to paint to his medical skill. Jerome (on Isaiah 6) gives him this praise: “He was highly skilled in the Greek language,” something that the character of the language in which he wrote his Gospel account clearly witnesses. Casaubonus (Exerc. 2, c. 1, p. 161) says, “It is well-known to the learned that he observed pure Hellenism more carefully than the rest of the evangelists.” Epiphanius numbers him among the seventy-two disciples. This can be doubted with good cause because in his Gospel account (1:2) he says he is writing that which was told him by others—among whom he was not. He lived for eighty-four years, according to Jerome (Catalog.), and according to the same author (on Acts) he died in Bithynia. Some say that he was hanged from an olive tree in Greece and died as a martyr.
He himself makes clear in his preface the reason that drove him to write his Gospel history. Eusebius points out (Hist., bk. 3, c. 21): “Luke describes those things that Christ began to do and teach up to44 the captivity of John the Baptist and describes the things that happened in the third year of Christ’s ministry only somewhat. Hence John was later compelled to supply those things in his Gospel.” Ambrose (on Luke 2) writes this about him: “Luke believed that he would be rich enough if he claimed for himself only the manger and cradle of the Lord.”
From Luke 22, the account of Christ’s bloody sweat and the comfort of the angel was at one time called into doubt, according to Hilary (De Trinit., bk. 10) and Jerome (Contra Pelag., bk. 2)—doubtlessly because those things seem to conflict with the divinity of the Son, just as some Catholics with wrongheaded zeal strike out the words “He wept” from Luke 19 of their Bibles, as Epiphanius relates (Ancorat). This, however, is not sufficient cause for doubt. You see, we must make a distinction between the divine and human nature of Christ, a distinction between the state of exaltation and humiliation, a distinction between the infirmities that Christ voluntarily underwent for our sake and sin with its vicious effects, from which He was completely free. Augustine (De cons. evang., bk. 3, c. 4) proves that this passage is evangelical. In Ad Theoph., bk. 6, Athanasius pronounces an anathema on those who deny that Christ sweat blood.
The Gospel of Luke contains twenty-four chapters in which he accurately describes the birth, circumcision, upbringing, and office both of the forerunner John the Baptist and of Christ.