Tired old arguments continue. . .

Everyone knows the ongoing debate about the order in which the Gospels were written, the theories about common source material, and the actual dates of their composition.  Spoiler alert.  I will not solve the problem here.  Suffice it to note that modern times have undone the historic narrative about the order and somewhat about the dates.  They have some evidence, to be sure, but they also are guessing and in their postulating have decided that those closer to the time know less than they do.  That is my point.

Modern Biblical scholarship believes that the Gospel of Mark was the first written Gospel and probably dates that work somewhere within a twenty year period from 50-70 AD.  Until more modern times, nearly everyone thought that the order of the gospels in the canon was actually their order of composition.  In particular, the Early Church Fathers are nearly unanimous in their thought that the Gospel of Matthew was the first gospel to be written and the sequence of gospels in the New Testament is the result of this thinking -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Today, about the only agreement you can find with earlier fathers and modern scholars is that the Gospel of John was the last to be written.

Third century scholar Origen said in his Commentary on Matthew 1:

Concerning the four Gospels which alone are uncontroverted in the Church of God under heaven, I have learned by tradition that the Gospel according to Matthew, who was at one time a publican and afterwards an Apostle of Jesus Christ, was written first and that he composed it in the Hebrew tongue and published it for the converts from Judaism. 

Note that already in the 3rd century, tradition had wrestled with and come to unanimity on both the question of the order in which the gospels were written and which were canonical.  To those who would insist this question of order or canonicity is simply unknown or uncertain, here is the thinking of a person of some repute about what was known and accepted long before the Church actually bothered to write out a list or modern scholarship presumed to know better. 

Later than Origen, in the 4th century, St. Augustine himself put together a harmony of the gospels in which he states unequivocally: 

Now, those four evangelists whose names have gained the most remarkable circulation over the whole world, and whose number has been fixed as four — it may be for the simple reason that there are four divisions of that world through the universal length of which they, by their number as by a kind of mystical sign, indicated the advancing extension of the Church of Christ — are believed to have written in the order which follows: first Matthew, then Mark, thirdly Luke, lastly John.

In addition, Origen also wrote of the authorship -- something of which modern scholarship insists is unknown and even, perhaps, the result of various scribes and traditions as compilation, of sorts.

The second written was that according to Mark, who wrote it according to the instruction of Peter, who, in his General Epistle, acknowledged him as a son, saying, 'The church that is in Babylon, elect together with you, salutes you and so does Mark my son.' And third, was that according to Luke, the Gospel commended by Paul, which he composed for the converts from the Gentiles. Last of all, that according to John. 

While some might question if it all matters, the importance here is confidence in the source material for who Jesus is and what He has accomplished for us and our salvation.  The matter of the canon and the gospels and their composition date and authorship bear to this essential point.  Can we have confidence that what we are reading today is the Gospel.  Where modern scholarship puts a question mark and some insist that nothing is so until the almighty Church says it is, it is clear that the early fathers believed and so proclaimed this Gospel of Jesus Christ based upon the historic record of the Scriptures well known to them and well defined (except for a very few books or sections of books in the New Testament) and that they reflected the earliest consensus and tradition on the matter.

The witness to the canon is clear even though you would be hard pressed to find a definitive statement that this is the canon and no other.  So Clement of Rome mentions at least eight New Testament books (95 AD), the martyr Polycarp, a disciple of John the apostle, 15 books (108 AD), Ignatius of Antioch 7books (115 AD), Irenaeus 21 books (185 AD), and Hippolytus 22 books (170-235?AD).  So the New Testament books around which the most doubt was placed early on were Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, and 3 John -- and this more for lack of mention than for dismissal from the witnesses of the earliest period.  Thus it is certain that, concerning the vast majority of the 27 books of the New Testament, no shadow of doubt existed concerning their character as tradition and this certainly includes the Gospels.  

In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius of Caesarea chronicles the witness of earlier writers concerning the limits of the canon. In summary (Book III, chap. 25), he divides the books into three classes: (a) twenty-two are almost universally acknowledged to be canonical, namely the four Gospels, Acts, the letters of Paul (including Hebrews), I John, I Peter, and even Revelation (though Eusebius comments further on Revelation); (b) five are quite widely accepted, though disputed by some (though it would seem all were accepted by Eusebius himself) namely, James, Jude, II Peter (earlier regarded by Eusebius as spurious), II and III John; and (c) five are clearly spurious, namely the Acts of Paul, Hermas, Apocalypse of Peter, Barnabas, and the Didache.  Eusebius comments about Revelation: “To these perhaps the Revelation of John should be added, as some reject it while others count it among the accepted books.” As any idiot can see, this is virtually the canon as we know today.  For what it is worth, following Eusebius (after 325 AD) the differences in the canon are very slight indeed.

This history supports the apostolic tradition received by the Church -- proclaimed with clarity and certainty as its Canon -- until a quantitative list appeared by the end of the fourth century.  Modern scholarship begins with a question mark where the Church must put an exclamation point.  The history may not be as neat and tidy as we would want it to be but to suggest doubt and uncertainty where the record says confidence and authority is to betray not only the Scriptures but the Christ whom those Scriptures proclaim.  Why we would doubt or distance ourselves from this early witness to the truth and reliability of the gospels in particular and the whole of the New Testament is and remains a mystery to me.