Today in Church History

✦ Feast Day

Feast of John the Apostle

The chain from John to Polycarp to Irenaeus is the most important personal chain of transmission in early Christianity. Irenaeus, writing c. AD 185, explicitly states that Polycarp told him what he had heard from John, and that he could recall the very tone of Polycarp's voice. This is not tradition in an abstract sense — it is memory. The theology of the second century is the personal recollection of men who knew men who knew the apostles. John's longevity — he died around AD 100, seventy years after the Resurrection — made this chain possible.

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✦ Feast Day

Feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist

The beloved disciple, author of the Fourth Gospel, three Epistles, and the Apocalypse. The only apostle not to die a martyr's death, he lived to extreme old age at Ephesus. His Gospel opens with the highest Christology in the New Testament: In the beginning was the Word.

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History has always been on her side.