essential to its polyphonic performance. This is especially true for texts such as the Gospels, which come to us in the form of cohesive narratives. It matters, as Irenaeus insisted, that we have not a single homogenized Gospel but, rather, a fourfold Gospel, in which the discrete voices of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John can and must be heard. Theological exegesis attends lovingly to the distinctive testimony of each witness. (5) My fifth point is the dialectical converse of the previous one: theological