Robert is author of a valuable Harmony of the Gospels. He wanted his work to be accessible to everyone. So, if you want you can download it for free clicking on the link.
Robert Sutherland A Harmony of the Gospels May 2020 Edition
We decided to give the opportunity to those who prefer to study on books to have access to a printed edition. Rob gave us non-exclusive permission to release a printed edition.
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333 pages 8.5 x 0.8 x 11 inches
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A HARMONY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS by Robert M. Sutherland
A Four-column Parallel and Chronological Harmony of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John using the modern World English Bible, Translated from the Greek Majority Text, and Ordering historical events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth on basis of the priority of Matthew over Mark by Robert M. Sutherland
book: www.amazon.com/dp/B089774MBJ
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From the book
THIS BOOK’S AUTHOR
I suspect the reader will want to know who I am.
First, I am a Canadian defence lawyer with 34 years at the bar. I hold a four-year Honours B.A. in the History of Ideas from University of Toronto (1977-1981). I hold a three-year L.L.B.. in Law from Osgoode Hall Law School (1981). My law school criminal law and criminal procedure professor was Louise Arbour, who would later become a Supreme Court of Canada justice, sit on the World Court in the Hague and is currently the United Nations Human Rights commissioner. I have practised criminal law, child protection law and family law for 34 years in five provinces: Ontario (1986-2005), Alberta (2005-2007), Newfoundland-Labrador (2007-2010), Nova Scotia (2010-2017), Manitoba (2017-2018), Nova Scotia (2018-2020). In the course of my career, I have some notable successes, changing the law nationally and provincially at various points in time. Throughout my career, my legal work has been focused on the representation of the poor and those otherwise in dire need of help.
Second, I am a philosophically moderate realist and a natural law thinker, in the tradition of the three great Western thinkers: Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Moritmer J. Adler. The last of the three was one of my mentors. Mortimer J. Adler was a prominent 20th century American philosopher of common sense, a former law school professor from the University of Chicago, the head of the Institute for Philosophical Research, and for many decades the Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, responsible for its publication of the 62 volume Great Books (1952, expanded 1992) series. I first discovered his writings in 1988, was quickly transformed by them, joining his American Chicago-based think-tank the Mortimer J. Adler Center for the Study of the Great Ideas (http://www.thegreatideas.org), serving as its Canadian director for a number of years, having communications with Dr. Adler through its director Max Weismann. I would strongly recommend to the readers seven of Mortimer J. Adler’s books: How to Read a Book (1972), How to Think About the Great Ideas (2000), Six Great Ideas (1997) Ten Philosophical Mistakes (1997), We Hold These Truths (1987), Truth in Religion (1990), and How to Think About the Great Ideas (2000) and four of Dr. Edward Feser’s books: Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (2009), Philosophy of Mind (2006), Five Proofs of the Existence of God (2017), Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphyical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science (2019) for their own philosophical check on those any historical claims and conclusions arising from the gospels themselves.
Third, I am an evangelical Christian, theologically traditional, in most areas, but Baptist in my rejection of the doctrine of original sin and its inherited transmission of damnation. I was not raised Christian and had no childhood religious upbringing. In my high school years (1972-1977), I read virtually all the writings of an English Calvinist poet John Milton, a Scottish Presbyterian theologian William Barclay, a German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and an Austrian pyscho-analyst Eric Fromm, and those readings were preparatory to my ultimate religious conversion. I trace my spiritual journey back to a powerful “born-again” experience on August 20, 1976. I was aged 18 years old, alone in a tent in middle of the backwoods of Prince Edward Island. I had just finished listening to a Christian sharing his testimony to others around a campfire outside my tent. He was not reaching them, but he was reaching me. He never knew it, and he never knew I was there. I have always regarded it as a profound reminder that you never know the influence you can have on others. In 1981, I was simultaneously accepted into the “Wycliffe” seminary at the Toronto School of Theology and the Osgoode Law School. I choose the law school over the seminary. And it was not a choice I have ever regretted. My legal training and career have afforded me the time, talent and treasure to pursue my religious interests in the direction and depth that I wanted. In 2004, I published a book Putting God on Trial: The Biblical Book of Job, a revolutionary contribution to Job studies that has been a course text in several Canadian, American and Indian universities. Over the years, I have been blessed with many blessings. The most important blessing is my closest friend and selfless wife Cindy Sutherland, whom I cherish beyond life itself. My hope and prayer is that the reader would find such a companion as she on their journey. In the meantime, the spiritual blessings that I can recommend to readers include any of Dr. Malcolm Guite’s “You-Tube” videos on Love, Light, Coleridge, Lewis and Tolkien and Dr. Charles Mathewes’ two audiobooks “City of God” and “Why Evil Exists”, the latter being a profoundly deep examination of the meaning of good and evil in Western civilization through its very best thinkers, religious and otherwise, from 4500 BC to the present day. Everywhere should wrestle with the questions that book raises and with the range of options it offers. I currently fellowship in and am a member at my local church down the street, a part of United Church of Canada.