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Document Details : Title: Callista and the Hunger for God in the Empire Author(s): WARD, Bernadette Waterman Journal: Louvain Studies Volume: 35 Issue: 3-4 Date: 2011 Pages: 367-383 DOI: 10.2143/LS.35.3.2157504 Abstract : John Henry Newman’s novel Callista is not a purely artistic endeavor, but uses novelistic vividness to pastorally communicate his theological view of history. Although historically well-researched, and originating in correction of Protestant depictions of early Christians, the novel aims most at showing that the spiritual reality of the Antichrist manifests itself in every age. The Antichrist manifested in the Roman Empire is a prefigurement or type of the Antichrist in his readers’ own culture. Anti-Christian propaganda in Rome and in Newman’s England has its analogues now, whether from the secularism in Europe and America, from Islam, or from new paganism. Newman’s novel is meant as an encouragement under persecution, not only the obvious and violent sort, but the more subtle temptations offered by one’s sense of shame; the character Callista exemplifies the need for catechesis, which is not an imposition but a loving offer of a much-desired good. He strikes home even today with his satires on the spiritual emptiness of Roman political power, and the spiritual follies attendant on the rejection of Christian truth under the allurements of fashion, political disapproval, or mere pride. Likewise pertinent are his observations about the reasons that the Roman Empire fears Christians, as postmodern culture does: because the human desire for the truth of God is greater than the political and social powers arrayed against it. |
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