Theophilos [Hardcover]

Michael D. O'Brien (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2010

St. Luke addressed his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles to a man named Theophilos.

Who was Theophilos? Scripture scholars do not know, making him a fit subject for Michael O'Brien's vivid imagination. In this fictional narrative, Theophilos is the skeptical but beloved adoptive father of St. Luke. Challenged by the startling account of the "Christos" received in the chronicle from his beloved son Luke and concerned for the newly zealous young man's fate, Theophilos, a Greek physician and an agnostic, embarks on a search for Luke to bring him home. He is gravely concerned about the deadly illusions Luke has succumbed to regarding the incredible stories surrounding Jesus of Nazareth, a man of contradictions who has caused so much controversy throughout the Roman Empire.

Thus begins a long journey that will take Theophilos deep into the war between nations and empires, truth and myth, good and evil, and into unexpected dimensions of his very self. His quest takes the reader into four ancient civilizations - the Greek, Roman, Jewish, and that of Christianity at its birth, where he meets those who knew this man that some believe is the Messiah.

Though Theophilos is a man of the past ages, he is as familiar to us as the men of our own times. Schooled in the empiricism of both medicine and philosophy, Theophilos is well suited to speak to our age in which seeing cannot be the basis for faith, but rather hearing the witness of those who have been touched by God and opening ourselves to the possibility of an encounter with the living Christ. This is a story about the mysterious interaction of faith and reason, the psychology of perception, and the power of love over death.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An arresting work. Totally credible both historically and psychologically. There's not a single false note in this music. Do you want to get into a time machine and actually live in the first century world? Then read this book!" ---Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy Boston College

"O'Brien again takes up the theme of the truth of revelation before an unbelieving generation. This novel searches the soul of our time through the eyes of St. Luke and Theophilos and those they encountered, including the Lord Himself. O'Brien brings to life the wonder that filled the soul of Luke." ---James V. Schall, SJ, Professor of Political Philosophy, Georgetown University

"All of Michael O'Brien's novels are in a sense 'historical,' even those often regarded as 'prophetic.' Theophilos, set long ago in the first century and meticulously researched, is finely textured, lush and convincing in its depiction of the rich embroglio of Mediterranean culture in the time of the apostles. The epistolary prose is hauntingly provocative, often lyrical, compelling in its characterization of the events reported in Luke and Acts as they might be considered from a learned gentile's point of view. This is a beautiful book." ---David Lyle Jeffrey, Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities, Baylor University

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Ignatius Press (March 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586173685
• ISBN-13: 978-1586173685
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1.5 x 8.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #521,452 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Journey of Discovery and Hope April 28, 2010

By Corban Storm VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

'Theophilos' by Michael O'Brien is a fictional depiction of the lives of St. Luke (author of the Gospel bearing his name as well as the Acts of the Apostles) and the individual to whom he addressed these writings, Theophilos. O'Brien establishes Theophilos as a dear uncle who had the responsibility of raising the young "Loukas" from the age of twelve. The book is written primarily in first person from the perspective of Theophilos--a physician steeped in the belief system of the Greek Gods though who still is more effectively an agnostic--who has now become quite disturbed by his nephew's sudden belief in the cult of "the Christos"---The Way of Jesus Christ. The book is a "present" narrative (mostly in 65 A.D.) with a collection of letters, journal entries, and examinations (interviews) woven into it, along with many reminiscences of the childhood years of not only St. Luke, but Jesus of Nazareth.

I think the first question that most O'Brien fans would ask is, "How does Theophilos measure up to the `Children of the Last Days' series?" To this, I would say that it is more a change of venue than a change of pace. The familiar elements of the author's craft: well-developed multi-dimensional characters, poetic dialogue (both interior and spoken), and thought-provoking scenarios--are not only intact, but I would even suggest further honed. The second question is, "Is 'Theophilos' more the high-action, overtly Catholic/Theological thriller (the likes of 'Fr. Elijah' or 'Plague Journal')... or is it more the evenly-paced, thoughtful novel--rich in Catholic philosophy though more subtle in its presentation (the likes of 'A Cry of Stone')?..." I would honestly say this book bridges the gap between the two, with a slight lean towards the latter, yet full of intriguing happenings as we traverse a familiar historical landscape where peripheral biblical "acquaintances" are given depth and personality in very compelling and believable ways.

The historical research is so meticulous, the cultural understanding so cohesive, and the biblical exegesis so sound, that this story becomes more than just plausible; the reader could easily be led to believe that the author had a profound mystical experience of the lives of Theophilos and St. Luke. The change of time period permits O'Brien to delve more deeply into the mystery of the human person, exploring interior realities that transcend culture and time yet which are no doubt influenced by both in how they are manifest. One example is when the adolescent Loukas approaches Theophilos, wrestling with the idea of cutting his hair (he has left it long in emulation of the ancient Greek philosophers). The boy wonders if this act would dilute his "Greekness". In a beautiful exchange between the two, his uncle agrees that, though a man's exterior and interior should "be as one", this is only in the "essentials" (his character, actions, and words), not necessarily in the "accidentals" (physical appearance). An astute Catholic can draw from this exchange not only a reflection on the common--if not universal--experience of adolescent angst (NOT rebellion), but also an even more profound reflection on our understanding of the Eucharist.

Once again, Michael O'Brien has created a masterpiece that I believe affirms his place as one of the top fiction writers of our time. At this point, I find that there are two realities which I lament: first, that Ignatius Press is not the large powerhouse publisher with the marketing machine to get this book in front of more people, and second, that it will most likely be at least a year before I will have the joy of reading a new Michael O'Brien novel.

Other books readers of this book and others by Michael O'Brien may enjoy:

A Canticle for Leibowitz (A post-apocalyptic saga rooted in sound Catholic theology and in excellent literary form)
Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (***Caveat! I include this with "fear and trepidation". No claims to theological soundness here -- I only include it because it is in the same genre as 'Theophilos' and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus found it to have literary merit nonetheless)
Dominion I: Seed (Those who enjoyed the genre of 'Father Elijah' may find this Catholic apocalyptic series intriguing) Read more ›

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Catholic Novel of the Year May 5, 2010

By Randall Beeler

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

At first glance, Theophilos appears to be a work of historical fiction--yet, in a much more profound sense, it is an examination of conscience for the present age: an examen of original sin and salvo of original grace.

The protagonist is Theophilos, the correspondent whom Luke mentions at the beginning of Luke's Gospel and Acts. The Greek-born son of a man freed from slavery, Theophilos seems free of both the slavery his father endured and the delusions imposed by the world and the excesses of passion.

A practicing physician on the Isle of Crete, Theophilos is every bit the modern rationalist--but with the soul of a virtuous pagan. In fact, Theophilos is an archetype of the best that the world and human effort, intellect, and technos have to offer. A fitting Virgil to lead us through the ancient world in the decades immediately following the Death and Resurrection of Iesous the Christos, he guides us pilgrim readers through the follies and glories of humankind in a journey that stretches beyond a particular age. The suspense of the plot is evoked in our--and Theophilos'--haunting doubt as to whether ours is the path to Inferno or Purgatorio.

Rescuing Loukas (Luke) from a plague that has wasted Loukas' mother (Theophilos' sister), father, and city (Thessalonika), Theophilos takes the boy to his home on Crete, raising the child as his own and training him in medicine, a labor and science that Theophilos again and again heroically and vainly wields against the forces of chaos.

For, outside Theophilos' well-stocked library and even the walls of his home town lurks man's capacity for evil. Repeatedly, the good physician struggles to snatch a few more years of life for one of his patients, only to witness humanity's thirst for death.... This book is a meditation on the physician who cannot heal himself and the worldly agonies that tear open his heart.

Like Aeneas carrying his father from burning Troy, Theophilos is Antique pagan man--and the best of contemporary man--struggling to save from the burning ruins of human civilization something that marks our dignity and purpose in the cosmos. Theophilos dialogues with the young Loukas upon the latter's interpretation of the Aeneid, both physicians assenting to the vanity of human effort, even that of the greatest empire in history:

"the dream of noble Rome, the forgiving and just Rome, is an illusion ... the sword is always thrust into those whom she conquers." (47)

But Loukas adds an important coda that foreshadows his--and the pagan world's--embracing an unforeseen hope: the resurrected Christos, who carries us out of the flames:

"There is a scene I love most of all ... when Troy is burning and Aeneas ... escapes carrying his aged father on his back--and with his little son clinging to his hand." (47-48)

I will not tell you here whether Theophilos is saved from the burning ruins of the City of Man ... for that story is our own story--the story of our age, which is yet in the telling. In the meantime, O'Brien invites our age to dare believe that we are not "shameless apes" deserving to die in our burning cities.

Read Theophilos to discover why. Read more ›

27 of 33 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars LOST ON THE WAY TO JERUSALEM May 26, 2010

By James E Geoffrey II

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Michael O'Brien is an exceptionally talented author whose works bring a subtle and complex depth to profound religious questions, specifically in a Catholic context. In Theophilos, O'Brien turns his attention to the question of modernity set against faith. However, unlike in many of his other works, where O'Brien's touch is sure and his intellectual direction is clear, this time he loses his way and leaves the reader with a deep but ultimately unsatisfying exploration of one of the central questions facing men of faith in a world of rationalism.

To start, kudos to O'Brien in evoking brilliantly the feel of the period about which he is writing. The reader gets a real sense that he is reading documents that were written in the time of the first century AD. From his use of original Greek, Latin and Hebrew place names to references to the historical events of the period to his colorful evocations of life in the Middle East and around Jerusalem, O'Brien hits it out of the ballpark. Even more fascinating is his description of the lives of people in different classes and the interaction of cultures in occupied societies. He neatly contrasts the life of the poor and the rich, the Greek and the Hebrew and - to a lesser degree - the Roman and leaves you with an acute sense of the motivations and viewpoints of an era long gone.

O'Brien tends to lose this a little bit toward the end when the book takes a decidedly mystical turn - more about which anon - and in his portrayal of the early Christians. (It seems like they are always praying and singing, but surely there one has to imagine that even in the ancient Holy Land they must have taken a break every now and then to go out for burgers or something and certainly they talked about things other than religion....) Yet, for all of that, he manages to keep an authentic tone throughout.

Even O'Brien's use of dates, it turns out, adds to the book's authenticity. The book is written as a series of letters and journal entries written by between Theophilos and Luke. The story then revolves around Theophilo's travel to the Holy Land which is provoked by his rising concern over Luke's sudden interest in what, to Theophilos, appears to be a cult. In the story, the journal entries and letters are dated "AD," and at first this looks like a rookie mistake by O'Brien. However, two clues suggest otherwise - 1) the dates are in brackets, suggesting that the reader is supposed to see himself as a contemporary individual examining ancient manuscripts. The reader is not sure of this though until almost the end, when Theophilos reads a letter from his friend and that letter is dated according to the usage of the time. Nice move and compliments to O'Brien, who does not treat his readers like dummies by explaining everything to them up front (i.e., "You are now a reader examining an ancient manuscript..")

Indeed, in writing the book in this way, O'Brien places the reader at an intellectual vantage point that allows him to judge the relative merits of Theophilos' and Luke's positions as an almost omnicient judge. (Though O'Brien is not neutral between Theophilos and Luke.) A contemporary reader lives in a world that exists with the consequences and implications of the debate between Theophilos and Luke and from that vantage point he is able to see more clearly the merits and demerits of the story's thematic direction.

Beyond that discussion, O'Brien brings to the book a deep spirituality and religious sensibility. This not only adds to the book's authenticity - the 1st century Holy Land is, after all, a world suffused in such a sensibility - it makes the experience of reading it much more emotionally stimulating and engrossing. Yet the book is not at all preachy, and in fact, like a number of his characters, O'Brien seems to bend over backward not to be preachy. It is quite refreshing and makes the book more appealing to readers of a secular bent.

In terms of characterization, O'Brien's depiction of Theophilos is the strongest of any character in the book. Theophilos is the quintessential modern man. Practical, humane, temperate, intellectual, pragmatic, superficially tolerant, and skeptical. Though when his worldview is challenged Theophilos becomes, like many such thinkers, remarkably intemperate - he wants the Emperor killed - and intolerant - toward the Christians he meets to whom he expresses a sort of patronizing condescension. Theoliphilos is meant to represent modernity and O'Brien brilliantly captures both the strengths and weaknesses of the modernist mindset. Indeed, O'Brien is quite balanced in this and it is therefore hard not to like Theophilos. He is a good husband and father, his intentions are benevolent, his humanitarianism genuine. Indeed, it is possible in Theophilos to see the attractiveness of the purely rationalist viewpoint. However,this also causes Theophilos to assume his own virtue and blinds him to the shortcomings and narrowness of his ostensibly pragmatic thinking.

Luke, on the other hand, is not well developed. We have a doctor and historian - as historically we know was the case - with a conspicuous but not overbearing faith, but otherwise it is hard to define him. This is not a mistake, however, as O'Brien is very shrewd here. With Theophilos, O'Brien has a "tabula rasa" on which he can write whatever he wants. Indeed, Theophilos may not have even really existed, but may have been for Luke a literary convention not unlike Burke's or Disraeli's "Letter to a Noble Lord..." in which the author writes an essay in the form of a letter to a fictional character in order to make it more readable and give it momentum for respect.

Although we do not know a lot about Luke, we know enough and we are sure of his Christianity. Which is as it should be. Milton in "Paradise Lost" or Dante in "The Divine Comedy" famously described Hell in great detail because no matter how bad it was described, an author could never describe it as bad enough. By contrast, heaven barely gets a mention because, no matter how good an author makes it sound, he could not make it sound good enough, and that failure would be a blasphemy. O'Brien, although dealing with a mortal man, has a similar problem with Luke. He cannot greatly detail Luke's character because, in so doing, he runs the risk of either defaming or deifying a saint.

The other characters in the book are less well defined, but are essentially foils or props for what is the central purpose of the book - a debate between the modernist sensibility and the Christian ethos. So while the characters are not vivid, they set the stage for both intellectually stimulating discussion and, at times, some heartfelt and dramatic scenes. The reader is both touched intellectually and emotionally - and thence spiritually by the combination of the two.

Unfortunately, in its last act, the book loses its way. First, like many a Hollywood movie, O'Brien does not seem to know how to end his book so he gives it two endings. Neither ending is intellectually satisfying, but the second is worse. Having Theoliphilos die in a fire in his house trying to save others may be an example of Christian self-sacrifice, but it also "over the top" melodrama. If that were all that it was, it would be bad enough.

The idea of self-sacrifice, specifically in the Christian context, is certainly not ignored in the book, but it is not a central flaw in Theophilos'character and to suggest it as a demonstration of his "born again" soul simply does not fly. For all his flaws, Theophilos is not a selfish man, so having him die in a supreme act of self-sacrifice after his conversion is simply superfluous. Also, why a fire? Theophilos is a doctor. It would have made much more sense to have him die from a disease he contracts while treating patients on a slave ship. Such a conclusion would have been far more in character and dramatically powerful than the super-heroics we see performed by the, by that point in the story, geriatric Theophilos.

Worse still, the image of his burning library as Theophilos makes his sacrifice is, in the context of the book, counterintuitive to say the least. The symbolic message - that the life of the mind is shed in order to manifest true Christian virtue - undermines the book's central thrust and certainly flies in the face of Catholic teaching which emphasizes the ultimate compatibility of faith and reason.

Which brings the reader back to the first ending. The author sets up throughout the book a dichotomy between faith and reason that is resolved in the person of Luke. Luke is both modern man and man of faith and he is the bridge between Theophilos and the faith which is an irreducible component of Christianity. Luke uses reason to transcend reason and glimpse, as much as any man can, the life of faith - hence establishing the fundamental compatibility of the two. Catholic teaching, coming especially out of Thomistic philosophy, is that if man's reason were perfect it would confirm and prove faith.

This is in contrast to the dichotomy between many mainline Protestants, who are modernist and rationalist, and who see religion as essentially an ethical doctrine, and many fundamentalists, (accidentally and incorrectly called Evangelicals), who believe that man's reason is the product of an utterly depraved nature and therefore all knowledge that contradicts faith must be false. Hence, why many of the mainline Protestants - such as many Anglicans - have no problem with gay marriage and why many fundamentalists reject the theory of evolution.

So what does O'Brien do? He has Theophilos come to his faith not by reason and philosophical reflection, but by revelation and dreams. Revelation has its place in Catholic teaching, but that is not the theme of the book. The result, hammered home without subtlety in the burning of the library, is to utterly abandon the idea that reason, properly understood, leads man to faith. Theophilos has the crabbed narrow reason of the modernist. Luke has the transcendent reason of the Christian. Yet Theophilos comes to Christianity via neither, but rather by the very superstitions he so rightly denigrates among the pagans. This is a man who does not transcend reason, but ultimately rejects it in accepting a dream as dispositive proof of Christianity. He could as easily have gone to the Oracle at Delphi to come to his faith.

In fairness to O'Brien, he has two problems. 1) It is not very dramatic from a purely artistic viewpoint to "reason" it out as opposed to portraying a climactic epiphany. (Though Sherlock Holmes might beg to differ.) 2) It is possible that O'Brien is relying on the reader to glean from the various vignettes in the book the "reason" that Theophilos is clearly missing. However, if that is true, it is a mistake in this instance to trust the reader. Not because the reader is not be trusted, but because the climax so thoroughly contradicts where O'Brien's vignettes seem to lead. One would hardly blame readers for suffering a case of intellectual whiplash as they they try to come to grips with O'Brien's thoroughly unforeshadowed - and frankly thematically inconsistent - turn.

T.S. Eliot once wrote, "The great mistake made about Christianity is to suppose it primarily a religion and emotional when in truth it is primarily dogma and intellectual. We are not, then, to be concerned with Christianity as pietistic feeling but with Christianity as a precise view of man and the world, which implies a social form."

O'Brien seemed to start out there - or at least to be heading in that direction - but somehow did not end up there. That does not, by any means, ruin the book, which has much to offer. However, it does make it less than it might have been. Read more ›