Theophilos »

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.

Publishers Weekly

In this lugubrious novel, painter and novelist O'Brien (Father Elijah) turns the addressee of Luke's Gospels, Theophilos, into a weary protagonist seeking to reclaim his adoptive son. Relating his affection for and concern over his adopted son Luke, who has recently become enamored of the teachings of Jesus, Theophilos travels to see his physician son after a 10-year absence and tries persuading him to return home. Luke, however, wants Theophilos to understand his growing attachment to the young community of Christians, and directs Theophilos to visit a number of people who were personally involved with Jesus; the quest also exposes Theophilos to illness, symbolic dreams and numbing internal discourses before his ultimate conversion. O'Brien displays a firm grasp of Greek, Roman, Jewish and Christian cultures of the first century, creating a strong sense of place and time, but the plot makes a ponderous vehicle for O'Brien's conservative views and doomsday visions, with a leisurely pace that will deter all but the most dedicated.
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