Reimaging Personhood Before the Figure of Christ in the Victorian Early Christian Novel

This chapter considers how Nicholas Wiseman, in his novel Fabiola, or the Church of the Catacombs (1854), and John Henry Newman, in his novel Callista: A Tale of the Third Century (1855), represent revelatory experiences that are foregrounded by images and embodiments of Christ as the Good Shepherd and the Suffering Servant. For the Christians that figure in the two novels, reimaging personhood involves a willingness to empty oneself of self-interest in imitation of the kenosis, God’s emptying of himself in the Incarnation (Phil 2:7). Throughout, the chapter highlights the theological implications of the forms in which the dynamic of this self-emptying is expressed and indicates how Wiseman and Newman challenge the chronological drive of Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia, or New Foes with an Old Face (1852–53) as they detail the place of the Church Triumphant and express their understanding of sacred time in the reimaging of personhood.