Newcastle's New Castle

I find myself in the great city of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. I come to meet up with a university student whose family attends Salem Chapel, and then to call upon a lad I used to teach, who is now a doctor at Gateshead. Despite some minor medical issues, I arrived in England’s North East with little difficulty. Having a day to explore before the two young men were available to meet, I repaired to that iconic landmark of Newcastle: its new castle.

It seems strange that the ‘new castle’ should be one of this great city’s oldest surviving buildings. There is very little that is new about it, save some obvious restoration to its keep’s outer wall. Even by 1400, this castle was being rendered obsolete by the town’s new wall; in any event, the usage of gunpowder was compromising all castles’ defensible capabilities. So why is this old castle a new castle? Why is the town named after a new castle? Well it stands on an older fortress, Pons Aelius, which guarded the Tyne bridge for imperial Rome. The site which was good enough for Hadrian the emperor was good enough for Robert Curthose, the Norman.

The New Covenant, the gospel of Jesus Christ, stands very much on the site of the Old. Moses, the Law and the prophets cannot be divorced from Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection. The latter fulfilled the old, and the former anticipated the new. Christianity is not some novel religion which sprung from nowhere in AD33, for it is built on the foundation of the patriarchs and ancient men of God. Truly, Christ was the Lamb ‘slain from the foundation of the world’. As Newcastle’s castle is actually an old castle, so Christ’s New Covenant is older than the world itself.