Christian Reflections on Western Thought & Culture: The Fall of The Roman Empire

To understand where we are in today's world—in our intellectual ideas and in our cultural political lives—we must trace three lines in history, namely, the philosophical, the scientific, and the religious. The philosophic seeks intellectual answers to the basic questions of life. The scientific has two parts: first, the makeup of the physical universe and then the practical application of what it discovers in technology. The direction in which science will move is set by the philosophical world view of the scientists. Peoples religious views also determine the direction of their individual lives and of their society.
In many ways Rome was great, but it had no real answers to the basic problems that all humanity faces.

The Greek & Roman Gods
The Greeks and Romans tried to build society upon their gods. But these gods were not big enough because they were finite, limited. Even all their gods put together were not infinite. Actually, the gods in Greek and Roman thinking were like men and women larger than life, but not basically different from human men and women. The gods were amplified humanity, not divinity. Life the Greeks, the Romans had no infinite god. This being so, they had no sufficient reference point intellectually; that being so, they did not have anything big enough or permanent enough to which to relate either their thinking or their living. Consequently, their value system was not strong enough to bear the strains of life, either individual or political. All their gods put together could not give them a sufficient base for life, morals, values, and final decisions. These gods depended on the society that which had made them, and when this society collapsed the gods tumbled with it. Thus, the Greek and Roman experiments in social harmony ultimately failed.

Julius Caesar
In the days of Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.), Rome turned to an authoritarian system centred in Caesar himself. Before the days of Caesar, the senate would not keep in order. Armed gangs terrorized the city of Rome and the normal processes of government were disrupted as rivals fought for power. Self-interest became more significant than social interest, however sophisticated the trappings. Thus, in desperation the people accepted authoritarian government.

Culture & Individual Collapse
A culture or individual with a weak base can stand only when the pressure on it is not too great. As an illustration, let us think of a Roman bridge. The Romans built little humpbacked bridges over many of the streams of Europe. People and wagons went over these structures for centuries, for two millennia. But if people today drove heavily loaded trucks over these bridges, they would break. It is this way with the lives and value systems of individuals and cultures when they have nothing stronger to build on than their own limitedness, their own finiteness. They can stand when pressures are not too great, but when pressures mount, if then they do not have sufficient base, they crash—just as the Roman bridge would case in under the weight of a modern six-wheeled truck. Culture and the freedoms of people are fragile. Without a sufficient base, a when such pressures come only time is needed—and often not a great deal of time—before there is a collapse.

Christians In The Arena In Rome
Perhaps no one has represented more vividly to our generation the inner weakness of imperial Rome than has Fellini (1920-) in his film Satyricon. He reminds us that the classical world is not to be romanticized, but that it was both cruel and decadent as it came to the logical conclusion of its world view.
Rome was cruel, and its cruelty can perhaps be best pictured by the events which took place in the arena in Rome itself. People seated above the arena floor watched gladiator contests and Christians thrown to the beasts. Let us not forget why the Christians were killed. They were not killed because they worshipped Jesus. Various religions covered the whole Roman world. One such was the cult of Mithras, a popular Persian form of Zoroastrinaism which had reached Rome by 67 B.C. Nobody cared who worshipped whom so long as the worshipper did not disrupt the unity of the state, centred in the formal worship of Caesar. The reason the Christians were killed was because they were rebels. This was especially so after their growing rejection by the Jewish synagogues lost for them the immunity granted to the Jews since Julius Caesar's time.
We may express the nature of their rebellion in two ways, both of which are true.

The One and Only God
First, we can say they worshipped Jesus as God and they worshipped the infinite-personal God only. The Caesar's would not tolerate this worshipping of the one God only. It was the unity of the state during the third century and during the reign of Diocletian (248-305), when people of the higher classes began to become Christians in larger numbers. If they had worshipped Jesus and Caesar, they would have gone unharmed, but they rejected all forms of syncretism. They worshipped the God who had revealed himself in the Old Testament, through Christ, and in the New Testament which had gradually been written. And they worshipped him as the only God. They allowed no mixture: All other Gods were seen as false gods.

God's Revelation
We can also express in a second way why the Christians were killed: No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions. The Christians has that absolute in God's revelation. Because the Christians has an absolute, universal standard by which to judge not only personal morals but the state, they were counted as enemies of totalitarian Rome and were thrown to the beasts.

The Late Empire
Apathy was the chief mark of the late Empire. As the Roman economy slumped lower and lower, burdened with an aggravated inflation and a costly government, authoritarianism increased to counter the apathy. Since work was no longer done voluntarily, it was brought increasingly under the authority of the state, and freedoms were lost. So, because of the general apathy and its results, and because of oppressive control, few thought the old civilization worth saving.
Rome did not fall because of external forces such as the invasion by the barbarians. Roma had no sufficient inward base; the barbarians only completed the breakdown—and Rome gradually became a ruin.


Reference: How Should We Then Live? by Francis A. Schaeffer, Pages 20-21, 23-24, 26, 29.