Transcript: The Roman Age (Episode 1, How Should We Then Live?)

There is a flow to history and culture. This flow is rooted in what people think and what they think will determine how they act. There is violence and a breakdown in society up to the point in which it’s unsafe to walk through the streets of many of the cities of the world. On the other hand, there is a danger of increasing authoritarianism to meet the threat of chaos, in our own countries and internationally. Should we despair and give in? If not, how should we then live?

The answers to whether we should throw up our hands and give in is No. There are good and sufficient reasons for this. We can receive help from a quarter which would be unexpected to most modern men, but to understand how we have to delve back into history.

I will begin with the time of the Romans because the Roman civilization is the direct ancestor of the modern European world. From the time of the earliest conquest under the republic right down to our own day Roman law and Roman political ideas have influenced the European scene the whole western civilization. The Roman Empire was great both in size and in military strength. It reached out over much of the known world. Its roads led over all of Europe, the Near East and North Africa. All the way from Hadrian's wall, which was built to keep out the Scots who were too tough to conquer, to the Forts on the Rhine river, to the North of Africa, to the Euphrates river and the Caspian Sea.

In one conquest the Roman legions crossed the Alps, came down the Rhone Valley passed the peaks of the Dents du Midi, to that place which is now called Vevey in Switzerland. For a time, the Helvetians, the principal inhabitants of Switzerland, held them check and made the proud Romans pass under the yoke ironically imitating the custom of the Romans who had the warriors they conquered pass under a yoke. This was a temporary reversal, not much could hold back the Roman legions neither difficult to raid nor the armies of their enemies. They passed up over the hills and conquered the ancient Helvetian capital Avendicum today called Avanch. One can imagine a Roman legionnaire who slogged home from the vastness of the North. As he mounted the hill and looked down on Avanch, a little Rome as it were, with its amphitheater, its theatre, and its temples. I love Avanch. It contains some of my favorite Roman ruins north of the Alps. Some have said, although I think it’s a high faker, that at one time forty thousand Romans lived here.

The opulence of Rome was here at Avanch. This gold bust of Marcus Aurelius was found here. Rome left its magnificent in art and architecture across the whole empire. In many ways Rome was great, but it had no real answers to the basic problems that all humanity faces. When a culture tries to build only on its military strength very, very soon this will prove not to be sufficient for the simple reason that without a sufficient base of knowing what is right, what is wrong, why we should do certain things in contrast to why we should do certain others, no amount of military might be sufficient. Rome first tried to build upon the decisions of acceptant citizens of the Republic and later on the decisions of its emperors, but the attempt ultimately failed because it was not a sufficient base on which to build a society.

And they never had the kind of democracy we have where everybody shares in it but for those who were the real citizens of the state, they just tried to build their opinions, and this totally failed then they turned to their gods. This is the goddess Diana whose temple was in Ephesus which is in modern Turkey. The Romans like the Greeks before them also tried to build upon their gods in the hope of having something big enough upon which to rest their society but their gods were not big enough because they were finite that is, they were limited. They were like bigger men and women not basically different from human men and women. They were amplified humanity not divinity. This being so the Romans had sufficient base intellectually that is they did not have anything big enough or permanent enough to which to relate either their thinking or their life therefore they had no value system strong enough to bear the strains of life either individual or political. All their gods together could not give them a sufficient base for life, morals, values or final decisions. The Romans made their own gods depending upon their society and when the society tumbled their gods tumbled with them. Thus, the Roman experiment in social harmony based on an elitist republic ultimately failed. The senate no longer could keep order. Armed gangs terrorize the city of Rome and the normal functions of government were disrupted as rivals fought for power. Self-interest took the place of social interest no matter how sophisticated the traffics. Thus, in desperation the people accepted authoritarian government. In the days of Julius Caesar Rome turned to an authoritarian system centered in Caesar himself. As Plutarch put it the Romans made Caesar dictator for life in the hope the government of a single person would give them time to breathe after so many civil wars and calamities. This was indeed a tyranny avowed since his power now was not only absolute but perpetual too. After Caesar’s death Octavian later called Caesar Augustus grandnephew of Caesar came to power. The great Roman poet Virgil friend of Augustus wrote in his Aeneid saying that Augustus was a divinely appointed leader and that Romes mission was to bring peace and civilization to the world. Because Augustus offered external internal peace while keeping the outward forms of legal constitutionality Romans of every class were ready to allow him total power in order to restore an assure the functioning of the political system, of business, in the affairs of daily life. After 12 BC he became the head of the state religion with the title Pontificus Maximus. All man were urged to worship the spirit of Rome and the genius of the Emperor. Later this became obligatory for all the people of the Empire and later still the Emperor simply ruled as Gods. Augustus tried to legislate morals and family life. Later Emperors tried impressive legal reforms and welfare programs, but a human God was a poor foundation and Rome fell. It is important to realize the difference a peoples world view makes to their strength as they’re exposed to the pressures of life.

In the Roman Era we must understand that when one became a Christian it meant that he stood not only opposed to the surrounding religions, but the entire culture built on those religions. Back in the Roman days when a person became a Christian and was marked as a Christian by baptism it was very short step at times from the open professional faith to the martyr's death. Rome was cruel, and its cruelty could perhaps be best pictured by the events that took place in the Roman Arenas. For example, the gladiator one sees in this statue or the Christians thrown to the beasts as people watched. Let us not forget why the Christians were killed. They were not killed because they worship Jesus. At that time, many religions were practiced in the Roman world. Some were called the mystery religions here for example we can see one of the initiatory rights practiced by one of these religions depicted in this Roman house in Pompeii.

Nobody cared who worshiped whom as long as the unity of state was maintained centered in the worship of the emperor. The Christians were killed because they were rebels, and this was especially so as they lost the support of the Jewish synagogues and therefore the immunity which the Jews had since the time of Caesar.

We may express the nature of this rebellion in two ways both of which are true. We can say they worship Jesus as God and they worship the personal infinite God only. This worshiping of the one God only Caesar could not tolerate. It was counted as treason. This became a special threat to the unity of the state based on emperor worship during the reign of Diocletian in the 3rd century when people of the higher classes began to become Christians in larger numbers.

In the Roman Era when one became a Christian it meant that he stood not only opposed to the surrounding religions, but the entire culture built on those religions. The early Church believed that Jesus was the Old Testament prophesied messiah and he’d come and he’d died in substitution on the cross. The second thing however is something that we’re apt to forget and that is that they really did believe that the old testament and the revelation in Christ and the growing new testament was growing then of course say the 1st century was god had spoken and that god had given truth and as such they were not caught in the flux of the relativistic Roman world because it really was relativistic much like our own day.

A weak base for a culture or an individual can only stand when the pressures are not too great. As an illustration let us take this bridge. The room in this many little humpback bridges like this over the streams of Europe people in wagons went over them safely for centuries, for two millennia but now if someone would drive a heavily loaded truck over these they would break. It is this way with the lives and value systems of individuals and cultures. If they have nothing stronger to build upon then their own finiteness, their own limitedness, they can stand if the pressures are not too great but as the pressures mount if they do not have a sufficient base, big crash, just as these Roman bridges would crash if someone drove over them with a modern ten-ton truck. Culture and the freedoms of men are fragile. If there is not a sufficient base it only takes time, and often not a great deal of time before there is a collapse.

In catacombs such as these here in Rome the Christians buried their dead and met for worship. That it was the Christians who were able to resist the religious mixtures syncretism and the effects of the weaknesses of Roman culture speaks of a strength of the Christian worldview. This strength rested on God being an infinite personal God and that he had spoken in the Old Testament the revelation through Christ and the gradually growing New Testament and that he had spoken in a way that people could understand. This meant that they not only had knowledge about the universe and mankind which people could not find out by themselves, but they had absolute universal values by which to live and by which to judge the state in which they lived, and people are unique in being made in the image of God. There was a reason for the basic dignity and value of each individual.

If they had worshiped Jesus and Caesar, they would have gone unharmed, but they worshiped one God only and rejected all forms of syncretism. There was no mixture all other God were seen as false Gods, or we can express why they were killed in another way. No totalitarian authority, no authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions. The Christians had a universal standard by which to judge not only personal morals but the state. So, they were counted as the enemy of totalitarian Rome.

Even though many of the Christians were martyred they had the answer which the Romans did not have. As the Romans tried to build upon the state or upon their limited Gods the Christians continued to grow in numbers and continued in history. The Romans had the Christian answers before them, but they turned from that base which would have given their society the answers they needed, and their society collapsed. As their empire wound down the Romans and their decadence were given to a great thirst for violence and the gratification in other senses as in their rampant sexuality. Here in Pompeii a century or so after the Republic had ceased to exist the phallus cult was strong. Paintings and statuary of exaggerated sexual content adorn the houses of the affluent not all the art in Pompeii was like this but that which was of sexual representation was just plain blatant. Rome collapsed not from external but from internal weaknesses. Even though Emperor Constantine ended the persecution of the Christians and Christianity became a legal religion in 313 AD and the official state religion of the empire in 381 AD the majority of the people went on in their old ways. Apathy was the chief mark of the period. The Elite abandoned intellectual life for their social life. Apathy also showed itself in the arts with a lack of creativity officially sponsored art became decadent the music became increasingly bombastic. Look at these 4th century works here on the arch of Constantine and in contrast these handsome 2nd century works of art taken from earlier monuments from the period of Emperor Trajen. This portrait of emperor Vatinian is so much inferior to this likeness of emperor Nero which was minted 300 years earlier. All of life was marked by the prevailing apathy and as the Roman economy slumped lower and lower burdened by costly government and by inflation authoritarianism increased in order to try to set off the apathy and as less people were inclined to work the state took over more and more and more freedoms were lost for example laws were passed binding the small farmer to his land and because of the apathy in its result and the oppression few people thought the old civilization was worth saving. Rome did not collapse because of outward forces such as the Barbarians but because of inward rottenness and Rome gradually became a ruin.

The conclusion I drawn looking at the Roman era is the fact that nothing humanistic provides a strong enough base for society as well as the individual life of the individual man and woman. The Greeks and the Romans tried magnificently to first build on society on those people who made up their society which is an exclusive elitist society but those people they try to build on this and totally failed. Then tried to build on finite gods. Gods that were not the infinite personal God this equally failed. It brings a simple conclusion there is no foundation strong enough for society within the realm of finiteness and beginning for man alone and is autonomous. The other side of course is that the Christians were able to stand but the reason they were able to resist the syncretism of that day and the breakdown and face the arena really face it with certainly is because they began at exactly the opposite place. They began with the existence of an engine of a personal God and that he had spoken and that he had the truth in the old testament in the revelation of Christ and in the growing and the then growing New Testament.