Lessons from the fall of Rome

Views of prominent Church figures on the fall of Rome are echoed in various approaches of Christians to unfolding current events.

By JÜRGEN BÜHLER
rome (photo credit: www.romealive.com)
rome
(photo credit: www.romealive.com)
On August 24 in the year 410 CE – sixteen centuries ago – the ancient world was shaken at its very foundation. A noted saying of that day held that “when Rome falls, the world also will fall.”
Well, on that August day, the city of Rome fell. An army of 40,000 Goth barbarians led by Alaric – a Roman general of Gothic descent who had defected – invaded the capital of the mighty Roman Empire. For the first time in its 800- year history, an enemy army conquered the “eternal city.” The shock waves ran much deeper than the trauma of 9/11 in our day, as on 8/24 the entire city was ransacked, and a legendary “eternal” empire fell along with it.
By this time, Rome had been ‘Christianized’ by the Emperor Constantine. But what made the fall of Rome so difficult to understand for Christians was that the wild, terrorizing Goths were no longer idol worshipers themselves, but newly converted Christians! Sadly, history has since witnessed countless conflicts between warring Christian kingdoms. For the early Church, however, the events of 410 represented a daunting challenge, and Christians throughout the crumbling Empire were searching for answers.
Three prominent Church figures of that era wrote extensively about the events of August 24, trying to explain them. All three had learned of Rome’s fall only from a distance.
Jerome of Bethlehem (347-420 CE) Jerome served as an abbot in Bethlehem, and is still widely recognized as a great Christian expositor and translator of the Bible. His church in Bethlehem was directly affected by the fall of Rome, as a steady stream of refugees fled into the Holy Land over the following months. When Jerome heard about the fall of Rome, he put aside his commentary on Ezekiel and sat, stunned to total silence, for three days. “Rome was besieged,” Jerome later wrote to a friend.
“The city to which the whole world fell has fallen. If Rome can perish, what can be safe?” Even though Rome’s fall caused him to mourn for three days, it must not have come as a total surprise. For years he had observed alarming signs. In 376 CE, the first Gothic tribes crossed the Danube into Roman territory, defeating not only Caesar’s legions but Caesar himself.
Emperor Valens then died in battle while commanding the legions. It took Rome three whole years to beat back the invaders.
Then in winter 407 CE, hordes of starving Gothic and Germanic tribes poured over the frozen Rhine into the Roman Empire in search of food and gold. All this, plus the great internal struggles between Rome’s eastern and western spheres, made Jerome realize that Rome was in decline.
In 409 CE, just a year before the Gothic conquest, he wrote to a friend that “Rome has to fight within her own borders, not for glory but for bare life.”
Jerome’s view of Rome was influenced by his eschatology. In his commentary on Isaiah, he expounded on the statue with feet of iron and clay as described in the book of Daniel, and interpreted those composite feet as the Roman Empire. With the fourth and last of the great empires falling, Jerome saw the Antichrist looming. “Yes, Antichrist is near, whom the Lord Jesus Christ shall consume with the spirit of his mouth.”
In this context, he counsels a friend not to marry “amid such scenes as this.” He firmly believed he was living in the End Times, and his message to the Church was that even greater catastrophes were on the horizon. The Antichrist is at hand, he warned, and true followers of Jesus must prepare for the worst, living holy and separated lives.
Augustine of Hippo
(354–430 CE)
The other great Christian theologian of the day was Augustine, who heard about the sacking of Rome while in the city of Hippo Regius, along the North African coast. His community also witnessed a mass influx of fleeing Roman citizens. Among them were both pagans and Christians, and Augustine was challenged with daunting questions from both camps. His answers came in the form of his most influential work, The City of God.
On the one hand, he had to address Romans who still venerated their old gods. They insisted Rome fell because its subjects had stopped worshiping the ancient gods who had once protected them. The rise of Christianity, they claimed, was the main reason for the fall of Rome. To them, Augustine replied that it was Rome’s decadence which brought the city down, not its new-found Christianity. He pointed out that it was a Christian army which had toppled Rome after so many pagan adversaries had failed.
Christian refugees, on the other hand, wanted to know how God could have allowed this to happen. Why Rome, a city which had become the center of Christianity and in which even great Church leaders had been killed?
In a sermon in Cartago in 411 CE, Augustine answered the question of how God could allow the city where both Peter and Paul had been martyred to fall. His reply was harsh, asking whether these renowned Apostles had died to preserve theaters and circuses. Stone and wood fell, he explained, but Christians should turn their hearts toward heaven, where Jesus urged that they lay up their treasures.
Thus he established his concept of two cities – an earthly and a heavenly one. No earthly power would exist forever; everything would perish one day. God Himself promised that, and the city of Rome was no exception.
Still, some ‘end-time preachers’ were proclaiming that “Babylon has fallen,” in reference to Revelation 17. But for Augustine, Rome’s fall was not a particular sign of the Last Days, but simply the result of natural processes which constantly pressure all people. “But the saint will be purified out of it like precious olive oil,” he wrote.
Augustine paid little attention to the eschatological passages of the Bible. He viewed the millennial kingdom as being primarily the reign of Jesus in the hearts of the faithful. He foresaw it as an indefinite period between the first Advent, when Jesus’s kingdom was born, and his expected Second Coming, when he will usher the faithful into eternity.
Orosius of Spain
(375–418CE)
The third writer, Orosius, was the first major Church historian after 410 to deal with the fall of Rome. From 414 to 417 CE, he compiled a universal history book of seven volumes. At the time, he was an assistant for both Jerome of Bethlehem and Augustine in Hippo. Nevertheless, his approach was entirely different to theirs.
Orosius believed in a divine calling over Rome. With the spread of Christianity, he believed everything in our world was advancing. For him, Rome was a divine institution of salvation which would slowly transform the world from Pax Romanum to Pax Christianum. In particular, once Rome became an officially Christian Empire under Constantine, he believed the world would soon be fully penetrated by the Kingdom of God. At the return of Jesus, the Church would thus present a saved and submitted world to the coming King.
It was a thought which Augustine completely rejected. In his mind, no earthly power could fully represent the Kingdom of God.
But how did the fall of Rome fit into the worldview of Orosius? In his writings, the fall became part of the redemptive work of God, and would even further His great purposes via the Holy Roman Empire. He spent much time pointing out that the Christian Goths had spared places of Christian worship, and even dedicated some of their booty in the Basilica dedicated to St. Peter. Wars in the past – before Christianity – were far bloodier, he argued.
Besides, the Goths left the city after only three days. The invasion caused destruction, but also good, for “in the sacking of the city the trumpet of salvation sounded far and wide.”
The world was moving into better times, he contended, and the ‘cleansing’ of Rome was ample proof.
Three current streams
Today, the views of these three Church figures are echoed in the various approaches of Christians to unfolding current events.
The progressive view
The followers of Orosius today can be found mainly in the western Christian world. Many contemporary Christians believe they are on the road to increasing prosperity and influence. They aim for “success,” and speak of taking dominion over their lives, businesses, cities and countries.
Now Christians are indeed called to be the “salt of the earth” and to influence global societies for good.
Past revival movements have done so quite powerfully. But we live in a broken world, and the Bible strongly suggests that until Jesus comes, it will never come under a Pax Christianum. The “Holy Empire” of Orosius collapsed completely in the following decades. The eastern half of Byzantium soon fell to the Muslims. The kingdoms of this world will only become kingdoms of our Lord at His appearance (Revelation 11:15). This transformation will be sudden.
The apocalyptic view
The eschatological school of Jerome could be placed at the other end of the spectrum. Today, many Christians see the Antichrist around every corner. In recent decades, countless books have been published on the identity of the Antichrist and his imminent emergence. From Ayatollah Khomeini to Mikhail Gorbachev, from Saddam Hussein to Barack Obama, numerous leaders have received this dreaded label. The fall of Rome did not usher in the end of history, and today many of our modern-day candidates have already died without fulfilling the prophetic expectations of some Bible teachers.
This does not mean we should discard the prophetic or stop observing world events for eschatological signs. But we need to be careful how we handle these passages of Scripture, as many have come to faith and then drifted away in disillusionment when “certain” predictions fail.
The spiritualized view
Augustine’s view in some way holds the middle ground. In his mind, we should keep our eyes fixed on the heavenly city and live as pilgrims and sojourners here on earth – an important calling even for today. On the other hand, the eyes of some faithful are so fixed on the heavenly city that they refuse to give historic events – such as the restoration of Israel – any biblical or prophetic significance.
Augustine’s conclusion that the Millennium is already upon us has proven very influential in this regard. His spiritual view of the millennial kingdom became the predominant view of the traditional Church for many centuries. Up to this day, numerous Postmillennialists and Amillennialists still look to Augustine. Consequently, for them the restoration of Israel is of little consequence, as their view of a purely spiritual kingdom contains no place for a natural people living on an earthly territory.
Conclusion
We can learn lessons from all three theologians if we steer clear of their excesses. Orosius was right in hoping to penetrate the secular world with the transforming power of the Gospel. God challenged even the Jews in Babylon (the epitome of an ungodly society) to seek the peace of the city (Jeremiah 29:7). But we should never be deluded that we will be able to transform the present world into a heaven on earth. Evil will always remain among us, and will even increase until the King himself comes to break its grip on humanity.
Augustine’s message helps keep us from having inflated expectations of our rulers. They will all fall one day, and this might even affect our
personal possessions. But if we invest in laying up treasures in heaven – a place beyond the reach of recessions or catastrophes – then we can find solace even in times of crisis (Jeremiah 45:5).
In any case, no one can rob us of eternal life.
Finally, Jerome was rightfully aware that God’s Word foretells events which will usher in the end of the age and the birthing of a peaceful Messianic kingdom. But the Bible puts this transition within the context of three major global developments: God’s judgment on the nations, the pouring out of His Spirit on all flesh, and the restoration of Israel. I wonder how Jerome could see the Antichrist so near without any sign of the restoration of the Jews to their ancient homeland? This is an apt reminder not to rush too quickly into believing the latest prophetic speculations.
Jerome’s eschatology was not merely a call to remove oneself from this world and wait for the end. To another friend he wrote in 416 CE: “The renowned city, the capital of the Roman Empire, is swallowed up in one tremendous fire… Churches once held sacred are now but heaps of dust and ashes… We live as though we are going to die tomorrow, yet we build as though we are going to live forever in this world.”
This is certainly timely advice.
Dr. Bühler serves as international director for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem; www.icej.org/