The Peripatetic Philosopher writes:

Faith

Part I

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 5, 2015

"Faith affirms many things respecting which the senses are silent, but nothing which they deny.  It is superior to their testimony, but never opposed to it."

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French mathematician and philosopher

Those of you who follow my commentary know that in recent times the narrative has been about the “Jesus Story” in an attempt to trace its historical basis to register a sense of the reality of that period.

It has found me reading scholars of that period of early Christianity down through the ages from the birth of the man called “Jesus” to his Crucifixion and to his alluded to Resurrection three days later.  This is the essence of Paul’s faith, which is critical to understanding him and his missionary zeal that changed the world, a world that is still changing because of him or perhaps even despite him.  That will be discussed in Part II.

Caesar and Christ

Eclipsing One Era with the Birth of Another

The drama of that first century of the Common Era or Christian Era (C.E.) haunts us to this very moment as the “Jesus Story” is the story of Western life from the Age of the Roman Empire to the Age of the American Empire.   


In this brief commentary, it will be shown that man throughout the ages differs little with how he embraces or retreats from what might be considered his faith.  If his faith is strong, so is he. If his faith is weak, he is vulnerable to all sorts of mischief.  

“The two greatest problems in history,” says J. S. Reid of Cambridge Medieval History, “how to account for the rise of Rome, and how to account for her fall.”  

We may be witness to a current iteration of that dilemma.

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has been destroyed within. 

Will Durant writes in “Caesar and Christ” (1944):

“The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.”

Rome would continue to decline in dominance over the first five centuries of the Christian Era (C.E.), while Christianity from early in the fourth century would soar.

Tertullian (155 - 240 C.E.), an early Christian writer, considered that the fin de siècle or the end of an era was eminent in the year 200 C.E., as Christianity was gaining momentum to destroy the pagan world. 

Cyprian (200 - 258 C.E.), another early Christian writer who was of a different mind:

“You must know the world has grown old, and does not remain in its former vigor.  It bears witness to its own decline.  The rainfall and the sun’s warmth are both diminishing; the metals are nearly exhausted, the husbandman is falling in the fields.”

Montesquieu (1689 - 1755), French thinker of the Enlightenment Period, blames Rome’s fall on Christianity. 

This religion, he argues, had destroyed the old faith that had given moral character to the Roman soul and stability to the Roman state. 

Christianity had declared war, he claims, on the classic culture, upon science and philosophy, on literature and art.  It had brought an enfeebling Oriental mysticism into the realistic stoicism of Roman life. 

In the process, it had turned men’s thoughts from the tasks of this world to an enervating preparation for some cosmic catastrophe, and had lured them into seeking individual salvation through asceticism and prayer, rather than collective salvation through devotion to the state. 

Christianity had disrupted the unity of the Empire, Montesquieu continues, while soldier emperors were struggling to preserve it. 

The impact of Christianity was in that it discouraged Rome’s adherence from holding office, or rendering military service, while it preached an ethic of nonresistance and peace when the survival of the Empire had demanded a will to war.  Christ’s victory, he concludes, had been Rome’s death.

There is always some truth in such deliberate assessments, but Christianity was more an effect, Will Durant reminds us, than a cause. 

The decline of the old religion had gone on long before Christ.  Rome was already dying when Constantine declared Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire in 306 C.E. 

Romans lost faith in the state not because Christianity held them aloof, but because the state defended wealth against poverty, fought to capture slaves to do the work Romans refused to do, taxed the underclass to support the luxury of the ruling class, and failed to protect Roman citizens from famine, pestilence, invasion and destitution.

Romans turned from Caesar preaching war to Christ preaching peace, from incredible brutality to unprecedented charity, from life without hope or dignity to a faith that consoled those in poverty and honored their humanity for not protesting their status.  

Christianity was an “other world orientation” that was hastening the collapse of Rome and Romans in this world. 

Rome was not destroyed by Germanic and Visigoth barbarians from the north; nor was it destroyed by Christianity.  Rome was already an empty shell of itself when Christianity rose to influence and before these invasions occurred. 

Economists can point to the collapse of the slave market, excessive taxation, the unwillingness of Romans to see themselves as part of the problem, Romans who would rather support armies the state could no longer raise or afford then farm the rich land, man the shops to produce the goods traditionally imported, or take up the slack left by the diminishing slave trade. 

Without aggressive immigration, maintenance of society was impossible as Romans would rather complain than work, discuss politics than run for office, until at last the power of Rome was a ghost of itself surviving economic death on hope, alone. 

The Roman citizen’s loss of civic pride was rooted in an increasing despotism that destroyed the citizen’s faith in himself and then in his identity, and finally, in his trust in things Roman.

When Romans lost interest in government, they became absorbed in personal business and amusing distractions.  They desired to be entertained, not challenged.  Patriotism and their pagan religion had been bound together, and now together patriotism and religion were in decay. 

The Roman governing body of the Senate, losing ever more power and prestige, relapsed into indolence, chicanery, duplicity, subservience and venality.  Senators missed the changing legislative demands, wouldn’t face them, and left the future take care of itself.

Local governments, which once thrived, were constantly overturned by imperial correctness and exactitude and therefore no longer attracted first rate men.  

There was a flight from judiciary office corresponding to a flight from taxes, factories and farms as qualified citizens made themselves scarce or ineligible by debasing their credentials. 

Constantine, Emperor from 306-326 C.E., made concessions in land, rankings, titles, and compensation to the clergy of the Christian Church considered by Roman citizens at their expense. 

The Western Roman Empire would come to an end in 476 C.E. hastened by the expansion and migration of the Huns in northwestern Asia, while the Byzantine Christian Church would start its ascent in 326 C.E. at the death of Constantine and would flourish for the next two hundred years, while the Roman Empire in the East would go on until 1453 C.E.   

The Roman Achievement

The rise of Rome to dominate the overt politics of Europe, North Africa and the Near East completely from the 1st century BC to the 4th century C.E., is the subject of a great deal of analysis by historians, military strategists, political scientists, and increasingly economists.

The Roman Empire was a sustained military and political system that represented the domination by one people over all others encountered with essentially an active world government.  

Having won the Mediterranean world, Rome adopted Mediterranean cultures, then gave them order, prosperity, and peace for 200 years. This held back the tide of barbarians for two centuries more, and transmitted the classic cultural heritage of the West before Rome died.

Rome had no rival in the art of government.  It committed a thousand political crimes, built its edifice upon a selfish oligarchy, and pagan religion, achieved a democracy of freemen, and then destroyed it with corruption and violence, exploited its conquests to support parasitic Rome, which when it could no longer exploit, collapsed. 

But amid all this evil, it formed a majestic system of law that gave security to life and property to nearly all of Europe, while given incentive and continuity to industry that lasted from ancient Rome to nineteenth century Napoleon.

Rome also molded a government that separated legislative and executive powers whose checks and balances inspired the makers of constitutions as late as the American and French Revolution.   At the same time, Rome gave municipal freedom to half a thousand cities which saw these cities thrive and prosper. 

She administered her Empire at first with greed and cruelty, then with tolerance and justice that the great realm could not maintain.  She made the desert blossom with civilization, and atoned for her sins with the miracle of a lasting peace known during that period as Pax Romana (27 B.C.E. – 180 C.E.). 

Within this framework, Rome built a culture Greek in origin Roman in application and result that thrived.

Rome was too engrossed in government and the military to pursue the realm of the mind as Greece had done, but Rome preserved with tenacity the technical, intellectual, and artistic heritage that she received from Carthage, Egypt, Greece and the East. 

She made no advance in science and no mechanical improvement in industry, yet she enriched the world with commerce and cross pollinated that world with the integration of cultures.  Along the way, she discovered that she was a great builder of roads, bridges, aqueducts, coliseums and buildings. 

Rome didn’t invent education but gave it structure, organization and a curriculum that forwarded her interests.  Nor did she invent philosophy but in this climate philosophy thrived with Lucretius and Seneca, while Epicureanism and Stoicism found a more finished form under Roman influence. 

She did not invent any type of literature, even satire which would subsequently be displayed in the oratory, essays and poetry of Cicero, but would mark the poetic influence of Virgil on Dante, Milton and on down to Dryden, Swift and Pope. 

While pedestrian in science, she gave terminology to botany and zoology, which survives in the sonorous ritual and official documents of the Roman Catholic Church.  Moreover, when Christianity conquered Rome the ecclesiastical structure of the pagan church, its rituals and vestments, its solemnity and pomp, its very maternal character was preserved in the new religion.  Thus pagan Rome captured her conqueror with her own covert imprimatur.  Alas, all roads still lead to Rome!

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