Read chapter 1. The Roman Age in How Should We Then Live? (If you’ve not purchased it yet, you can do so here.)
Here are some quotes to consider:
“People are unique in the inner life of the mind—what they are in their thought world determines how they act. This is true of their value systems and it is true of their creativity. It is true of their corporate actions, such as political decisions, and it is true of their personal lives. The results of their thought world flow through their fingers or from their tongues into the external world.” (p.19)
“People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize. By presuppositions we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic worldview, the grid through what he sees the world.” (p.19, emphasis added)
“To understand where we are in today’s world—in our intellectual ideas and in our cultural and political lives—we must trace three lines in history, namely, the philosophic, the scientific, and the religious.” (p.20)
“In many ways Rome was great, but it had no real answers to the basic problems at all humanity faces.” (p.20)
“It is important to realize what a difference a people’s worldview makes in their strength as they are exposed to the pressure of life. That it was the Christians who were able to resist religious mixtures, syncretism, and the effects of the weaknesses of Roman culture speaks of the strength of the Christian worldview. This strength rested on God’s being an infinite-personal God and his speaking in the Old Testament, in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, and in the gradually growing New Testament. He has spoken in ways people can understand. Thus the Christians not only had knowledge about the universe and mankind that people cannot find out by themselves, but they had absolute, universal values by which to live in by in which to judge the society and the political state in which they lived. And they had grounds for the basic dignity and value of the individual as unique in being made in the image of God.” (p.22)
“A culture or an individual with a weak base can stand only when the pressure on it is not too great.” (p.23)
“Let us not forget why the Christians were killed. They were not killed because they worship Jesus….The reason the Christians were killed was because they were rebels. This was a specially 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. First, we can say they worshiped Jesus as God and they worshiped the infinite-personal God only. The Caesars would not tolerate this worshiping of the one God only.” (p.24)
“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 had that absolute in God’s revelation. Because the Christians had 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.” (p.26)
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