Christians are ‘atheists’?!

In the minds of some Roman authors, like the first-century BC imperial poet Virgil, Roman rule of the Mediterranean was a gift of the gods to the Roman people.

Early Christians, though, saw it through the eyes of the Biblical understanding of history: it was the Sovereign Lord of history, the God who had revealed Himself definitively in Jesus Christ, who had ultimately caused the political dominance of Rome to take place. And he had done so through a variety of what we call secondary causes.

Levelling up

First, there was the openness of Roman society to upward social mobility from the lower classes and even from the ranks of slaves.