Rome’s common grace

The Jewish Rabbis in the second century after the birth of Christ liked to imagine Rome standing before the judgment seat of God in the last days.

When the Lord God asks them to account for their rapacious wars and conquests, the Romans reply: ‘Lord of the world, we have established many markets, we have built many baths, we have increased much silver and gold, and we have done all this simply that the Israelites might study the Torah without distraction’. The plea is of course brushed aside. The Lord who searches the hearts knows the real reason: hedonistic self-enjoyment and lust for power were the real reasons. Jewish hatred for Roman rule is well known. But this story is grudging admission of the achievements of the Pax Romana that was at its height in the second century AD.

Roman technology in the ancient world was second to none. But there is a real sense, though, in which Roman technology was for the sake of the gospel, for these technological achievements aided in the spread of the Christian faith. Think, for example, of the Roman roads. They were built for the express purpose of enabling Roman legions to traverse the Empire fairly quickly. But ordinary Roman citizens – and Christian missionaries – also used them for their own purposes. And these ordinary Roman travellers and Christian missionaries went faster, on the whole, than the characters in a Jane Austen novel of the 18th century.

Or think of the common grace at work in the aqueduct system that fed the major urban centres of the Empire, which were also key centres of Christianity. In Rome alone there were 11 aqueducts that daily delivered 1.2 million cubic metres of water (nearly 300 million gallons) – yes, daily! – to the city.

One of the superintendents of the aqueduct system for the city, Sextus Julius Frontinus, the curator aquarum, penned a fabulous treatise De aquaeductu (97AD) at the close of the first century during the reign of Nerva. Comparing the system of aqueducts to other architectural marvels of the ancient world, he asked: ‘I ask you! Just compare those useless pyramids, or the good-for-nothing tourist attractions of the Greeks with the vast monuments of this vital aqueduct network’.

When the apostle Paul arrived in Rome for the first time (Acts 28), he would have seen these architectural marvels, and when he stayed in the city for those two years under house arrest, the water he drank and bathed in would have come through this remarkable system of aqueducts. Roman aqueducts thus served the cause of the gospel.