A World Come Full Circle

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from his Nazi prison cell that the world had “come of age,” he launched a phrase that was to journey through the theological world for decades. What did he mean? Has the world grown up? If so, what does this mean for the Church in its mission and structure?

Bonhoeffer believed the world had come of age in the sense that the “hypothesis” of God is no longer considered necessary to account for man and his world. This is now true not only in science and philosophy but even in religion itself.

Bonhoeffer noted, “Ever since Kant, [God] has been relegated to the realm beyond experience” (Letters and Papers From Prison, Fontana Books, p. 114). He insisted that a realistic Christian apologetic must openly accept man’s new godlessness and, in the midst of the new scientific world-view, confront him with Christ.

Was Bonhoeffer right? What kind of world is ours?

It is a “seculurban” world, a world that has been secularized and urbanized. Yet it is also a world in which new superstitions rush in where old beliefs feared to tread; a world where city man can be just as isolated and insulated—and just as parochial—as his rural forebears. The secular city is becoming re-enchanted.

Secular man (with the possible exception of some “secular theologians”) is facing a failure of nerve. What was heralded as man’s adulthood, his pinnacle of self-confidence, is being undermined by self-doubt.

Rather than coming of age, our world has, it seems to me, come full circle, returning in several key respects to the spirit of the first-century Roman world. Therefore this age to which we have come may be the best possible one for the effective proclamation of the biblical Gospel.

Recently E. M. Blaiklock observed, “Of all the centuries, the twentieth is most like the first: city-ridden, marred by tyranny, decadent, and wracked by those crises that man’s abuse of man and of his native earth engenders” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, May 7, 1971, p. 6). This parallel between today and the new first century has also been suggested by (no less!) futurologists Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener of the Hudson Institute. In their 1967 book The Year 2000 they note that “there are some parallels between Roman times and ours” and suggest, “Some of the prospects for the year 2000 are, in effect, a return to a sort of a new Augustinian age” (p. 189). Discussing current culture, they say that “something very much like our multifold trend occurred in Hellenistic Greece, the late Roman Republic, and the early Roman Empire” (p. 193).

Kahn and Wiener explain this “multifold trend” as essentially a trend toward an increasingly sensate, secular, pragmatic culture; the accumulation and application of scientific and technological knowledge; the increasing tempo and institutionalization of change; and increasing education, urbanization, and affluence.

This analysis is particularly interesting when placed alongside Adolf Harnack’s list of first-century conditions that nourished the growth of the Christian faith (The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Harper Torchbook edition, pp. 19–22). Some of the parallels with today’s conditions are striking, as when Harnack speaks of “the blending of different nationalities,” “the comparative unity of language and ideas,” “the practical and theoretical conviction of the essential unity of mankind”—and, especially, “the rising vogue of a mystical philosophy of religion with a craving for some form of revelation and a thirst for miracle.”

Seven Signs Of The Times

Comparing the cultural climate of the late twentieth century with that of the first-century Roman Empire reveals several interesting parallels. Let us look at seven of these.

1. An essentially urban world with cities playing the major cultural role. The urban flavor of the first century comes through clearly in the Book of Acts and in Paul’s writings. In contrast to most of the Middle Ages and the first 150 years of American history, the Graeco-Roman world was a cluster of cities. It was the world of Rome, Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth, Colosse, Thessalonica, Sardis, Philadelphia, Smyrna, Laodicea, Ancyra, Antioch, and literally hundreds of other cities. Rome, the largest, had a first-century population of possibly one million, and the population of Alexandria has been estimated at 500,000. Many cities apparently had populations in excess of 100,000 (including slaves); we know the stadium at Ephesus could seat 25,000.

Estimates of the first-century population of the total Roman Empire vary, but sixty million seems reasonable. Of this total, perhaps as many as ten million, or about 15 per cent, lived in major cities of 100,000 or more. Considering the large number of smaller cities then in existence, possibly nearly half the population lived in cities—a situation that later changed drastically.

The important fact, however, is not percentages but influence. Regardless of the percentage actually “urbanized” (by today’s standards), it is clear that urban life and culture played the predominant role in the first century. The city was the place to be; the Book of Acts reflects this.

The fact of urbanization today—not only in America but worldwide—is too well known to need elaboration. We say ours is an urban age, which it is, even though in actual fact only about one-fourth of the world population lives in metropolitan areas of more than 100,000, according to Gist and Fava (Urban Society, fifth ed., p. 68).

Thus one can trace an urban parallel between the Roman Empire and the world today—statistically, but especially culturally. For urbanization is more than a quantitative development. “Urbanization means a structure of common life in which diversity and the disintegration of tradition are paramount,” in which “high mobility, economic concentration, and mass communications have drawn even rural villages into the web of urbanization,” notes Harvey Cox (The Secular City, p. 4). Despite Cox’s contention that this is a strictly twentieth-century phenomenon, the first-century parallel is significant.

2. Unparalleled peace, stability, and political unity. “War is one of the constants of history,” note the Durants in The Lessons of History. “In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war” (p. 81). Yet the Christian faith burst into the Roman world during a time of unusual peace: Caesar Augustus had stabilized the entire empire, bringing about a peace unparalleled in history.

At first glance today’s world hardly appears peaceful, what with Viet Nam, the Near East, Pakistan, urban and racial strife, and other areas of conflict. Yet by contrast with the past, and considering today’s lightning social revolutions, the era since 1945 has been remarkably peaceful. Despite local turbulence, the world shows a surprising overall stability. Many people think a major war is less likely now than it was ten years ago.

Certainly no worldwide political unity comparable to the Roman Empire’s position in the Mediterranean world exists today. Yet the far-flung American military presence, plus the caution induced by nuclear fear, plus other factors, have combined to produce what may be a “functional equivalent” of the Pax Romana. Even the United Nations, for all its ineffectiveness, has been a stabilizing influence.

3. The “worldwide” spread of one predominant culture and language. Greek culture predominated in the first-century Roman world. Throughout the Roman Empire—even in Italy—Greek was the common second language. Greek ideas were adopted or mimicked in nearly every province. Roman children were taught in Greek.

The parallel with American influence today (for good or ill) is striking. School children from Russia to China study English. The world goes to American movies and adopts American styles. America is still the world’s primary exporter of technological and scientific innovation, though Japan’s influence is growing in this area.

4. International travel, communication, and cultural interchange. Roman roads (52,000 miles of them, according to one estimate) are legendary; their safety and maintenance in the first century find parallel only in our day. Businessmen, government officials, military personnel, and others traveled extensively and with ease throughout the empire. Knowledge and communication mushroomed, creating something like a first-century equivalent of our “knowledge explosion.”

The situation is similar today, but now on a nearly worldwide scale. Never before has travel been so easy, so safe, so comparatively cheap. Businessmen, students, educators, tourists, government personnel travel continually to almost all parts of the globe; even China is beginning to open up. Worldwide trade has reached unparalleled levels. Cultural exchange—both official and unofficial—goes on apace, often unnoticed.

Then there is the world of modern mass communications—satellites, national and international publications (at newsstands here in São Paulo one can often find Time, L’Express, Stern, and other foreign magazines on sale), the wire services, unprecedented book publishing, and especially television. A dramatic demonstration of this system was the worldwide live TV coverage of the first manned moon landing in 1969.

In short, ours is the communications age. Important new ideas and events quickly become the possession of the world. The situation is unparalleled—but, on its own scale, the first century was remarkably similar.

5. Pervasive social change, with a tendency toward a humanizing, universalist, “one world” outlook; a feeling that mankind is essentially one and shares a common destiny. Any broad movement of men and ideas tends to unravel the fabric of tradition and produce social change. This was true in the days of the early church. Harnack cites Ulhorn’s description of the first-century world:

Ancient life had by this time begun to break up; its solid foundations had begun to weaken.… The idea of universal humanity had disengaged itself from that of nationality. The Stoics had passed the word that all men were equal, and had spoken of brotherhood as well as the duties of man towards man. Hitherto despised, the lower classes had asserted their position. The treatment of slaves became milder.… Women, hitherto without any legal rights, received such in increasing numbers. Children were looked after. The distribution of grain … became a sort of poor-relief [or welfare] system, and we meet with a growing number of generous deeds, gifts, and endowments, which already exhibit a more humane spirit [Harnack, op. cit., p. 22].

This description depicts not only the age of Paul but also, to a surprising degree, the contemporary world.

Zbigniew Brzezinski notes in Between Two Ages, “We have … reached the stage in mankind’s history where the passion for equality is a universal, self-conscious force.… The passion for equality is strong today because for the first time in human history inequality is no longer insulated by time and distance” (p. 111). Scaled down to fit the first century, nearly the same could have been said of the Roman Empire. The passion for equality was not as great, but it was present and growing. And its essential presupposition, that mankind is essentially one, was a powerful molding force then as now.

6. Widespread religious and philosophical ferment; the mixture and “relativization” of world-views; the rise of new religions; a practical atheism and disbelief in “the gods” coupled with an existential mysticism. Here we have, theologically, the most characteristic first-century condition—and the most important one from the standpoint of the Christian faith. And it is here that the parallel with today’s world is the most impressive.

We note four more or less distinct first-century trends here. The first was a “practical atheism” resulting from a strong reaction against traditional religion and its gods. Popular writers ridiculed the gods of traditional mythology. “Thoughtful people reflected on the cruelties, adulteries, deceits, battles and lies attributed to the gods, and they were repelled,” comments Michael Green (Evangelism in the Early Church, p. 17). By many, traditional religion was no longer taken seriously.

A similar rejection is occurring today. There is growing disenchantment both with ideology and with traditional religion—whether this takes the form of rising skepticism as to the truth of Marxism in Communist countries, the abandonment of historic beliefs in Africa and the Orient, or reaction against institutionalized Christianity in Europe and America. Ours is “the age of volatile belief” (Brzezinski), of “the end of ideology” (Daniel Bell), of “relativized world-views” (Harvey Cox). As Brzezinski notes,

In our time the established ideologies are coming under attack because their institutionalized character, which was once useful in mobilizing the relatively uneducated masses, has become an impediment to intellectual adaptation, while their concern with the external qualities of life is increasingly felt to ignore the inner, more spiritual dimension …

Compelling ideologies thus are giving way to compulsive ideas.… Yet there is still a felt need for a synthesis that can define the meaning and the historical thrust of our times [op. cit., p. 64; italics mine].

Secondly, this religious ferment was characterized by the rise of new, intensely emotional religions and the resurgence of some of the other Oriental faiths. In the Roman Empire the cults of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras (the last imported from Persia) were particularly popular, but there were others. “By the first century A.D. the Graeco-Roman world was inundated with mystery cults of this sort,” notes Michael Green, and “the enthusiasm engendered by these cults was great” (op. cit., p. 20).

This development finds many present-day parallels—the resurgence of some Buddhist sects, the popularity in the West of Indian guru Krishnamurti, the phenomenal spread of spiritism, in various forms, in Brazil, and the new religions of Japan, of which Sokka Gakkai is the best known. All these and similar movements have in common an intense emotiontal nature that concentrates more on experience than on belief.

A related parallel here is the popularity of astrology. Green cites “the rise and great popularity of the pseudoscience of astrology in the last century B.C. (ibid., p. 21). The contemporary resurgence of astrology is well known and has been amply reported in the popular press. (See, for example, the Time cover story, “Astrology and the New Cult of the Occult,” March 21, 1969).

A third aspect of contemporary aud first-century religious ferment is the rise of an irrational mysticism and an emphasis on experience rather than reason. Notes Kenneth Scott Latourette, “The intellectuals were despairing of the ability of the unaided human mind to arrive at truth” (A History of the Expansion of Christianity, I, 131). As we have already noted, Harnack cites this as one of the “external conditions” of the first-century world.

The situation today looks like a replay of the first century. Both a contemporary conservative Protestant (Francis Schaeffer) and a secular political scientist (Zbigniew Brzezinski) have spoken of modern man’s “escape from reason.” Experiencing is the thing (whether through political radicalism, drugs, communal living or Oriental mysticism); one has only to look at the mess we’re in today, it is said, to see where rationalism leads. A kind of return to romanticism has set in.

A fourth trend indicating religious ferment is a general theological and ideological confusion and quest for new directions. For the first century, this was largely the fruit of rising disbelief in the traditional gods. The popularization of Plato’s philosophy and his attacks on the gods left thinkers of the day in a philosophical and theological vacuum. The traditional gods were dead. What was to take their place?

The modern parallel here is the theological confusion of the sixties with its various bizarre spin-offs, and the move today that calls into question the whole development of Western thought since Descartes and Kant and calls for a new biblical theology. Robert J. Blaikie’s recent book “Secular Christianity” and God Who Acts (Eerdmans, 1970) and Francis Schaeffer’s God Who Is There are significant in this regard.

7. Moral degeneration. I add this last condition with some hesitation, since it has been so often cited and overworked. Yet it does seem to suggest another parallel between the world today and the world of the early Church.

Three Objections

Where there are parallels there are also contrasts. Three particular differences between today and the first century must be considered.

1. First, our age stands at the end of twenty centuries of Christian history, whereas the first century was a pre-Christian age. Considering this, are the parallels we have noted really valid?

While this fact is important, it does not disqualify the point we are making here, for two reasons. One is that Judaism had spread rapidly throughout the Roman world during the four centuries prior to Pentecost. During this time Judaism was an intensely missionary faith, and we may suppose that its leavening influence was something parallel to the role of Christianity today.

The other qualifying factor is Christianity’s remarkable self-renewing capacity. Many times, at the very moment in history when the visible, institutional church was dying and funeral preparations were under way, the Christian faith was quietly being reborn in new movements that only later became recognized. There is some evidence that this is happening today. Christianity may be, at one and the same time, one of the old, traditional religions being abandoned and one of the new, dynamic, emerging faiths; this seems to be happening in the United States right now through the “Jesus revolution.”

2. A second difference is the totally new fact today of computerized technology, the “technetronic revolution.” Here there is no real first-century parallel. Yet there is something of a negative parallel. While computerized technology is a new fact, many react against it by turning to irrationalism and mysticism—parallel to the first-century reaction against contemporary philosophy and science.

The implications of the technological revolution for the Christian faith will be far reaching and need to be studied thoroughly in our day. Jacques Ellul’s books, especially The Technological Society, are particularly important here.

3. Finally, we note that the Roman Empire was not really the whole world but only a restricted part of it, whereas today we think in truly worldwide terms. Yet this is precisely the point I am making here. We are seeing emerge a situation similar to that of the first-century Roman Empire, but today on a worldwide scale. Christianity was born into this Roman world “in the fullness of time,” and turned in right side up. May not this happen again in our age—worldwide?

Looking Ahead

We are shocked and dismayed by spiraling crime statistics and other indicators of moral decline. But rather than being shocked, perhaps we should look at these indications in another light. For we as Christians know that the true Church of Jesus Christ can never be in any real danger of extinction. Institutionalized religion may decline. Immorality may grow. But perhaps even through these things God is preparing a new revolutionary outbreak of the Gospel that will once again alter the course of human history. Christ came “in the fullness of time,” when the stage was set. And God is setting the stage today for a great moving of his hand—perhaps the last great moving in the world’s history.

There are encouraging signs—the Jesus movement among American youth, revivals on Christian college campuses, unprecedented evangelical religious publishing, fantastic Pentecostal growth in Latin America, revival in Indonesia and some parts of Africa, new openness to the Gospel among Hindus in India, new and persuasive voices in evangelical theology. It may indeed be that the world is coming of age in the most profound sense—coming to recognize its utter need for a sure word from the living God.

Prophecies such as Joel 2:28–32 were not exhausted on the Day of Pentecost. A fund of biblical prophecies remains stored up for our day, and not all these prophecies speak negatively of judgment. God will yet do a new thing!

“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters

shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even upon the men-servants and the maidservants in those days, I will pour out my spirit … And all who call upon the name of the LORD shall be delivered” (Joel 2:28, 29, 32).

Howard A. Snyder is dean of the Free Methodist Theological Seminary in São Paulo, Brazil. He has the B.A. (Greenville College) and the B.D. (Asbury Seminary).

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