Andrew

“it is a mistake to look with hindsight for exact historical correspondences”

Well, yes- but I cannot see any historical correspondences

“On the second point, my argument is not particularly that the Roman empire collapsed because of the faithful suffering of Jesus and his followers. The enemy of the church collapsed because it came under divine judgment, just as Babylon and Antiochus Epiphanes had done before. In political terms the collapse can be attributed to internal and external causes, but that doesn’t make it any less a matter of divine judgment. But the people of God survived the eschatological crisis by its willingness to endure suffering in the hope of eventual vindication and victory. There are two different issues here.”

I really struggle to follow your thought here.

You suggest that we can make pronouncements about God’s intervention in the world quite independently of what historiography would say. That is, historians could adduce a set of causes for the collapse of Rome which constitute a complete and convincing explanation but we could still say their explanation is not the real explanation: the real explanation is God’s judgement on Rome.

The trouble with this approach is that, in denying the relevance of what historians regard as causes, any set of facts can be used to validate the claim that God has exercised judgement.

The broader debate that has been taking place on OST concerns (if I understand it correctly) finding the right balance between treating the New Testament writings as a repository of timeless truths on the one hand and as a unique and unrepeatable set of events in the onward march of history on the other. I struggle to keep up with this discussion (having so far read only a bit of your book) and so I make no comment on the scriptural issues.

However I do have a comment about the portrayal of God as one who intervenes in earthly affairs to strike down Rome because the Roman emperor purports to divine. If God can intervene in earthly affairs to do this why could he not intervene in the Holocaust or the 2005 tsunami or the religious wars in Europe, or the current carnage in Iraq etc etc?

The fact that God does not do so leads me to think that he cannot be understood as a God of earthly power. I am not thereby suggesting that belief in God is a matter of private devotion- only that it does not lead to changes in the world that are in any way clear or straightforward.

In saying this I am particularly influenced by Simone Weil.

Paul