An Apology of Rome: Empire, Incarnation, and the Making of Christianity.
I write this as a civis Romanus , by instinct and inheritance, and as someone who has long felt a quiet disappointment at how Rome is remembered in the Christian imagination. Too often, Rome is reduced to a convenient villain: the brute empire that crushed Christ and then conveniently disappeared once the Gospel triumphed. That account has always felt both historically thin and theologically unsatisfying. What follows, then, is an apologia of sorts—not for Roman cruelty or injustice, but for Rome’s place in the providential economy of Christianity. It is an attempt to say, with clarity and gratitude, that Rome was not merely the backdrop of the Christian story, but one of its necessary conditions. From the beginning, the Christian claim is not merely that God entered history, but that he did so at a decisive moment and within the most influential empire the world had ever known. The Gospels assume that this timing was providential rather than accidental. God chose the most influential ...
