Pax Romana ("Roman Peace") was a roughly 200-year period of relative peacefulness experienced by the Roman Empire after the end of the Final War of the Roman Republic and before the beginning of the Crisis of the Third Century.

Quotes

  • There is no peace but the Pax Romana, a "peace" maintained by violence and threat of violence, by the greed of the privileged and the oppression of the weak and the lowly. ... The people of God knew, however, that this was no true peace. The peace and prosperity of the Roman empire depended on the continued oppression and enslavement of almost 95 percent of the population of the known world. The "peace" was meant for the privileged, the top 5 percent who dwelt in the palaces and courts of Rome.
  • God is not simply power, as most people were inclined to think. God is love, and he manifests himself in the dialectics of an impotent love. ... The emperor is not God. Jesus desacralizes that kind of power and its claim to be the absolute mediation of God. The pax romana is not the kingdom of God. The political organization of Rome might dazzle the world with its power, but it was oppressive; hence there was nothing sacred or divine about it. ... In Jesus' eyes God's ultimate historical word is love, whereas the ultimate historical word of power in the human world is oppression. Jesus' journey to the cross is a trial dealing with the authentic nature of power.
    • Jon Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads (1978), p. 369

See also

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