Charles Cochrane's Christianity and Classical Culture
Dec. 21, 2011
There are something in the range of 200 theses regarding the fall of the Roman Empire. The most important of these is still Augustine's City of God. He viewed it as the product of false theology and ethical decline.
In 1940, Charles Cochrane's book appeared, Christianity and Classical Culture. He, too, saw the fall of Rome as a religious and ethical decline. He went into great detail describing specific ideas. Rome suffered a loss of faith. Romans wanted to understand the operations of this world. Some Romans viewed causation as random: chance. Others saw it as impersonally predestined: fate. Christianity saw it as under the sovereignty of God.
Cochrane's book was revised in 1944 and reprinted in 1957. Click here for a PDF of that edition. It was the one I used. I read the book in 1963. It had a powerful influence on my thinking.