the five reasons for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire — secular historian Edward Gibbon

"But why, in spite of all our efforts and endeavors and great advances, is the world still in trouble? Why is every advance followed by regression, every rise by a decline and fall? Why do our attempts to govern the world end in disaster? What is the matter? And there is only one answer. It is due to the fact that men and women have sinful and fallen natures; it is due to their estrangement from God; and, more, it is due to God’s wrath upon humanity in its sinfulness and arrogance. But the tragedy of the world is that it does not realize this.

I was reading again, only the other day, and it struck me forcibly, the explanation given by that great historian Edward Gibbon, who was not a Christian, for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. And if his explanation is not also true of this country today, then I am completely ignorant!

Here are the five reasons he gives:

  1. The rapid increase of divorce and “the undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis of human society.” Now that is not being said by me, a little evangelical preacher—that is the great Edward Gibbon, and, of course, he is right. The home is the fundamental unit in society and once the home goes, everything will go, sooner or later.
  2. “Higher and higher taxes and the spending of public monies on bread and circuses.”
  3. “The mad craze for pleasure and sport; sport becoming every year more and more exciting and brutal.”
  4. “The building of gigantic armaments when the real enemy is within—in the decadence of the people themselves.”
  5. “The decay of religious faith; faith fading into mere form which has lost all contact with reality.”

The Roman Empire was a wonderful civilization. Those Romans were perhaps the greatest experts the world has ever known on local government and on legal systems. The Roman system—that was real civilization. Add to that the Greek civilization that had gone just before, and you had human endeavor almost at its highest point. But what happened to it? It was conquered by the Barbarians, the Goths, and the Vandals—the ignoramuses. How did they ever conquer this great civilization? Gibbon’s answer is that internal rot in the civilization itself weakened and destroyed the Roman Empire. And that, I repeat, is the story of human civilization.
All human systems fail because the trouble is within the people themselves, and external rules and laws and regulations cannot change them. It is not that we need better laws, but that we need better natures; not better instruction, but better spirits and better desires. And so all this human history comes to nothing. And yet these earthly authorities prohibit the preaching of the Gospel, the only thing that can save the situation."

— Martyn Lloyd-Jones (2003). Vol. 3: Victorious Christianity (1st U.S. ed.). Studies in the Book of Acts (102–103). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Book