Letter 3

From: Salvian of Marseille, priest and writer To: Eucherius, Bishop of Lyon Date: ~450 AD Context: A follow-up letter to Eucherius, developing the argument about Roman moral decline and divine providence. To the most holy Eucherius, from Salvian, Your response to my last letter was characteristically generous and characteristically penetrating, and I want to engage with the objection you raised. You suggest that my argument — that the Roman world's disasters are divine judgment on its sins — risks making God look like a punishing tyrant rather than a loving father. You are not wrong to raise this. The prophetic model of interpretation, applied clumsily, can produce a theology that makes people afraid of God rather than turning toward him. What I want to say in response is that the judgment I am describing is not punitive in the crude sense of punishment for the sake of punishment. It is corrective — the kind of suffering that a wise father permits to fall on a wayward child not to hurt him but to bring him to his senses. The Roman world has been drifting from genuine Christian life for generations while maintaining the forms of Christianity. The catastrophe is an invitation to return to the substance. The question is whether the invitation is being received. From what I observe, it mostly is not. The Roman aristocracy continues to live as it has always lived, to complain about the barbarians, and to show no signs of connecting its own behavior to the situation it is in. This is the deepest tragedy of our time. Salvian