On The Spiritual Meaning of ‘All Roads Lead to Rome’
The above proverb has its roots in the centralisation and road-building of the pagan Roman Empire 2,000 years ago. Then all roads did literally lead to Rome. The proverb now means that there are many ways of achieving the same goal.
The proverb is now often used by some in religious affairs to express the same laziness and indifferentism of the syncretistic phrase, ‘We all have the same God’. This phrase of course is patently untrue. For example, we Orthodox Christians do not have the same God as the filioquist, semi-Trinitarian Catholics and Protestants, as the openly anti-Trinitarian Muslims and Jews, as the pagan Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Vikings and Hindus, who have thousands of gods, including some who are violently destructive, let alone as those who worship the ‘modern’ pagan gods of capitalism, sport, television, sex etc.
However, the proverb can also be used in the same sense as another popular phrase, ‘There is only one God’. This is absolutely true, the only question is how we can find Him and distinguish Him from the multitude of false gods invented by the human imagination and cultural and political conditioning.
In our Orthodox Christian consciousness, ‘All roads lead to Rome’ means ‘All roads lead to Orthodox Christian Rome’, to the Centre of the Orthodox World. And here we should beware of three difficulties:
Firstly, all roads do lead to Orthodox Christian Rome, for the grace of God can bring us from very far to His Church, but some roads are more direct than others. Indeed, some roads are very bad, full of potholes and bumps, little more than jungle trails, and very tortuous, making it very easy to get lost, even for a thousand years of solitude.
Secondly, all roads do lead to Orthodox Christian Rome, for the grace of God can bring us from very far to His Church, but it is also possible to stop on whichever road we are on, even the most direct, even if we have not gone very far at all, and to remain in that same place for many years, even decades.
Thirdly, all roads do lead to Orthodox Christian Rome, for the grace of God can bring us from very far to His Church, but it is also possible not only to stop, but to walk backwards and so even end up at our starting point.
Let us ‘redeem the time, for the days are evil’.
