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Notes -
The early church endorsed one world government when they were living under it. Were they wrong?
Had any early church father called to dissolve the Roman Empire into separate provinces (and to split Latin language into dozens of mutually incomprehensible dialects) as something more pleasing to God?
In what way was the Roman empire a one world government? There existed plenty of peoples outside of the Roman empire, whom Christians went to and converted. St. Thomas famously went east, even (some say) as far as India. In the Bible itself, Philip converts the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8), who is on the way back to his home country. Ethiopia (or Kush, probably) was not in the Roman Empire. Or are we discounting Christians in Persia?
If we take Pentecost as our example, the list of peoples (in Acts 2:9-11) includes many from outside the Roman empire, including Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, and Arabs.
I think that much of the early church existed inside the Roman empire, and did not advocate the overthrow or destruction of the Roman empire, but firstly the Roman empire was not a world government, and secondly Christianity was never coterminous with the Roman empire.
If I were making a case for Christian one world government I might instead frame that in terms of Catholic claims about the papacy's universal jurisdiction. Fortunately I'm not Catholic and I consider those claims to be in error. I think that visible signs of church unity would be good and I'm broadly in favour of ecumenism, but I don't think that requires some sort of global secular government.
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