Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind

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Tom Holland is an award-winning historian, author and broadcaster. His bestselling books include Rubicon: The Triumph and the Tragedy of the Roman Republic, which won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; Persian Fire, which won the Anglo-Hellenic League's Runciman Award; Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom; In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World; Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar; and Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. In short, Faith is easy; the Rule is hard. Faith rationalises self-interests; the Rule subverts them. Historically and empirically, there is no relation between Faith and the Rule except as contradictions. Christian values are oxymoronic. Those principles of behaviour which constitute our cultural ethic come from elsewhere than Christian teaching; and they are obscured by that teaching. Peter Thonemann, writing for the Wall Street Journal, called Dominion "an immensely powerful and thought-provoking book", stating "it is hard to think of another that so effectively and readably summarizes the major strands of Christian ethical and political thought across two millennia". At the same time, he criticized it as selective, writing "Mr. Holland postulates a golden thread of Nice Christianity ... this argument — that everything Nice in our contemporary world derives from Christian values, and everything Nasty in the actual history of Christendom was just a regrettable diversion from the true Christian path — seems to me to run dangerously close to apologetic". [1] The Los Angeles Review of Books stated that " Dominion's most important contribution is in emphasizing how terms we take for granted, even concepts seemingly as fundamental as 'religion' and 'secular,' come 'freighted with the legacy of Christendom'", stating that his argument about the Christian origin of "human rights, socialism, revolution, feminism, science, and even the division between religion and the secular" is carried out in a "mostly convincing way". [7] In this respect, Hollywood was right. This story had become the greatest ever told. Within twelve years of Constantine’s turning point in belief, the Council of Nicaea (AD325) had produced a statement which would unite peoples across the empire to a degree which rituals and laws had never yet achieved. It gave substance to an ideal which remains to this day (115). It was also, sadly, an ‘unpredictable and fissile source of power’ (118).

Ultimately, the clash between Protestantism and Catholicism—and the opening it gave for people to challenge all forms of authority—created the conditions that allowed for the Enlightenment to occur in Europe, but this can only be appreciated in hindsight. Had the Enlightenment occurred in the Islamic Middle East or even—had Charles Martel not triumphed in 732—in an Islamic Europe, there would no doubt have been an equivalent of Holland writing today explaining why the Enlightenment could only have occurred in an Islamic civilisation. Similarly, there may be a sophisticated explanation as to why it was predominantly Athens in which philosophy flourished in classical Greece, and not any of the other citizen-states. Or, as I suspect, it could be that cultures of learning and of ideas take hold in often unpredictable ways, and then begin to self-propagate, overcoming innumerable barriers (dogmatism, nationalism, and so on). Thus, it is not the Christianity of St Paul on which humanity was destined to settle; the work of earlier Christians was only accepted by later thinkers insofar as it promoted good consequences, particularly hedonic consequences. And this—the promotion of pleasure and the repudiation of pain—is truly universal, for all humans, all sentient beings, have the ability to experience them. Utilitarianism is a lodestar, as the economist Scott Sumner once put it. During the Enlightenment, “several strands of… intellectual thought led towards the ultimate destination of utilitarianism”, writes the historian Norman Davies. If in the 18th Century one had wished to predict the social and economic changes that would occur around the world over the next two to three centuries, it would not be to St Paul, or to Jesus, that one would turn: it would be to Bentham, Godwin, d’Holbach and the philosophes. a b Strandness, Erik (17 September 2020). "Tom Holland: "I began to realise that actually, in almost every way, I am Christian." ". Patheos . Retrieved 12 April 2023. Terry Eagleton, writing for The Guardian, described the book as "an absorbing survey of Christianity's subversive origins and enduring influence" and an "illuminating study", concluding "Holland is surely right to argue that when we condemn the moral obscenities committed in the name of Christ, it is hard to do so without implicitly invoking his own teaching." [3] The Economist also reviewed the book favorably, calling Holland a "superb writer", though also writing that "his theory has flaws", and that " correlation is not causation". [13] Samuel Moyn, writing for the Financial Times, similarly stated that "Holland shines in his panoramic survey of how disruptive Christianity was for the ethical and political assumptions that preceded it", though also criticizing how "the illustration of the conquest of the west by Christianity risks becoming so total that it explains everything and nothing." [15]You can, however, make a fetish or idol out of anything, as Freud instructs us. Such false gods fill every chapter of this illuminating study. Yet Holland is surely right to argue that when we condemn the moral obscenities committed in the name of Christ, it is hard to do so without implicitly invoking his own teaching. In the following chapters, we learn that less than two centuries after the Roman Empire had embraced Christianity, its Western half was in ruins, with Rome’s population at 2% of its height, and embroiled in ceaseless conflict. If Christianity was indeed, as Holland indicates, such a pervasive influence on society, and its values were the brotherhood of man and regard for the poor, then that is a damning indictment of those values and indeed the religion as a whole. But by overlooking the successful Christian Empire in the East of Byzantium, he is again only telling half the story. Christianity was not just a religion of crazed ascetics, depressives and martyrs, it was the religion of the state that codified Roman laws under Justinian and which was the largest and richest state in Europe. The Vikings traded with Byzantium and may have become Christian not just for the respect of Rome’s old glory, but also for ease of trading in the East.

In place of 'Dominion', for those with sufficient interest, a short church history like 'Christianity: the first 3000 years', combined with Gregory's 'The Unintended Reformation' to get a better grasp of what exactly is being discussed here, what exactly the thesis is, and stronger evidence for it. Holland runs more along lines of inference, genealogy and family similarity in his arguments. Whether that deity orchestrated the conquest of Canaan, or whether it was more a case of the scribes recording what they felt they should for the sake of Israel itself, is something Holland discusses in a way that should interest thoughtful Christians faced with this awkward part of the Bible. He is equally thought-provoking in looking at how monotheism brings the problem of evil into acute focus. The twin conviction of the Jews that their God was both omnipotent and all-just was revolutionary: ‘Never before had such incongruities been so momentously combined within a single deity: power and intimacy, menace and compassion, omniscience and solicitude’ (50). Needle-point precision is achieved here in the way that C.S. Lewis managed while starting from a different premise. Lewis’s memorable description of Aslan as good but certainly not a tame lion springs to mind. Perhaps Christians are sometimes rather reluctant to accept an entirely objective picture of the God of the Bible. It is a welcome change to find a writer from outside a strictly Christian worldview who is able both to do justice to texts and be theologically literate. A good, if simple, example of this is where Holland understands that the commandments are not just instructions but an expression of God’s identity, a call to men and women ‘to share in his nature’ (53). That is a useful reminder to us all: whatever we may think of how Christians behave, there has never been a God like this, one who loves jealously and expects the highest possible moral behaviour in return for his protection and guidance. Moreover, for God to enter a covenant with his people rather than just being called as witness to worldly ones was without precedent. The last section of the book shows how many of the key cultural developments in the modern West owe their underpinnings to Christian values, even though they may have no obvious religious foundation. For example the successes of the struggle for racial equality in the United States in the 1960s, or the debt owed to Christianity by Communist values (the meek shall inherit the earth, after throwing off their chains and uniting etc). What’s it like to read?I have read all of Tom Holland's non-fiction except for 'Dynasty', and have liked and learned something from it all. Not so here: unlike what's written on the cover, this work is not much about the making of the Western mind - at least not in the way that books like 'The Unintended Reformation', 'A Secular Age', and others are. It is a decent, but not first-rate, social history of Christianity in one volume from an agnostic-atheist standpoint, with space constraints leading to superficial coverage and a questionable selection of events to cover vignette-style. Strand, Daniel (17 June 2020). "Are We All Christians Now? A Review of Tom Holland's Dominion" . Retrieved 13 January 2023. Dominion tells the epic story of how those in the West came to be what they are, and why they think the way they do. Ranging from Moses to Merkel, from Babylon to Beverley Hills, from the emergence of secularism to the abolition of slavery, it explores why, in a society that has become increasingly doubtful of religion's claims, so many of its instincts remain irredeemably Christian. Christianity's enduring impact is not confined to churches. It can be seen everywhere in the West: in science, in secularism, in gay rights, even in atheism. It is - to coin a phrase - the greatest story ever told. This section of the book ends with a consideration of Galileo. Ever since the worldwide popularity of Bertolt Brecht’s play Galileo (1943), this clash between science and the Vatican has been infamous. In the play, the Church plays the villain of the piece – presenting the hero scientist with the instruments of torture to secure a recantation of his heretical heliocentric ideas. Holland provides a much more historically accurate picture: ‘The entire debacle had been a concatenation of misunderstandings, rivalries and wounded egos’ (341). Galileo, though ‘supercilious and egocentric’, was a Bible-believing Christian – but the Pope needed to shore up his authority, having had it badly dented by Lutheran victories.