Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind

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To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The people who recognised the radical nature of Christianity championing the weak against the strong were its enemies — Nietzsche, the Marquis de Sade, Thomas Huxley, Goebbels — and they despised it on that account. Gregory of Nyssa defined the institution of slavery as an unpardonable offence against God at a time when most Christians and others took it for granted. There were downsides too, as the Crusades amply demonstrated, with Crusader Knights putting to sword those they conquered, often with Papal approval. Further down the line the British empire would similarly act as a vehicle for an analogus dissemination.

The concept of human rights and equality, as well as solidarity with the weak against the strong, Holland argues, ultimately derive from the theology built on the teachings of Jesus and Paul the Apostle. Prefiguring the book, in 2016 Holland penned an essay in the New Statesman describing how he was "wrong about Christianity". Recommended to anyone looking to get a new perspective on how western culture was and continues to be this day shaped by a death of a single man in a remote backwater of the Roman empire in the year 786 ab urbe condita.Widen the focus, though, and Christianity’s enduring impact upon the West can be seen in the emergence of much that has traditionally been cast as its nemesis: in science, in secularism, and yes, even in atheism. Yet the author even manages to demonstrate that more paradoxical concepts such as humanism, secularism and agnosticism have roots in Christianity. It was released to positive reviews, although some historians and philosophers objected to some of Holland's conclusions. Jonathan Sumption, writing for The Spectator, opined the book was "sustained with all the breadth, originality and erudition that we have come to associate with Holland’s writing. He describes crucifixion as one of the most terrible deaths one can suffer, which must be true in general but if Jesus really did only spend six hours on the cross, as the New Testament reports, he was luckier than most victims, who thrashed around for days.

This book is of interest to anyone looking to understand the development of modern western culture and how it came to be such as it is. According to Holland, over the course of writing about the " apex predators" of the ancient world, particularly the Romans, "I came to feel they were increasingly alien, increasingly frightening to me". He served two years as the Chair of the Society of Authors and is Chair of the British Library’s PLR Advisory Committee. It is particularly strong at the beginning, where Tom Holland plays to his strength as a historian with a strong knowledge of the classical period ( I enjoyed his discussion about ancient Persian civilization). In one particularly provocative take on the book, the historian Jonathan Sumption suggests that far from Christianity being fundamental to, as the subtitle says, it is in fact a product of that mind.

Like dust particles so fine as to be invisible…they were breathed in equally by everyone: believers, atheists, and those who never paused so much as to think about religion. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Really interesting how Tom Holland details the rise of Christianity from a relatively minor religion to an international faith. Paul willingly put this manifesto into practice by abandoning his privileges, including the rights of Roman citizenship. In balance to these negatives, there were many instances of truly magnificent people who shed life's pleasures and comfort and devoted themselves to spreading the word of God.

How you feel about the person whose place you take in the queue for the gas chambers is neither here nor there.For Cajetan, the teachings of the Church were universal in their reach; Christianity should be imposed not by force but solely by persuasion; that neither kings nor emperors nor the Church itself had any right to ordain their conquest. When Notre Dame was being built in medieval Paris, a collective of prostitutes offered to pay for one of its windows and dedicate it to the Virgin Mary.

Holland argues that all “western” moral and social norms are the product of the Christian revolution. He had resolved to forgive Quoting Matthew: “you have heard that it was said love your neighbour and hate your enemy, but I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” FW de Klerk resolved to set Mandela free.Holland has all the talents of an accomplished novelist: a gift for narrative, a lively sense of drama and a fine ear for the rhythm of a sentence. He is haunted by St Paul’s claim that God chose the weak and foolish things of the world to shame the strong, and to drive the point home he might have looked at the beginning of Luke’s gospel. Holland shows how these concepts and events continue to shape our culture, our expectations and norms today, without us realizing where they actually come from.