Tom Holland is one of England’s most successful historians. And there are good reasons. Not only has he learned a lot about history. He also knows how to tell a good story.
At more than 600 pages, Holland’s Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (2019) is a big book. As deep in insight as it is broad in scope. Not only does he use it to tell a collection of fascinating historical tales. Including many you may not know. He uses it to cast a penetrating beacon of light on the Christian core of the spiritual black hole threatening to consume today’s science-laden and hi-tech, Western culture.
My recounting of this big book starts where its author finishes. With the tale of a deathbed visit to his beloved godmother Deborah Gillingham. “Aunty Deb,” as he called her, died in 2009. By Holland’s account, she had been a lifelong “committed and faithful member of the Church of England.” Here’s how he sums up her life.
“Although she had no children of her own, she was a teacher, the headmistress of a garlanded school, and publicly honored for it: the conviction that she had a duty to those who would outlive her provided her entire career with its cornerstone.” [p. 535, Basic Books hardbound edition, 2019]
Luckily for young Tom, Aunty Deb supported his early interest in dinosaurs. Years later, that led him to study human history’s Megalomanic monsters. And by setting a loving and faithful example, she made Tom aware of what, through his pursuit of knowledge of our natural world, he came to lack.
As he sums that up, “Without a dimension of the celestial, all things are transitory.” Think of our updated, hi-tech image of Lord Kelvin’s mid-19th century concept of the heat death of the universe. Given enough time, everything burns up and turns to ash. Today’s cosmologists see it all as turning from one Big Bang to a huge number of big old, evaporating black holes. Or as Holland quotes the late theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” [p.537, from The First Three Minutes, New York, 1977, p.154]. Unless we treasure our chances to strut and fret our hours upon this almost unbelievable stage. And "Pray to God," with awe, humility, and gratitude.
Then again, Aunty Deb’s studious and talented godson tries to illuminate the lasting effects of history’s greatest act. The act that remains Christianity’s primal paradox. From the beginning of his book, Holland emphasizes a confounding fact. The most popular religion in the history of our world, with some 2 ½ billion at least nominal adherents alive today, is founded upon a glaring contradiction. And a collection of supporting, supernatural suppositions.
That contradiction is, of course, captured in every Crucifix. Every graven, golden image of the Crucified Messiah. The Divine Warrior and World Savior nailed to and hanging from the Holy Cross. This is the reason both faithful Jews and Muslims have never bought into St. Paul’s uncircumcised Christian franchise – and never will. Are you listening, all you Christians and former Christians out there? Jews and Muslims insist on imagining their Divine Warriors as circumcised winners.
Being a Christian requires unquestioning belief that the Romans crucified a Jewish workman turned faith healer for trying to foment an insurrection. And that’s not hard to believe. Although even St. Paul perceived a need and an opportunity to blame the Jews. But then, Jesus’ dead body was taken down and interred in a tomb. Which was unusual, to say the least. An extraordinary sign of respect for one of many poor fools in those days who got themselves cursed to be “hung from a tree.”
But on the third day, bereaved visitors to His tomb found its door rolled back, and Jesus’ body gone. Resurrected. Raised from the dead. So that 40 days later, after a sequence of unannounced appearances to faithful followers, he ascended to sit at the right hand of His Heavenly Father. Who had conceived him immaculately in his mother Mary’s womb. Like a Greek demi-god. Until the inevitable but unknown day of His return to lead the Heavenly Host to victory in the Final Battle. To lead it to triumphal victory over the demonic forces of Evil & Darkness. Oh, ye of little faith!
This is the essence of Christianity’s “Greatest Story Ever Told.” But Holland shows why it’s also the founding myth undergirding liberal democracies in today’s Western nations. His down-to-earth answer: it opened doors to valuing the rights of every individual. And especially those less privileged. That is, those sitting and voting on what’s been called the political Left since the French Revolution. And how, while laboring to cut away the tangled web of Judeo-Christian metaphysics, mythology, and the moral values from which the West's liberal core emerged, we appear to be teetering on the brink. While confronting resurgent authoritarian adversaries. From Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China in the East. And Donald Trump, a potential tyrant, here at home.
Before reaching these heartfelt and troubling conclusions, Holland takes 533 pages to recount fascinating tales of successive reforms and revolutions throughout Christianity’s 2000-year-long history. A history that first built and then supplanted Europe’s Roman Catholic Church. A history driven by expectations of the pending Return of the Crucified & Resurrected King. From St. Paul to Constantine I to Gregory I to Gregory VII & Urban II to Urban VI.
Following the invention of the printing press, Protestant reformers starting with Martin Luther presumed to question the need for Catholic popes and priests. But never the inevitability of their King's Return. And then, agnostic scientists and atheists caught onto the reforming act by questioning any need for God as Heavenly Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From Baruch Spinoza to Voltaire to the Marquise de Sade to Friedrich Nietzsche to Heinrich Himmler. A history that continues to contradict itself by rejecting its own contradictions. But always, according to Tom Holland, with a resounding refrain taken from St. Paul’s 1 Corinthians 1:27. “God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” Lest I add from the Firesign Theatre, "We’re All Bozo’s on This Bus."
We may look beyond Tom Holland’s Dominion for what this means in the present and for the future. As I am doing in my Blog posts at historyhighjackers.com. But it would be pointless to try to outdo the artistry of his tapestry of tales of Christianity’s 2000-year-long history of paradoxes. And how they have brought us to the paradoxes of the perilous present.
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Popular Highlights in this book
That a man who had himself been crucified might be hailed as a god could not help but be seen by people everywhere across the Roman world as scandalous, obscene, grotesque.Highlighted by 1,130 Kindle readers- To live in a Western country is to live in a society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions.Highlighted by 1,025 Kindle readers
- So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilisation that it has come to be hidden from view. It is the incomplete revolutions which are remembered; the fate of those which triumph is to be taken for granted.Highlighted by 911 Kindle readers
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Important Historic Perspective for Christians
I don’t believe I’ve read a 500 plus page book in a very long time. And, Dominion did take me a few months to complete. I am so glad I did. I found it to be such a quality and detailed walk through the history of Christianity and all of its works. Some good, some not so good. In all of this, the work of the Spirit inspires The Way. I believe it also inspires Tom Holland, and I am grateful for this impressive work.
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Top reviews from other countries
Vincent Mathew
Absolutely amazing by Tom Holland
Reviewed in Canada on May 17, 2023Daniel Martins
Um bom livro, mas com viés político desnecessário que o prejudica
Reviewed in Brazil on March 21, 2022