I enjoyed Glen Scrivener's interview with Tom Holland when we saw it on Sunday evening, although much of the ground they covered was familiar to anyone who had read Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, or watched other conversations with the author.
Holland's rehearsal of the argument advanced in Dominion was interesting enough. His thesis being that enlightened liberalism owes more to its Christian heritage than is often admitted. Ideas of equality, universal human rights and secularism didn't just spring from nowhere. They are rooted in the Bible and Christian theology.
It was also fascinating to hear Holland commenting on how his book on the origins of Islam, In the Shadow of the Sword was received rather differently in the Muslim world to Christian reaction to Dominion. The author received death threats for subjecting origin myths of Islam to historical scrutiny. Christians have by and large welcomed Dominion, giving it warm reviews. Certainly no death threats. Tellingly, secular humanists have been most critical of this work because it shatters their origin myth that the Enlightenment rejected everything based on Christian superstition in order to usher in a new age of reason. Not quite.
One of the key features of Dominion is Holland's ability to spot where a moral position that is so common in the West that it might seem like part of the natural order of things, is in fact rooted in Christianity. Take a concern for the poor and disadvantaged, for example. That concern lies at the heart of Black Lives Matter, however much the movement might disavow the Bible in favour of Marxism. As Holland points out, however, BLM and other identitarian causes have failed to take on board the Christian doctrine of original sin that chastens our claim to moral superiority. Hence the shrill denunciation of anyone who has the temerity not to 'take the knee', even if they are black. Go woke, go Pelagian.
Towards the end of the interview Scrivener asked Holland where he was when it came to a personal commitment to faith in Christ. He acknowledged that he had lost his faith in liberalism as a system of universal values supposedly derived from pure reason. But his comments on believing in and following Jesus were rather opaque. Holland spoke of 'surrendering to the story' of the Bible, irrespective of whether that story is grounded in history. He was willing to take that existential leap of faith because the Christian story offers him a compelling moral and spiritual vision.
Scrivener doesn't press Holland on this, even though the Christian faith is based on the great historical claim that Jesus rose from the dead. If that isn't true, 'we are of all men to be pitied', as Paul put it. Reflecting further on why he has not yet made a personal commitment to Christ, the historian commented that he was not impressed by the pronouncements of church leaders during the pandemic. To him their message was one of health and safety, not heaven and hell. Disappointingly, they seemed to make little attempt to draw upon centuries of theological reflection on plagues and pestilence to help us discern what God might be saying to us in these Covid-stricken days.
He may have a point, although at least some of us have been trying to apply the message of God's Word to men and women living in darkness and the shadow of death. It turns out that Holland has been playing cricket over the summer, rather than attending church, where he might have heard the urgent call to repent and believe the gospel.
In Dominion Holland demonstrated that the 'Christian Revolution' transformed Western society in ways that we do not always appreciate. But Christianity is not primarily an agent of cultural change. It proclaims the way of salvation through faith in Jesus who died for our sins that we might be put right with God and rose from the dead to give us the hope of everlasting life. 'Cultural Christianity' wants some of the societal and existential benefits of the faith, but resists Jesus' costly call to 'follow me'. It's just not cricket.
Here's the interview:
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