Review: Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind by Tom Holland

In this lengthy tome, historian Tom Holland provides a history of Christianity and Christendom up to the present day. The central thesis is that the current Western mindset, despite its secular pretensions, is still undeniably Christian in both its genealogical origin but also its core philosophy and outlook. 

The book starts in ancient Greece and advances chapter by chapter over two millenia, through the inception of Christianity to the present day. Mini-biographies of key figures, philosophical, religious and political alike, are interwoven into the narrative. The book has many chapters, each with rich stories and vivid descriptions that serve to bring the past to life.

I

As stated, the main thrust of the book is twofold. The first is that the Western Mind is Christian in origin. As a theory of historical causation - that the birth of the Christian idea caused the emergence of the Western Mind as we know it today - this argument is convincing and well made. The rival thesis is one mostly associated with the French Philosophers of the Enlightenment and later British propagandists. It presents the modern mindset as emerging in the Reformation and picking up where the Roman Empire and classical antiquity left off. It is what Herbert Butterfield famously described in his book of the same name as "The Whig Interpretation of History." The middle ages represent an interruption or an aberration in this otherwise continuous historical chain.

Writing on the French Revolution, at a time of widespread murder of clergy and destruction of religious property, Holland sums up the dominant view with regards to Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular:

"A grim warning of what might happen should the revolution fail was to be found in the history of Greece and Rome. The radiance that lately had begun to dawn over Europe was not the continent's first experience of enlightenment. The battle between reason and unreason, between civilisation and barbarism, between philosophy and religion, was one that had been fought in ancient times as well. (p.381)"

By this point in the book, however, Holland has already demonstrated how unsustainable this view is. Firstly, even before making any arguments, the succession of events shows more continuity than disjointedness. Whilst Rome is deemed to have 'fallen' in the 5th century (or to be more precise the Western part of it) its descent wasn't as clear cut as such language suggests. Holland writes that in the 6th century the province of Africa had been recaptured by the Romans, as was Rome, and was a secure province (p.162). And there were 'Caesars' in the West centuries later.  In the 8th century, Charlemagne ascended to the rule of the Franks. Holland writes:

"he exerted a sway that was Roman in its scope. In 800, the pope set an official seal on the comparison in Rome itself; for therefore on Christmas Day, he crowned the Frankish warlord and hailed him as "Augustus". Then having done so, he fell before Charles' feet. Such obeisance had for centuries been the due of only one man: the emperor in Constantinople."

It is said that Rome fell when the barbarians invaded in 476 AD. In reality there was no sudden barbarian invasion. The Barbarians were not actual barbarians, but Germans and Goths (the latter were incidentally Christian). These groups had been interacting with Rome for two hundred years; the Goths had even sacked Rome before in 410 AD.  Goths and Germans had been the power behind the throne is Rome for many years before it officially fell. The character of Rome changed significantly over time and there is no one point where a changing of the guard can be said to have occurred. Obviously, historians for the sake of explanation do need to draw lines somewhere. The point is that they make judgements in doing so.

II 

Secondly, as Holland shows, the idea that Europe's enlightened spirit in the 18th century had more in common with the ancient world than the world of Christianity, in particular pre-Reformation Christianity, is not credible. Granted, the Christian worldview marked a radical and decisive shift from that of the Greco-Roman one in its heyday, but not in the way that the superficial self-serving propaganda of the philosophes would claim.

Holland shows how in Ancient Greece a philosophical tradition emerged which was based on rationality. For Aristotle:

"In the heavens...beyond the sublunar world to which mortals were confined, bodies were eternal and obedient to unchanging circular orbits; and yet these movements, perfect though they were, depended in turn upon a mover which itself never moved. (p.20)"

Thus emerged the idea of an ordered cosmos. For Aristotle, the lover of wisdom (the Philosopher) undertook to understand the laws that governed this cosmos for its own sake. The subsequent question, then, was how to order the affairs of the world. The answer was to observe the laws of nature. This meant that society was to be organised according to the natural order of hierarchical power. Humans ruled animals, Men ruled Women and Greeks ruled barbarians (p.21). Holland writes how the practical application of this philosophy by the contemporary ruler, Demetrius, led to the disenfranchisement of the poor and the abolition of assemblies (p.22). Later, when Pompey the Great conquered Greece for the Roman republic, he would use this philosophy to "gild his self image". The conquests, the enslavement, the glory - this was all part of the natural cosmic order. A sort of binary logic of master and slave was institutionalised.

"As on the battlefield of Troy, so in the new world forged by Rome, it was only by putting others in the shade that a man most fully became a man".

Was this the pagan world that Montesquieu was referring to in which he said a "spirit of toleration and gentleness had ruled" (p.381)? Of course, in their infatuation with reason, the French Philosophes   took another key idea for granted, the dignity of the human individual. This is at the heart of the Christian message and constituted a total inversion of the dominant Greco-Roman paradigm. Holland writes;

"Not as a leader of armies, not as the conqueror of Caesars, but as a victim the Messiah had come. (p.85)"

This idea was shocking and totally novel. Holland refers to the preachings of St Paul in the embryonic stage of Christianity. Paul proclaimed that the human body was a temple of the Holy Spirit (p.81). Paul taught that to suffer, to be beaten, to be abused, to be degraded was to share in the glory of Christ. For those who adopted God, the spirit of Jesus would redeem their bodies (Ibid).

The dignity of the individual was also enhanced through the Christian view of marriage. Man and woman in marriage were joined like Christ and the Church were joined. While the woman was instructed to submit to her husband, the man was instructed to be faithful to his wife. This was in marked contrast to an earlier Roman view of marriage in which a double standard prevailed, and where there was no obligation of fidelity on the man. Divorce was only allowed in rare circumstances (p.265-6). This therefore put a premium on the institution of marriage to the benefit of the partaking individuals.

In relation to science, the great strides in science in the 16th and 17th centuries were the culmination of centuries of effort. The adoption of the Heliocentric model in astronomy, a key milestone in science's progress, drew on the work of earlier scholars in Oxford and Paris (p.338). Such achievements would not have been possible without universities, uniquely Christian inventions. Nor indeed would they have been possible without the Church's respect for natural philosophy and reason. Notwithstanding this reality, the myth of the medieval period being an age of ignorance and backwardness became popularised in the late 19th century (p.430).

The spirit of toleration and secularisation was an accidental outcome of the 30 Years War of the 17th century. Christianity, therefore, cannot take any credit for it. The settlement that followed brought about the separation of church and state and individual freedom of worship. This is what Herbert Butterfield meant when he wrote about modern Western principles such as democracy and liberty being the accidental product of the clash between certain sects, rather than the necessary product of a particular dynamic within Christianity, i.e. Protestantism.

In retrospect, then, it seems that the Reformation is the key event (inadvertently) whereby Christianity and the technology it cultivated (i.e. science, humanism, reason) began to part way. 

III

The next question is whether the Western mind today is still inherently Christian. While the case is well made that Christianity got us to this point, the jury is out on whether we still need it. Holland believes that we do. He describes Angela Merkel's response to the 2015 Refugee crisis as Christian in all but name (p.503). Similarly, the iconoclastic satire of Charlie Hebdo is not unlike the desecration of idols by early enthusiasts of the Reformation (p.506).

The key here is to recognise the distinction between means and ends. Christianity was once the end towards which certain means (technologies) were developed. As modernity unfolded, these technologies took on a life of their own and the end they served lost relevance. We eventually arrived at the point, after the end of the Second World War, where ends either became completed privatised (liberalism) or declared non-existent (existentialism). And so Angela Merkel may have been privately motivated by religion, but her public stance was standard liberal humanitarianism. And Charlie Hebdo exalted freedom of speech for the sake of, well, freedom of speech.

With that in mind, the only conclusion is that the West may have had Christian origins but is no longer Christian in its DNA. And that is to its peril.