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SO MANY ATHEISTS, AGNOSTICS, no-theists, pantheists, and otherwise non-Christian coves like Richard Dawkins, Elon Musk, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are now calling themselves "cultural Christians" that it's become a phenomenon. Even Nick Cave is signing up. The argument, many say, for subscribing to the nonsense is that, they say, Christianity built western civilisation — so any decent supporter of civilisation should subscribe as well.
A book by Tom Holland is cited as one of the main influences on this movement. Holland is a prolific podcaster who has previously written — and written well — on the histories of Rome, Greece, Persia, and Islam — Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind "isn’t a history of Christianity," he says, so much "a history of what's been revolutionary and transformative about Christianity: about how Christianity has transformed not just the West, but the entire world." So transformative, says the author, that we of the west find ourselves unable to even see the cultural transformation clearly.
In some in Christian circles this “Tom Holland train” is spoken of as a new route to Christianity.
But there are problems with the book. Most especially that he speaks of a philosophical transformation that preceded and informed the cultural change, yet his philosophical discussions are all but absent.
Not so in another book, by Charles Freeman.
Freeman's book The Reopening of the Western Mind is a magnificent 2023 sequel to his investigative opus The Closing of the Western Mind — an exploration of how Christianity's rise saw the fall of independent thought —the rise of faith bringing the death of reason — ushering in a millennia of darkness age only (en)lightened, eventually, by the revival of interest in Greek and Roman thought. (You can read my own summary of that great story here.)
You can see almost immediately how that might pit Freeman's books against the tale told by Tom Holland. Not least because Holland's overlooking of the importance of Greco-Roman thought (most especially that of Aristotle) undermines the very basis of his story.
An absorbing discussion with scholars from the Ayn Rand Institute (part of a "Bookshelf" series that I hope takes off) examines these two contrasting perspectives (above), evaluating their arguments and assessing their historical and philosophical accuracy. The discussion covered:
- The central arguments of the books;
- Why the Church feared Aristotelian philosophy;
- How Freeman’s books provide a more thorough and philosophical analysis than Holland’s;
- How Holland diminishes Greek influence on modernity;
- How Holland appropriates secular ideas and thinkers into Christianity;
- The role of Christianity in the abolition of slavery;
- The relationship between Christianity and science;
- Why Holland’s book gained popularity while Freeman’s did not.
Fascinating.
[NB: The books are published with different titles in the US and the UK, confusingly, so here in NZ you might see the same book with two different titles. I've linked below, if you click the cover pics, to what seem to be the best sources here.]
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English (US) ·