Tom Holland | How Christianity Gained Dominion | A Secular Historian Loses His Faith (In Liberalism)

i have lost my faith as you know as a liberal i've lost my faith i don't really believe in it um but in my gut i still do [Music] reset is about going back to the beginning back to the book of genesis and looking at that ancient origin story to see if the ancient text can still speak today on reset we are going back to the beginning today with tom holland he is the author of many books including dominion the making of the western mind tom holland thanks so much for joining us thanks very much for having me back hey yeah we we we uh we had a little chat i guess about three and a half thousand years ago or um november as it was known in the old money yeah yeah pre-covered i mean it seems a very very long time ago pre-covered but it was post the launch of the the hardback edition of dominion and and now the the paperback has come out um and i wanted to begin by asking you about um the paperback cover which i absolutely love um but it's such an interesting comparing contrast i think to the american cover of your book you know if you're going to write a book about the influence of christianity one way of doing it would be the american way and you show salvador dali's sort of crucifixion and there is christ kind of you know everything else is in his shadow um whereas this is going for a very different approach what are you trying to communicate with this kind of collage the multiplicity of influences that uh um christianity's had and the way in which that influence is expressed um in trends and in developments that perhaps people might not automatically think of as being christian so you have um you have feminism you have the beatles you have uh martin luther king um as well as um uh more obvious symbols of christianity um uh cathedrals and angels and so on and also that you've got um hints of the um the classical world that um both influenced the development of christianity and which christianity very radically transformed so um i guess the the the the collage on the front of the paperback is suggesting that this is this is this is a this is a long story um this is this is uh this is tracing a long story um whereas the american cover as you say features features dali's um uh dali's famous painting of of christ on the cross and i guess that's equally making the same point that um you know this is this is uh this is where it all begins this is the kind of ground zero of this immense earthquake which you can trace out across time um but it's a kind of different emphasis i guess yeah for those who haven't yet read the book obviously they need to go out and grab the paperback now but uh what what is the the thesis in a nutshell the thesis of the book essentially is that um christianity is the most transformative and revolutionary um ideology that has ever existed and that um in its distinctively western form it it continues to completely saturate the way that people in the west um view the world not just morally or ethically but and issues as fundamental as how they uh the things that they take for granted about how say sexuality operates um relations between men and women how society is structured um the nature of progress all kinds of things that people might be tempted to take for granted and just assume exist out there um in the in the sky but but at all they're very culturally contingent and they're very specifically bred of of deep the the deep roots that the west has in christian history and theology where do you find people um most objecting to to that thesis where do you find people most considering their views to be neutral or obvious or universal whereas i guess your argument is um those things would be contingent on on christian history and how it's shaped us but where do most people kind of trip up on this well one of the inspirations for writing this book um was an event i did in the wake of a previous book uh called in the shadow of the sword which was about the world of late antiquity and had at its climax the emergence of islam and the argument of the book was essentially that the muslim understanding of where islam had come from was um in its canonical account quite late so in christian terms the earliest the the earliest life that we have of muhammad is essentially kind of um 200 years after after his lifetime so in christian terms that would be equivalent to say the gnostic gospel some of the gnostic gospels and what do the gnostic gospels tell us about the lifetime of jesus probably not very much they tell us much more about what people say in around 200 a.d thought and so likewise i the the argument of in the shadow of the sword was that um the received accounts of muhammad's life and how the quran emerges tell us a lot about what muslims thought in say the year 800 but very little probably about what was going on within the lifetime of muhammad um and this was obviously to lots of muslims quite a a a controversial and sometimes upsetting thesis um and i remember one one muslim in in uh at a talk i was giving saying um you know why have you done this you'd never do this to your own beliefs your own you know if you think that they're myths why are you not questioning your own myths and i felt that that was a very germane question and the the values and assumptions that i had were essentially those of of the enlightenment of kind of liberal secular humanism it never crossed my mind for instance in writing in the shadow of the sword to um think that god had actually spoken to muhammad um you know and i wasn't being neutral in thinking that that was the position of someone who's not a muslim so therefore it's not a neutral position um and so i i in in the wake of that um i did think well what you know what are the beliefs that i hold dear what are the the values that i hold there what are the assumptions that i take for granted and i thought well you know i'll i'll try and trace them back as far as they will go and it it was already kind of clear to me that that actually the the enlightenment myth the idea that you know there'd been a period of light in ancient greece and then darkness and then the light switch had gone on again with the enlightenment what was mythical um a restructuring if you like um as it turned out i think of of christian myths of christian ways of seeing the world but one of the things that i wanted to set myself with dominion was basically to look at almost everything that i took for granted and say well how far back can i trace it and invariably it went back uh not to the enlightenment and and generally not to ancient greece although greek philosophy has a huge does indeed have a huge influence on on on christian theology but now in in the fundamentals when i trace those threads back they lead back to christianity and um that was that that was why i wanted to write the book just as when i wrote in the shadow of the sword the most vatubative criticism came from muslims who said you know this isn't a myth this is true so with this with dominion the most intuitive criticism has tended to come with with with from people who believe in in in the enlightenment myth the idea that it all begins or humanists who believe that um their values are just kind of imminent and not culturally contingent or can be traced back you know that they just exist everywhere um but i think that these are myths and nobody likes having no you know people don't like to be told that their myths are mythical yes yes well i mean speaking from i mean i found it unsettling as well sure so i i i have sympathy so had you been kind of mostly kind of brought up and formed with the sort of the edward gibbon myth that um yeah that basically yeah yeah i i i mean i've i'm sure i told you this before but i was i was kind of brought up in the church of england and and went to went to sunday school and so on but was always um more emotionally and indeed to a degree spiritually engaged by uh the gods of greece and and by the the glamour and the potency and the charisma of of greece and rome and um i did feel that um you know when i shut my eyes and i thought about greece i i would see blue skies or or think of imperial romance hey i would see blue skies and then when i thought of the coming of of of christianity um constantine's conversion or whatever it would be autumn it would be drizzle it would be rain and that's kind of very synesthetic response that was kind of an emotional one essentially um rooted in in um in things that that were not kind of necessarily intellectually grounded but i did find when i read gibbon kind of 1516 um that it provided absolutely the kind of intellectual cladding for what was this god impulse that that you know the grey breath of the galilean had had turned the the glamour and the charisma of the classical world to ash um and yes so that was that was very much the kind of gut instinct i had yes which itself is i i guess an inheritance of of the way that christianity has shaped us there's this sort of a darkness and a light kind of moment and in edward gibbons telling of things the there is there is the vanquishing of an evil by the the dawning of the lights and that that sort of stuff but i guess would you say that that itself is testimony to how deeply the christian myth has kind of worked its way into us i i think gibbon himself is um i mean he he was raised protestant he he famously converted to catholicism then turned back to protestantism and then became a kind of enlightenment sage um but i think always remained in his gutter protestant and um i think that the the enlightenment is a kind of recalibration of the protestant reformation i mean that's why i don't think it's anything spectacularly new and everything that um gibbon is is doing in questioning the church in in kind of mocking it as a source of superstition and idolatry is what protestant reformers were doing to the roman church to the catholic church and that attitude towards idolatry and superstition is of course one that um christian missionaries um in you know in in in the early middle ages are are bringing when they go into the the dripping woods of saxony um and boniface um chops down the tree that is sacred to thunder in the way that um uh protestant reformers kind of overthrow statues of the virgin or gibbons sneers at the uh the stories of the saints written by jerome there is a kind of continuum there and of course ultimately uh it goes back before christianity to the hebrew prophets and to um the legacy of um isaiah or jeremiah who who are absolutely talking about bringing people who walk in darkness into light and who are dismissing the idols of babylon or egypt as as as mere stock and stone and that is the the great continuum that has run from the jews from fro from from from the babylonian exile through the jews of the pre-christian period into christianity through the reformation into the enlightenment into the present um say when um richard dawkins is often called evangelical and and he is he's preaching good news he's preaching good news that um that light has come that if you let the light into your into your into your heart into your mind then you'll be purged of superstition and idolatry that you will be um elevated to a new understanding of the way that the the cosmos functions um and this is this is a uh again a very kind of culturally contingent thing to be preaching i mean why why where does this impulse to to to condemn superstition and proclaim the coming of light you know where does it originate it's not it's not it's not a given it's it's something that is bred of the culture in which richard dawkins has emerged okay so to steal man richard dawkins he comes back and he says well obviously christianity had a role to play in the banishment of superstition and in establishing enlightenment values and in establishing a scientific method that wants to investigate the world and overturn superstition but that's just one voice among a whole chorus of voices what's so special about christianity because it's a very very uh distinctive way of of understanding the world and um one of the things that that that is so intriguing about western liberalism western secularism western humanism is that um it has inherited from christianity and into a sense transmuted the conviction that that that what it teaches is properly universal so this is something that that you don't get say in in in in classical indian cultures you don't get it in china this this desire to propagate a particular way of seeing the world and spread it around the world so that everyone comes to share in it and essentially what happened over the course of of the imperial heyday of the west which is now coming to an end is that there were certain areas of the world where [Music] people could be conquered and their gods could be banished and their civilizations could be effectively either wiped out or so transmuted as to be unrecognizable um and their christianity was planted um unapologetically um so that's the case in in north america in south america um uh in in australia in new zealand um but there were other regions of the world where european christians went and they found themselves confronted by civilizations that in many ways were vastly more sophisticated and ancient than their own so india or china or japan and um the way that um christians there uh exported their values was to pretend that um or or indeed to assume that uh concepts that were absolutely bred of um christian theology christian history like the notion of the secular like the the concept of human rights could somehow be divorced from the culture that had that had bred them and were just kind of manifest uh everybody had them and this was incredibly effective so um there's an indian scholar i i quote in the book who says that christianization proceeds in two ways through conversion which is obvious and through secularization which is much less obvious india was not converted to christianity um but it was converted to sectorism that's why when the british leave the the indian republic is defined as a secular republic um likewise say in turkey ataturk rejects islam he doesn't think that he's converting to christianity but he does basically convert to secularism um and as a token of that he he he transforms the cathedral of haggis sophia that had been um the great monument of orthodox christianity uh had been converted into a mosque with the conquest of constantinople ataturk converts this mosque into a museum a neutral space now i think that um the conceit of the west has always been to assume well this is just the natural order of things you know all around the world this is the the way it's kind of like the life cycle of a butterfly uh you know caterpillars become butterflies um superstitious backward people who worship gods become secularists this happens everywhere but but we are seeing now that that is a complete delusion that this this is a very very culturally contingent assumption and we see this summer where where in india modi has gone to ayodhya the the city that supposedly was the birthplace of rama the great hero of the ramayana and which hint many hindus have come to believe um the mughals deliberately built a mosque on the site which led radical hindus in the 90s to destroy that mosque and modi went this summer to lay the foundation stone of a great temple which will be built to rama on the side and essentially it's it's a statement that that india is not a secular state preeminently in modi's opinion it's a state that that should properly be defined by by this vast inheritance of hindu scope of hindu scripture and tradition and practice and ritual the kind of totality of of hindu-ness if you want uh that hindu-ism is not a religion in the in the way that the protestant missionaries who and and and administrators who'd come with the british in the 18th century had assumed that that that that to be hindu is properly to you know it's not to practice a religion it's it's it's to be indian that's essentially the kind of core assumption of of modi and this is something that that that is obviously deeply threatening to the secular foundations of the indian republic and a reminder that um you know the english language and and and cricket weren't the only legacies that the british left behind that have endured and left and and persisted after the the area of the raj and likewise with um in in in istanbul um president erdogan's reconsecration of the museum of haggis sofia as the mosque of a sophia is a very very blatant statement that the era of the secular is over in turkey that this was this was not a kind of you know the secular in turkey is not something neutral it's an expression of an alien and and i would argue specifically christian way of seeing the world that that gives all the more potency to the reconsecration of this great building that had once been the cathedral to islam yes yes so that is the waning of the christian revolution in terms of geopolitics in terms of india and and in terms of turkey where do you see the influence of christianity waning here because i guess there's two ways of seeing some of the convulsions that are happening in the west one one is to see them as in in a sense hyper-christian hyper-protestant convulsions of the same revolution and and another way of seeing it is it's the it's the waning of christian influence on the west which is it yeah well i i think i think that um the the person who really did get this right um was was nietzsche and and nietzsche said you know pose this question can you have christian values without christian belief um and he also said kind of riffing on plato that god is dead but his corpse continues to send shadows on the walls of the cave so it looks as though he's alive [Music] and and i think that um the state of the west at the moment is i mean we we we're so christian that almost everything we do remains remains kind of rooted in in in christian assumptions um and and yet i i think that the question remains open that that that once you have generations that grow up that are not familiar with not just with with the practice of going to church but with i think just as importantly the the kind of the basic biblical stories that have structured the way that people think for centuries and centuries in say in this country in in in other western countries um i you are kind of depriving the roots of their fertilizer and so the question becomes what happens to the blooms and i don't really know the answer to that i mean it's an open question i think i don't know whether nature's going to be proved right or not but i think that you can see the way in which uh deprived of of certain christian orthodoxies and certain fundamental christian narratives um this this inheritance of kind of christian assumptions are starting to go off in in what a traditional christian might regard as slightly heretical directions so one of your chapters in dominion is entitled woke um and so it seems seems to me like some of the convulsions in in the west uh you would say a testimony to this um revolutionary spirits the that is that traces its roots back to to christianity um is is is that now now that we've had an extra year since uh the hardback came out um is that is that still your sort of contention yes i think i think that um the word woke is a riff on the idea obviously on on being awakened and the idea that that that um that people fall asleep that they fall into um they fall into sin basically um and and therefore need to be to be woken up from that and and to wake up to the light to the truth um to to to to to liberate themselves from the chains of oppression is fundamental to the history of anglo-american protestantism uh there are you know cycles of what are called awakenings that that ripple through protestant britain and protestant america and this summons is is is something that seems to happen kind of you know every few generations um and i think it's clear that the civil rights movement was was was absolutely part of that that was part of of this cycle of of awakenings and it's why it had such an impact in britain because because it's it's part of the cultural dna having said that um i i think that um one of the things that's been striking about black lives matter and the way that it's kind of erupted over over the course of this summer is that on the one hand the the christian dynamics are absolutely evident most fundamentally there is the deep rooted assumption that those who suffer oppression should be freed should be liberated and the narratives that underlie that most obviously are the exodus narrative and the narrative of um of of christ rising from death and casting off the chains of death and those were the the stories that that inspired and motivated um martin luther king for instance and and you can see them that they they that they're still fundament the influence of those stories remains absolutely manifest um that's why people went out on the streets because they they they felt that these were simply true and again why why did um the death of a an innocent man um put to death by the apparatus of of of a a kind of imperial power have such an impact um why did somebody cry out i can't breathe uh have this this this impact well you know at the heart of of western civilization for centuries and centuries and centuries has existed the figure of someone suffering an unjust death dying because he couldn't breathe um so these the ripples that are set out are from from these are are very very profound the difference though between this and the civil rights movement is that this has not been overtly christian and indeed in many cases has been kind of antithetical to christianity he's seen christianity as some as as a kind of part of of of um of white oppression and so that that that means that the relationship of um the assumptions that that govern black lives matter although they're deeply rooted in kind of a christian seed bed um and not necessarily anchored in them and the consequences of that for instance um i i think that one of the um the very profound shifts since the 60s has been a reaction against the doctrine of original sin and in the 60s the idea that we are all born with sin was seen as as as a kind of repellent and so we've we've in a sense become pelagian or augustine's doctrine of of original sin you know he formulated in the context of a disagreement with um with with with a british theologian called pelagius who argued that that we can we in a way we can become perfect through through our own efforts that that it is possible to become perfectly virtuous and i think that that there is a sense in which um in in its more radical manifestations those who condem sin in others are reluctant to contemplate that they too may share in sin um there is a kind of pelagian sense that it is possible to become virtuous completely virtuous and in a way i i think that the doctrine of original sin stands as as revealed as something that is profoundly democratic because if we're all sinners then we're all at fault and you can tell other people you know to take to take the beam out of their eye but you should be aware of the fact that you have emote in your eye as well um and if you don't have that right and if you don't have that then then um then you feel all the more qualified to sit in judgment on on on those who you feel have have failed to to to kind of emancipate themselves from sin and in a way you then become the you know the the um the the anti-theist stereotype of of a kind of persecuting judgmental um person who refuses to accept that the person you're sitting in judgment with the the you are you are you know you you are bread of the sec the common stock of humanity we're all in that sense you know in augustinian terms we all share in the same sin we all share in the same form right so i so so so that's that does seem to me one of the the um the really really significant changes since the 60s is is that a lot of of the the kind of virtue spirals that have happened since the 60s they're rooted in deeply christian assumptions but because they've cast off the the christian doctrine of of original sin the risk is of a kind of judgmentalism and arrogance i think and i guess those those shackles sort of began to be thrown off in the enlightenment you had you know russo a man is born free but everywhere he's in chains and and therefore the result is i need to release this spark of liberty within me and disrupt the structures that are out there that are that are holding me but that that is kind of almost the photo negative of original sin really um and we're dealing with the fallout of that yeah yeah um let me let me read out um so in in dominion you you talk about the declaration of independence and uh you know what a wonderful statement of of you know human rights and equality uh you say that all men had been created equal and endowed with an inalienable right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness i'm glad you corrected them it's not unalienable you're right tom it's inalienable right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness they were not remotely self-evident truths that most americans believed they were owed less to philosophy than to the bible to the assurance given equally to christians and jews to protestants and catholics to calvinists and quakers that every human being was created in god's image the truest and ultimate seed bed of the american republic no matter what some of those who had composed its founding documents might have cared to think was the book of genesis and to that i ask really what about what about the stoics what what about um deists who are sort of you know founders of the of the american republic who um would not perhaps you know would claim not to be going back to genesis but would be drawing on more sort of classical sources for their belief in in human rights and equality what would you say to that they're wrong i mean there were there was no concept of human rights in in greece or rome um but that's the birthplace of democracy tom right so so this is i mean this is a kind of perfect illustration of the way in which when we we we look back at the classical world and this is one of the reasons why i wanted to write dominion [Music] what you see what you look at is viewed through a kind of smoke screen and the particles that constitute that smoke screen are christian so it's incredibly difficult i think to to kind of brush away that smoke screen often because we don't even realize that the smoke screen is there don't even realize that what you're seeing is something that's that's kind of distorted so democracy it clearly it's a greek word power of the deimos which which we might translate as the people um and so we're tempted to think that um something called democracy is is there in ancient greece that um our modern democracies then pick up and our our idea of democracy which is expressed um i mean even though the um the founding father school's founding a a republic um rather than specifically a democracy but but when that they assume that there are things called rights and that everyone shares in them um and they're saying that even though notoriously women don't have the vote and um black people are allowed to remain slaves under under this constitution um and this is something that and and this is a kind of great source of of tension and stress that ultimately will lead to um to the american republic tearing itself apart and collapsing into civil war and it takes a very very long time for these ideals these democratic ideals to be fulfilled many would argue that they still haven't been fulfilled properly to this day but the idea that the democracy is an expression of a kind of ideological notion of the rights of each individual it's very very deeply rooted and so when we look back at ancient athens the criticism it's the point that is almost invariably made is well uh yeah it was a democracy for the athenian men women didn't have the vote uh slave you know they were slaves medics foreigners didn't have the vote um which is entirely to see it through christian glasses christian lenses because that is not what democracy was to the athenians the the athenians were not saying that this is the our way of our way of government is an ideological one rooted in abstract values abstract notions of um of rights of uh individual rights what the power of the the demos expressed was um ah a highly complex subtle emotionally grounded sense the athenians had that they were bred of the soil that they were toxinous in the greek word that they were literally creatures who had emerged from the earth of attica and that um they'd done this as favorites of the gods and specifically of athena and that therefore the demos the body of the athenian people had should have power because that was what the gods and athena specifically had willed and that um in this kind of nexus of the divine the earth and the human everyone who was bred of the soil everyone who was a true born athenian had duties to the soil and to the the gods that they had emerged from so men it was their responsibility to um to fight to sit in the assembly to pass laws if they were required women had the responsibility above all of liaising with the gods so if you go to to the british museum and you look at the parthenon freezes you'll see that it's women who lead the panathenaic procession up to the uh up to the acropolis it's women above all who mediate between the human and the divine and that for the in the opinion athenians is just a significant and just as important in some ways more important role than for men sitting in the assembly casting their votes the point is that that democracy for the athenians democratia is something that is expressive of a way of seeing the world that christianity has radically radically dissolved so completely dissolved it that we don't even recognize it when we see it we think that it is about rights about responsibility you know about individual rights that kind of thing ideological frameworks of the kind that we might see in a modern democracy it's nothing of the kind but because we're so christianized we can't recognize what it is that we're missing and again and again that is what happens when you look back at the classical world we're so habituated to seeing the world through christian lenses that we don't even recognize what it is that we're doing when we do that yes yeah we don't recognize how theological they were in what they were saying but we also don't recognize how theological we are when we express beliefs in things like human rights well well but but also you see i mean going back to um uh atheism as a kind of logical endpoint of of a strand of protestant christianity we we're tempted to look back at at um attention to athens and and asked what you know did the greeks really believe this stuff of course they didn't uh we we kind of assumed that that nobody really believes this stuff that uh you know they're all philosophers they all think it's nonsense that um the the that that um the very idea that the gods exist is something you know is is is is kind of an irrelevance and so we can talk about athen you know religion could be a kind of chapter and a book on the greeks but um by and large we then move on to more secular stuff like uh voting or fighting or anything and we don't recognize that this again is a deeply deeply christian idea the idea that there is a secular space and that there is something called religion which exists to one side and that the greek religion is so patently ridiculous with all its stories of gods that no one could possibly have believed it this is this is protestantism writ large and the fact that that most historians of ancient greece and that that that most people who write about it you know this is the model that they adopt they probably don't think of themselves as as protestant historians but that's exactly what they are i mean that's what i was sure i would love to i'd love to go back and and and we will we'll we'll compare and contrast sort of the christian origin story and you know where we've come from according to genesis one to three um with with those sorts of more classical um origin stories but just on on this point um it's it can be very difficult to disagree with your thesis can't it tom because in in some ways you know a critic of christianity comes and they they give some critique of of of christianity and um your response can be how very christian of you um that there is there is that kind of um there's a is is your thesis unfalsifiable or if not what would falsify it i mean i think i think that that that it it um first it it it requires you first of all i think to question your own assumptions like you know this is why i've written the book i was questioning my own assumptions not allowing any saying where does this come from where does this idea come from how saturated is it in assumptions that i haven't acknowledged it's kind of biased training i suppose i i think that that when you do that you're forced to acknowledge at least i was forced to acknowledge that it's actually very very very difficult to stand outside the christian influence because essentially the west is christian in the way that the you know the islamic world is is is is muslim the way that the radioactivity lingers in the air after a radiation leak that it's just there it's just you breathe it in you can't really help it now of course there are ways to um you know there are that there are very different ways of seeing the world and and um you know what's happening in india gives you one example of that i think what's happening in china gives you another um in our own um european history we have the example of the nazis who um absolutely repudiated um not just doctrinal christianity as the french revolutionaries had done as the russian revolutionaries had done but um some of the most fundamental tenets of christianity among which um you know we talked about the image of christ on the cross that is about that that is a profoundly um visual statement of the notion that the slave will conquer the master that the tortured will conquer the torturer that the oppressed will conquer the the oppressor which the nazis regarded as ridiculous um everything that the nazis were about was to reject that and also of course they they rejected what you just talking about the the the the idea of genesis that um all human beings are created equally you know the christian refinement in paul that there is no jew or greek the nazis completely thought that there were differences between jews and greeks and and they they launched genocide on the back of it um so we do we do have that example and and so if what is if we want to know what what what what an unchristian world looks like we can for starters look at the third reich what is it the nazis thought what they were doing was right they didn't sit down and say you know it's like the michelin web sketch are we the baddies they didn't think they were the baddies they thought they were goodies they thought what they were doing was right for the german people the fact that we have enshrined them as you know literally demonic we don't need satan because we've got hitler we don't need hell because we've got auschwitz we don't need devils because we've got we've got the nazis but we regard them as as diabolical because we bring christian frames of reference to their ideologies so in a sense the the um you know the shadows of of the corpse of god on on on the wall of the cave that that's what the the the dread of of nazism is the kind of the the the agon the the nightmare that there are nazis lurking everywhere waiting to take over which which is a huge part of of contemporary liberal discourse is it seems to me clearly belongs to the deep the lengthy christian tradition the anxiety that um that evil may triumph and that large numbers of people have given themselves up to evil um which you see manifest in in the witch craze in the albigensian crusade and all kinds of things like that um we don't dread satan anymore because hitler has taken on the role of satan but we we dread hitler for the same reason that christians dreaded satan [Music] so you've offered a very of a very stark alternative to standing within the christian tradition um you know i mean first of all there's nature do you want to go that path there's there's hitler do you want to go that path um for those well of course you see nature wrote when nietzsche wrote he didn't know what was going to happen he didn't he didn't you know but he says that that that um the death of god will will basically kind of bring about terrible convulsions deeds of great horror and he was cut you know i mean he was right the nazis what the nazis did depended on their repudiation of of of the the fundamentals of christian doctrine even as of course it also drew on on elements of it so the traditions of anti-semitism um the apocalyptic strain of you know the thousand year reich um that you know there are clearly it's even nazism is flavored by the inheritance of christianity but it is the most radical attempt to reject christianity that that um that europe has seen since you know since the time of constantine and that notwithstanding um the the horrible errors of the church in in not repudiating nazism sufficiently in you know in not excommunicating you know nazi leaders in in um in in some ways going going along with the third reich um you would say notwithstanding those um inconsistencies um the christianity what what are you pointing to at that point what is it that is standing against christianity overstanding against nazism because christians in history um collaborated with all sorts of evil all down through the ages what are you boiling down to the the kernel of truth that you identify as this is what christianity is that actually opposes nazism well i think that there are two kind of pretty non-negotiable values which are the ones that i said the idea that we're all created equal and um the uh the idea that you know the first should be last the last should be first that that um that christ comes not as a not not as a conqueror but as a man's nail to a cross right um and and and those that those are are kind of two um two doctrines which remain fundamental to to western liberalism right um i mean they you know where do they come from they don't just magically appear um and i think that western liberalism is profoundly shaped by it's kind of like the mirror image of what the nazis did but why did we find what the nazis did so terrible right because we are instinctively christian yeah yeah and in in the book and in the passage that i read out you you trace back the declaration of independence and this this um declaration of human equality um back to genesis what what in particular are you thinking of from genesis man and obviously there are two different kind of stories that have been bundled up together in um in the genesis narrative um one of which in one of which the role of women is considered inferior to that of men but in the other men and women are are equally created in the image of god and that that gives to human beings an incredible dignity um if there is one god who has fashioned the entire cosmos and that god has created human beings in his image then the dignity that accrues to that is common to all human beings right and in you know the literature of the ancient near east the king might be said to be in the image of god but suddenly you've got humanity male and female yeah male and female i mean as everyone knows that there are all kinds of um echoes of the genesis narrative in in mesopotamian myth in particular canaanite myth but in in um in the babylonian account of the crucifixion um humans are created quite specifically to serve as slaves to the gods you know the gods get tired of building temples so they they create humans to build the temples to them um that's not the role that humans have in the genesis account humans are not created to be slaves humans are created to to to live in the image of god right right it's very temple like language throughout um the garden of eden and and and yeah humanity has this sort of priestly role to work it and keep it and that they are placed in god's most favored place um and therefore yeah emphatically not slaves in that way um are there other things we can we can learn from genesis chapters one to three do you think as you think back to those origin stories well one of the one of the um one of the factors one of the consequences of the genesis story that has has always intrigued me and led to the first kind of glimmerings of doubt that i had as a child is of course the way that it contradicts what we now know is the prehistory of this planet um that this is not how this is not what happened um i mean it may it may have a kind of quality of of the truth of myth but there's no place for for um the pre-cambrian explosion or trilobites or um dinosaurs or um in in genesis um and that was always an issue for me because um i was obsessed by pre-history and um i would have large numbers of books which showed the sweep of life on earth and then i'd have illustrated bibles and the challenge of of matching them up you know was was was kind of difficult for me um but but what i now recognize is that we would not have um those books detailing um the immensity of geological time and the growth of life over over the millions and millions of years if it weren't for genesis i think because what genesis gives us um is a sense that the world has a beginning and that time flows from that point forwards um and in the christian bible genesis is one bookend revelation is is the other so people who read the christian bible from cover to cover leave it with a sense that time moves in a single direction but there is a beginning genesis and that there is an end point that will come and that in turn gives us a structure of time you know times arrow um and again this comes to saturate the assumptions of people in the west so thoroughly that they don't even think of it as being something you know just take it for granted um even though in other in other cultures in other civilizations in in in other philosophies the idea that um time is a cycle that it goes round and round and round that there are cycles of creation and destruction um is is very powerful but if you have that sense that time is is is um going around in a cycle um it's it's hard to make sense of um say fossils in uh sedimentary rock um in a sense to make sense of of uh what the layers of sediment might tell us the antiquity of rocks um what bones of giant monsters dug up out of quarries might reveal about the past you need a sense of time which certainly in europe has been given to us by by by genesis and by the bible which helps us not just with the scientific method but i i guess it helps us with all those rights and equality issues that we're speaking about and we mentioned that you know martin luther king jr you know the that um the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice as well is is another i guess inheritance of that kind of hebrew vision do you think well yeah but but the hebrew yes i mean but but of course the what the what the um the old testament completely teaches is that things go horribly wrong and that there are horrible smash ups but yes the idea that ultimately there is a divine plan and that that that all shall be well is there is there too and that's been the great you know that's that's been the the reassurance that that the bible provides is that no matter how terrible things are god is good and god is all-powerful and therefore ultimately things will be good but that is obviously requires a certain leap of faith and so the um i think a a lot of um liberal agony at the moment is that you know since the fourth the the end of the cold war there has been a kind of assumption that history's come to an end that that that things can only get better um and in the absence of of of religious faith there have been all kinds of of sociological or phys philosophical attempts to construct reasons for for believing in that but i think that that that now in 2020 those attempts look pretty threadbare um it becomes evident that actually there isn't some law uh woven into the fabric of of um of of human society that means that things will necessarily bend in a liberal direction um things go horribly wrong um so ultimately to believe that things will be all right again kind of requires a leap of faith and again again this is this is kind of where what you know what i i i kind of realized is that things that i had taken for granted were actually beliefs right and require relief a leap of faith to believe in them um and to that extent they remain christian assumptions right right and speaking as a christian minister i i would say it kind of requires you to look at that victim on the cross and to believe that he is the victor to believe that's that and that somehow that is the path um and that somehow ultimate reality works out because you know the the arc of history we tend to think of the arc going that way actually the heart goes down into the valley of shadow but yes and so so when i was writing that it would come up i can't remember whether i talked about this the previous time we spoke but when i was in the midst when i was writing this um i went to a a yazidi town in northern iraq that had just been liberated from the islamic state and you know people had been crucified there and the people who've done those crucifixions were a couple of miles away within striking distance and i remembered standing there in this place where people had suffered crucifixion and knowing that the people who'd done it were you know absolutely on my doorstep on the doorstep and feeling this great abyss of kind of existential terror not just that the thought that um men who could inflict such cruelties were were as close as they were but kind of broader terror at the idea of a world in which um the cross did not signify uh what it signifies for me and for most people who are brought up in the western country you know you don't have to be a believing christian to kind of subliminally have a sense that the cross is is a good thing that if you you know if you're lying injured and somebody turns up with a red cross on their uniform that this is going to be good um and and to think that actually um that might all be delusion that the cross might actually represent what it represented to the romans they need the the the right and the power of the powerful to torture to death those who are less powerful than them was a kind of it opened up a really terrifying existential abyss in front of me which is why when i went back i rewrote the opening of dominion to talk about the crucifixion and it's why at the very end of the book i talk about that experience because i think that you know um humanity can't bear too much reality and i think that that that for us in the west we don't want to think that um maybe the torturer will win and a huge part again to go back to black lives matter i mean that that is a great convulsive expression of that it's it's a kind of a group it's a communal expression of horror at the idea that the torturer might win that the slaver might win that um right that that those who who grind down the oppressed are other are our history's victors right and and and where would we you know why do people think that you know where does that even come from if not from christianity yeah yeah and you see that you know you see that you see that manifest not just in what happened to the yazidis but in what's happening in china at the moment million people being targeted right yeah and so what do we do with our minorities what do we do with the least and the last and the last in the week we exclude them we extinguish them christianity is just so unique in in in valorizing the victim seeing him raised up so that the first she'll be lost and the last should be first right right yeah it's christ or the pit tom isn't it it's christ or the pit no because because there are you know i mean there that there are roman civilization was not just about torturing people to death i mean it was it was certainly a feature of it but people lived and and and laughed and and loved and you know so so that's not the totality of it but but i wouldn't want to live in a world without that assurance and therefore there is that that kind of leap of faith i know we we spoke back in uh november and i said there lots of lots of christians praying for you tom and you said keep the prayers coming um so in the in the in the last year or so um where do you where do you find yourself as you consider you know that one on the cross do you do you think do you think of that as a kind of a dead end um in terms of the the end of a story you're in the valley of the shadow and and that's that or do you think he might be a doorway through to to hope and peace and joy um i think that um well i've said that that i've realized that all my um the the kind of the liberal assumptions i had i float on faith that without faith they have no no funk you know they they have no validity so essentially i've i have lost my faith as you know as a liberal i've lost my faith i don't really believe in it um but in my gut i still do i i have no objective reason for thinking that anything that i thought is liberal is true i i you know i don't believe that human rights objectively exist or anything like that i don't objectively think that there's anything in the arc of history that suggests that um the strong won't crush the the weak um that that powerful states won't enslave parts of the population that they want to enslave i mean all of these things i you know just and so does that open up a kind of existential abyss kind of but what it also does and i'm speaking entirely for myself here um is that because i now understand where my beliefs and values came from that that rather than just drown completely beneath a kind of despair um i can cling to stories and i think that ultimately um the the power of christianity is expressed most potently through its stories and those stories are not just in the new testament but but in what christians call the old testament as well and those stories don't have to be literally true so the exodus doesn't have to be literally true for the story itself in my opinion to be true so i think that stories how certain stories have such a power that you can surrender to them and i said so essentially that's that's what i feel that i'm doing is that i have surrendered to the truth of the stories and therefore of the the kind of the poetry and the mythology that they express and i'm happy to identify myself with the truth of those stories and to see them as true in in in a kind of a moral a poetic uh a mythical sense um and i realized that the whole issue of of whether i think they you know is are they literally true did moses literally part the red sea i've just decided i'm not worrying about that um yeah because i think i think the power of those stories is sufficiently great that i can say well i'm going to believe in them yeah yeah and i think that's the path yeah and what what what i've what i've kind of felt after four years of of fairly intensive immersion in christian writings and studying christian lives is that um essentially the beliefs that that that that i hold as a liberal are are when i try to to think what the roots are those that they seem anemic and uninteresting compared to the interest and the kind of the potency of of the christian mythography that gave birth to them um and i'd really rather have the poetry and the power and the myth than the kind of the the the the the pap the palette simulacrum which is basically what i think i previously had very well put however however i i i i mean against that um i think that and again i speak entirely personally here um and i'm sure that this is my own my own fault uh you know i haven't looked hard enough but i felt that over the course of this year um the churches have been a letdown um i i think that that the experience you know the experience of of pandemic it sets you to asking you know why is this happening it raises profound issues of theodicy um and there was one there was um one moment where i felt that um a kind of answer was being given and it wasn't an explicit answer it wasn't a kind of theological attempt to explain why the bad things happen or anything like that but it was when the pope held um an open air mass in saint peter's square and um he was socially distant so it was just him in the background you had um the bells of of rome clanging out and you had the whale of sirens um dealing with the the the pandemic and he prayed before an icon that um had been sent from constantinople to gregory the great and gregory the great is in my book and gregory became pope at a time of plague and he led processions and he prayed and the the plague came to an end and gregory in turn um had written a commentary on the book of job and job of course is the bible's most unsettling and profound attempt to answer the question that everyone who's going through the pandemic is asking now and i felt watching that on the kind of live stream that um we we we were going through things that previous generations had gone through and that that in a sense the um the line that reached back from the pope in in that square through the experience of plague in in gregory's rome um back to uh the writing of job and the the the the kind of horrors of the world in which that book was written that it was all kind of part of a continuum and that if there was a god then then that was a kind of expression of the answers that were begin being given that and it felt incredibly profound and comforting and unsettling in all kinds of ways that that um you know that i would that weren't to be found on um uh government health lines or um accounts about you know what we should do to to stay healthy or how we should even help you know help others or anything like that that it was it was kind of cutting directly to the heart of what it is to be human in a world where these awful things happen and situating them in this vast cultural inheritance of attempts to explain it in a certain way and that we were therefore part of this continuum and there was a kind of comfort there that people had been there before us now so i had that experience and i waited for more and i didn't get them and i felt that that that the response of the churches was a kind of a pallid echo of of public health announcements and of course terribly important for for uh bishops and vicars and so on to to give public health announcements but i i you know that's what public health officials are for i've kind of feel the churches are there to to give answers and to situate our what's happening in in in in the context of this kind of weird weird that that they're teaching um and i i haven't felt that that i haven't what would that look like though what would that look like in any i mean obviously the pope in rome can do that that great theater that great drama what would it look like in in for instance an english setting or an anglican setting goodness i think that it that it might be expressed through open-air open-air services like the pope did um yes that an attempt to to to to root what's happening in the um the cultural and the scriptural inheritance of of of what's gone before i mean i haven't heard my i've heard almost nothing about um you know why this is happening about what this thought what you know what does the bible say about plagues you know there are an awful lot of plagues in the bible um and there's an awful lot of of attempts by christians to understand why plagues happen and what people should do in plagues and and this seems to me you know an incredibly valuable resource and and something you know i'd much rather hear um a bishop talk about that than than kind of tell me to wash my hands i mean i know that washing hands is important but i don't want to hear it from from people who i i would want to hear more from i i mean they may have been doing this and also i mean i i i had this odds kind of um during the lockdown i read um the canterbury tales and the great opening to the canterbury tales when chaucer goes to a pub in april and he meets with all kinds of different people and he doesn't socially distance and he heads off on pilgrimage to canterbury to the shrine of saint thomas who heals the sick and i read it loads and loads of times before and this time around i it moved me and struck me in ways that i'd never done before because i suddenly realized that of course when chaucer was writing that plague was endemic in london and much worse during the winter months as we're we're finding out now you know you kind of you know when plague is endemic you you dread the winter and then when april comes suddenly uh plague retreats and you can start meeting strangers in pubs again and then you go out the joy of heading out going to a shrine where god's power to cure and heal is manifest you know in a miraculous way and it kind of inspired me to to set off on on a pilgrimage so i i'm midway through a pilgrimage to canterbury uh i'm not going there because i think that you know the shrine of st thomas is gone and canterbury is now an anglican cathedral protestant cathedral um so the idea that you you pray to saints for miracles is is obviously not part of the fabric but i think that the kind of the the the the impulse to um and i'm really thinking of this now to to to to to kind of take to take a route along a route that other people have taken to feel that you share in the experiences of people who have gone through something similar and who have explained it in a certain way and to to do as they have done and to see whether you can find a source of comfort in the way that they did i've found very powerful and i think that that's something that sense of communion with people in the past is something that that that christianity perhaps better than any other framework for making sense of what's going on provides because it does you know it goes back before christianity that thread goes all the way back to to to the you know the experience in the hebrew scriptures have played it's it's it's this vast kind of continuum this consolation this resource and i i i i didn't get the feeling that that i i i think that that is something that the churches could provide or could draw attention to or could structure and haven't done but then i i maybe they have been and i've missed it i mean i'm aware that i've it's it's kind of all slipped i've been too busy um living in the classical world and uh playing cricket all summer to have sounds nice you haven't been engaging with church politics but you have been playing qriket dear me yeah yeah on the sabbath too yeah yeah well these are these are prophetic words to to finish with uh tom and i i do take uh yeah i too take them to heart and i hope but um many more christians um do i've taken up so much of your time you've been very generous with it but i i do hope that people will go out and get uh dominion uh the making of the western minds and uh put the thesis to the test um figure out where this inheritance has come from and uh and and trace it back to its roots i think uh you did a terrific job tommen and just personally as a christian i my heart was warmed um especially as you speak of the cross and i and i think um seeing the cross at the heart of all things including human history um has done my faith a world of good so um i know that wasn't uh the intention to have anglican ministers be warmed in the cockles of their hearts but um it certainly has helped me and um i i recommend it hardly to many people but tom holland thank you so much for joining us on reset thanks very much for having me [Music]

Channel: Speak Life

Views: 169,330

Keywords: glen scrivener, speaklife, uk, God, history, Dominion, Christianity, Tom Holland, meaning crisis, Genesis, Reset

Id: favILmUsVdg

Length: 74min 13sec (4453 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020