-- Historian Tom Holland on the Christian Roots of the West --
Thus,
in this blogpost, I’ll introduce parts of an online lecture of British historian
Tom Holland. Holland wrote a book titled Dominion: The Making of the Western
Mind.
Holland,
Tom. Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. London: Little-Brown,
2019. (references will be to this originally British hardcover edition)
The
North American edition’s sub-title is more explicitly Christian and religious:
Holland,
Tom. Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. New
York: Basic Books, 2019.
nowadays in this secular age, its basic “instincts –for good and ill—remain thoroughly Christian” (p. xxix). That is what I mean when I say above that anyone who has been or is influenced by “western” ideas can be compared to fish swimming in an originally Christian fishpond. Thus, if we want to understand our western culture and civilization or, to use the metaphor again, the fishpond-habitat in which we swim, we’ll have to face its Christian heritage and ancestry. Holland bluntly puts it this way: “To live in a Western country is to live in a society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions” (p. xxv).
To
take Holland’s last quoted point further, this means that although many parts
of the West now are societies characterized by great diversity in terms of
culture and ethnicity, being and living in the West still means to be swimming
in a fishpond that is full of Christian influence even though many are not
aware of it.
The text of Holland’s lecture follows below. The parts in blue are my own annotations. Sub-headings are not part of the original lecture. Special thanks to my research assistant Danielle Rivest-Durand for helping me with this project.
*****
Tom Holland on his bestseller Dominion
De Balie
Published: 2020-02-25
Source in the public domain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLXyrrGRdJ8 (timestamp
8:05-26:15)
Originally Accessed: 2021-05-17
Description (from YouTube)
“Although Western-Europe is becoming more secular, Christian values are still at the core of our European society. Tom Holland’s bestseller, Dominion, tells the story of how Christianity transformed Europe and is still influencing the way we behave and think. Can Holland give Europeans a new story in a time where Europe seems to get more divided? He enters into conversation with De Balie-director Yoeri Albrecht about his recently acclaimed book.”
Transcription
Introductory Remarks
(timestamp 8:05)
Thank
you so much. Thank you so much everyone for coming. It’s such a pleasure to be
back at De Balie, not
least because the previous times that I’ve come here have actually played a
great part in inspiring me in wanting to write this new book, and indeed to
stress test some of the themes, some of the subjects. So, I’ve come here, and
I’ve talked variously about the beginnings of Islam, and about the Psalms, and
about Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and the Second World War. And all
of these elements are within the new book.
Dominion’s
Subtitle (timestamp 8:48)
I think
that the argument of the book is a sweeping one, and I don’t think I would have
had the nerve to embark on it if I had not had the chance to come to places
like De Balie and stress test them, so I’m very grateful to be back and have
the chance to talk about it. And yes, the book is, as the English subtitle has
it, a kind of about the making of the Western mind. But, ladies and gentlemen, The
Making of the Western Mind is a subtitle I did not choose. It was chosen by
my very, very nervous, very, very atheistical, very, very enthusiastic for the
Enlightenment-esque editor in London, who felt that any mention of Christianity
on the cover, whether in the form of, you know, a cross or whether in terms of
the subtitle might put people off. It’s not really about the making of the
Western mind. The Dutch subtitle alludes to what it really is; it’s about the
making of Christendom and how Christendom has made us.
The Dutch title is:
Heerschappij.
Hoe het christendom het Westen vormde (How
Christianity Shaped the West)
The North
American edition published from Basic Books of New York (2019) has this more
“grandiose” title: Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
The Goldfish Metaphor
(timestamp 10:07)
And the
argument really can be summed up very simply that the coming of
Christianity, its incubation, and its emergence, and its evolution in the world
of classical antiquity is the most decisively revolutionary moment certainly in
European history and, I think very possibly, globally as well. And that the
idea that I had in the back of my mind as I was writing it was that the West,
the modern West – if that’s a goldfish bowl and we are the goldfish, then the
waters that we swim in are Christian. (This is
where I get the fishpond metaphor!)
The Chernobyl Metaphor
(timestamp 10:55)
I found this illustration quite
helpful to show Holland’s argument in a more concrete way.
But
then when I had finished it, another metaphor struck me. There was a TV series
shown in England about Chernobyl. It was a drama, and there was a scene where
two of the apparatchiks who were trying to control this terrible rupture in the
power station are right up close to the radiation leak. And they look up, and
you can see the radioactivity leaking because it is ionizing the air. But then,
of course, the threat from the radiation is that as it spreads across the
forests of Ukraine, as it reaches Kiev, as it reaches Scandinavia, as it
reaches Amsterdam, the radioactivity is invisible. But the people are still
breathing it in, people are still being affected by it, even though they may
not be aware that it’s affecting them. And by that, I do not mean to say
that Christianity makes your hair drop out and kills you, but just that its
effect may not be obviously apparent. So, if you are in the kind of cathedral
that we had in the opening graphic – that’s kind of like being up close and
seeing the air ionizing. If you’re thinking about the Crusades, or Thomas
Aquinas, or the Pilgrim Fathers, of course you’re completely aware that Christianity
is having this transformative effective.
The Shaping Effect of Christianity
(timestamp 12:38)
But, if
you are thinking about things that may not seem to be distinctively Christian
at all – if you’re thinking about categories like homosexuality, if you’re
thinking about categories like the secular, even if you’re thinking about
categories like the very concepts of religion, all of which we may be tempted
to take for granted. In fact, we should not take these for granted. These are –
none of them –categories that would have meant anything to people in the Roman
Empire; they are highly culturally contingent, and they are bred of the
depths of Christian history, of Christian theology. And as I am reminded by
today’s reading that we just heard, by Christian scripture – and it’s a kind of
classic De Balie that I’ve never really talked about this before – but
of course, one of the many ways in which Christianity has shaped and molded us
in ways, again, that we often may not be aware of is through the impact of
biblical stories and biblical poetry and biblical imagery. And this is
something that I was already reflecting upon before I realized that this was
what we had arranged to have.
In the following section,
Holland gives a more concrete example of how Christian thinking has stamped western
mentalities. It concerns instances in Dutch history when the western belief
that Christians are now “the new Israel” works for good as well as for ill.
The Dutch as the New Israel
(timestamp 14:15)
Yesterday,
I went to Leiden; this morning, I went to Harlem. And, as every foreigner who
comes here inevitably is, one struck by the beauty and the kind of
self-confidence of the centers of these beautiful towns, these expressions of
the Dutch Golden Age. And, of course, what it was that made the Dutch Republic
so successful, so culturally productive, so wealthy is the subject of huge
amounts of historiographical inquiry; people write about the economy, people
write about all kinds of aspects. But it seems clear to me that a crucial part
of it is the sense the Dutch in the 17th century have of themselves as
a new Israel. And of course, both Harlem and Leiden absolutely focus on how
both were the objects of great sieges.
And the fact that Harlem was eventually conquered didn’t drive the Dutch to despair because they had the assurance that even though Jerusalem had fallen to the Babylonians, nevertheless, the God of Israel did not abandon his people, and say the Dutch could have the assurance that their God would not abandon them. And that was the sense that was sharpened for them by the fact that Leiden did not surrender and that the floodwaters came and drowned the chariots of Pharaoh. And the Dutch could imagine themselves as a people redeemed from slavery, offered a new land, a new prospect, and this sense in which our minds – all our minds – because my country too, England – the beginning of England – the first history we have of England written by a monk called Bede. Again, in Bede’s Account, the Anglos, the Saxons, [and] the Jutes come to Britain and are given this land. And whenever there are kings who are ungodly, who opposed the coming of the church, fascinating thing, they all drown like Pharaoh, so again this sense the English have of themselves as a chosen people, the sense the Dutch have of themselves as the chosen people. This is part of the fabric of how all of us, as Europeans, conceive of ourselves and, of course, this has been for good. It has fostered – it’s helped foster – the astonishing civilizational achievements of the Dutch Republic in the 17th century.
The “New Israel” Self-Identification and
Shaping History (timestamp 17:04)
But
it’s also not necessarily been positive for certain people in the rest of the
world. So, when the Dutch go to South Africa and they settle there, again, they
consider themselves a chosen people. And this, of course, is bad news for the equivalent
of the Canaanites, who find that their land has been given to people who are
claiming it in the name of God. And again, over and over and over again, the
English, you know, when they go to North America, when they go to South Africa,
when they go to Australia, again, this is a part of the narrative that they
also like to tell about themselves. And so, the power of these stories has
literally shaped the way that European history has evolved. They’ve been
written and rewritten over again, kind of like palimpsests and they – these
stories – continue to, I think, affect and shape the way that Europe functions
and has behaved over the course of the past few years.
The above are concrete
examples of how biblical tropes became a way for a people to understand and
interpret what was happening to them in history and I repeat: for good as well
as for ill, in this case, resulting in the oppression of others.
Jesus, the Storytelling and Shaper
(timestamp 18:20)
The
book culminates with Angela Merkel and Viktor Orban. Now, I do not think that
Angela Merkel would have let a million people from different parts of the
world, different cultural backgrounds into her country if she had not been
raised in the parsonage of her Lutheran pastor father. Learning, not just
absorbing not just moral principles, ethical principles, but absorbing stories.
And
Jesus, among the many other things, Jesus has to rank as the most influential
teller of short stories who’s ever existed. And perhaps one of his most
influential stories is the story of the Good Samaritan. The idea that we all
have a responsibility to care for people who may be very different to us, and
the power of that – the power of the moral teaching embedded in that story – is
implicit in the narrative. And it’s something, I think, that the historians,
philosophers, even theologians may forget -- the power of a simple narrative.
And yet, that story, that parable that Christ told, continues to reverberate
into the present. But of course, again, there are many contradictory ways in
which this inheritance of biblical narratives can impact on us because, just as
the Dutch at the siege of Harlem, at the siege of Leiden saw themselves as a
godly people resisting enemies, who like the Midianites, or the Assyrians, or
the Babylonians environed them around. So also, for Viktor Orban,
the leader of a nation that had been occupied by the Ottomans for many
centuries, so we’ll say he was able to draw on the biblical heritage to cast
his people as a people environed around: equally Christian, equally shaped by
the power of Christian narratives of biblical narratives, but leading to very
different conclusions, very different results.
The Beacon of Light
(timestamp 20:48)
And I
think that when you look at the totality of Christian and European history,
what is striking is not just the potency of certain ideas, certain moral
teachings, certain ethical teachings, certain ways of conceiving the world –
all of which are hugely important – but it is also the power of narratives,
the power of certain images. And we heard one of them in the reading that
this event began with: “In him, the word, was life, and that life was the light
of all mankind, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not
overcome it.” And those lines are, as so often in the New Testament, drawing on
images and ideas in the old and specifically the lines of Isaiah, that the
people who walk in darkness have seen a great light; they’ve been lost in the
murk and now, illumination has come to them, enlightenment has come to them.
And this is a way of seeing the world – the world is lost in darkness and light
has come – that will inspire the very first generations of Christians to
venture out into a world that they see is lost to idolatry and superstition and
darkness, and bring them light.
And
again, in the Early Middle Ages when people from newly converted England come
here, come to the Netherlands, and put their rough churches among the Frisian
wilds, and then go further east again into the forests of Saxony; Boniface, a
man from my own southwest of England – one of the very few saints to have had a
nuclear power station after him, I’m proud to say – ventures into the forests
of Saxony and he chops down a tree, great tree of Thor, as an emblem of his
determination to destroy superstition, to banish idolatry, and to bring the
people who live in the murk of those Saxon forests into the light of Christ.
And this becomes a crucial way in which the church, the medieval church (what
becomes the Roman Church over the course of the Middle Ages) sees itself as a
beacon of light. It is the enemy of idolatry; it is the enemy of superstition.
Enemy of Idolatry, Enemy of Superstition
(timestamp 23:33)
But
then, of course, in the 16th century, that gets turned against it.
It’s part of what is at issue when the Dutch and the Spanish are facing off
against one another – it’s that the Dutch Protestants have come to see the
Church of Rome as the embodiment of superstition and idolatry. And for
Protestants, the idea of enlightenment, the idea that the heart can be opened
up to the spirit and light can blaze all around becomes a crucial part of their
self-image. And over the course of the 17th century in the
Netherlands, this is a fundamental concept – the idea that enlightenment can
blaze amid darkness. And by the 18th century, this concept has come
to be turned not just against the Roman Church, but against the Christian
Church itself, against the very fabric of Christianity, against the very idea
of what has come to be defined as religion. And the idea of the enlightenment,
a blaze of light that all can access across the world from Shanghai to Lima, is
a crucial part of the way in which the philosophes and then the revolutionaries
in France conceived themselves, and they see this as a new beginning, a
bringing of the people who walked in darkness into light, a rejection of
superstition, a toppling of idols. And yet, even to put it in those terms is to
demonstrate how fundamentally Christian it remains. How deeply, when we talk
about enlightenment, when we condemn Christianity as superstition, when we say
that we have toppled the idols, we are just replicating themes and images and
stories that go back over the two thousand years of Christian history, and back
even before the coming of Christianity to the writings of the Hebrew prophets.
Closing Remarks
(timestamp 25:32)
And
I’ve increasingly come, over the course the of writing this book and then
talking about it, to think that it’s almost impossible to escape this [Christian] legacy, to stand outside it. The very
process of trying to emancipate oneself from Christianity merely – it tangles well
up in its web even more. And whether that is something to be celebrated – I
increasingly think it is – or whether it is something to be deplored is, in a
sense, irrelevant. It is, just as I said, beginning. It is the waters in
which all of us swim. Thank you.
*****
Concluding Reflections by JKK
Holland did not mention in the above lecture a more personal incident that he recounts in chapter one of the book and later on in the Q&A of the online lecture. He shares that he was raised Anglican but, at a young age, he was more fascinated by the seemingly glorious historical images from classical western civilizations represented of course by Greek civilization and the Roman empire. As he continued his historical work though, he became increasingly bothered by the sheer brutality of the Romans and Greeks. Intriguingly, he gradually came to the realization that his many good and humane values as a modern western person have been crucially shaped not so much by the classic civilizations that he once admired so much but by Christendom which took over Greece and Rome and the whole of western civilization at a certain point in its history. These many western values such as democracy, critical thinking, civility, care for the oppressed, among many other things, are actually rooted in the West’s Christian heritage.
I agree strongly with Holland in this regard. And even though more and more people in the West are disregarding and are even hostile toward the West’s Christian heritage in our increasingly secularized mileu, there has to be a way to critically retrieve and valorize the Christian heritage of the West, a project that I continue to work on.
(I've written a more extensive reflection on the Christian heritage of the West based on philosopher of religion Don Cupitt's thinking. It's entitled "The Secularized West - Source of Immorality and Godlessness or (Flawed) Embodiment of the 'Kingdom of God'?".)
---
No comments:
Post a Comment