A review of ‘Dominion’ by Tom Holland

Tom Holland is a brilliantly successful fiction author, non-fiction author, podcaster, TV producer, playwright, translator, and more—he, in short, is a man of the humanities. He is a “secular humanist” in that sense, but, in Dominion, he wrestles with what he admitted in 2016: 

Familiarity with the biblical narrative of the crucifixion has dulled our sense of just how completely novel a deity Christ was . . . . [Christianity] is the principal reason why, by and large, most of us who live in post-Christian societies still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. It is why we generally assume that every human life is of equal value. In my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian.

In Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (2019), Tom Holland has a monumental task: Take the breadth of Western history, from Ancient Greece to the 21st century, and show that Christianity, not Greece or Rome, formed the bedrock of Western society. 

He accomplishes this aim in a remarkable fashion. 

What is Dominion, by Tom Holland, about? 

Dominion is readable, well-researched, honest, and witty. It’s not without flaws, but this work ranks alongside Carl Truman’s magnum opus, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, as foundational for understanding the West and our current upheaval of traditional values.

Holland is an accomplished novelist, so although long (500 pages or so), Dominion is a breeze to read. Although he covers most major turning points of history, what he chooses to analyze is almost philosophical. 

Tradition and reform, progress and conservatism, violence or love—Holland navigates both sides of every historical coin through the lens of Christianity. What he shows is not that every good thing in the history of the West comes from Christianity but that the very idea of morality as we understand it arose from radical Christian principles of love.

The West’s Christian foundation of morality

The idea that every human is equal before God and deserving of universal rights is a direct result of the radical nature of Jesus and his followers’ claim of love, kindness to the marginalized, and universal morality. 

Did some justify slavery or racism by referencing the Bible? Yes, but only through the teeth of painfully obvious hypocrisy. Just as the Constitution endowed people with “unalienable rights,” many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves. Of course, the anti-racist and anti-slavery movements have always been fundamentally Christian. Before Christianity and, generally, outside the West’s influence, slavery and xenophobia were facts of life—not evils. 

So, while atheist humanists have always pointed out that religion causes some of history’s greatest evils, the fact that we call those things evil is itself Christian. 

In the concluding paragraph of Dominion, he writes, 

“[Many Christians] over the course of this time, have themselves become agents of terror. They have put the weak in their shadow; they have brought suffering, and persecution, and slavery in their wake. Yet the standards by which they stand condemned for this are themselves Christian; nor, even if churches across the West continue to empty, does it seem likely that these standards will quickly change.”

This is his conclusion. How does he argue for it? 

Dominion’s scope—an impressive 2,000 years

Holland examines dozens of major movements of history, split into three sections: Antiquity, Christendom, and modernity. As he covers the history of the early Christian martyrs, he points out how bewildering and unintelligible the idea is that dying a lowly, shameful, criminal’s death, could bring immeasurable heavenly glory. The weak and lowly honored and lifted up is incomprehensible without Christianity. Holland hammers the radicalness of this claim, in contrast to other ancient civilizations. 

That flipping of values on its head echoes throughout Western history. 

More than just ancient or medieval thought, he examines modern movements. The Beatles, for example, who were all at one time atheists, wrote “All you need is love.” Where did such a sentiment come from? Where else but the Christian tradition. He examines thinkers, not just events. He covers Herodotus, Homer, Paul the apostle, Origen, John Calvin, Darwin, Nietzsche, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and countless others. 

Remember—Tom Holland is not a Christian

While Holland’s introduction to Dominion reads almost like a Christian apologetic, it’s important to remember (especially in his coverage of the apostle Paul), that he’s not a Christian. Take his insights there with a grain of salt. He doesn’t believe the Bible is God’s inspired Word, even if he does believe it inspired the Western world. 

His coverage of the times in which the Bible was written is insightful and helpful for Christians to reflect on, even if we disagree. It forces us to ask, “What do I believe about the Bible’s origins? What does it mean to interpret Scripture faithfully?” 

I think in a couple of places, he thoroughly misinterprets Paul, and, without training as a theologian, misses important biblical context to certain claims. However, other insights in the early sections were extremely helpful. For example, it was illuminating to realize certain Christian phrases, like “gospel,” which means “good news,” were first a Roman proclamation of Augustus Caesar (the “son of god” to the Romans), that supposedly ushered in a golden age of peace. This contrast shows how the New Testament’s claims radically opposed contemporary Roman ideas of peace, deity, and salvation. 

Without Christianity

What do we get without Christianity in modernity? He spends some time addressing this question by examining Nietzsche, Darwinian evolution, radical Islam, and fascism. 

He writes, “[According to Hitler], ‘Apes massacre all fringe elements as alien to their community.’ Hitler did not hesitate to draw the logical conclusion. ‘What is valid for monkeys must be all the more valid for humans.’ Man was subject to the struggle for life, and to the need to preserve the purity of his race, as any other species. To put this into practice was not cruelty. It was simply the way of the world.” 

Holland’s implied conclusion is that other sources of ethics simply reduce to power, to “might makes right” in the atheistic evolutionism, or Neitzschie’s “superman,” where strength is honorable and power is beautiful. 

If we follow these to their conclusion, we receive ideologies like Nazism as our reward. The very idea of universal morality is itself, a thoroughly Christian one to Holland.

History for the 21st-century 

This work, like all good history, will make you seriously reflect on modern conflicts.

As we’ve mentioned, the paradoxes of Christianity in the West—both defending tradition and progress, as well as the very idea of morality—are perhaps seen most clearly in the paradox of two “cultural war” phenomena: The LGBTQ movement and the rise of Donald Trump. 

In the case of LGBTQ, modern feminism, and “intersectionality,” all purport to uphold the oppressed and marginalized—precisely Christianity’s essence. As Holland argues, without the foundation of Christianity, “wokeness” makes no sense, even as the movement vehemently critiques Christianity itself. On the other hand, the paradox of Evangelical Christians supporting a president like Trump, whose strong-dominates-weakness mentality is constantly on display, comes into sharp light for Holland. 

These contemporary ideas, political movements, and more are ripe for reflection after reading Dominion. 

My recommendation

Read Dominion yourself. Let its fascinating perspective on history cast light on the modern day. Holland’s honest, if secular, examination of Christian history and the West is illuminating and thought-provoking. To my mind, it’s best red side-by-side with Carl Truman’s Christian perspective in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. 

For our hope, as Christians, is not in “the West.” It’s not in Holland’s secularized version of Christendom, but in the one, eternally true God, who is love, and who historically lived, died, and resurrected. The power of that message will never lose its draw, for it truly is “good news” and will prove true when history comes to an end on Judgment Day.

Finally, pray for Tom Holland’s salvation. Since publishing Dominion, he’s had fruitful, interesting discussions with Christian theologians and thinkers. He’s expressed continual humility and interest in the Christian faith. And while he hasn’t reached the point of placing his faith in Christ, we can trust that seeds are planted with each of those conversations (1 Corinthians 3:6). 

Will you pray that God brings about the growth necessary for him to accept Jesus as his Lord? 

Notable Quotes

“Gregory [of Nyssa], more clearly than anyone before him, traced the implications of Christ’s choice to live and die as one of the poor to its logical conclusion. Dignity, which no philosopher had ever taught might be possessed by the striking, toiling masses, was for all.” (123)

“[Abolishing slavery] was the rainbow seen by Noah over the floodwaters; it was the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea; it was the breaking of the Risen Christ from his tomb. Britain, a country that for so long had been lost in the valley of the shadow of death, had emerged at last into light.” (414)

The following quote was written a couple of years before Dawkins spoke of being a “cultural Christian.” Holland became prophetic (or perhaps Dominion convinced Dawkins). “Dawkins—agnostic, secularist and humanist that he is—absolutely has the instinct of someone brought up in a Christian civilization.” (523) 

“As in Italy, so in Germany, fascism worked to combine the glamour and the violence of antiquity with that of the modern world. There was place in this vision of the future for the mewling feebleness of Christianity.” (456)

“To Augustine of Hippo, it was precisely the diversity of the Christian people, the joining together of every social class, that constituted its chief glory.” (137)

“To the Roman authorities, the pretensions of martyrs were liable to seem so ludicrous, so utterly offensive, as to verge on the incomprehensible.” (93)