FB18 – Tom Holland’s book, Dominion
Tom Holland’s book, Dominion (2019).
This is an amazing read for both Christian believer and otherwise.
Let me point to Timothy Keller for his review (Gospel In Life website, 2020 Fall). Later I may add other perspectives and direct access to an audio version of the book.
Here are the opening lines of Keller’s review:
Tom Holland has written a book that is not so much a history of Christianity, but a history of the complex role Christianity has had in the formation of modern western culture. He rightly calls that influence “paradoxical” because, first, the Christian church has often spectacularly failed in its ideals, and other times it has been disastrously divided over what those ideals actually were. Holland gives us all the gory details. He is no apologist for the church and despite his considerable respect for certain aspects of the Christian faith, he does not profess personal faith.
But the bottom line is this—it is hard to overstate the importance of Tom Holland’s new book Dominion: How The Christian Revolution Remade the World. The sub-title tells you the basic thesis. He makes a readable and yet at the same time, extraordinarily well-documented case that the central values and priorities of modern, western, secular culture have actually come from Christianity. And even now, when most of the educated classes have abandoned Christianity and when religion is in sharp decline among the populace, Christianity has such an enduring, pervasive influence that we cannot condemn the church for its failures without invoking Christian teaching and beliefs in order to do so.
https://quarterly.gospelinlife.com/tom-hollands-dominion…/
Free audio version of the complete book, Dominion, available for listening here:
https://archive.org/details/tom-holland-dominion
First published on Facebook Page (My Reads and Views):
https://www.facebook.com/RonInRegina/posts/429788005556756
First published: 2022/02/04
Latest revision: 2022/05/13