PART THREE

Below is my interview with Tom Holland about, Dominion, The Making Of The Western Mind (listen via podcast).

Here are reflections 1-6, and here are reflections 7 and 8. In outline they are

1. Tom Holland gets the ethic of the cross.
2. Tom Holland gets the theology of the cross.
3. Dominion is a continuation of In The Shadow of the Sword
4. Dominion is the perfect contrast to In The Shadow of the Sword.
5. There is a huge gap in the book. And that’s deliberate.
6. The avoidance of the Gospels is still a bit of a dodge.
7. Having said this, Holland can help us immensely with the question of historicity.
8. Holland is very aware that history is crucial to the faith.

9. It’s either Christ or the abyss

Quite early in the interview Holland mentions Nietzsche as the supreme example of someone who has clearly seen the way of the cross and rejected it. Nietzsche therefore shows us how remarkable (and admirable) the ethics of the cross really are because the alternative seems to be nihilism. I put to Holland that he’s presented a stark binary for us: “It’s either the abyss [i.e. the abyss of nihilism] or it’s ‘Christ and him crucified.’” I ask whether there is a third way? Holland responds:

“That is the course that, by and large, the west has taken. It has [said] ‘We’ll take over Christian morals and ethics thank you very much, but we’re not actually going to bother with any of the mumbo jumbo that requires us to go to church.’ The question that is posed by that of course is whether or not you can continue to have the bloom if the roots have been pulled up. And we don’t know the answer to that as a society.”

Fascinatingly, Holland thinks Nietzsche was right that the bloom is from Christian roots. The morals and ethics we take for granted in the west are inextricably Christian. Their historical (and we might say theological) contingency is irreducible. If this is the case then it does seem to me that the “third way” experiment of the secular west is doomed to failure. It really is Christ or the abyss. Holland doesn’t say it in these terms. I’m sure he has more hope for the secular west, but I wonder how warranted that is. For me the binary that Holland suggests sounds remarkably like “the cross or the pit!”, “Jesus or the abyss!” Which, of course, is what Christians have been banging on about for quite some time.

Once again, Holland is not presenting the stark binary that I am. But it seems to me that following his train of thought has some some very Christian-sounding implications.

10. Tom Holland’s objection to personal faith is, itself, very Christian. 

Our time had already gone when I asked my final question about personal faith. I didn’t feel I had time to come back on his reason for not believing. He cited, as he often does, the dinosaurs.

Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, but it’s occurred to me since the interview that a good riposte would be the one which Tom uses for those who disbelieve his thesis. Essentially it’s to say: “That’s a crucial objection, well made. And it also betrays how Christian your assumptions are!” I really like that tactic. I think Tom’s excellent at it, so let me use it on the master himself. Here’s my imagined comeback:

“Dinosaurs, yes! I too have such questions. Species come and go. Extinction level events occur. And all of it seems an unacceptable violation of humanity’s supposedly unique dignity. But I sense that the outcry here is coming from a very Christian place. The Christian story — unique in so many ways — gives exceptional dignity to humans. And, yes, it seems contradicted by every other story, whether religious or scientific. If the Christian story of God’s solidarity with man is true then it will seem false when judged from the perspective of every other story. That’s the nature of the case.

But I wonder whether you’re drawn to this story because of how Christian your instincts are. You want to have a problem with suffering and catastrophe, with a mere survival of the fittest, and with the extinction, not only of glorious creatures, but of human exceptionalism too. You’re right to find a problem here. Christianity is the invitation to step inside the story and have the problem. Really have it. Because outside this story you can’t really object to ‘nature red in tooth and claw’, can you?

Of course you’ll counter — and rightly so — ‘These problems cast doubt on the story itself. How can the story be true when contradicted by untold suffering, death and degradation?’ But I think you know the answer to that question. You’ve written a whole book about it. The Christian story of God’s solidarity with man includes the most bewildering chaos and darkness. The God of the cross doesn’t merely coexist with baffling evil, hopes dashed, and excruciating pain, he includes these elements in his greater glory. We might ask, “If dinosaurs can go to the wall, why not humans?” But at the cross the stakes are raised even higher! We don’t just see man go to the wall, but God! And out of that folly, weakness and godforsakenness comes meaning and hope beyond all expectation. There’s nowhere else to truly have your question than inside the story. And there’s no-one else to trust your question to but to this God — the God of the cross.

And the thing is, Tom, the person who’s made me feel the wonder of this God most in the last fortnight has been you. So my prayer is not that you’ll ditch your question, but that you’ll come home to the place where such questions — and such questioners! — truly belong.”

PART TWO

Last week I interviewed Tom Holland about his new book, Dominion, The Making Of The Western Mind. If you haven’t seen it, do have a watch below (or listen via podcast).

You can read my first 6 reflections in full here. In outline they are

1. Tom Holland gets the ethic of the cross.
2. Tom Holland gets the theology of the cross.
3. Dominion is a continuation of In The Shadow of the Sword
4. Dominion is the perfect contrast to In The Shadow of the Sword.
5. There is a huge gap in the book. And that’s deliberate.
6. The avoidance of the Gospels is still a bit of a dodge.

Here are reflections 7 and 8:

 7. Having said this, Holland can help us immensely with the question of historicity. 

The gap which Holland leaves in his book is extremely suggestive. He takes us from BC to AD and, without looking directly at the nuclear blast, the camera instead focuses on the astonished witnesses — Paul and the recipients of his letters. Holland leaves us in no doubt that there’s been a rupture and it has caused the greatest revolution in history. This rupture needs explaining. From the expanding universe of Christianity we can infer an initial big bang. And while Holland won’t name the ‘bang’ definitively, he’s very happy to report on what Paul insists it is. Paul insists that the rupture is the historical death and resurrection of Christ. 

Around 17:00, I ask Holland whether he’s making Paul’s letters themselves into the rupture. Was it Paul’s philosophical fusion of internationalist Judaism and Stoicism that turned the world upside-down? I’d slightly feared that this was Holland’s thesis from one passage in Dominion but I was very glad to be put straight.

“I’m not hanging it all on the letters of Paul. Paul’s letters are, if you like, the first reader on the seismometer.”

Get that! The event that changed the world was prior. Paul was only a witness. And it’s not just Paul.

Holland makes the point that Paul is “an exceptionally argumentative writer but he never has to argue about” the happening of the gospel events. Whole communities scattered around the Mediterranean already know about the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s taken for granted. That’s significant. Holland also acknowledges in our interview how “incredibly early” is the creed of 1 Corinthians 15 — something that insists on the death, burial, resurrection and appearances of Christ.

But for me there’s something even more persuasive. It’s not an argument that Holland himself makes, but it’s one that his writings have strongly suggested to my way of thinking. In reading Holland I’ve been minded to do a basic counterfactual. It goes like this: If Christ had not been raised, what would be required of Paul and the other New Testament authors to pull off the hoax? Many, many things, but let me mention one. They would have to forge convincing biographies of Jesus that fuse all the elements present in the epistles, all the expectations of Hebrew hopes, and they would need to put warm flesh on Paul’s bare bones. I say ‘warm’ flesh because the artistry required to pull off the hoax seems to be to be the most extraordinary thing. A Hebrew scholar might be able to synthesise some of the prophetic data, perhaps even to suggest some plausible 1st century fulfilments. But how do you make it believable? How do you make it compelling, attractive, glorious? How do you combine a false history with an exceptional literary genius, and pull it off in the lifetimes of those who lived through the supposed events?

Holland himself is a massive fan of the gospels as literature. As he tweeted in 2017:

Listening to David Suchet read Mark’s Gospel at @StPaulsLondon, I reflect that Jesus is the most remarkable figure in world literature.

What an incredible coincidence that the most influential figure in world history turns out to be the most remarkable figure in world literature. If the Gospels were concocted to fill in theological gaps (rather than to reflect historical events) consider the pitch to a room full of potential Evangelists:

“OK, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Galatians was a big hit. We need a prequel. I want you to write us an origins story narrating the life of the greatest character in human history — God but also man, sinless but fully alive, pure but with profound depths, the Judge of the world but with bottomless compassion, the fulfilment of all Jewish hopes but with a global appeal, a man in time but a man for all times. We need sublime ethical teaching to drip from his lips — the kind that builds civilisations. We need extraordinary miracles from him — the kind that would have been noticed (and could therefore be contradicted) by the generation to which you’re writing. We need a believable narrative arc whereby he remains impeccably righteous but is nonetheless condemned as a blasphemer. And we need it all to stand up to scrutiny — Scriptural, theological, geographic, linguistic and historical. It needs to be believable both near and far, now and later, for those who’ve lived through these times and for generations hence. Go to it!”

Who could pull this off?

There does come a point when you have to admit: “You couldn’t make it up.”

8. Holland is very aware that history is crucial to the faith. 

During Q&A after Thursday’s lecture, a preacher from Cambridge asked Holland: 

“I wonder how far you think the cross of Christ will have genuine potency without an historical resurrection? To put it conversely, belief in an historical resurrection is what gave the Christian message such extraordinary attractiveness and power, because it meant that they might kill you but you’d be raised again. Whereas without an historical resurrection that promise seems a bit thin.” 

Holland responded: 

“Yes and that’s what Paul says: Without it, there’s nothing. If Christ is not risen from the dead then it’s folly and all our hopes are vain. Absolutely! It’s the historical specificity of it that makes ideas that… it’s just a recalibration of Adonis or Osiris so ridiculous. It’s the fact that it’s rooted in historical specificity and without that there’s nothing.”

Strong stuff. He didn’t elaborate further on his views, but in those 5 sentences he’s given us more than enough to go on.

In my next post I’ll make my final two observations:

9. It’s either Christ or the abyss

10. Tom Holland’s objection to personal faith is, itself, very Christian. 

PART ONE

Last week I interviewed Tom Holland about his new book, Dominion, The Making Of The Western Mind. If you haven’t seen the interview, do watch below (or listen via podcast).

Below are 6 reflections on the book and on our interaction. (Here are parts two and three).

1. Tom Holland gets the ethic of the cross. 

If the ethic of the cross means honouring the nobodies, then Tom has understood the cross well. I — a complete nobody — was cheeky enough to ask him for an interview on Twitter and he could not have been kinder or more accommodating. Very Christian!

2. Tom Holland gets the theology of the cross. 

Holland’s writing and speaking is shot through with astonishment at Christianity’s “molten heart: the image of a god dead on a cross.” The day after our interview I attended his lecture in Cambridge where he spoke about crucifixion among Persians, Romans and ISIS. The historical context brought home the wonder of the God of the cross as few preachers can manage it. Not enough Christians are as focused or as passionate about ‘the molten heart’ of the faith. We can learn much from his writing and speaking.

3. Dominion (about Christianity) is a continuation of In The Shadow of the Sword (about Islam). 

Throughout Holland’s earlier book, In The Shadow of the Sword, Daniel chapter 2 is repeatedly referenced. It speaks of four cruel kingdoms represented by a statue made of four kinds of material. Eventually they are all overthrown by a simple rock that strikes the feet — the fourth kingdom. (This simple rock seems parallel to ‘the lowliest of men’ in Daniel 4:17 who will eventually mediate the ‘dominion’ of God over all the earth (4:32)). In Daniel 2 this rock grows into a kingdom that fills the earth. In the end it has sole dominion.

Throughout In The Shadow, the identity of these players is kept somewhat ambiguous. Maybe the fourth kingdom is Rome and Islam then is the dominating regime? Maybe Islam is the fourth kingdom and something else takes over? While we contemplate that possibility, Holland gets busy writing a follow-up book about an unlikely victor over the kingdoms of the classical world. In the lowliest way imaginable an unexpected hero sparks a revolution that overtakes the world. And the name of this book? Dominion.

4. Dominion is the perfect contrast to In The Shadow of the Sword. 

Dominion is, in many ways, the opposite of In The Shadow Of The Sword. Early on in the interview I put this thesis to Tom — he neither endorsed it nor shot it down. I think it’s basically right but I’ll let the viewer decide. The Shadow Of The Sword looks at Islam (something strange to the modern western mind) and demonstrates how it naturally arose from the forces of late antiquity. On the other hand Christianity is natural to our minds — it’s the water we swim in — but its origins are anything but natural. The preaching of the cross was an astonishing “rupture”. 

The comparison is instructive. Islam is what you get when you stir the pot of Christian, Jewish, Persian, Roman, Greek and Zoroastrian ingredients. “Christ and him crucified” was folly and weakness to everyone to whom it was preached yet somehow it has proved to be the power of God and the wisdom of God. 

To my mind this offers two ways in which Christianity commends itself.

Think about then… Christianity was not natural then (which suggests a supernatural origin).
Think about now… Christianity is natural now (which suggests a supernatural providence).

5. There is a huge gap in the book. And that’s deliberate. 

Dominion does not engage with issues regarding the historical Jesus. The Gospels are passed over. Holland uses Paul as our earliest source on Christ and leaves alone Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (although he quotes from them continually through the rest of the book, which is interesting!). 

Does this mean the historicity of the gospel events is unimportant? You might get that impression as he speaks in terms of Christian ‘myth’. The gospel is, he says, the most potent “myth” humanity has known. But (see from 36:50) he insists: 

“I don’t mean ‘mythic’ as an insult. I mean mythic in the sense that… it transcends ideology, it transcends commandments… it’s like drama.”

In the book, Holland leaves it as an open question whether the myth really happened. But his purpose for the book is to underline the power of the myth. If you don’t like the word ‘myth’, substitute the word ‘kerygma’, or ‘preaching’, or even ‘gospel’. Before anything else, Holland wants us to know the unmistakable, epochal, civilisation-building effects of this drama, this myth, this gospel. If we want to know whether the myth happened we’ll have to go elsewhere. But once the intended scope of the book is understood, Holland’s approach is not a weakness. After all, didn’t Pascal say “Make good people wish it were true, then show them that it is”? Well Holland has helped us greatly with that first step.

6. Having said this, the avoidance of the Gospels is still, at times, a bit of a dodge.

It’s entirely understandable that Holland might want to save ‘historical Jesus’ questions for another day. He doesn’t need to engage them in order to forward his thesis. Strategically I see the benefits. But at times the avoidance has the effect of making the Gospels seem like another kind of literature, somehow divorced from history itself. It would be an interesting job to count up the sources Holland has depended on for his telling of history from 479 BC to AD 2015. And it would be interesting to calculate the average gap in time between each writer and the events they chronicle. I’ll bet the gospel writers would fare very well indeed by comparison with any of Holland’s ancient sources.

He complains that an author like Luke is writing “too late” but then tells us about Plutarch’s account of Julius Caesar — written around a century later. By comparison you want to start singing Spin Doctors songs on Luke’s behalf: “It’s not late, it’s early!” Certainly the Gospels are later than the Pauline epistles, but both Paul and the evangelists write earlier than the majority of sources on which ancient historians usually rely. 

On this historicity question, I asked at one point about the “minimal facts” arguments for the resurrection. In response he compared those arguments to claims that Mohammed encountered the angel in the cave and brought divine revelation to the world. I don’t think the comparison holds for a number of reasons. First, as Paul says (though we only have Luke’s word for it!), the gospel events “were not done in a corner” (Acts 26:26). A private encounter with an angel is not at all like the public execution of Christ, nor like the public proclamation of his empty tomb. Secondly, the Quran is unlike the New Testament in that the Quran is explicable as a natural outcome of the confluence of forces in late antiquity. The New Testament is the report of a “rupture”, a “singularity”, “astonishing.” It’s really not the same (see point 4). Thirdly, as Holland elsewhere notes, the comparison between Islam and Christianity is not really between the Quran and the Bible, but between the Quran and Christ. The Bible for Holland is the spike on the seismograph. Christ himself (or the Christ ‘event’) is the real history-maker. The ways of investigating Muslim and Christian claims are quite different. And therefore we can’t just file away the evidence for the resurrection in a category along with very different Muslim claims. Jesus’ cave is not like Mohammed’s.

In future posts (here and here), read my final four reflections…

7. Holland does help us immensely with the historicity question.

8. Holland is very aware that history is crucial to the faith.

9. It’s either Christ or the abyss.

10. Tom’s objection to personal faith is, itself, very Christian.