# Tom Holland British popular historian (b. 1968) whose 2019 book *Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World* (Basic Books / Little, Brown) became the touchstone modern argument that contemporary Western moral commitments, including those used to attack Christianity, are themselves Christian-derived. Holland is not a confessing Christian (he describes himself as "culturally Christian" but not a believer); his significance for Christian apologetics is the **borrowed-capital meta-defeater** his work supplies: secular-Western moral assumptions about human dignity, equality, the wrongness of cruelty, the protection of the vulnerable, and the criticism of power are not religion-neutral universal-rational deliverances but the specifically-Christian inheritance of Western culture. The argument is deployed extensively across the codex's objection-defeater apparatus (the [Christians Behaving Badly](/codex/christians-behaving-badly/) / [Atheism](/codex/atheism/) / [Religion Causes Violence Objection](/codex/religion-causes-violence-objection/) / [Spare the Rod Objection](/codex/spare-the-rod-objection/) / [Biblical Slavery Objection](/codex/biblical-slavery-objection/) / [Atheism Cannot Justify Compassion](/codex/atheism-cannot-justify-compassion/) / [Atheism Targets the Vulnerable (Recruitment-Dynamic Defeater)](/codex/atheism-targets-the-vulnerable-recruitment-dynamic-defeater/) cluster). Holland co-hosts *The Rest Is History* podcast (with Dominic Sandbrook, 2020-), one of the world's most popular history podcasts. ## Biography - **1968**, born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK; raised in a non-religious household. - **Cambridge**, studied English and Latin at Queens' College, Cambridge; first-class honours. - **Oxford**, doctoral work in Lord Byron, never completed. - **1990s-early 2000s**, early novels (*The Vampyre* 1995; *Slave of My Thirst* 1997) and historical-narrative works. - **2003**, *Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic* (Doubleday), popular-history breakthrough on the late Republic. - **2005**, *Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West* (Doubleday), Greco-Persian Wars. - **2008**, *Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom* (Little, Brown), early-medieval Europe. - **2012**, *In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World* (Little, Brown), late-antique transition; engages early-Islamic-history skeptically. - **2015**, *Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar* (Doubleday), Julio-Claudians. - **2019**, ***Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World*** (Basic Books / Little, Brown), the touchstone work for Christian-borrowed-capital arguments. - **2020-**, co-hosts *The Rest Is History* podcast with historian Dominic Sandbrook; one of the most-listened-to history podcasts globally. - **2023**, *Pax: War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age*, completes Roman history trilogy with *Rubicon* and *Dynasty*. ## *Dominion*, the central thesis *Dominion* argues that Western secular-moral commitments, human equality, individual dignity, sexual ethics constraining the powerful, the duty of care for the weak, the conception of historical-progress as moral-improvement, are not religiously-neutral deliverances of "reason" or "civilization" but are specifically the residue of Christianity's two-millennia-long reshaping of European thought. The argument's empirical case spans 21 chapters from St. Paul through to 21st-c. moral controversies (Holland concludes with chapters on #MeToo, secular humanism, the New Atheist movement). Key Holland claims (paraphrased): - **Pre-Christian Greco-Roman moral commitments differ radically from contemporary Western ones.** Slavery, infanticide, the unconstrained sexual exploitation of subordinates, the public spectacle of suffering, and the moral-priority of the strong over the weak were normal and largely-uncontested in pre-Christian classical antiquity. Cicero on slaves; Seneca on suicide; Roman family-paterfamilias-power; the pagan-philosophical critique of compassion (Stoics on *apatheia*). - **Christianity introduced a moral revolution.** Specifically: the Imago Dei doctrine (every human bears the divine image, regardless of social position; load-bearing for human equality / abolitionism / civil rights); the cross-as-power-inversion (the suffering victim is the divine winner; load-bearing for victim-centric ethics); the critique of power's self-justification (Augustine *De Civitate Dei*; Holland traces this into liberation theology and modern political ethics); the protection of the weak (early Christian critique of infanticide, gladiatorial combat, sexual exploitation). - **Modern secular morality inherits this Christian frame even when explicitly rejecting Christianity.** Holland documents how 19th-c. abolitionists, civil-rights activists, feminists, and progressive moralists have argued from explicitly-Christian premises (or, when secular, from Christianity-derived premises that are not available without the historical Christian inheritance). The "moral progress" narrative of secular Westerners is a Christian-eschatological narrative re-clothed. - **Therefore, secular-Western moralists who attack Christianity using moral-categories that Christianity supplied are engaged in a borrowed-capital operation.** The categories of "cruelty is wrong," "the powerful should not exploit the weak," "all humans are morally equal," "sexual coercion is wrong" are not natural-rational-universal claims; they are the specific moral-anthropology of Christianity. Holland is explicit that the borrowed-capital argument **does not establish Christianity is true**, the question of whether the resurrection happened is independent. His point is **historical** not **apologetic**: regardless of theology, the *intellectual ownership* of Western moral commitments belongs to Christianity, and secular moralists who deploy those commitments owe Christianity acknowledgment. ## Apologetic value Holland's significance for the Christian apologetic apparatus is the **borrowed-capital meta-defeater** he supplies, useful across many specific objections: 1. **Christians-behaving-badly objection**: when atheists cite the Crusades, Inquisition, slavery-defense, or clergy-abuse as evidence against Christianity, the *moral framework* the atheist deploys ("these were wrong because they violated human dignity") is itself Christian-derived. Holland: "the criticism of Christianity *as Christianity has framed criticism* is itself Christian." See [Christians Behaving Badly](/codex/christians-behaving-badly/) for the deployment. 2. **Religion-causes-violence objection**: the moral-framework of "violence is wrong" the New Atheist deploys against religion is itself a Christian moral-anthropology heritage. Without the Christian inheritance, "violence is wrong" is a Stoic / Epicurean / Confucian / utilitarian / nihilist-position-of-many; the *intuitive certainty* of "violence is wrong" Western readers feel is a Christian-formed intuition. See [Religion Causes Violence Objection](/codex/religion-causes-violence-objection/). 3. **Atheism cannot justify compassion**: Holland's documentation of Christianity's introduction of compassion-as-moral-virtue (against Stoic *apatheia*) supplies the historical case for the structural-borrowed-capital claim. See [Atheism Cannot Justify Compassion](/codex/atheism-cannot-justify-compassion/). 4. **OT slavery / OT genocide / Bears-Mauling-Youth / OT-difficult-texts**: the *moral revulsion* the modern reader feels at OT difficult texts is itself a Christian-formed moral revulsion; ancient pagans would have felt no comparable revulsion at the same texts (and felt much more at non-OT-text matters that Christian-formed readers find unproblematic). See [Biblical Slavery Objection](/codex/biblical-slavery-objection/) / [Bears Mauling Youth Objection](/codex/bears-mauling-youth-objection/). 5. **Sexual ethics (Biblical Sexual Ethics Objection)**: Holland traces the Christian sexual-ethics revolution, the constraint of male sexual access to women + the protection of women + the priority of marriage, as a specifically-Christian moral revolution against the Greco-Roman background. Modern secular sexual-ethics commitments (no exploitation, no rape, age-of-consent, no harassment) are Christian-inheritance. See [Biblical Sexual Ethics Objection](/codex/biblical-sexual-ethics-objection/). 6. **Atheism targets the vulnerable**: Holland's broad framework supplies the historical-empirical case for the structural-claim that atheism's recruitment-pattern (despair-and-meaninglessness pitch to the suffering, sexually-broken, and politically-disenfranchised) operates on terrain that Christianity claims as its proper domain. See [Atheism Targets the Vulnerable (Recruitment-Dynamic Defeater)](/codex/atheism-targets-the-vulnerable-recruitment-dynamic-defeater/). ## Holland's own religious position Holland is consistently described in interviews and in *Dominion*'s own framing as **culturally Christian but not a believer in the Resurrection** as a historical event. His position: - Has been raised non-religious; described his early position as ranging from atheism to agnosticism. - Through his historical work on the ancient world (especially the Roman cruelty he documented), came to recognize the *historical particularity* of Christian moral commitments and their non-availability outside the Christian tradition. - Now describes himself as "culturally Christian", he attends Anglican services, finds the Christian story moving, but does not affirm credal Christianity. - Has been clear that this position is distinct from Christian apologetics, Holland does not argue *that Christianity is true*, only that *Western secular morality is Christian-shaped*. The "culturally Christian" position is itself a non-trivial apologetic data-point: secular-historian inhabits Christian moral categories with intellectual integrity while not being able to commit to the underlying truth-claims. The position is unstable in ways that suggest the borrowed-capital tension (cf. [Engaging the Conclusion-Fixed Skeptic](/codex/engaging-the-conclusion-fixed-skeptic/)). ## Notable lectures + interviews - **Tom Holland and N. T. Wright**, multiple recorded conversations on Christianity's historical role; Premier Unbelievable channel; *The Rest Is History* episodes. - **Tom Holland on the *Justin Brierley* podcast**, covering *Dominion*'s reception in apologetic circles. - **Tom Holland and Stephen Fry**, opposed-position conversations on atheism + culture (post-*Dominion*). - **The Rest Is History podcast** (2020-), co-hosted with Dominic Sandbrook; popular-history with frequent engagement with Christian topics; Holland's expressions of his religious position are documented across episodes. ## Selected works - *Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic* (Doubleday, 2003), Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2004 - *Persian Fire* (Doubleday, 2005), Runciman Award 2006 - *Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom* (Little, Brown, 2008) - *In the Shadow of the Sword* (Little, Brown, 2012), controversial engagement with early-Islamic-history; argues the historical record for Muhammad is much thinner than the Islamic tradition presents - *Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar* (Doubleday, 2015) - ***Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World*** (Basic Books / Little, Brown, 2019), **the load-bearing work for Christian apologetic deployment** - *Pax: War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age* (Little, Brown, 2023) ## See also - [Christians Behaving Badly](/codex/christians-behaving-badly/), Holland's borrowed-capital deployment in the Christian-failure-objection - [Atheism](/codex/atheism/), meta-engagement with the worldview Holland's historical work undermines - [Religion Causes Violence Objection](/codex/religion-causes-violence-objection/), Holland's deployment in the New Atheist religion-causes-violence claim - [Atheism Cannot Justify Compassion](/codex/atheism-cannot-justify-compassion/), Holland's compassion-as-Christian-revolution thesis - [Atheism Targets the Vulnerable (Recruitment-Dynamic Defeater)](/codex/atheism-targets-the-vulnerable-recruitment-dynamic-defeater/), Holland's broad framework supplies the historical case - [Biblical Slavery Objection](/codex/biblical-slavery-objection/), Holland on the Christian abolitionist tradition - [Biblical Sexual Ethics Objection](/codex/biblical-sexual-ethics-objection/), Holland on Christian sexual-revolution - [Spare the Rod Objection](/codex/spare-the-rod-objection/), Holland on Christian-formed child-protection moral intuitions - *N. T. Wright*, Holland's frequent dialogue partner - [David Bentley Hart](/codex/david-bentley-hart/), companion borrowed-capital theorist (*Atheist Delusions* 2009) - Larry Siedentop, companion (*Inventing the Individual* 2014)