Person

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 / Atheism / Religion Causes Violence Objection / Spare the Rod Objection / Biblical Slavery Objection / Atheism Cannot Justify Compassion / 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:

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 for the deployment.
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.
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.
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 / Bears Mauling Youth Objection.
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.
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).

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).

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)