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> ‘To dream of a world transformed by a reformation, or an enlightenment, or a revolution’, writes Holland, ‘is nothing exclusively modern. Rather, it is to dre

> ‘To dream of a world transformed by a reformation, or an enlightenment, or a revolution’, writes Holland, ‘is nothing exclusively modern. Rather, it is to dream as medieval visionaries dreamed: to dream in the manner of a Christian.’ Is the author seriously trying to assert that the process of societal improvement and the longing to live in a more just and fair world started with Christianity? That's a rather naive world view to carry...

swsieber 7y ago
To say that something is characteristic of a Christian doesn't mean it can't be characteristic of non-Christians.
mikestew 7y ago
Having not gotten to TFA just yet, the author could easily follow up with "...and before Christ himself, we have the Hindus of India, Confuscians of China, and so on. Regardless, dreaming of a better, more just world is hardly a modern invention." The author simply chose to use but one example. Nothing to get lathered about, I suspect. EDIT: having now RTFA, meh, you could be on to something. OTOH, it's a book review of a book about Christianity and (from what I gather) its influence on Western thought. Given that someone capable of writing such a book is not that naive, I'm willing to give an out-of-context quote the benefit of the doubt.
war1025 7y ago
Haven't read the article, and don't know how this relates, but it triggered a memory of something NN Taleb has said before: Western Atheism can in many ways be considered an offshoot of Protestantism. Basically that in the same way that the reformation stripped away a bunch of the pomp and circumstance from Catholicism, Atheism was just a further step along that path, while retaining the underpinnings of the Christian world-view. Don't really remember enough about it to go more in depth than that, but thought it was interesting.
bitwize 7y ago
In pre-Christian antiquity, the gods ruled all men absolutely, and the high ruled the low. It was simply not the place of commoners to dream of a better world. That was the purview of lords, of patricians, maybe of scholars. The notion of equality is very much rooted in Christian thought. Pre-Christian peasants might've thought that having very little was perfectly just and fair, because they would never question that they were born lesser than their lord or king. The insight the Christians contributed was that all are created equal before God, and that all had moral authority and responsibility for their own actions. The example, as the article says, is Jesus, an ostracized and dangerous radical of ignoble birth taking on a mighty empire and winning the war for hearts and minds. This was heady, revolutionary stuff to an ancient European.
- viklove 7y ago
  This is still a very Europe-centric analysis though. There are many non-European civilizations that precede Christianity though, are you talking about all of those as well?
- locopati 7y ago
  Siddhartha came to a similar insight some 500 years earlier (without bringing gods into it).
- dragontamer 7y ago
  I strongly disagree. The Spartans and Athenians equal under their Spartan law and Athenian law respectively, which created the bedrock of democracy (that we eventually based our government on today). There may have been other civilizations with good equality measurements, but my knowledge of history isn't the best.

swsieber 7y ago

To say that something is characteristic of a Christian doesn't mean it can't be characteristic of non-Christians.

mikestew 7y ago

Having not gotten to TFA just yet, the author could easily follow up with "...and before Christ himself, we have the Hindus of India, Confuscians of China, and so on. Regardless, dreaming of a better, more just world is hardly a modern invention." The author simply chose to use but one example. Nothing to get lathered about, I suspect. EDIT: having now RTFA, meh, you could be on to something. OTOH, it's a book review of a book about Christianity and (from what I gather) its influence on Western thought. Given that someone capable of writing such a book is not that naive, I'm willing to give an out-of-context quote the benefit of the doubt.

war1025 7y ago

Haven't read the article, and don't know how this relates, but it triggered a memory of something NN Taleb has said before: Western Atheism can in many ways be considered an offshoot of Protestantism. Basically that in the same way that the reformation stripped away a bunch of the pomp and circumstance from Catholicism, Atheism was just a further step along that path, while retaining the underpinnings of the Christian world-view. Don't really remember enough about it to go more in depth than that, but thought it was interesting.

bitwize 7y ago

In pre-Christian antiquity, the gods ruled all men absolutely, and the high ruled the low. It was simply not the place of commoners to dream of a better world. That was the purview of lords, of patricians, maybe of scholars. The notion of equality is very much rooted in Christian thought. Pre-Christian peasants might've thought that having very little was perfectly just and fair, because they would never question that they were born lesser than their lord or king. The insight the Christians contributed was that all are created equal before God, and that all had moral authority and responsibility for their own actions. The example, as the article says, is Jesus, an ostracized and dangerous radical of ignoble birth taking on a mighty empire and winning the war for hearts and minds. This was heady, revolutionary stuff to an ancient European.

viklove 7y ago
This is still a very Europe-centric analysis though. There are many non-European civilizations that precede Christianity though, are you talking about all of those as well?
locopati 7y ago
Siddhartha came to a similar insight some 500 years earlier (without bringing gods into it).
dragontamer 7y ago
I strongly disagree. The Spartans and Athenians equal under their Spartan law and Athenian law respectively, which created the bedrock of democracy (that we eventually based our government on today). There may have been other civilizations with good equality measurements, but my knowledge of history isn't the best.