Dominion by Tom Holland is the story of Christianity’s influence on the world. The Romans thought that being crucified was the worst possible fate and that it should only be dished out to slaves. How incredible that people could have come to believe that one particular crucifixion victim—an unassuming provincial by the name of Jesus—should … Read more
What are the foundations of its morality, if not a myth? A myth, though, is not a lie. At its most profound – as Tolkien, that devout Catholic, always argued – a myth can be true. To be a Christian is to believe that God became man and suffered a death as terrible as any … Read more
When Krafft-Ebing invented the word ’sadism’ to describe those who took erotic pleasure in inflicting pain, he was implicitly associating the Marquis with inquisitors such as Conrad of Marburg. Even more shocking to devout sensibilities, however, was his analysis of what he termed – after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian nobleman with a taste for … Read more
But Voltaire – baptized into the Catholic Church and educated by the Jesuits, whom he publicly lambasted as power-hungry pedophiles, but privately saluted for their learning – did not take up the cause out of any sympathy for Protestantism. That September, as he was busy preparing his case, a letter arrived which addressed him as … Read more
The Chinese seemed to have no concept either of creation or of a god. Rather than a universe obedient to the laws of an omnipotent deity, they believed instead in a naturally occurring order, formed by constituent elements – fire, water, earth, metal, wood – that were forever waxing and waning in succession. Everything went … Read more
Only the cause of bringing them to God, he argued, could possibly justify Spain’s rule of the New World; and only by means of persuasion might they legitimately be brought to God. ‘For they are our brothers, and Christ gave his life for them Cajetan, stupefied that an obscure monk should think to place his … Read more
Revolution of a new and irreversible order was brewing in the Latin West. Humanity, lost to sin, had been redeemed by Christ. But how? Some had cast Christ’s death as a ransom paid to Satan; others as the resolution of a lawsuit between heaven and hell. Abelard, following in Anselm’s wake, had been more subtle. … Read more
Christianity, in Origen’s opinion, was not merely compatible with philosophy, but the ultimate expression of it. ‘No one can truly do duty to God,’ he declared, ‘who does not think like a philosopher.’ The need was urgent. The gospel proclaimed by Paul, the conviction that had animated him and all the first generation of Christians, … Read more
Marcion was a Christian from the Black Sea coast, a wealthy shipping magnate whose arrival in Rome some four decades before Irenaeus travelled there had generated a sensation. Outraged that the churches in the capital refused to accommodate his teachings, he had indignantly turned his back on them and founded his own. Marcion, like numerous … Read more
Here was a question, as Irenaeus knew all too well, infinitely more unsettling than any that a Roman governor might think to demand. For some Christians, the teaching within Paul’s letters, and within the four earliest gospels – that Jesus, a man tortured to death on a cross, was also, in some mysterious way, a … Read more