The Speak Live Podcast. Sharing Peter in everyday life.
SPEAKER_03Hey. Hey, welcome to the live cast. Hello, I'm Glenn Scrivener. I'm Paul Feedy. And uh today we're gonna think about uh Tom Holland. Yeah, not that Tom Holland. Not that Tom Holland. The other Tom Holland. Although even on Twitter there was somebody who managed to get a third Tom Holland confused. I did see that. Yes, yes. Who was he? The other a poor unfortunate who gets atted. The same way that John Lewis guy. I was gonna say the John Lewis guy. Around about this time of year, there is a man called John Lewis who gets a lot of praise for his Christmas films, but uh yeah, or berated, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Because he's at John Lewis on Twitter, isn't he? Yes. Isn't it at John Lewis UK or John Lewis Retail? Is there something like John Lewis?
SPEAKER_03But he does patiently sit down and he responds to every single individual message every year. It's kind of his Christmas routine that gets him ready.
SPEAKER_02It's a good thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, how do we get onto this? I don't know. Tom Hollands are many Tom Hollands. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Tom Holland, the author of Dominion, so the historian Tom Holland, that's the Tom Holland we've been talking to. Yes. Not Tom Holland, who is also Spider-Man currently. He's not Spider-Man? No. I don't know why he was wearing that outfit.
SPEAKER_03He wishes. Tom Holland, Dominion, the Making of the Western Mind. So it's big news. Big news on this side of the pond. It hasn't yet launched on the other side of the pond. So here, yeah. But the Wall Street Journal were in touch just over the weekend. They said, hey, can we use your video? Oh yes, I saw. They're about to uh you know make some big noise for Dominion as it comes out in the States. Um you've got to see the the US cover for Dominion. Like this is this is the English cover. This is British understatement, yeah. Yes. Like you wouldn't know it has anything to do with Christianity at all, right? No. They've got a few kind of subliminal crosses. Yeah, yeah. But it's called Dominion, the making of the Western Mind. Uh whereas in the States, it's Dominion, the Christian revolution that shaped the world, or something like that. Okay. And Christian cross on that. And a massive Isabad or Dali's cross. Really? And it's it that tells you everything you need to know about the relative strengths of the Christian markets in both the US and the UK. Absolutely. But uh yeah, thankfully, I I was just cheeky on Twitter, uh, I guess back in May. Yeah. And uh and Tom Holland is very active on Twitter, and uh he responds to everybody. So I've seen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So uh I just cheekily asked, yeah, up for a up for an interview? And he said, sure. And uh so just to where did you you went to him? Went to him. Um is it his house? Uh yes. Tom Holland's house? I know. Tom Holland's house. His his office is everything you would want it to be. Yeah. Because if you know him from Twitter, he's he's got like certain passions. Um the hedgehog is like preserving the hedgehog is a major major passion of his. Cricket is obviously a major passion of him of his. He sort of jokingly um tweets about how he's an elite sportsman. He wants he wants bowled out Andrew Caddock. Um and uh uh so it had um you know cricket memorabilia there, and it had Herodotus, a little bust of Herodotus. Yeah, I saw that in the background, I think. And it has some Christian icons as well. Interesting, interesting. But um, yeah, so he was he could not have been more accommodating, he could not have been more Christian in in that sense. And I thought it was very interesting that in his book Dominion, he he clearly talks about how much he loves the ethic of the cross, the fact that Jesus dies for his enemies, prizes his enemies, includes those who are beyond the pale, identifies with those who are outsiders and weak and marginalized. And um that that clearly has resonated with him massively. Um and it it clearly comes out in in his kindness, in his yeah, effusive generosity and hospitality. So one thing Tom Holland gets, he gets an ethic of the cross. Um whether whether he knows the God of the cross is is another matter, but he gets he gets the ethic of the cross. And uh it was just a great conversation that we had uh last Wednesday, ranging over a a lot of different topics, but mainly it was it was all about how Christianity is the water we swim in and we are just goldfish. Sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So in the sense that people don't even realize how Christianized they are.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I think he is really well suited to doing that because he is uh an expert in ancient history, and so looking at the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, looking at classical Islam, um, you you see a brutal world. Um you see a world in which the strong devour the weak.
SPEAKER_02Um that's his thing, isn't it? Doesn't he talk about how he his assumption in himself was that his kind of values he'd inherited were Greek and Roman? Right kind of that's what he thought. And and he has doesn't he talk in the need to be about his idol being Julius Caesar growing up and kind of feeling a natural affinity there, and then reading of, you know, kind of Caesar's killed millions and many more and so yeah, so many more and parading people through the streets and going, actually, this is very alien to my world. This isn't the kind of you know, Roman society isn't the kind of society I know and am familiar with. Right. Um I don't know if I don't know what what was it the pro did you ever get on to what prompted him to make that get to that place?
SPEAKER_03Well, interestingly, he um he wrote a book before Dominion called In the Shadow of the Sword, where he looks at the um the origins of Islam, yeah. And that book um has Daniel chapter chapter two kind of recurring throughout it. And in that prophecy, um Nebuchadnezzar has this dream about the statue that has four different kinds of materials, four different empires, um, and there's some debate over who the fourth empire is. It's the feats that are of iron and of clay. That's what it's in. It could possibly be very more orange. It could be rhymed, it's ram or is it something else? Or it could be something else. Um and so you know, he he leaves the the players in in the the the analogy kind of ambiguous, um, but it it is all about these confluence of forces that that there is the Roman and the Persian and the Greek and the Um all all these sort of military forces, these these brutal regimes, and you stir them all together and you get Islam. You just do. It's just the most natural thing in the world. And and so obviously he cops a lot of flack from um you know Muslims because he's saying, no, it's not supernatural at all, it's really naturally explicable. But what's fascinating about Daniel chapter 2, and I tried to engage him in conversation on this on Wednesday, is in the dream, um there is a rock that smashes into the feet of the statue, and then that rock turns into a mountain that grows and has dominion, hello, dominion over the world. And so I said to him, this is before we started taping. I I said to him, Um, so obviously, Christ is the rock and Christianity is the mountain that has dominion, right? And he just he didn't he wasn't biting. He wasn't biting. So I'm thinking, I'm thinking the word dominion is an Easter egg in the truest sense of the word. Like a real Easter egg. Yeah, I see, so that really he is on this project to show how Daniel 2 is true. You've got the dominions of the world, and then you've got this really weird thing, a small rock.
SPEAKER_02It looks so- rather than say it outright, just be like, well, just lay this stuff out and let you come to a conclusion. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03That's my speculation. Sure. You know, there are other theories out there. But um, but so as he said in the interview, um, Dominion really is a kind of a sequel to In the Shadow of the Sword. Yeah. Because while um he was looking at the origins of Islam, people were challenging him and saying, Well, come on, why don't you do the challenges? Why don't you do the origin of the West? Yeah, you would feel uncomfortable doing that, or something they were saying. But I think, and I said this to him in the interview, I I think actually Dominion is the opposite of In the Shadow of the Sword. Because what happens in the Shadow of the Sword is we look back on Islam and it seems so alien to us to the modern Western mind. And yet Tom's saying, Oh, but it's totally natural to the seventh century AD. Yeah. This book is the utter opposite, because Christianity seems totally natural to us, but it's very alien to the first context it emerged in.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah. It's a total rupture. Well, it's like I remember, you know, people or I've heard people say you if you just take something like the Christian sexual ethic, and they're like, oh well, it's very much of its time, you know, because we've moved on of its time, and you think it wasn't, it's not of its time at all. You know, if you look at like the Roman sexual ethic, it's absolutely depriv depraved and all over the shop, and you know, yeah, it's complete nonsense, isn't it? Really?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and so and so Tom Holland kind of says, Me too is incredibly Christian. And we just we just don't know how Christian it is. And and you know, today's can't see the forest for the trees kind of stuff. Yeah, like it's it's yeah. Like why why do we think that a strong, powerful man having his way with a weaker boy or a weaker girl, why do we think that's not natural? Yeah, why do we think that's wrong? That's every other culture that there's ever been.
SPEAKER_02Like they're our power, you know, yeah. So those who have power wield it over those who don't have power, and that's natural to subjugate those who have lesser.
SPEAKER_03Right? Yeah. And that that's been the way of sexual ethics with every other civilization that we've ever tried. And yet in the West, like the one sexual taboo we can all agree on is pedophilia's wrong.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Right? But um when you look at classical cultures, when you look at the Assyrians and the Egyptians, it wasn't obvious to them, yeah. You look at um a lot of Muslim cultures today, and the the there are things that go on on on Thursday nights before Friday prayers, um, that we would all be deeply, deeply uncomfortable with, but just to sort of go on in the Islamic world, I think the the Christian sexual ethic is it is the water that we swim in. Yeah. Now, obviously a progressive sexual ethic today is is kind of saying, well, um therefore consent is the ultimate value and the gender of the members involved is is of no importance. Um but in one sense I think Tom Holland would say that's that's kind of a hyper-Christian sexual ethic rather than an anti-Christian sexual ethic. It's it's at least taking one aspect of the Christian sexual ethics. Just like ramping it. Yeah. Yeah. And and not the gender specificity issue. But yeah, so Me Too and sexual ethics is is just another way in which Christianity is the waters that we swim in. We don't even we don't even know about it. Um should we have a look at a clip? Absolutely. Um so uh I kind of I kind of ask him this question about surely we'd just have we would have evolved human rights, like naturally, even without Jesus Christ. Yeah. Wouldn't we have human rights? I loved Tom's answer here. Generated some kind of universal human rights and that that sort of stuff. And materials. Right.
SPEAKER_00Why would you? I mean the the idea of human rights, I mean the idea that human rights kind of hangs in the ether waiting to be discovered is is as theological as believing that the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead and sits at the hand of God the Father. Yes. I mean it's a it's it's it's it requires a leap of faith. Yes. The difference is that Christians recognise that belief in in the divinity of Christ requires belief. Whereas lots of people just assume that human rights are something that exists. Yes. But they're not. They're they're they're the the the result of specifically legal developments in medieval Christendom. The emergence of of um this theory by the canon rights lawyer by by the canon lawyers in from the 12th century onwards. It it doesn't just spontaneously emerge.
SPEAKER_03Yes. But you hold dear to your heart those liberal values. You personally hold dear to your hearts that that the wheat should not be cast off and that there's there's an equality of all the things.
SPEAKER_00But we recognise now that they're not you know that they're Christian values. Yes, yes. And of course the w what it opens up is the is the recognition that that actually without Christian faith, then w ultimately what is the underpinning for that? Yes. And the the the kind of idea of uh that that that humanists propagate that somehow science proves this, I mean it seems to me grotesque. Right. You know, science science is a mirror in which you see what you want to see reflected back. So the Nazis use science to justify you know racial genocide, the liberals use it to justify uh, you know, let's you know, hug the world. Yes. But both of them reflect the cultural prejudices of the people who are looking in that mirror of science.
SPEAKER_03Therefore, do you worry what do human rights therefore rest on?
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, that is that is a question, isn't it? And and what I like about the whole human rights thing and and because I mean we talked about this before, I think it came out when we were looking at the Jordan Peterson stuff and his is stuff with Sam Harris. You know, and can you get a morality from nothing or from materialism and whatnot? And we did talk about human rights and stuff then. But what I like about it is is that you can probably sit down with any of your non-Christian friends and you'd be like, well, we've got some common ground. Our common ground is it's it's likely that every one of your non-Christian friends believes in human rights. You know? Uh and if and if they don't, you've got some problems. But um you know, that you've got a common ground, you can say we both believe in these things, but I just don't think you have any real good reason to believe in it in your worldview, you know, so from the 80s point of view. I can ground it in something, but what do you ground it in? And I think it just opens up a door, doesn't it, to talk about stuff.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, I mean the idea that human rights hang in the ether waiting to be discovered is as theological as believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and sits at the right hand of the Father.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's I can hear people getting angry already.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Angry internet, like being told what you hold is a belief, uh basically a faith belief. Right. You're like, no, no, we're empirical sciencey types. Well the thing is, there is empirical evidence for the resurrection. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we don't want that kind of evidence. Yeah, but we can't rely on that evidence.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he's saying belief in human rights is like belief in this creedal uh you know item of Christian uh faith. And it's like, yeah, and the Christian thing actually has some evidence to it. Whereas bringing in evidence to the human rights debates is tricky because you don't want to have to prove someone's right to be treated as an equal. Like you don't want to have to make someone justify their existence as an equal. You don't want empiricism coming in there, you just want a pure faith claim. But then what is it based on? Well, I I would say it is grounded in Jesus Christ was crucified and sits at the right hand of the Father, and we've got evidence for that. Um but without without that grounding, he said, you know, some people try and look at look to a science to to find the the the grounding, but like he says, it's just a mirror, you see what you what you put in. Yeah, you know.
SPEAKER_02And he talks about I don't know, I don't I don't think it's on one of the other clips you've got, I think it may have been from just before that, because it was a chunk of this while you were talking. And he was saying something like, Well, you know, if you wanted to know what the world would look like without Christianity, where it hadn't taken hold in a culture, he said something like, you could look as an example at least partly to somewhere like India, where you'd see that it has got this kind of deep tradition of of different gods and philosophy and you know, all that kind of those thoughts and stuff, but actually their value system is very, very different. You know, it's it is an alien world in some ways from our culture that we we take for granted.
SPEAKER_03It signs up to the United Nations Human Rights Declaration, right? It signs up to that, but um it's signed up to that for for some very Christian reasons. And he sort of goes through that in the book in terms of you know British colonial rule came to India and said to them, Oh, you guys, you have a thing called Hinduism. And they all went, Oh, do we? Yeah, what it's kind of and and you know, these Protestants from England were saying, Well, yes, I mean you have priests and you have scriptures, you you have what we would call a religion. And Indians were like, Oh, if you say so. But all of a sudden, the secular is imposed on India as this realm, and that becomes very, very useful because what do you do with religious practices? We want to call them religious practices when you burn the widows of men on their funeral pies. Like, what do you want to do with that? And the solution came to be oh, you guys, you have this Hindu thing, great, keep that private when you come out into the village square, don't go burning people because your religion is what you do in private, and what we do in the public square is the realm of the secular.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03A thoroughly Christian and comes to be Protestant ideal, which gets sort of foisted on India. And then from within that framework, there are things like human rights, you know, declarations that can be made. Yeah. But it's all it's all happening within Christianity, and divorce things from Christianity, and what right do we have to talk in terms of the equality of all people? It's like castles in the air, I think. Um and therefore, that you know, that leads to another question that I asked Tom Holland. Do you worry about Western civilization going forward? If if we are kind of coming apart from the roots that we have in the Bible and in Christian faith, what's gonna happen to all these rites? Here's what Tom says Therefore, do you worry about Western civilization going forwards if I mean certainly the church is exploding in places like China and in other places in South America and Africa, but here in the West it's on the wane.
SPEAKER_00Do you worry that these different values? I think I mean I've been thinking a lot about this. I think what's happened is I mean Christianity was as vibrant as it has ever been, it's deeply held in the years of the First World War. It did not precipitate a collapse in faith. If anything, it it it consolidated it. And in the years that followed the Second World War, again, there was very, very high uh religious commitment, and then in the 60s it dropped off a cliff. And so the question is what you know, what happened? I think one of the things that happened was that um we emerged from the the experience of the war, and as people began to realize what had happened, particularly with the Holocaust, um there was there was a kind of recalibration of our sense of of what evil is. Um and so we no longer needed the devil because we have Hitler, we no longer needed hell because we have Auschwitz. And so ever since ever since the um ever since the war, when most people in the West want to know what is right, what is good, they look at the Nazis and they do whatever the the opposite to what the Nazis did. Right. So it's a bit like um it's a cross between um you know Plato's parable of the people in the cave, of the shadows, and and Nietzsche's parable of the death of God, but his corpse remains in the cave casting shadows. What we're seeing is the shadow of Christianity. We look at Nazism, and the shadow that Nazism casts tells us what what Christian values and ethics are. So enshrined at the heart of every Western society in the wake of the war is the utter conviction that racism is the ultimate evil and that the weak should be careful, so there should be welfare states. And these have become the the um absolute foundations of the way that governments function and universities function and opinion formants function, and the the worst insult that you can give anyone is to say they're a racist or a Nazi. The risk with that, which I think we're slightly seeing now, is that what do you do when people turn around and say, Yeah, okay, I'm a racist, or yeah, I'm a Nazi, or I I don't want to let refugees in, or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. What resources then do you have to make this case beyond kind of screaming racist?
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00And that I think is when you start to realise just how rooted in deeply Christian assumptions these arguments actually are, yeah. And how denuded the attempt to try and make these arguments is if you don't have this mythic resonance that Christianity brings them. And I don't use mythic in it as an insult, I mean mythic in the sense that this is a kind of deep, rich it it transcends ideology, it transcends commandments, it it you know, it transcends drama that we live in and it's giving meaning. It's it's a it's yeah, it's drama.
SPEAKER_03It's a strange new world of the Bible that we've got to inhabit. But without that, yeah, it uh it's like counsels in the air.
SPEAKER_00I think well it's like councils in the air, or it's uh it's it's a very attenuated version. It's a thin gruel. Right, right. It's it's inherently mildly boring. And that's the notorious thing about liberals, they're mildly boring. Centrist dads. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So um we've got a we've got a comment here from Paige, um, and she's she's obviously watched the the Uh interview before because she actually mentioned something that just came up in that clip, but she mentioned it before we showed it. So she said uh something about Tom. I found his take on where we find ourselves today fascinating. When Tom Holland said that Hitler replaced Satan or was Satan personified, and now our greatest sin is the sin of racism. Yeah. That was a thing there. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So if if Hitler becomes Satan and hell becomes Auschwitz, yeah, Auschwitz is a new hell, then what is virtue now? Virtue is the opposite of the Nazis. Which is interesting. That's kind of what Jordan Peterson does. Um Jordan Peterson bell goes off. Um we had to mention him, but he he kind of does that in Twelve Rules for Life. He he kind of says, I you know, I don't know what virtue is, but I know what it isn't. It's Auschwitz. And you know, he kind of he kind of builds his morality up from the Nuremberg trials, where we we know what a crime against humanity is, and therefore the opposite is, you know, let's build a modern welfare state. Um which that's that's not exactly where Peterson goes, but that's that's what Holland says. Yeah, he mentioned it doesn't matter. That really helped me to understand like why why is there this near religious zeal for the modern welfare state? Like, I understand it's a good thing. Sure. Like I you know, I understand that. But if you say a word against the NHS or something like that, like instantly people will come and they'll say, Oh, I can't believe you've had a bad experience of the NHS. It can't all be like that. And it's almost like you've blasphemed. Yeah. You know? Yeah. You know, why why can no politician actually talk critically of the NHS? Why do they all have to say that it's the you know it's the envy of the modern world and and all that kind of stuff? And actually, Tom Holland helped me with that. Um I I think we have a religious commitment to the modern welfare state, which is a good thing. You know, all idols are good things. They're just good things that are elevated into the state. But um, yeah. Is d uh is Tom Holland worried about the future of Western secular liberal values? In in one sense, I would I think not enough. In one sense. You know, he he sort of leaves it leaves it as an open question, whether we can have the bloom without the roots. Yeah, he does say that, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_02Because Yeah, you he said we don't know yet, do we? I think. Which I wonder whether I would say I mean I would have said, well, no, you can't have the bloom without the roots, and I would have said, I think they're far enough down the road to begin to have seen that already.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what he worries about, you know, when somebody says they're racist. When someone makes the accusation of racist, the other the other person, if they just say, yeah, and what of it? If someone actually takes the Nietzsche line and says, Well, of course I'm racist racist, I'm trying to become the Ubermensch. Yeah. Right? I'm trying to become this overman who grows out of Christianity and gets back to classical values, what resources do we have to resist that? Not a lot. No, not a lot. And it all just becomes power plays at that point. Um so that that kind of leads to the the the next clip we're gonna uh have a look at. Um if Christianity needs to be there in in order to be the root from which we get the bloom of the lovely rights and values that we we we believe in, um what would he like to see Christians preach? Um how would he like to see the the the church strengthened and what kind of proclamation does he think the church should make going forward? And uh I loved what he had to say here. Preach what what would you like to see Christians say?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I think I I see no point in in bishops or preachers or Christian evangelists just recycling the kind of stuff that you can get from any kind of stuff like liberal. Because that's everyone is giving that. You know, if I want that, I'll I'll hear it, I mean, I'll get it from a liberal democratic councillor.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00If you're a Christian, you think that the the kind of fabric of the consonants was ruptured by this strange singularity where someone who is a god and a man sets everything on its head. And the you know, the there is a the the to say supernatural is to downplay it. I mean, this is this is a massive singularity at the very humble things. And if you don't believe that, it seems to me you're not really um a confessional Christian. You may be a cultural Christian, but you're not a confessional Christian. So if you believe that, then it should also be possible to dwell on all the other weird stuff that um that comes as part of the traditionally come as part of the Christian package. So I I think that um it seems to me purely lovely from the kind of cursory listening of thought for the day, that there's a there's a deep anxiety at that moment. I almost said a sense of embarrassment. Yes, that um, you know, ooh, you know, Jesus is really just a nice guy, um more than that. I think it's really weirder than that. And to be honest, the whole kind of panoply of angels and the supernatural panoply that that you know, as I'm saying, I think has been destroyed by uh by the the way that the Nazis have kind of replaced like demonology and then the angelology and everything. I think without that, yeah. Um and it doesn't need to be kind of you know an a literalist, reductive. I mean, of course, you know, there are all kinds of different dimensions, but the the wealth of of Christian reflection on this is more than adequate to that.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00Um I mean I um I I find all the writers I Christian writers I read, it was um Origen Origen, what do we say?
SPEAKER_03Let's have let's let's have origin.
SPEAKER_00Because Origen then it becomes brilliant belonging to Oregon has this um amazing uh image that he says was taught him by a Jew, his Jewish teacher, where he says that scripture is like a a great house with many rooms, but the keys to these rooms lie scattered all around the house, and we it's difficult to find them. And that's what you need philosophy for, is to help you find the keys. It's kind of amazing, Borgettian image. Um and I think that that's the kind of the the the poetry, the the strangeness, the sense of myth that that that should be brought to this. I think that that ultimately if it if if if if it's to be preached as something true, the strangeness of it, the way that it can't be framed by what seems to be mere reality, has to be fundamental to it. I don't want to hear what bishops think about Brexit. You know, I know what they think about Brexit and it's not particularly interesting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, but if they've got views on original sin, I'd be very interested to hear that.
SPEAKER_03Yes. If they have got views on original sin. If they have. And I then took the opportunity of uh saying, ah, have my book, 321.
SPEAKER_02It's yeah, I mean I really enjoyed that part of the um well as as Paige has just said, this part was great. You know, yeah, I think it was great as well. Because, you know, one of the you know, saying what what is it that the church needs to do? What do Christians need to preach? What does the church need to do? And what has the church in the UK or the West largely done in the wake of a uh a more liberal, secularised society? It's kind of said, well we should be a bit more secular and liberal. And what has happened is Christian uh faith has kind of nosedived. And it's just uh Isn't it is it weird that it's the the person who's not well I'm not really sure where Tom Holland is yet, but let's say the the non-believer is it weird that it's the non-believer who's saying to the church, might be a good idea if you preach the Bible Yeah, and preach Christ and him crucified. Yeah, you know, like all that stuff that it because you know, you said I I can go and get this message about secularism from my local Liberal Democrat MP. You know, I don't need that in church, you know. The church has got a distinctive message. I mean, I'm I've always in two minds, you know, when people I mean I worked in the church for eight years, and you know, you worked in church as well, like in in a church job. And a lot of people say, don't they, like, church ministry is really hard, you know, it's r it it's hard work. And you know what, it in one sense, yes. Yeah. But also, like, it's just the simplest thing in the world. You just care for the flock and teach the word. Right. Like, I mean, that's literally pretty much all you need to do. Yeah, you don't need grand plans and you know, you don't need to work out how the market's turning and to buy at this stage or whatever, you know, invest here or invest. You literally just in season and out of season do the same thing.
SPEAKER_03It's it's not hard work. I've heard that before, actually, the the two Timothy, like in season and out of season. Like a farmer has to think about lots of different stuff, but it's like a church worker doesn't. It's the same thing the whole time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, sorry. Um you know it it's I mean and and I've heard people say it before in conservative circles that you know liberal churches are the churches that are actually, you know, they're venting, they're venting people and they're not financially secure. So the biggest the churches that are actually keeping the Church of England afloat are actually the the Bible-believing churches on the whole who are preaching faithfully, but actually they're saying things which aren't particularly in line with what society's saying. And I I I'd never known really how much truth there is in that, where those facts come from, but you know, if that is the case, it's interesting, isn't it, that it is those who are standing up and saying something distinctive and and preaching a distinctive Christian message which is different to the world's that actually seem to be most attractive to people in the world.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Paige agrees with you. Um she says, the world needs our distinctives, not mushy Christianity that looks the same as the world. Uh Kim Warren says, lasure sharp remarks from Tom Holland about being a cultural Christian rather than confessional, very challenging. And Ian McCarthy says, Is it the case that in a manner of speaking one can be so relevant to the world that they become irrelevant to God? Yeah. And and you become boring. Yeah. Yeah. If you're just saying what the world is saying. And when you've got and when the alternative is Christ in him crucified, like why why do you want to pontificate about Brexit?
SPEAKER_02Well, like he said on there, didn't he? You know, if if you believe that this stuff is true, then this is like a cataclysmic moment in the history of the universe, you know, that everything converges on it from behind and everything goes out from it ahead. And why would you not use that? Why would you not talk about that? Like, well, actually, let's talk about Brexit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and when you get your moment on Thought for the Day, you say, well, Thought for the Day is awful, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02It's terrible. Yeah. I don't know. Would you Yeah. The Daily Man in me's coming out now.
SPEAKER_03Wouldn't you much rather hear Tom Holland on Thought for the Day than a bishop?
SPEAKER_02Like you'd rather hear someone who does not identify as a confessional Christian than someone who's again it's a bizarre, isn't it, in the last couple of years? There there's people like Tom Holland we've seen who've kind of been doing like they're doing the church of favour, but you're not quite sure whether they're really on board with the church. Bit like uh Jordan Peterson, who's kind of been doing the church of favour, but you're not sure he's really on board, and you're kind of like, Where what are the bishops doing? Yeah. Like where are the where are the religious leaders doing these things? Yeah. I mean, it just seems like the the Church of England hierarchy has lost the plot and been so weak and wet blankets for years now.
SPEAKER_03Completely, completely. And like if you want good preaching of of Christ and him crucified, like I would recommend getting a hold of Dominion because from the first page to the last, it is all about the cross. Like it's lit it's literally, he says, you know, you you look at the expanding universe of Christendom and you infer from that a big bang. And he does he's not gonna name what he thinks the Big Bang is. He's gonna say that the earliest witnesses to it, Paul and those he's writing.
SPEAKER_02He says something must have happened, doesn't he, to make them convinced of this.
SPEAKER_03And they said that it's the historical death and resurrection of Jesus. Yeah, absolutely. And he he uh I've got to get this point in. We're we're we're past time, but I've gotta get this point in. Like some people have wondered like, does he think that Christianity is just a myth in a negative sense? Right.
SPEAKER_02And therefore, it's quite confusing, isn't it? Because we often think of a myth as like a story that's not true.
SPEAKER_03You know, and he says it's the most powerful myth. But I think what he means by myth is it's the thing that grounds everything else, right? It's the story that you inhabit uh that makes sense of your world. But he does talk about it as being a powerful myth. I think what he's trying to do is I think substitute the word myth for the word gospel, and I think you understand what he's talking about. He's basically saying there's this gospel, right? There's this good news in which God shows up, dies on a cross, rises again to turn the world upside down. Okay, let's call that a gospel then. Did it really happen? Well, he leaves that question to one side in the book. And he just wants to show you um the effects of this gospel on the world and what a positive effect it is. So, in a sense, he's doing what Blaise Pascal said. He said, show people that they should want it to be true, then demonstrate that it is.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And he's not going to demonstrate that it is true or that it happened in this book. He's going to show you that it's had a positive effect. Um, but does he therefore think that the historical death and resurrection of Jesus is unimportant? Um I was at a lecture that Tom gave in Cambridge on Thursday. Yeah. And Julian Hardiman, if you're watching, hello Julian Hardeman, who's um uh minister at uh Eden Baptist Church in Cambridge, he asked this great question. Um he asked him in the Q ⁇ A time, 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. Good question. Yep. How does Holland respond? He says, yes. And that's what Paul says. Without it, i.e. without the resurrection, 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 I 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. And that was his answer. He gave his his answers to every other question went on for about six, seven, eight minutes. Right. His answer to that question was probably less than a minute. Yep. But he said everything he needs to say there. He's just like, yeah, according to the Apostle Paul, the historicity of the resurrection is vitally important. Without it, there's nothing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, and he doesn't go on. I'll leave you with that. I'll leave you with that, and he doesn't he doesn't say what he personally thinks, but you know, as an historian, he just wants to say what Paul thinks.
SPEAKER_02It's interesting, isn't it? Is that what he kind of does with the whole the book in a sense that like we said earlier with the Daniel stuff? He doesn't kind of say, and it's this, he just kind of goes, Yeah, here you go, have a look, and here's the stuff, here's the evidence as it looks and make your own mind up. Yeah. You know, everything you hold dear in the world has come from this. Yeah, all your beliefs, yeah, values. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03There's been an immense rupture, this big bang, you're looking in the world.
SPEAKER_02And the people that brought you this, clearly something happened to them to make them bring this because it wouldn't have emerged from culture otherwise.
SPEAKER_03And it could not emerge just from the confluence of around.
SPEAKER_02And then, as he just said, something something must have happened. Something must have happened.
SPEAKER_03Specific something. And another and another thing that's really interesting is that he's also a great fan of the Gospels, even though in the book he can touch some of the other gospels. Like totally. He quotes from them for a lot of the book. Um, but he doesn't he doesn't enter into the historical Jesus issues. He bases it all on the letters of Paul. Um which are gonna be our earliest stuff anyway. Right, that is our earliest stuff. But if you're going to say that those gospels are not historical, and it was just a bunch of guys getting around Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John trying to write a prequel to Galatians. Right. Some fanfic. Just do let's do some fanfiction about Jesus. It's like guys just getting walking on water and stuff. Exactly, exactly. You know, can you imagine the pitch in the room? It's like, alright, so he's a man. He's a man. But he's also god. He's also godman. Born to a virgin. Yeah, he they would have to rate. So yeah, going from Galatians, going from the other letters of Paul, what would you have to say? Yeah, he's he's a god man, he dies for the world, rises again, um, in fulfilment of Jewish hopes. So I guess you've you've got to be faithful to the Jewish scriptures, you've got to be faithful to the letters of Paul, and then you've got to put flesh on those bones. Yeah. And what's interesting is that Tom Holland, like a lot of people, are massive fans of the literary figure of Jesus. Like, he's incredibly attractive. He's won the hearts of billions. Yep. So are we really to believe that basically Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were just spitballer, just spitballer in a room together, trying to come up with an origin story. You know, and they've got to they've gotta write this story arc in which a perfect man is also really fascinating and interesting. Which just creatively, like speaking as a writer, it's that's really difficult.
SPEAKER_02There are not many other stories you can think of which universally people have gone, yeah. Oh, quite like this guy. I quite like this guy, especially if they're impeccable. Yeah. If they're perfect. I mean, who likes a perfect guy?
SPEAKER_03That's why Superman is such a rubbish hero. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02There's nothing in there.
SPEAKER_03And why do we like the Joker, right? Because he's he's dark and he's, you know, and we we empathize with the Joker, this nihilistic figure, because it's it's it's easier for us to empathize with evil than it is with good. So but these guys, they've got to write this compelling figure who somehow does everything right, but somehow has the religious authorities kill him. That's a that's a difficult thing to narratively construct, yeah, to have the path in which he does everything right and still ends up nailed to a cross. Um, and yet they they do it so compellingly. And you know, Tom Holland tweeted out a couple of years ago when he heard David Suchet reading out Mark's gospel. Sure. He said Jesus is um the greatest figure in literary history. So Tom Holland believes, on the one hand, Jesus is the most significant figure in history, history itself, and he's the greatest figure in literature. And you're like, how could those two things come together? Like how could you know um heck of a coincidence if they weren't related? I know. At some stage, the phrase you couldn't make it up applies, is what I think. So we we continue to pray for Tom Holland. He did say keep the prayers coming for him. Absolutely. So let's let's pray for Tom Holland and pray that his book does uh tremendous good. It did my soul good to read it. I I I was really reintroduced to the stark nature of the cross by a an historian who knows what he's talking about. He knows about its Persian roots and its Greco-Roman roots, he knows about how Isis have crucified people, and then he talks about the God who showed up on that cross. And like he he did my soul much good this month, um reading this book. And it even he's got a chapter on charity where he talks about how Christians got into saving uh exposed infants from the rubbish dumps and adopting them into families. And you know, as as an adoptive father, um I've read a lot about adoption, but very little moved me, and very little was so explicitly cross-centered as what I read from Tom Holland. He was, he was just very clear. I think Christians have always done this because they believe in the God of the cross who died on a rubbish dump, you know, for the marginalized and weak. And I read that chapter. I was in tears reading this chapter on charity, um, written by a guy who's not a Christian, you know, talking about the cross. So I think this book is gonna do much good. Uh let's pray for for continued good to be done by the book, continue to pray for Tom Holt. And um, yeah. Yeah. That's about it. Yeah, and now for some thoughts on Brexit. And mindfulness. Jesus was a nice guy. Yeah. Do you know I was driving the other day? And do you know? And I thought to myself, oh dear, terrible. Would Jesus have driven an SUV?
SPEAKER_02And I thought, no. They say no, because he did not speak of his own accord.
SPEAKER_03Boom!
SPEAKER_02Thank you.
SPEAKER_03On that note, we were we were searching for a joke to end on. We found it. Yep. Let's not outstand our welcome. Um Brunett, we're gonna uh release some clips, some further clips of um the interview.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and particularly if you're like a Facebook user or something, because I watched that whole video initially and I was like, oh man, there's so much great stuff in here, and I'd love people to see this and this and this. I thought if I share a 49-minute video, no one's gonna watch this on Facebook. So we're hoping to really you know break it down so that actually you get some of those shorter clips that you could easily share. And you know, I've been thinking already in my head, like if we if we put this clip, what would I type? You know, in my bit. Because rather than just share it without any comment, like what would I type that I know would get people on my feed to pause as they scroll past, you know, scroll down. Um so you know, if you're gonna if you're the kind of person who shares, have a think about how you might get people to stop and look as well. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because it's provocative, it really is provocative stuff. And let's let's start some conversations. Uh also do uh watch out on uh Facebook for the Halloween video. We're gonna pump that out there again for the fifth year running. Um let Halloween do its thing. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_02Fast armies undead to tread through the night. Sounds like uh Greta Thinberg. How dare you! How dare you?
SPEAKER_03Um yeah. I wonder now we're in trouble. No one would do that in public today. No way. Um Brilliant. Well, thank you guys uh for all your comments. Thank you, Kim Warren and Paige Wrightman, Ian McCarthy. Great to see you on Top Chat. Uh, this is where we'll be uh for the foreseeable future on YouTube uh with some clips going out on Facebook and that sort of thing. But um, if you don't follow us on all those platforms, do so and uh do try and give us a rating and review if you're listening on the podcast. Absolutely. Terrific. Well, thank you so much, Paul Feasy. Thank you, Glenn Scriffener.