{"id":42002,"date":"2025-09-09T01:00:35","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T08:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=42002"},"modified":"2025-09-08T00:58:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T07:58:12","slug":"the-crucified-king-still-rules-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-crucified-king-still-rules-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The crucified King still rules the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I love church history and every year teach a church history intensive in our bible college, so when I saw Tom Holland\u2019s Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind[1]<\/strong><\/a><\/em> on my reading list, I chose to read it from beginning to end. It is a weighty book, sweeping across millennia of history, weaving together philosophy, theology, politics, and culture, but at its heart is one astonishing truth: the crucifixion of Christ redefined humanity. What the Roman world saw as degradation, the early Christians proclaimed as glory. Holland shows that from this paradox grew the moral and cultural framework of the West, a framework that continues to shape us today even when we deny its source.<\/p>\n

What I admire, however, was not only Holland\u2019s telling of Christianity\u2019s triumphs but his honesty about its failures. Undoubtedly, the church has often been compromised, entangled in empire (from Constantine\u2019s conversion), distorted by violence, corrupted by wealth, or scarred by hypocrisy. And yet, Christianity has not disappeared. Against all odds, the faith continues to flourish, and its central paradox remains alive, \u201cGod chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong\u201d (1 Corinthians 1:27). Holland ends his story there, page 525, and it is the lesson I relate to, as a pastor and a student of leadership.<\/p>\n

The Apostle Paul\u2019s metaphor of \u201cjars of clay\u201d (2 Corinthians 4:7) captures the heart of Holland\u2019s writing. Fragile vessels, easily cracked and broken, are entrusted with treasure. Human weakness becomes the stage on which divine power is displayed. Holland, though a secular historian, testifies to this dynamic as he traces Christianity\u2019s rise. The church has demonstrated that its influence does not flow from flawless institutions or impeccable leaders but from a cruciform message that keeps re-emerging, even in times of scandal or decline.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

Consider the supposed collapse of Christendom. For centuries, the church wielded immense cultural and political power, often repressively. Yet, when secular thinkers of the Enlightenment turned against the church, they did not abandon its morality. The ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity, and human rights are, as Holland shows, secularised versions of Christian convictions.[3]<\/a> God\u2019s power persists, even when the jars that hold it are cracked.<\/p>\n

The crucifixion was scandalous in its time. Roman elites could not understand worshipping a man executed in shame. Yet the church made this its central proclamation: the true King reigns from a cross. Holland highlights how revolutionary this was. Slaves, women, and the marginalised found dignity because Jesus (the Christian God-Man) identified with them.[4]<\/a> This inversion of power, where the last are first and the weak are honoured, has remained Christianity\u2019s enduring gift to the world.<\/p>\n

But here lies the paradox: the same church that preached the weakness of God often imitated the strength of Caesar. From the crusades to colonialism, from inquisitions to involvement in slavery, the history of Christianity is littered with distortions of its own gospel. Holland refuses to romanticise the church. Yet he also refuses to let its failures erase the fact that its moral essence kept reasserting itself. Even critics of Christianity borrow its assumptions. Nietzsche himself, who declared God dead, could not escape the Christian valuation of compassion, even as he tried to reject it.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

Reading Dominion<\/em> alongside leadership studies brings a striking resonance. Adaptive leadership, as Ronald Heifetz teaches, often emerges not from control but from vulnerability, the willingness to disappoint people at a rate they can absorb, to admit limits, and to face loss.[6]<\/a> Jim Collins describes \u201cLevel 5 Leaders\u201d[7]<\/a> as those who combine fierce resolve with deep humility. Holland\u2019s thesis shows that such counterintuitive patterns have their deepest roots in the Christian story of weakness as strength.<\/p>\n

The Scheins\u2019 Humble Leadership<\/em> reinforces this, arguing that leadership thrives on openness and relational authenticity, not domination.[8]<\/a> Leaders who know they are jars of clay can paradoxically carry a greater treasure. In ministry contexts, this requires resisting the temptation to perform strength or perfection and instead embracing the cruciform pattern of servant leadership.<\/p>\n

As a teacher of church history, I often tell students: our past is not just a record of glory but a witness to grace. Holland\u2019s book affirms this. The story of Christianity is full of contradiction, light and shadow, saints and sinners, reform and corruption. Yet, through it all, God has chosen to work in history through clay jars. The abolition of slavery, women\u2019s rights, and human dignity all gained their traction through Christians who remembered the radical ethic of the cross, even when the institutional church lagged behind.[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

For church leaders, Holland\u2019s Dominion<\/em> offers caution and encouragement. The caution: our power is always fragile and prone to corruption. We are jars of clay, not marble monuments. The encouragement: God still places treasure within us. Even when churches falter, the gospel has a way of rising again.<\/p>\n

In my own NPO work on leadership flexibility, I emphasise that leaders must adapt to the seasons their churches are in: growth, stability, crisis, or renewal, to name a few. But beneath all flexibility must lie one constant: the cruciform pattern of weakness. Leaders are at their most powerful when they admit they are jars of clay. God\u2019s power is not diminished by our fragility; it is displayed through it.<\/p>\n

Holland concludes Dominion<\/em> with Paul\u2019s words: \u201cGod chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.\u201d[10]<\/a> That is the story of Christian history. Despite scandal, sin, and excess, Christianity has endured, not because of the strength of its institutions but because of the paradox of its message. In the end, Christianity\u2019s greatest dominion is not its empires or cathedrals but its witness that weakness can bear glory, that clay jars can carry treasure, and that a crucified King still rules the world. The gospel is not fragile, even if the church is. God\u2019s power is still made perfect in weakness. History proves it, and Holland reminds us of it.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind<\/em> (London: Little, Brown, 2019),<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid, 89.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid, 387\u2013388.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God<\/em> (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 340\u201341.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals<\/em>, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1989), 86\u201387<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ronald A. Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers<\/em> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 253\u201354<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap\u2026 and Others Don\u2019t<\/em> (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 21.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Edgar H. Schein and Peter A. Schein, Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust<\/em>, 2nd ed. (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2021), 14\u201315.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Holland, Dominion<\/em>, 424.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Ibid, 525.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love church history and every year teach a church history intensive in our bible college, so when I saw Tom Holland\u2019s Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind[1] on my reading list, I chose to read it from beginning to end. It is a weighty book, sweeping across millennia of history, weaving together philosophy, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":191,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2967,2630,2627],"class_list":["post-42002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp03","tag-dominion","tag-holland","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42003,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42002\/revisions\/42003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}