Christianity is the most enduring and influential legacy of the ancient world, and its emergence the single most transformative development in Western history. Even the increasing number in the West today who have abandoned the faith of their forebears, and dismiss all religion as pointless superstition, remain recognisably its heirs. Seen close-up, the division between a sceptic and a believer may seem unbridgeable. Widen the focus, though, and Christianity’s enduring impact upon the West can be seen in the emergence of much that has traditionally been cast as its nemesis: in science, in secularism, and yes, even in atheism.

That is why Dominion will place the story of how we came to be what we are, and how we think the way that we do, in the broadest historical context. Ranging in time from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC to the on-going migration crisis in Europe today, and from Nebuchadnezzar to the Beatles, it will explore just what it was that made Christianity so revolutionary and disruptive; how completely it came to saturate the mind-set of Latin Christendom; and why, in a West that has become increasingly doubtful of religion’s claims, so many of its instincts remain irredeemably Christian. The aim is twofold: to make the reader appreciate just how novel and uncanny were Christian teachings when they first appeared in the world; and to make ourselves, and all that we take for granted, appear similarly strange in consequence. We stand at the end-point of an extraordinary transformation in the understanding of what it is to be human: one that can only be fully appreciated by tracing the arc of its parabola over millennia.

基督教是古代世界最持久和最具影响力的遗产，它的出现是西方历史上唯一最具变革性的发展。即使今天西方有越来越多的人放弃了他们祖先的信仰，并将所有的宗教视为毫无意义的迷信，但他们仍然可以认出是基督教的继承者。从近处看，怀疑论者和信仰者之间的分歧似乎是不可逾越的。不过，扩大焦点，基督教对西方的持久影响可以从传统上被视为其克星的许多东西的出现中看出：科学、世俗主义，是的，甚至无神论。

这就是为什么《多米尼克》将把我们如何成为现在这样的人，以及我们如何以我们的方式思考的故事放在最广泛的历史背景中。从公元前480年波斯人入侵希腊到今天欧洲正在发生的移民危机，从尼布甲尼撒到披头士乐队，它将探讨到底是什么让基督教变得如此具有革命性和破坏性；它是如何完全饱和于拉丁基督教世界的心态的；以及为什么在一个对宗教主张越来越怀疑的西方，它的许多本能仍然是不可挽救的基督教。本书的目的有两个：让读者了解基督教教义首次出现在世界时是多么新奇和不可思议；并让我们自己和我们认为理所当然的一切因此而显得同样奇怪。我们正站在对人类的理解发生非同寻常的转变的终点：只有通过追踪其几千年来的抛物线弧度才能充分体会到这一点。

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