I was reading a review of a book by Tom Holland "DOMINION: THE MAKING OF THE WESTERN MIND"

It seems like Holland's thesis is summed up with this line: "He argues that most of the things that we consider to be intrinsic and instinctive human values are actually nothing of the sort; they are primarily and fundamentally the product of Christianity and would not exist without the last 2000 years of Christian dominance on our culture."

I want to ask how much this can verified, some of the stuff mentioned here I have read about in the past in such a way that would suggest it certainly does exist outside a Christian, Western context. On the face of it, it seems like an argument that can be taken as another example of Western exceptionalism, almost an idea that Christianity is the source of true morals that non-christian cultures are deprived of.

Some key bits to hit upon, the first is about the conception of slavery as being inherently an evil act:

"Origen wondered at seeing man in God through Christ. Thinking in the opposite direction, Gregory of Nyssa wondered at seeing God in man; and by this he meant all men, including slaves. In his Fourth Homily on Ecclesiastes, Gregory does not mince words:

“What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling the being shaped by God? ‘God said, let us make man in our own image and likeness’ (Gen 1:26). If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller?”

There is a great deal of Seneca in what Gregory says, but unlike the Stoics, Gregory of Nazianzus or his brother Basil, Gregory does not temper his condemnation by making excuses for the institution of slavery to justify its continuation. In defiance of all ancient thinkers before him, he declares it to be simply wrong – end of story."

The next is about the notion of assisting the less fortunate and poor in society simply for the sake of helping them rather than because it increases the status of the wealthy:

"Today, the idea that we should care for others, help the weak, give to assist the needy and feel sorrow at the afflictions of the vulnerable and exploited is thought to be normal and obvious. TV ads for charities and aid organisations do not have to argue all humans have a right to dignity by merit of being human, they simply assume we all understand this. So it is difficult for us to imagine how radical it was for people like Gregory and Macrina or the others Holland highlights in this part of his book (Martin of Tours, Paulinus of Nola) to help the helpless purely because they recognised the paradox of a divine Christ as a suffering human being in these fellow humans. Rich people had done good works before. Ancient nobles were expected to endow great public buildings, hold games, races and gladiatorial shows, give free grain and bread to the populace of their city or support centres of learning or healing. But this was because that was seen as reflecting their dignitas and to their glory and esteem. It was not because they saw the people these acts assisted as their equals, equally reflecting the divine and so intrinsically worthy of equal dignity. That idea would have been alien, bizarre and even repellant. The fact that it is familiar, normal and attractive to us shows, as Holland argues, that we are like fish swimming in essentially Christian water. We barely even notice we are doing it."

Next is the idea that secular division between Church and State is uniquely Western and Christian:

"This division of life into that which is “secular” and that which is “religious” is peculiarly western and relatively recent. In a later chapter Holland traces the strange effects of its imposition by colonial westerners on cultures where it really did not fit. So Indian rites and cultural practices that were intrinsic to life on the sub-continent were made to conform to western conceptions of “religion” and “the secular” by creating the concept of something called “the Hindu religion” or “Hinduism”, where a whole variety of “religious”-looking practices, traditions, ceremonial and ideas were jammed, rather awkwardly, into the western concept of “religion” and given a neat label.

In medieval Europe, however, this new conception of a division between “the secular” and “the religious” was to have revolutionary effects. With the fall of the Western Empire and the centuries of chaos and fragmentation that followed, the Church in the west needed new powerful patrons for protection. The barbarian warlords and kings converted to the Catholic faith, but in the process the Church came to be dominated by its new protectors. Much of Western Christianity took on a distinct and oddly Germanic flavour, with Christ often depicted as a chieftain surrounded by his disciples as a comitatus, or warband of followers. Off on the western fringes of Europe, Celtic Christianity took on even more strange characteristics. And the Church became increasingly subsumed within a complex network of obligations, exchanges of favours and lordship over lands in return for services and dues. Bishops and priests were appointed by local potentates, rich church benefices were reserved for relatives and allies of the dominant lord in a given region and ecclesiastical offices were regularly bought and sold."

And finally the idea that revolutionary movements in the west have some intrinsically Christian basis, whether or not they explicitly mention religion:

"Similarly, the revolutions that reshaped the modern western world from Europe to America also had their origin in this very western and, ultimately, Christian idea of renewal and purification. It is ironic that movements that saw Notre-Dame (briefly) reconsecrated as “the Temple of Reason” in Revolutionary France or the establishment of a 3.5 million strong “League of Militant Atheists” in Soviet Russia had a fundamentally Christian impulse deep in their genes."

I've heard this notion before, and specifically that the idea of secular divisions in society is particular to Christianity, but I don't know if this is actually well accepted among academics and I find myself a bit leery since it seems to be very strongly playing up the certain ideas about western cultural superiority, the 'Judeo-Christian values' meme but with a nicer presentation. Like just on the slavery question, I understand that the curious usurper emperor of the Xin Dynasty Wang Mang abolished slavery and justified doing so on Confucian principles, almost simultaneous to Jesus's historical existence, but then I might have the full story on that particular incident.