INVENTING THE INDIVIDUAL
By Larry Siedentop
Penguin. 448 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 0 141 009 544
A leading international historian of ideas – not, seemingly, a professing Christian – argues that the ‘revolution’ initiated by Jesus and Paul is central to understanding present day democracy. Any Christian with an interest in society, history and politics will find this book exciting and challenging.
Drawing especially on Paul’s letters, Larry Siedentop shows how Christianity ‘turned the world upside down’ by abolishing the classical understanding of the universe as shaped by natural hierarchy. Paul’s insistence on each human being as equally free to be morally accountable reverberates through history ever since.
