[W]hile the book does provide some strong invective against the New (actually, not so new) Atheists, it has an importance out of proportion to its occasion. Dawkins et al. are like the irritant that prompts the secretion of a pearl.

What Hart does in this book is set forth a sweeping, and convincing, counternarrative to the story of Western civilization told by the atheist propagandists. Far from being an obscurantist obstacle to human fulfillment, he writes, Christianity actually invented the idea of humanity as we understand it today. . . .

The sadness of pagan antiquity — of a fixed, closed, tragic world order — gave way to a world in which the lowest could be liberated into a joyful communion with God. Pope John Paul II loved to quote from a particular Vatican II document the assertion that Christ did not just reveal God to man, but “reveals man to man”; Hart’s book is a profound essay on this theme, and the revolution wrought in history by this new understanding of intrinsic human dignity.