CHURCH AND SOCIETY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 714, 20 March 1953, Page 13

CHURCH AND SOCIETY

THE STORY OF CHRISTIANITY, by John Armour; Angus and Robertson, Australian price, 35/-. [s the Church the Body of Christ on earth, or not? Is it a supernatural: society in the process of being led into all truth by the Holy Spirit, or is it a human society teetering perpetually, under the fallible guidance of man, on the edge of error? Fundamentally, did Jesus Christ leave behind him something which was to grow into an organic unity, or something which was to deteriorate int an infinite series of groups of like-mind individuals? John Armour, in his ‘Story of Christianjty, favours the latter, Protestant, view. The Church, to him, is a blundering earth-bound | society which reached its fulfilment in the Reformation when "Believers became Popes with the infallible Word of God in their hands." In order to uphold this view he comes perilously near to denying the operation and the personality of the Holy Spirit, and to bringing up, again, in another form, the Ebionite heresy. So much, briefly, for the principal doctrinal points. What of the book itself? There can be no doubt that Mr. Armour has done a remarkable piece of condensation to fit nearly two thousand years of history into four hundred pages. But both matter and style have suffered for it. The book is, at best, a text-book. The story is told monotonously, and the style is turgid and, frankly, dull. On the whole, The Story of Christianity may form an admirable reference book for the Sunday Schools of Protestant sects. I cannot imagine its’ fulfilling any other

function.

PIC