MEN OF GOD
THE FATHERS OF THE WESTERN CHURCH, by Robert Payne; William Heinemann, English price 21/-. N considering the-development of the Christian Church we tend to overlook the crucial part played by the writing and example of the early Fathers. Indeed, many modern apologists see only a brief light after Pentecost, then a troubled darkness in which the Church and the world become indistinguishable. Of. course, it was and is never quite so. Mr. Payne is on familiar terms with the Fathers: almost, before he checks himself, he seems about to pat them on the back. But at some "cost he has made clear their double role, as men credulous, opinionated, tormented by anxieties and passions, and as Titans engaged in the construction of aqueducts for heavenly water. Without glossing, for example, the crabbedness and hatred of the flesh which characterise St. Jerome, he shows that a grim hermit weighed down by austerities can also be a man of God. From St. Paul to St. Thomas Aquinas, with extraordinary (his favourite adjective) success, he endeavours to present the Fathers as men of their times involved in unique labours. The result ‘is
a book which avoids the errors of the pietistic biographer, a book often irritatine but never dull.
James K.
Baxter
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 764, 12 March 1954, Page 13
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212MEN OF GOD New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 764, 12 March 1954, Page 13
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