Men of God

In 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 and 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 irritating but never dull.

1954 (81)