Christianity. Part 8. The Nadir of Triumphalism (1870 AD to 1975 AD) – Modern Papacy, Modernity, Christianity and World War II, Nazism, decline of the Church in the West, Second Vatican Council, Humanae vitae. Part 8 closes by discussing the possible ending of the millennial-long East-West Schism. How far the ending of schisms within Christianity will go is to be seen. "[T]he argument about the control of the Christian Church is almost as old as Christianity itself; and it may be that it will continue so long as there are men and women who assert that Christ was God, and who await the parousia. Perhaps it is part of the providential plan that the organization of Christianity should be a perpetual source of discord. Who can say? We should remember the words of Saint Paul, towards the end of his letter to the Romans, the key document of the faith: 'O depth of wealth, wisdom, and knowledge in God. How unsearchable his judgments, how untraceable his ways. Who knows the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counsellor?'"(p. 514) The Epilogue focuses on the papacy of John Paul II, his role in the fall of Communism, the Post-Soviet recovery of the Russian Orthodox Church; and describes the history of Christianity as a matrix for "a constant process of struggle and rebirth – a succession of crises, often accompanied by horror, bloodshed, bigotry and unreason but [with] evidence too of growth, vitality and increased understanding." The book "has necessarily stressed [Christianity's] failures and shortcomings, and its institutional distortions" but in the context of "its stupendous claims and its unprecedented idealism."(p. 515–16) Johnson argues that Christianity is self-correcting, with an "outstanding moral merit to invest the individual with a conscience, and bid him to follow it." "[I]t is thus no accident that all the implantations of freedom throughout the world have ultimately a Christian origin."(p. 516) Indeed, "Europe was a Christian creation not only in essence but in minute detail."(p. 515) The apotheosis that Christianity has provided, Johnson writes, "has reflected an effort to rise above our frailties... [and, to] that extent, the chronicle of Christianity is an edifying one."(p. 517) Reception Malcolm Muggeridge, writing in the New Statesman, describes the book as "masterly... [combining] great wealth of scholarship... with a vigorous, confident style." Alan Brien in The Sunday Times called it "vivid, colourful, clear and often at once impassioned and