When I was a young adult (yikes--that sounds pretty much like I'm admitting that the words 'young adult' no longer describe me!), I was pretty much a C.S. Lewis fanatic. I read all his works that I could get my hands on. To me, and of course to many others, he can describe theological ideas in ways that are just, well, perfect. He's a genius. I haven't read through one of his books in ages, but I still think about the ideas in them all the time.
I've just discovered Peter Kreeft, and now that I've finished his Philosophy of Jesus, I can't wait to start working my way through his other works. This book is profound, witty, current, rich with many-layered ideas--just amazing.
Here are a few of my favorite excerpts.
Regarding John 1:38:
"...the very first words John records as coming from Jesus' lips: 'What do you seek?' The question may seem casual and common, but it is profound.
It is profound because it is a probe that goes into the depths of our hearts. It means, 'What do you love the most?' And this means, 'Who are you?' For we are what we love...Jesus says the same thing: 'Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. For all who ask, will receive, all who seek, will find, all who knock, will have the door opened.' (Matthew 7:7) In other words, what you love, you will get. So be careful what you love.
So this is a very dangerous thing, this loving-thing. It changes you. It changes your life. It's as objectively real as a large, hot rock thrown in your face. It's not just a thought or a feeling inside you; it really happens. We unite with what we love. We become what we love. The more you love chocolate, the more chocolate you become. The more you love cannibalism, the more cannibalistic you become. The more you love Christ, the more Christlike you become. Nothing is more scary than that. Look how scared the world was of Christ: they had to crucify Him."
On finding the truth:
"For God does not discover truth, as we do. He decrees it. He creates it. We do this too, partially, in the creative arts. There, we make truth: elsewhere, we discover it. It is true that elves are small and impish in the world of A Midsummer Night's Dream because Shakespeare made them that way, and it is true that elves are tall and awesome in The Lord of the Rings because Tolkien made them that way. The creation (the universe) is God's art and man's science. What is objective to us (e.g. tigers) is subjective to God. First He invents tigers, then we discover them, as first Tolkien invents hobbits, then we discover them. When we discover truth about the creation, we are reading the thoughts of the Creator."
So for man to deny the existence of God is as absurd as Bilbo Baggins the Hobbit denying the existence of Tolkien!
On man being "normal":
"Without knowing Christ, and thus knowing our 'abnormalism,' we must fall into the fundamental error of 'normalism.' All secular psychology, sociology, and anthropology is fundamentally askew at its very foundation because it assumes, wrongly, that its object, man, is in his natural state. All its data are its observations of 'normal' human behavior, just as in physics or astronomy all the data come from observations of how matter naturally behaves. Just imagine how radically physics would change if physicists came to believe that gravity was not inherent to matter at all but that matter had 'fallen' into this abnormal state at some time in the past. Imagine the radical shock astronomy would experience if astronomers came to believe that stars only started to shine at some point in past time called the 'fall.' Christianity reveals a shock as great as that in anthropology in its doctrine of the Fall, in its most basic interpretation of human history, in which the three great defining events are Creation, Fall, and Redemption."
On Jesus and politics:
"All political issues today are seen through the prism of Right vs. Left, the political 'us vs. them.'...The polarization is also harmful to society because it lets us be selectively moral, selectively idealistic--which means selectively immoral and pragmatic. If we take the high road on abortion, euthanasia, and sexuality, we can take the low road on war, poverty, and pollution; or vice versa. Even when we focus on a specific question like whether all human lives are intrinsically valuable, these categories allow us the moral schizophrenia to say yes when we address abortion and no to that same question when we address war and capital punishment--or vice versa. It's not just that we give wrong answers, it's that we have self-contradictory principles.
Only from the viewpoint of the straight can we judge the skewered. Christ is the straight, the plumb line--both when He is explicitly known, by divine revelation, and when He is implicitly known, by conscience and the natural law."
And finally, a quick one:
"The Church has only begun to unpack her holy luggage, her 'deposit of faith.' From the perspective of the year A.D. 5000, we will be 'the primitive Christians.'"
So is this guy great or what?
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