Peter Kreeft

We have reduced all virtues to one: being nice. And, we measure Jesus by our standard instead of measuring our standard by Him. For the Christian, explains author Peter Kreeft, being virtuous is not a means to the end of pleasure, comfort and happiness. Virtue, he reminds us, is a word that means manly strength. But how do we know when we are being meek--or just cowardly? When is our anger righteous--and when is it a sin? What is the difference between being virtuous--and merely ethical? Back to Virtue clears up these and countless other questions that beset Christians today. Kreeft not only summarizes scriptural and theological wisdom on leading a holy life, he contrasts Christian virtue with other ethical systems. He applies traditional moral theology to present-day dilemmas such as abortion and nuclear armament. Kreeft restores to us what was once common knowledge: the Seven Deadly Sins have an antidote in the Beatitudes. By setting up a close contrast between the two sets of behaviors, Kreeft offers proven guidance in the often bewildering process of discerning right from wrong as we move into the questionable mores of the twenty-first century. He provides a road map of virtue, a map for our earthly pilgrimage synthesized from the accumulated wisdom of centuries of Christians, from Paul and the early Church Fathers through C.S. Lewis.

What would happen if Christians and a Muslim at a university talked and disagreed, but really tried to understand each other? What would they learn?
That is the intriguing question Peter Kreeft seeks to answer in these imaginative conversations at Boston College. An articulate and engaging Muslim student named 'Isa challenges the Christian students and professors he meets on issues ranging from prayer and worship to evolution and abortion, from war and politics to the nature of spiritual struggle and spiritual submission.
While Kreeft believes Christians should not learn extremism or unitarian theology from Muslims, he does believe that if we really listened we could learn much about devoted religious practice and ethics.
Here is a book to open your understanding of one of the key forces shaping our world today. It's a book that just could make you a better Christian.

For the first time in 400 years the Catholic Church has authorized an official universal catechism which instantly became an international best-seller, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Using this official Catechism, the highly-regarded author and professor Peter Kreeft presents a complete compendium of all the major beliefs of Catholicism written in his readable and concise style. Since the Catechism of the Catholic Church was written for the express purpose of grounding and fostering catechisms based on it for local needs and ordinary readers, Kreeft does just that, offering a thorough summary of Catholic doctrine, morality, and worship in a popular format with less technical language. He presents a systematic, organic synthesis of the essential and fundamental Catholic teachings in the light of the Second Vatican Council and the whole of the Church's Tradition. This book is the most thorough, complete and popular catechetical summary of Catholic belief in print that is based on the universal Catechism.

Peter Kreeft believes that Baise Pascal is the first post-medieval apologist. No writer in history, claims Kreeft, is a more effective Christian apologist and evangelist to today's uprooted, confused, secularized pagans (inside and outside the Church) than Pascal. He was a brilliant man--a great scientist who did major work in physics and mathematics, as well as an inventor--whom Kreeft thinks was three centuries ahead of his time. His apologetics found in his Pensees are ideal for the modern, sophisticated skeptic.

My title explains itself.

But it's misleading.

There are more than 40 reasons.

In fact, there are at least ten to the 82nd power, which, I am told, is the number of atoms in the universe. And that's just in ordinary matter, which makes up only 4.9% of the universe, the rest being dark matter and dark energy.

Each of my reasons is an independent point, so I have not organized this book by a succession of chapters or headings. After all, most readers only remember a few big ideas or separate points after reading a book. (I've never heard anyone say "Oh, that was a good continuous-process-of-logically-ordered-argumentation" but I've often heard people say, "Oh, that was a good point."

Which takes me back to my main point: "Why are you a Catholic" is a good question.

A good question deserves a good answer.

Here are forty of mine.

"Life, in the end, has only one tragedy: not to have been a saint."
- Leon Bloy

The ever-popular and prolific Peter Kreeft says that the most important question he has written about is how one becomes holy; or to put it another way, how one becomes a saint. This question is central to all the great religions, Kreeft demonstrates, for striving toward holiness, moving toward perfect love, is the whole purpose of life.

Kreeft admits that he is only a beginner on the climb to holiness, and it is to novices like him that he has written this engaging and encouraging book. Using the insights and experiences of saints and great spiritual writers throughout history, Kreeft shows what holiness is and how it can be achieved. He especially draws upon the spiritual classic Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean-Pierre de Caussade, S.J. The core of Caussade's timeless gem is that God reveals himself to all of us through the daily events of our lives. The surest way toward spiritual growth, therefore, is by perceiving and accepting the merciful will of God in every situation.

Kreeft stresses the simplicity of his approach to holiness, which focuses mainly on the virtue of love. Sanctity is love, he asserts, and only that can give us what we all long for--deep and lasting joy.

This book is for anyone who has ever wept and wondered, "Why?" Peter Kreeft observes that our world is full of billions of normal lives that have been touched by apparently pointless and random suffering. This account of a real and honest personal quest is both engaging and convincing. Written from a deep well of wisdom derived from experience and careful observation, Making Sense Out of Suffering is a book for empty hearts, not full ones. Read it if you are hungry for insight into the mystery of suffering. A Servant Book.

From a lifetime of studying the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, popular author Peter Kreeft says that his amazement has continually increased not only at Aquinas' theoretical, philosophical brilliance and sanity, but also at his personal, practical wisdom, his "existential bite." Yet this second dimension of St. Thomas has usually been eclipsed by the other. Kreeft wrote this book to help bring that sun out from its eclipse. He provides easily digestible samples of the religious wisdom of Aquinas.

Here are 359 pieces of wisdom from St. Thomas's masterpiece, the Summa Theologiae, which Kreeft says "are literally more valuable than all the kingdoms of this world because they will help you to attain 'the one thing needful, ' or 'the greatest good'," the ultimate end and purpose and meaning of life. Three of its names are "being a saint," "beatitude" ("supreme happiness") and "union with God." That was the principle for Kreeft in choosing which passages to use: do they help you to attain your ultimate end - sanctity, happiness, union with God? St. Thomas would have agreed with writer Leon Bloy, who often wrote that in the end "there is only one tragedy in life: not to have been a saint."

These 359 gold nuggets have helped Kreeft in the struggles of real life, to live in the real world, to grow closer to the Lord, and he hopes they will do the same for his readers. After each passage directly from Aquinas, Kreeft provides brief spiritual commentary to help explain it and apply it - practical, personal, existential, "livable" thoughts.

He has framed these readings as answers to questions that people actually ask their spiritual directors. Each answer is taken word for word from Aquinas.

Among the many topics Aquinas and Kreeft cover here include:

The problem of evil

Interpreting the Bible

Love vs. knowledge

Reconciling justice and mercy

Human freedom and divine grace

Angels and demons

The need for theology

Predestination and free will

Three kinds of goods

A shortened version of Kreeft's much larger Summa of the Summa, which in turn was a shortened version of the Summa Theologica. The reason for the double shortening is pretty obvious: the original runs some 4000 pages! (The Summa of the Summa was just over 500.) The Summa is certainly the greatest, most ambitious, most rational book of theology ever written. In it, there is also much philosophy, which is selected, excerpted, arranged, introduced, and explained in footnotes here by Kreeft, a popular Thomist teacher and writer. St. Thomas Aquinas is universally recognized as one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. His writings combine the two fundamental ideals of philosophical writing: clarity and profundity. He is a master of metaphysics and technical terminology, yet so full of both theoretical and practical wisdom. He is the master of common sense. The Summa Theologica is timeless, but particularly important today because of his synthesis of faith and reason, revelation and philosophy, and the Biblical and the classical Greco-Roman heritages. This little book is designed for beginners, either for classroom use or individually. It contains the most famous and influential passages of St. Thomas' philosophy with copious aids to understanding them.

In this engaging fictional conversation, Peter Kreeft gives credible voices to C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Billy Graham as they discuss one of the most contentious questions in the history of Christianity: Is Jesus symbolically or substantially present in the Eucharist?

These widely respected modern Christian witnesses represent three important Western theological traditions. Graham, an ordained Southern Baptist minister who traversed the world and the airwaves to spread the good news of salvation, represents evangelical Protestantism. Lewis, an Oxford professor, a prolific Christian apologist, and the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, was a member of the Church of England. Also an Oxford don, Tolkien was a friend of Lewis, the author of The Lord of the Rings, and a Roman Catholic.

While Lewis and Tolkien likely discussed the Eucharist during their long friendship, the conversation in this book never took place--but it could have, says Kreeft, who faithfully presents the views of these three impressive men.