Books

'Socrates Meets Jesus', by Peter Kreeft

Reviewed by Arthur N. Ballingall

Contents - Jun 2002 - Buy a copy now Editorial: Corpus Christi: at the core of the Faith - Michael Gilchrist Liturgy: New English Missal: Archbishop Pell to chair international Vox Clara committee - Michael Gilchrist News: The Church Around the World - AD2000 Neocatechumenal Way setting up its second Australian seminary - Richard Egan Sydney initiative to strengthen Catholic influence at university - Robert Haddad A post-1968 Catholic's view of R.E.: 'My generation was shortchanged' - Mark Power Moral leadership of American hierarchy under scrutiny at Rome meeting - Philip Lawler Following our baptismal calling takes courage - Chrism Mass homily - Bishop Geoffrey Jarrett How John Paul II's 'new springtime' came to an American parish - Elizabeth A. Wittman Pope John Paul II on Catholic Action (from Ecclesia in Oceania) - Pope John Paul II Letters: IVF expansion (letter) - Brian A. Coman Letters: Father Fessio (letter) - P.A. McKenna Letters: An exemplary priest (letter) - John Monaghan Letters: Heroic fantasy (letter) - Hal G.P. Colebatch Events: Talks on the Faith at Thomas More Centre - AD2000 Letters: Good example (letter) - Paul Foster Letters: Radio apostolate (letter) - Maureen Federico Letters: Inclusive language (letter) - George F. Simpson Letters: Accuracy (letter) - Fr John Crothers PP Letters: Excellent edition (letter) - Anne Boyce Letters: Ambiguities (letter) - Valentine Gallagher Letters: Latin Course (letter) - Rev V.I. Falconer SJ Letters: (letter) Letters: Latin Masses in Victoria (letter) - William Campbell Books: 'Right And Reason: Ethics in theory and practice', by Fr Austin Fagothey SJ - Michael Casanova (reviewer) Books: 'Socrates Meets Jesus', by Peter Kreeft - Arthur N. Ballingall (reviewer) Books: The Travels of Friar Odoric, 14th Century journal of Blessed Odoric of Pordenone - Anthony Cappello (reviewer) Books: New Titles from AD Books Reflection: A reason for mercy: healing post-abortion trauma - Anne R. Lastman

SOCRATES MEETS JESUS:
History's Greatest Questioner Confronts the Claims of Christ
by Peter Kreeft

(InterVarsity Press, 2001, $24.95. Available from AD Books)

Having written over sixty books on apologetics, theology and philosophy, Professor Peter Kreeft has steadily developed a number of these into a distinctive genre of literature, one which provides his readers with a 'painless' introduction to the critical thinking approach of the immortal Socrates.

Whatever else may be said about today's media, attention to critical thinking is seldom to the forefront - least of all Socratic-style thinking. And with media propaganda now approaching the absurd, in both its print and electronic forms, Kreeft delineates the ancient discipline of Socratic thought, which amply underlines the modern media's inability to consistently render truthful, logical opinion.

Dispensing with the obtuse exegesis of the Classical Greeks, Kreeft allows his readers to watch and learn in readily familiar practical situations the process of the Socratic question and answer.

In the case of the present book - Socrates Meets Jesus - the highly imaginative Kreeft, himself a first class student of Socratic thinking, enrols Socrates in the Divinity School at a large, modern university; and I suppose you could say he lets him loose. Think about it - which local campus would you choose for this event?

Socrates, naturally, professes no knowledge of Jesus, but is sufficiently interested to seek out the "experts" who claim to know Jesus. What better place for an old fact-seeking pagan to start, than with the intellectual establishment of the Western World?

The position of Socrates, as always, is that he pursues what he genuinely does not know, by way of question and answer, from those who are supposed to know. What they know, and how much they know, provide the fascination of Socrates Meets Jesus.

Without any knowledge of Jesus, this saintly old pagan prises further information from these mostly professional Christians, who at times become a trifle reluctant, but in the process teach all of us how we can allow truth to pass us by.

Professor Kreeft, in my opinion one of the best Christian apologists to come out of the 20th century, commenced his Socratic dialogues with his book The Unaborted Socrates - the most comprehensive debate on the subject in recent times, and an exceptional model of clarity.

In the same genre, Kreeft has singled out Socrates in debate with such thinkers as Machiavelli, Karl Marx, Sartre, Freud, Descartes, Kant, Marcel, Kierkegaard and "Philosophy 101", all of them in separate books.

Peter Kreeft has been able to take Socrates as a pre-eminence of Classical literature, and show his work as a thoughtful procedure of inquiry that we can all usefully adapt into our own lives in a host of contexts.

Arthur N. Ballingall is a Melbourne-based Catholic writer.

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 15 No 5 (June 2002), p. 17