Book Review: Between Heaven and Hell by Peter Kreeft

Pages: 142
Pub­lisher: Inter­var­sity Press
Year: 1982 (2008)
Author: Peter Kreeft

I believe this is the first major Socratic dia­logue Kreeft pub­lished (1982) and, unlike the oth­ers pub­lished by Inter­var­sity Press, does not fea­ture Socrates as the cen­tral char­ac­ter. But, instead, fea­ture Lewis as the main char­ac­ter. Between Heaven and Hell is a dia­logue between Chris­t­ian author and apol­o­gist C.S. Lewis, Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy and Eng­lish author Aldous Huxley.

While the orig­i­nal was pub­lished in 1982, a revised edi­tion was pub­lished in 2008 — the edi­tion I own — and includes an Appen­dix (A World With­out an Easter) and out­line of the book. How­ever as far as I know, the main text has not been altered between the two editions.

The basic premise of the book is described on the back cover:

On Novem­ber 22^nd, 1963, three great men died within a few hours of each other: C.S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy and Aldous Hux­ley. All three believed, in dif­fer­ent ways, that death is not the end of human life. Sup­pose they were right, and sup­pose they met after death. How might the con­ver­sa­tion go?

The three dif­fer­ent views of death pre­sented in the book are West­ern the­ism (Lewis), West­ern human­ism (Kennedy) and ancient East­ern pan­the­ism (Hux­ley). The qual­ity of the dia­logue here is excel­lent, and I sus­pect one might have trou­ble telling the dif­fer­ence between the C.S. Lewis of this book and the C.S. Lewis of “real life”. I’ve never read (or really lis­tened to) Kennedy or Hux­ley (in any sort of con­ver­sa­tional text) so I’m not sure if they sound as they really would have sounded, but I can say that their views are pre­sented accu­rately and articulately.

Lewis’ dia­logue with Kennedy con­sid­ers “New Chris­tian­ity” and “Old Chris­tian­ity,” the nature of Jesus, objec­tions to mir­a­cles and the super­nat­ural and  whether there is such a thing as “objec­tive truth”. Lewis’ trilemma is pre­sented and explained, and Jesus’ claim to divin­ity is exam­ined. Lewis’ dia­logue with Hux­ley con­tin­ues the exam­i­na­tion of Jesus’ divine claim (Hux­ley argu­ing that Jesus did not claim to be divine), and pro­gresses the dis­cuss into whether Jesus’ claims of divin­ity were unique or sim­i­lar to claims the sages of other reli­gions have made. The new dia­logue, A World With­out Easter, is a short but worth­while read and mostly exam­ines the pop­u­lar atti­tude that the res­ur­rec­tion wasn’t a sig­nif­i­cant event.

So far Peter Kreeft has yet to fail to impress me. This is another well-written book, one that I highly rec­om­mend for those who are inter­ested in see­ing how the three dif­fer­ent world views pre­sented in the book would dia­logue and inter­act with each other.

Related posts:

1. Book Review: The Unaborted Socrates by Peter Kreeft
2. Book Review: Between Allah and Jesus by Peter Kreeft
3. Book Review: Socrates Meets Jesus by Peter Kreeft
4. Book Review: Mak­ing Sense of Suf­fer­ing by Peter Kreeft
5. Book Review: Three Approaches to Abor­tion by Peter Kreeft