Book Review: Socrates Meets Jesus by Peter Kreeft

Pages: 182
Pub­lisher: Inter­var­sity Press
Year:  2002
Author: Peter Kreeft

Peter Kreeft has writ­ten a sim­ple, yet crit­i­cal exam­i­na­tion of the claims of Jesus as expe­ri­enced through a pagan Greek philoso­pher — Socrates.  It is through Socrates that Kreeft cuts through a lot of the the­o­log­i­cal jar­gon, ask­ing what should be the fore­most and basic ques­tions when approach­ing the ques­tion “Who is Jesus?”

The book is writ­ten in the same fash­ion as his other Socrates meets… books. Names are often satire, some times bit­ing and always rel­e­vant. The con­text is always mod­ern day (at least at the time of writ­ing) and the issues as rel­e­vant now as they were back then. Kreeft’s use of satire does not come off as inap­pro­pri­ate or spite­ful, but humor­ous (i.e., Pro­fes­sor Fesser, Bertha Broad­mind) and light-hearted.

Kreeft’s story picks up imme­di­ately after Socrates drinks hem­lock juice, dying. He finds him­self thrown 2,000 years in the future (1987) and reg­is­tered at Have It University’s Divin­ity school. He’s intro­duced imme­di­ately to Bertha Broad­mind, who saves his life a few times (not know­ing what a taxi is, of course) while intro­duc­ing him to the ‘god of progress’ (in the words of Socrates), the idea of fun­da­men­tal­ism and the nature of con­tem­po­rary faith.

Socrates quickly dis­cov­ers he’s been enrolled in three classes which take up the focus of the book, Sci­ence and Reli­gion Com­par­a­tive Reli­gions and Chris­tol­ogy. In Sci­ence and Reli­gion Socrates exam­ines the nature of mir­a­cles — are they unsci­en­tific? Here he meets Pro­fes­sor Flat­land and Thomas Skep­tic. In Com­par­a­tive reli­gions Socrates dis­cusses the nature of reli­gious claims and truth — are they exclu­sive or mutual? As well as the claims sur­round­ing the exclu­siv­ity of Jesus. Finally, Socrates finds him­self in Chris­tol­ogy class, where he meets Molly Mooney, Ahmen Ali Louiea, Solomon Etude, Sophia Sikh and Pro­fes­sor Fesser. It is in this class, the last por­tions of the book, that we encounter the Jew­ish idea of God, how those ideas trans­late into the New Tes­ta­ment and whether or not they are com­pat­i­ble with the claims of Jesus. Also dis­cussed is the impact in the lives of the Apos­tles and dis­ci­ples and whether their lives attest the mes­sage they believed was being preached.

I’m already a fan of Peter Kreeft’s dia­logue style of books and find this to be another sig­nif­i­cant addi­tion to my library. Some might not like his ‘Socratic method’ which brings me to the only prob­lem I can fore­see with the book. While Kreeft is extremely clear in his think­ing and I agree with him entirely. Some may not like that he paints tra­di­tional views of Jesus as wholly sen­si­ble, whereas com­pet­ing inter­pre­ta­tions (Jesus as an arche­type, a myth pro­jected back­wards into church tra­di­tion, etc.) seem almost fool­ish. Though, I think like Lewis, Kreeft cuts to the heart of the issue and in this a lot of views seem increas­ingly jus­ti­fied the more peo­ple that believe it, the more books that are writ­ten on it, the more ‘-isms’ you can attach to them. Kreeft asks one sim­ple ques­tion, “What does the text say?” and leaves it at that. I like this, oth­ers won’t, but fore­go­ing that the book is a funny, enlight­en­ing and pos­si­bly cor­rec­tive read that should be required. It is just too bad that the book is so short, under 200 pages.

With this book I think Peter Kreeft has man­aged to place him­self under C.S. Lewis as the two top thinkers (An Angli­can and a Catholic, go fig­ure) who have most influ­enced the way I view things. Socrates Meets Jesus is an excel­lent book and highly recommended.

Sug­gested reading:

The Best Things in Life
The Unaborted Socrates

Related posts:

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