This book review was written by Anne Mary Russell, my 15-year-old daughter, and student at Boyce college in Louisville, KY.
Kreeft, Peter. Socrates Meets Jesus: History’s Greatest Questioner Confronts the Claims of Christ. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987.
Peter Kreeft wrote his fiction book Socrates Meet’s Jesus: History’s Greatest Questioner Confronts the Claims of Christ to show how Christianity is reasonable (8). Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College. He has written seventy-five books, including The Unaborted Socrates, Philosophy of Jesus, Refutation of Moral Relativism, and Handbook of Christian Apologetics.
Summary
Socrates wakes up in Have It University, a liberal university in the modern world. He discovers that he is registered for classes in the Have It Divinity School (13). Here he meets Bertha Broadmind, a fellow student at the Divinity School, and questions her ideas on modern progress. In his discussion with her, he laments that progress has removed most people’s willingness to think and converse about deep subjects, particularly in the area of philosophy (21). After this he questions his own idea that evil is ignorance (49).
After his first class, Science and Religion, Socrates talks to the professor, Professor Flatland on the topic of miracles. Flatland argues that miracles are disproved by science, but cannot cite any specific evidence against miracles (62). Socrates argues that the scientific laws do not contradict miracles, they allow for them. Because the scientific laws describe what usually happens, they allow for the highly unusual (71).
On the way to their next class, Christology, Bertha and Socrates debate on open-mindedness. Bertha argues that it is close-minded (and therefore wrong) to call someone else incorrect, but Socrates counters that a person is open-minded to find the truth and “to learn,” not to agree with everything (82). He asserts that to accept Christianity, a person must call all other views at least partially wrong, therefore real open-mindedness leads to close-mindedness (85).
When they arrive at the Christology class, Socrates and Bertha meet five other students and Professor Fessor. The class is arranged to be discussion oriented instead of lecture oriented (104-107). Professor Fessor decides to let Socrates role play as himself (the professor does not think that Socrates is actually the historical Socrates) to give the class a perspective of how a pagan from two thousand years ago would see Jesus (107-108, 147). Socrates asks why Jesus is so important to history. The class gives various reasons, including Jesus’ philosophical teachings, and his death, but Socrates argues that other people had good moral teachings and died for their beliefs (109-112). Finally, one of the students describes Jesus’s claim that he was God. Socrates is confused by Jesus’ claim about God and himself and decides to read the Old Testament to better understand Jesus’ view of God (113, 118).
During the next Christology class, Socrates describes his surprise that God was viewed as all-powerful. He also notes the paradox of goodness and God choosing goodness, and says that he now understands that goodness and God’s character are not cause and effect, but that goodness is an intrinsic part of God’s character, continuing his idea that evil must have an identity outside of ignorance (127, 131-132). To better understand Jesus’ life and claims, Socrates resolves to read the New Testament (146).
In the third Christology class, Socrates claims that he had a personal experience with Jesus, which he calls meeting Jesus, and he becomes a Christian (148, 153). Realizing that reason is only one part of attaining knowledge, he says that he was “led by the river of reason to the ocean of the whole person, to something that is more than reason but not less” (152). Then he expresses concern that the professor and several of the students claim to be Christian, but their lives look the same as people who do not claim to be Christian. He says that Christianity changes your whole life (154-155). Next, he argues that the resurrection is not metaphor or myth, but is fact, and that it is essential to the Christian faith (160, 163) because it “proves Jesus’ claim to divinity” and it completes Jesus’ task, saving man from “death and the origin of death, sin” (163). After the class is over, Socrates returns to the library, where he disappears in full view of other students (180).
Critical Evaluation
Kreeft gives a sound argument for the reasonableness of Christianity. He shows, through Socrates’ questions and conversations, that Jesus is not any more significant than another philosopher if he is not God. He shows that, to understand Jesus’ claim to be God, a person must first study the biblical view of God. He demonstrates how, unless the resurrection is true, Jesus’ claim is ridiculous. He shows how the resurrection is logical, likely, and maybe even true.
Kreeft successfully works through several arguments against Christianity, and provides counterarguments. Many of these arguments were familiar, but a few were clarified in a helpful way. For example, he clarifies the Euthyphro Dilemma (in which Socrates asked Euthyphro if the gods chose good because it was good, or if good was good because the gods chose it), by arguing that good is intrinsic to God’s character, demonstrating that it is a false dilemma after all.
He also demonstrates that miracles do not break the laws of logic, but only break the laws of nature, saying: “If a man feeds 5000 people from 5 loaves, he does not at the same time feed 5000 people from 55 loaves. Even miracles must obey logical laws” (71). This is well-articulated, and helped me be able to explain the relationship between logical laws and physical laws better. Overall, this book shows how logical thought leads to belief in God, although only a revelation from God can lead to Christianity (Socrates did not become a Christian without first “meeting” Jesus).
This book’s greatest weakness is that it is not good fiction. First, the dialogue is weak and contrived. The characters say things such as: “I’m afraid that’s the way it is” (23), and “Oh, let’s just leap to the miracles people really care about” (65). Furthermore, Socrates is supposed to know the modern English language “perfectly” (11, 22), but he speaks a formal, unnatural English, saying things like: “I had always believed and taught that the true self was the soul… therefore I -the true I- am immortal.” This sounds like an academic paper, not something a person would say in conversation. Another time he says “I am here because the divine providence arranged it, for what ultimate end I do not know” (107). This stiff English is not limited to his philosophical debates, but is in all of his casual conversation.
The characters in Socrates Meets Jesus are undeveloped and unrealistic. If a character’s point is rebutted, he or she immediately concedes and agrees to a new definition or changes the argument. Bertha, when discussing the nature of evil, quickly agrees that she is not sure what she believes anymore (57). This is not how most people argue in real life. People are not totally objective creatures whose only goal is to find truth; they are emotional and prideful beings, who often want to seem right or win an argument more than they want to be right. They do not usually agree on new beliefs based on logic alone, especially not instantly.
While the supporting characters promptly concede small points and arguments, they never make any major changes to their viewpoint. Each of them is one-dimensional and predictable. Thomas Keptic, one of the students, is a stereotypical skeptical atheist who must question everything (except naturalism). He never settles on believing anything. Bertha is a broad-minded relativist at the beginning of the book, and is a broad-minded relativist at the end of the book. For a story to be interesting, the characters in it must change and develop, but Socrates Meets Jesus leaves them the same for the whole book. No one changes significantly except for Socrates. The other characters merely exist to voice viewpoints opposed to Christianity.
Conclusion
Kreeft successfully gives a logical argument, but fails to write good fiction. I learned from Socrates Meets Jesus, but I did not enjoy reading it. I did not connect with the characters, and the dialogue separated me from the story instead of helping me embrace it. Even the names annoyed me. The names like “Professor Flatland” for the professor who is too narrow-minded to see how miracles and science are compatible, or “Thomas Keptic” for the skeptic who won’t change his ideas did not sound clever, they sounded cheesy. They removed my pleasure of finding out about the characters by telling me who they were before I read any of their dialogue.
Kreeft could have improved his book by making a better fictional story that magnifies the argument, or by leaving the fictional story out of the argument. I would not recommend this book to a friend, but it was useful for me to understand a few key arguments against Christianity. This book is like Socrates’ view of the academic world: “When it talks about a grape, I wonder why it has to squeeze out the juice and turn it into a prune.”
