But if that answer looks like a dodge, if you mean what PHILOSOPHICAL argument is best, I think it's the moral argument that C.S. Lewis begins MERE CHRISTIANITY with, and which Dostoyevski shows in even more convincing form than abstract logic, namely life consequences, in CRIME AND PUNISHMENT and above all THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, that "if there is no God, then everything is permissible." Why not, if you never get caught? Dr. Rieux, in Camus' THE PLAGUE, can never solve his (and Camus') greatest riddle: If there is no God, and you can't be a saint without God, and the meaning of life is to be a saint, then how can anyone ever find or live the meaning of life?
Peter Kreeft Interview David Farel, Writer Peter Kreeft, a prominent philosopher, writer, and aplogist, recently agreed to an exclusive interview with the SLUH Review. Here are his responses to questions posed by the SLUH community. This interview has been edited for length.
David Farel: In your 45 years teaching at Boston College, what have you found to be the biggest obstacle to your students' faith, and how have you addressed it? Peter Kreeft: I honestly don't know, because I don't know what most of my students are thinking or believing or why. No teacher does, unless he has only a few students. University teaching is not Socratic dialoging or Oxford tutorials. I can only guess, and my guess is that, like most young Americans, they are simply too in love with the world to be in love with God very much. Not a surprising answer, or distinctively modern. But money, sex, and power (autonomy, 'freedom') have always been the three biggies, which is why poverty, chastity, and obedience are the three monastic vows. Today sex obviously comes first. Boston College is just as much a free whore house for its "men" (playboys, really) as any "secular" university, and that's got to be more exciting than conventional religion. That's the elephant in the living room that nobody wants to mention.
DF: On your list of twelve ways to know God, you wrote that we can find God in great literature. Which books and authors (not only of literature) have most influenced you, and if you had to list five must-reads for Catholics or Christians, what would the five books be? PK: John's Gospel, Frank Sheed's translation of Augustine's Confessions, Pascal's Pensees, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and Dostoyevski's Brothers K. DF: What makes a school--whether grade school, high school, or college--truly Catholic? PK: Very simple: Its teachers really believe and love the truth and goodness and beauty of the Catholic faith. Lacking that, nothing works; with that, nothing else matters.
DF: What do you believe to be the most effective argument for belief in God? PK: No competition here: saints. You can't refute Mother Teresa. Eleven ordinary schlemiels became saints hanging around Jesus; only one angry revolutionary failed.
DF: What advice on living the faith would you give to a high school student today?
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