RamistThomist
Puritanboard Assessor
Kreeft, Peter. Angels (and Demons). Ignatius Press.
Dr Kreeft’s work has no original thinking–and he would accept that as a compliment. This book is a series of questions and answers from his years of teaching. To the degree the book has a structure in its questions, it moves from “Our Fascination with Angels” to “How we know anything about them” to “the nature of angels” and finally to demons. Around 90% of this book is acceptable for Protestants, as Kreeft “nods” to Mary at times.
As with Mortimer Adler’s work on angels, we see with Kreeft that the answers we give to angels align with the answers we give to questions about reality. In other words, naturalism vs. supernatural theism. Somewhat surprisingly, Kreeft spends only minimal space dealing with Ps. Dionysius’s “Nine Choirs” of angels. He affirms it, of course, but it does not carry the most weight with his argument.
One could do an analytical review of this work, but it is sometimes best with Kreeft just to quote him, as many of his sentences are near-perfect:
“Angels are sentinels standing at the crossroads where life meets death” (Kreeft 17). In other words, not only are angels active at the life-death moment, but they are also active in redemptive history.
Does the supernatural exist, or are we just atoms in motion? Peter Kreeft gives a good answer: "Would you pay attention to your own thinking if you believed it was nothing but the inevitable echo of the evolutionary belch of the primordial slime?" Kreeft got this from CS Lewis’s Miracles, and the same answer can be found in Plantinga.
If angels are invisible, how can we conceive of them? It might be easier than you think. As he notes, “We can conceive of all sorts of things we can’t imagine, such as time, relationships, and numbers” (47).
Kreeft follows Thomas on angelic knowledge, noting it is intuitive. As angels are not in time the same as we are, their knowing of a thing is different. They just know. In other words, they do not know through sensation. Rather, “Angels learn from the top down, so to speak: from abstract universal ideas to concrete specific things” (66).
He has some interesting insights on angels’ relation to space and how the body relates to the soul (i.e., the soul contains the body, not the other way around). Exploring that, unfortunately, would take us too far afield.
Conclusion
This is certainly a book for the intermediate-advanced reader. The content is not difficult. Far from it, for Kreeft could not be dull if he tried. His Roman Catholicism does come through at times (though never in a reasoned way).
Dr Kreeft’s work has no original thinking–and he would accept that as a compliment. This book is a series of questions and answers from his years of teaching. To the degree the book has a structure in its questions, it moves from “Our Fascination with Angels” to “How we know anything about them” to “the nature of angels” and finally to demons. Around 90% of this book is acceptable for Protestants, as Kreeft “nods” to Mary at times.
As with Mortimer Adler’s work on angels, we see with Kreeft that the answers we give to angels align with the answers we give to questions about reality. In other words, naturalism vs. supernatural theism. Somewhat surprisingly, Kreeft spends only minimal space dealing with Ps. Dionysius’s “Nine Choirs” of angels. He affirms it, of course, but it does not carry the most weight with his argument.
One could do an analytical review of this work, but it is sometimes best with Kreeft just to quote him, as many of his sentences are near-perfect:
“Angels are sentinels standing at the crossroads where life meets death” (Kreeft 17). In other words, not only are angels active at the life-death moment, but they are also active in redemptive history.
Does the supernatural exist, or are we just atoms in motion? Peter Kreeft gives a good answer: "Would you pay attention to your own thinking if you believed it was nothing but the inevitable echo of the evolutionary belch of the primordial slime?" Kreeft got this from CS Lewis’s Miracles, and the same answer can be found in Plantinga.
If angels are invisible, how can we conceive of them? It might be easier than you think. As he notes, “We can conceive of all sorts of things we can’t imagine, such as time, relationships, and numbers” (47).
Kreeft follows Thomas on angelic knowledge, noting it is intuitive. As angels are not in time the same as we are, their knowing of a thing is different. They just know. In other words, they do not know through sensation. Rather, “Angels learn from the top down, so to speak: from abstract universal ideas to concrete specific things” (66).
He has some interesting insights on angels’ relation to space and how the body relates to the soul (i.e., the soul contains the body, not the other way around). Exploring that, unfortunately, would take us too far afield.
Conclusion
This is certainly a book for the intermediate-advanced reader. The content is not difficult. Far from it, for Kreeft could not be dull if he tried. His Roman Catholicism does come through at times (though never in a reasoned way).
