Tag Archives: Peter Kreeft

What Is the Argument from Desire?

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

I don’t expect this argument will work with a science-worshiping atheist, but I do think it will work for people who are into the New Age or  Buddhism, or who otherwise are aware of the transcendent qualities of the world around them. I just finished the Steve Jobs biography, and I actually believe that Jobs may have resonated with this argument.

So what is the argument from desire? Nobody explains it better than philosopher Peter Kreeft. Here is Kreeft from his blog post on the argument from desire, first giving the two premises and conclusion of the argument:

1. Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.

2. But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.

3. Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.

Kreeft then defends the first premise:

The first premise implies a distinction of desires into two kinds: innate and externally conditioned, or natural and artificial. We naturally desire things like food, drink, sex, sleep, knowledge, friendship and beauty; and we naturally shun things like starvation, loneliness, ignorance and ugliness. We also desire (but not innately or naturally) things like sports cars, political office, flying through the air like Superman, the land of Oz and a Red Sox world championship.

Now there are differences between these two kinds of desires. We do not, for example, for the most part, recognize corresponding states of deprivation for the second, the artificial, desires, as we do for the first. There is no word like “Ozlessness” parallel to “sleeplessness.” But more importantly, the natural desires come from within, from our nature, while the artificial ones come from without, from society, advertising or fiction. This second difference is the reason for a third difference: the natural desires are found in all of us, but the artificial ones vary from person to person.

The existence of the artificial desires does not necessarily mean that the desired objects exist. Some do; some don’t. Sports cars do; Oz does not. But the existence of natural desires does, in every discoverable case, mean that the objects desired exist. No one has ever found one case of an innate desire for a nonexistent object.

Kreeft defends the second premise:

The second premise requires only honest introspection. If someone defies it and says, “I am perfectly happy playing with mud pies, or sports cars, or money, or sex, or power,” we can only ask, “Are you, really?”

But we can only appeal, we cannot compel. And we can refer such a person to the nearly universal testimony of human history in all its great literature. Even the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre admitted that “there comes a time when one asks, even of Shakespeare, even of Beethoven, ‘Is that all there is?'”

Finally, the conclusion:

The conclusion of the argument is not that everything the Bible tells us about God and life with God is really so. What it proves is an unknown X, but an unknown whose direction, so to speak, is known. This X is more: more beauty, more desirability, more awesomeness, more joy. This X is to great beauty as, for example, great beauty is to small beauty or to a mixture of beauty and ugliness. And the same is true of other perfections.

But the “more” is infinitely more, for we are not satisfied with the finite and partial. Thus the analogy (X is to great beauty as great beauty is to small beauty) is not proportionate. Twenty is to ten as ten is to five, but infinity is not to twenty as twenty is to ten. The argument points down an infinite corridor in a definite direction. Its conclusion is not “God” as already conceived or defined, but a moving and mysterious X which pulls us to itself and pulls all our images and concepts out of themselves.

In other words, the only concept of God in this argument is the concept of that which transcends concepts, something “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived” (1 Cor 2:9). In other words, this is the real God.

As usual, C. S Lewis summarizes in a way only he can:

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. (Mere Christianity, Bk. III, chap. 10, “Hope”)

Does God’s Mercy Cancel Out His Justice?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Christians claim that God is both merciful and that he is just, but how can both of these be true?  Doesn’t mercy cancel justice, or justice cancel mercy?

Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest church fathers, addressed this very issue in his monumental work, Summa Theologica.  Thomas’s approach in Summa Theologica was to present an objection, and then answer the objection.  Here is the objection:

Further, mercy is a relaxation of justice. But God cannot remit what appertains to His justice. For it is said (2 Tim. 2:13): If we believe not, He continueth faithful: He cannot deny Himself. But He would deny Himself, as a gloss says, if He should deny His words. Therefore mercy is not becoming to God.

In other words, God is just and God cannot deny himself.  If God is just, and mercy is a relaxation of justice, then God cannot be merciful.  How does Thomas answer this objection?

God acts mercifully, not indeed by going against His justice, but by doing something more than justice; thus a man who pays another two hundred pieces of money, though owing him only one hundred, does nothing against justice, but acts liberally or mercifully. The case is the same with one who pardons an offence committed against him, for in remitting it he may be said to bestow a gift. Hence the Apostle calls remission a forgiving: “Forgive one another, as Christ has forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32). Hence it is clear that mercy does not destroy justice, but in a sense is the fulness thereof. And thus it is said: “Mercy exalteth itself above judgment” (Jas. 2:13).

Philosopher Peter Kreeft, commenting on Thomas’s words in his A Summa of the Summa, adds that

Mercy is expressed in forgiveness.  In the word “forgive” is the word “give.”  For forgiveness is not primarily an attitude or feeling, but a gift,  remitting of debt, and therefore it costs the giver something.  God’s forgiveness of human sin cost him dearly on Calvary.  Both justice and mercy were satisfied there.

Further building on the interaction of mercy and justice, Kreeft explains that

mercy, as a property of love, is more primordial than justice.  Justice [as God applies it to mankind] is finite, and proportioned to desert; love can be infinite.  Our very existence is due to love and generosity, not justice, for we were not even there to deserve anything, even existence, before God gave us the gift of existence.

In summary, mercy is more basic than justice, and mercy can therefore complete justice.  To be truly merciful is not to negate justice, but to fulfill it.  Nothing better illustrates this concept than what God did on the cross for mankind.

What Should Be Our Response When We Fail God?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Failing to obey God is something that every Christian does, and repeatedly.  Every one of us sins, but how should we react when we sin, when we fail God?

Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft, in his book Prayer For Beginners, takes some lessons from Brother Lawrence’s little classic The Practice of the Presence of God.  Brother Lawrence says, “When I fail in my duty, I readily acknowledge it, saying ‘I am used to doing so; I shall never do otherwise if I am left to myself.’ If I fail not, then I give God thanks, acknowledging that the strength comes from Him” (Conversation 2).

When he considers Brother Lawrence’s advice, Kreeft says:

You may think this sounds too easy, too cavalier, almost indifferent. But why?  To be “sensible” of our faults but not “discouraged” by them is not indifference, it is patience.  Not to be sensible of them, or not to confess them, is the road to pride.  But to be discouraged by them is the road to despair. . . . How can we attain this state, of being sensible of our faults but not discouraged by them?  By seeing our faults but also seeing farther than our faults; by framing our faults by our faith, which is not faith in ourselves but faith in God.  No fault, no sin, no failure can exhaust God’s power to forgive.

Kreeft then compares the way Satan wants us to think about our sins versus the way God wants us to think about our sins.

God wants us to worry about our sins before we sin; the devil wants us to worry after we sin. God wants us to feel free after we repent (for we really are free then); the devil wants us to feel free before we sin, as we are choosing to sin (for we really are not free then; the devil is a deceiver). The devil tempts us to cavalier pride before we sin and worrisome despair afterward, since pride and despair both separate us from God, and anything that separates us from God is the devil’s friend and our enemy, while anything that brings us closer to God is the devil’s enemy and our friend. But what is our friend at one time can be our enemy at another.

Kreeft concludes with these thoughts:

What our Heavenly Father wants us to do about our spiritual failures is like what our earthly father wants us to do about our earthly failures.  When we fall off the horse, or the bike, or the high road to Heaven, we must simply climb on again as soon as we are aware of the fact that we have fallen off, rather than sitting there stewing in self-pity or self-hatred.

And remember to thank God for the awareness of the fact that you have fallen off the “horse” of awareness of his presence, for that, too, is his gift, not your achievement.  If he did not give you the grace to notice that you have forgotten his grace, you would not only forget his grace, but you would also forget that you had forgotten his grace. And then your state would be without hope.

How Do We Listen to God?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Oftentimes you’ll hear pastors or priests tell us to listen to what God has to say to us, but how exactly are we supposed to do this?  Should we expect God to communicate in a booming voice, much like he spoke to Moses on the mountain?  If not like this, then how are we to understand this command to listen to God?

Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft introduces the concept of listening to God in his book Prayer For Beginners.  An important step in learning how to pray is learning how to listen to God.  So, how do we go about listening to God?

In a conversation, if you are the wisest, it makes sense for you to do most of the talking. If the other person is wiser, it makes sense for you to do most of the listening. The wiser the other is, the more listening you want to do. Well, prayer is conversation with God, and it makes no sense for us to do most of the talking. We ought to be listening most of the time.

But, you may object, we cannot hear God’s voice as we can hear the voice of another human being. True, but we can hear God’s voice in other ways. We hear him in nature, which is his art. We hear him in his providential directing of our lives, and in the lessons in human history, and in the “still, small voice” of our conscience, God’s interior prophet. We hear him loud and clear in Scripture, his inspired Word deliberately given to us.  One way of praying is listening to God’s voice in Scripture, reading Scripture as God’s Word—which is exactly what it is!

And the best listening, the listening that gets the closest to God’s heart, the listening that hears the most total revelation of God, is listening to Christ, God incarnate, God in the flesh, “very God of very God”. “The Word of God” means the Bible only secondarily; primarily it means Christ. In the words of the Catechism, Christ is “the Father’s one, perfect, and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one” (CCC 65). Praying by reading the Gospels prayerfully and “listeningly” is one of the very best ways to pray.

Let’s review the ways we listen to God.  Kreeft introduces 6 ways of listening to God in order of their effectiveness and importance:

  1. nature
  2. providential directing of our lives
  3. lessons in human history
  4. conscience
  5. Scripture
  6. Christ in the Gospels

The implication of this ordering is that those who listen primarily in ways 1-4 are missing out on the 2 best ways to listen to God.  They are starving themselves of his fuller revelation.  There is nothing wrong with ways 1-4, but we mustn’t stop there.  If we are going to hear the most from God, if we are going to get the “closest to God’s heart,” we must take seriously the reading of Scripture, and especially the reading of the Gospels.

What Is the Meaning of Life?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

This is the one of the most basic and fundamental questions that every human being must come to grips with, or waste their lives away.  If you don’t know what the end goal of your earthly existence is, you will drift like a boat without a rudder on the high seas of life.  You will chase one thing after another, never making any progress, because progress implies that there is something to progress to.

The Christian answer to this question is powerful and compelling.  Recently, as I was reading philosopher Peter Kreeft’s little book, Prayer For Beginners, I came upon Kreeft’s wording of the Christian answer to the meaning of life.  Prayer, Kreeft explains, is a necessary activity for attaining the meaning of life.  In this context, he explains what the meaning of life is:

Becoming saints is the meaning of life.  It is why we exist.  It is why God created us.  It is the reason he banged out the Big Bang, . . . and why he providentially provided this one perfect planet, and why he breathed his Spirit into the Adam he formed out of its dust, and why he does the same to every baby conceived, and why he prepared a chosen people, and sent prophets among them, and finally came down from Heaven into a mother and a manger and a Cross, and was forsaken by God so that we need never be forsaken, and rose again, and sent his Spirit to haunt our hearts—all this stupendous effort was for one end: to make saints, to make little Christs, to give his Son brothers and sisters.

The whole universe is a saint-making machine.  And prayer is the fuel that powers it.  He was not called “Jesus” (Savior) merely because he was to save us from the punishment for our sins; he was called “Jesus” “for he will save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:21).  His purpose was not just to make us safe but to make us saints.  Prayer is our first step in becoming saints.

The meaning of life is to become like Christ, to become a saint.  It is not to become wealthy, it is not to gain honor before other men, it is not to become famous, it is not to gain power over other humans, it is not to seek bodily health so that we can live longer, it is not to revel in fleshly pleasures.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Heb 12:1-2

A Simple Argument for God’s Existence

Post Author: Bill Pratt

A couple months ago, we featured a 7 minute audio clip from philosopher Peter Kreeft’s lecture on arguments for God’s existence.  For this post, we are presenting an additional clip from the lecture – this time on the first cause argument for God’s existence.  Again, Kreeft does a wonderful job simplifying the argument so that anyone can understand.  Enjoy!

[audio:https://www.toughquestionsanswered.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Arguments-for-the-Existence-of-God-First-Cause.mp3|titles=The First Cause Argument]

Design in the Universe as Evidence of God – Peter Kreeft audio

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Philosopher Peter Kreeft gives a brilliant overview of the argument from design in the audio below.  The audio is excerpted from one of Kreeft’s podcasts where he lectures on five arguments for the existence of God.  I beg you to set aside just 7 minutes to listen to this audio.  You won’t be sorry.

[audio:https://www.toughquestionsanswered.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Arguments-for-the-Existence-of-God-Design.mp3|titles=The Design Argument]

What Is Christian Faith?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most abused words in the English language is the word faith.  For skeptics, faith is believing in something despite reason.  For some religious folks, faith is simply the expression of positive emotions toward God.  Others claim faith is purely intellectual.

Can we more rigorously define what faith is?  I think we can, and I will call on Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli to help out, from their book Handbook of Christian Apologetics.

Kreeft and Tacelli first differentiate between the object of faith and the act of faith.

The object of faith includes all the things that are believed about God, as communicated by the Bible.  These things that are believed are expressed in propositions (e.g., Jesus is the Son of God).  These propositions, however, are only pointers.  They direct our attention to the real object of faith, God.  If the real object of faith is God, then why do we need all the propositions that capture our beliefs about God?  Kreeft and Tacelli explain, “Without propositions, we cannot know or tell others what God we believe in and what we believe about God.”

The act of faith consists of more than just belief.  There are four components of faith: 1) emotional, 2) intellectual, 3) volitional, and 4) heart.  Let’s look at each of these one at a time.

Emotional faith is “feeling assurance or trust or confidence in a person.  This includes hope (which is much stronger than just a wish) and peace (which is much stronger than mere calm).”  Emotional faith is the weakest component of faith because emotions change so frequently.

Intellectual faith is belief.  According to Kreeft and Tacelli, intellectual faith is more stable than emotional faith.  Strongly held beliefs will tend not to change often.  They cite the definition of intellectual faith from the Baltimore Catechism: “the act of the intellect, prompted by the will, by which we believe everything God has revealed on the grounds of the authority of the One who revealed it.”

Volitional faith is an act of the will.  “This faith is faithfulness, or fidelity.  It manifests itself in behavior, that is, in good works. . . . For the root of volitional faith – the will – is the faculty or power of the soul that is closest to . . . the ‘heart’.”

Heart faith is the very center of a person’s being, the center of their soul.  This is the “I” where the emotions, intellect, and will reside.  “The heart is where God the Holy Spirit works in us. . . . With the heart we choose our ‘fundamental option’ of yes or no to God, and thereby determine our eternal identity and destiny.”

All four of these components of faith work together, with the heart being the intersection of them all.  Faith is, therefore, not just about emotions or intellect.  Faith involves the entire person – every part.

The interaction of the intellect and the will are particularly interesting.  Kreeft and Tacelli describe how they work together:

The intellect is the soul’s navigator, but the will is its captain. . . . The will can command the intellect to think, but the intellect cannot command the will to will, only inform it, as a navigator informs the captain.  Yet the will cannot simply make you believe.  It can’t force the intellect to believe what appears to it to be false, or to disbelieve what seems to it to be true.

We could also add that if the emotions are predisposed against believing, then faith can be thwarted.  This is why purely intellectual appeals to a non-believer may not be effective.  If their emotions and/or will are set against faith, then intellectual arguments cannot bring them to God.  Likewise, purely emotional appeals may appear to work for a short time until that person has time to think about their beliefs and decide they are not reasonable (they have an intellectual problem).  There are even people who will to believe, but their intellect and/or emotions stand in the way.

Christian faith deals with the whole individual, so the takeaway is that the church can never become one dimensional and forget that will, intellect, emotions, and finally the very heart of a person must all express faith.

What Explains the Changing of the Universe?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Everything around us is changing, moving from one state to another in time.  My son was less than 5 feet tall two years ago, and now he is greater than 5 feet tall.  The grass in my yard is growing every week so that I have to cut it.  The paint on my house is fading.

Now, all of these things that are changing are moving from one state to another.  What could move a thing from one state to another?  It doesn’t seem like the thing itself could do that, all by itself.

Food, air, and water contribute to my son’s changing height.  The sun and water grow the grass.  The environment acts on the paint to cause it to fade.  My son cannot be the sole explanation for his change, nor can the grass or paint change themselves.  These things all have the potential for change, but there is always something external that acts on that potential to make the change occur.

It doesn’t stop there, though, because food, air, water, the sun, and the environment also need an explanation for why they change.  They cannot actualize their own change either.

So, what we have is a universe full of changing things that each need an explanation for that change.  Said another way, we have a universe full of potentialities, all of which need things to actualize them.

The universe, though, is the sum total of all these changing things.  It is the sum total of all time, space, and matter.  If everything in the universe is changing, then logically the universe is also changing.  What, then, is the explanation for the universe changing?  It cannot change itself, as we’ve seen.  There must be something outside of it, and that something cannot be in time, in space, or material.  The theist responds that God is outside time, space, and matter, and is therefore a great candidate for the explanation of the changing of the universe.

One last thing, if the explanation for the changing of the universe is also changing, then it also needs an explanation.  But Christians have always held that God is unchanging Therefore, God is the immaterial, nonspatial, eternal, and unchanging Source of all change.

Here is the argument in a syllogism:

  1. Everything that changes needs an explanation for that change outside of itself.
  2. The universe is changing.
  3. The universe needs an explanation of its change outside of itself.

Note: Credit for this form of the argument goes to Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli in their book, Handbook of Christian Apologetics.

The Meaning of Life According to Malcolm Muggeridge

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Below is another great quote from Malcolm Muggeridge, a man who in many ways was extremely successful.  Every day I see people who think that just a little more money, or a little more pleasure, is all they need to be content.  How sad and how foolish.  Money, fame, and pleasure will never fill you up.  Just go ask the rich and famous whether they’re content with their lives.

The philosopher Peter Kreeft once remarked that suicide rates are much higher in wealthy nations than poor nations.  Think about that for a good long minute.  If money and pleasure are truly what life is about, then suicide rates should be lower in wealthy nations, not higher.  Something is askew!

In any case, please enjoy the quote below from Malcolm Muggeridge:

I may, I suppose, regard myself, or pass for being, as a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the streets–that’s fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Internal Revenue–that’s success. Furnished with money and a little fame even the elderly, if they care to, may partake of trendy diversions– that’s pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time–that’s fulfillment. Yet I say to you — and I beg you to believe me–multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing–less than nothing, a positive impediment–measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.