46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderfully perceptive, December 9, 2004
This review is from: Love is Stronger Than Death (Paperback)
This is my favorite of all of Peter Kreeft's books, and I've read most of them. One might expect a book about death to be depressing, but this book is full of hope and joy.
Kreeft, as always, is wonderfully perceptive, and draws some really sharp insights. For instance, he notes the double meaning in saying that death is the "end" of life - both its termination, but also its consummation (or even its "goal"). "If death is not meaningful, then life, in the final analysis, is not meaning-full. For death is the final analysis...Life cannot be meaningful in the short run and meaningless in the long run, because the long run is the meaning of the short run." Wonderful.
His analogy between death and birth is especially perceptive. The child in the womb is warm and secure, and outside the womb is - he knows not what (although he might have some inklings of the "world beyond" - muffled voices and the like). Birth is a painful thing, and yet he is born into a world infinitely wider and richer than the womb, and he is infinitely freer in the "outside world" than he was in the womb. Even so, we are comfortable in this world, and at any rate, this world is all we know (although we might have inklings of a "world beyond"). Death, like birth, involves pain. Is it possible that death, like birth, brings us into a wider, richer, freer existence than we had before?
And, as the child in the womb draws his life from his mother, he cannot SEE his mother, much less KNOW her AS A PERSON until he is born. Is it possible that, just as, in this world, we can't see God, death brings us into a new relationship with Him ("then we shall see face-to-face")? Food for contemplation, perhaps.
This is a wonderful book; it points in some very profound directions.
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Moving!, January 14, 2005
This review is from: Love is Stronger Than Death (Paperback)
This is a beautifully written and moving book on death-on being mortal. It is written with depth and soul that few books on death can match. Masterfully written Kreeft indicates that we go thru stages to finally appreciate the value death can have in making us whole persons. Kreeft with finesse has interwoven quotes from literature, mythology, poetry and religion.
If you read my other rreviews you will note i dont give out praise easily-but this book was written by someone divinely inspired.
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32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
PETER KREEFT WRITES AS WELL AS C.S.LEWIS, September 16, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Love is Stronger Than Death (Paperback)
KREEFT,WHO SEEMS TO ACKNOWLEDGE C.S.LEWIS AS HIS MENTOR,WRITES ON A PAR WITH C.S.(AND C.S.IS THE GREAT MIND OF THE 20TH CENTURY WHOSE WORKS HELPED ME LEAVE THE DARK).IF THERE IS ANYTHING MORE IMPORTANT TO US THAN THE QUESTIONS OF GOD AND DEATH I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE. IF THERE IS ANY BETTER TREATISE ON GOD AND DEATH THAN THIS WORK OF PETER KREEFT I ALSO DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS.LOVE IS STRONGER THAN DEATH IS MANDATORY READING FOR EVERONE EXCEPT THOSE WHO ARE NOT GOING TO EVER DIE.
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