Peter Kreeft has written the best article of his life, an article that recaps his entire body of work on the Faith, in a way. It is not only a must read, it is a must quote – though I’m tempted to quote the whole thing.
One part will have to do.
I’ve written lately on how the mistaken dichotomy between the “God of the Old Testament” and the “God of the New” results from an emasculated notion of Love. See Love and War and Love, War and Gonads.
Kreeft nails it.
But is not the God of the Bible revealed most fully and finally in the New Testament rather than the Old? In sweet and gentle Jesus rather than wrathful and warlike Jehovah?
The opposition is heretical: the old Gnostic-Manichaean-Marcionite heresy, as immortal as the demons who inspired it. For “I and the Father are one.” The opposition between nice Jesus and nasty Jehovah denies the very essence of Christianity: Christ’s identity as the Son of God. Let’s remember our theology and our biology: like Father, like Son.
But is not God a lover rather than a warrior?
No, God is a lover who is a warrior. The question fails to understand what love is, what the love that God is, is. Love is at war with hate, betrayal, selfishness, and all love’s enemies. Love fights. Ask any parent. Yuppie-love, like puppy-love, may be merely “compassion” (the fashionable word today), but father-love and mother-love are war.
In fact, every page of the Bible bristles with spears, from Genesis 3 through Revelation 20. The road from Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained is soaked in blood. At the very center of the story is a cross, a symbol of conflict if there ever was one. The theme of spiritual warfare is never absent in scripture, and never absent in the life and writings of a single saint. But it is never present in the religious education of any of my “Catholic” students at Boston College. Whenever I speak of it, they are stunned and silent, as if they have suddenly entered another world. They have. They have gone past the warm fuzzies, the fur coats of psychology-disguised-as-religion, into a world where they meet Christ the King, not Christ the Kitten.
Welcome back from the moon, kids.
I read this article because of your use of superlatives, Kevin. You didn’t exaggerate.
This is an old article, one Kreeft has put out for years, I’m surprised you just read this now Kevin; I knew about it long before I was even a Catholic!
It’s late and I need to get some rest, but I’d like to make a comment first. As for how good it is- while it has some good parts, IMHO there are some odius elements in there as well.
If our only enemies our Satan and sin, how on earth do you explain away all the enemies of the Church?! When the french revolutionaries tore France to pieces in an effort to rid themselves of Catholicism, was is Satan alone that did it? Oh I’m sure he helped, but those men choose to do what they did, they willingly made themselves our enemies. What about the protestants? I recall the “reformation” being about the overthrow of the Church. Seperated brothers? They were a little more than that back in the day. And do I even need to start about the muslims?! How many times did they try and invade Christendom, with the express intent of destroying it?
And how on earth is the left not our enemy? They are the biggest supporters and promoters of the abortion holocaust that Kreeft himself denounces, yet they are not our enemies? How odd. The same applies to heretics, anti-catholics and the rest.
Sorry, but many if not most of those groups are our express enemy, even if they may be our “patients” as well. If indeed they are our patients, then they are patients who try to kill their doctors, spread lies about their doctors in order to keep others away, and attempt to poison the medicine the doctor uses to treat his other patients.
Kreeft seems to forget that we can convert our enemies, without having to resort to calling them something other than enemies. Satan and sin are the true villians in existant, but they have many willing and able servants, who often do their bidding. If we don’t confront the servant as well as the master, we will only be fighting half the war. I say make war on both.
Glad you did, Deana! It turns out it was written in 1998, and I have blogged about it before. It did seem familiar, but it’s well worth re-reading, even for those who have already read it once.