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Making Sense Out of Suffering by [Peter Kreeft]

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Peter Kreeft

Making Sense Out of Suffering Kindle Edition

by Peter Kreeft (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Peter Kreeft observes that our world is full of billions of normal lives which have touched by apparently pointless and random suffering. He then records the results of his own wrestling match with God as he struggles to make sense out of this pain.

Print length

198 pages
Language

English
Publication date

July 17, 2011
File size

284 KB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College, is the author of such well-received books as Between Heaven and Hell; The Unaborted Socrates; Yes or No?: Straight Answers to Tough Questions About Chrisitanity; Heaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing; and Prayer: The Great Conversation --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005D7USWU
Publisher ‏ : ‎ St. Anthony Messenger Press, Servant Books (July 17, 2011)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 17, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 284 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 198 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #237,275 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #510 in Catholicism (Kindle Store)
- #2,317 in Catholicism (Books)

Customer Reviews:
243 ratings

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Peter Kreeft

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---"Beauty" -- The branch of philosophy dealing with aesthetics.

---"C. S. Lewis and Mere Christianity" -- C.S. Lewis' masterpiece

--- Charisms: Visions, Tongues, Healing, etc. (feat. Dave Nevins)

---"Christianity in Lord of the Rings" -- The cleverly disguised role of God

---"Culture War" -- A call to arms, mapping key enemies and battlefields

---"Existence of God" -- A magnificent overview of the arguments

---"Good, True, Beautiful" -- C.S. Lewis on three great transcendentals

---"Happiness" -- How do you get it? Christ's version vs. the world's

---"Heaven" -- The heart's deepest longing

---"Hollywood Screenwriting" -- Encouragement to film's creative storytellers

---"If Einstein Had Been a Surfer" -- Rediscovering intuitive thinking

---"Lord, Liar, or Lunatic" -- The famous argument for Christ's identity

---"Problem of Pain" -- C.S. Lewis's brilliant exposition on suffering and evil

---"Sex in Heaven" -- Imaging the fire of God's love

---"Sexual Reconnection" -- Healing the link between sex & love

---"Shocking Beauty" -- The live character of Christ

---

Lecture scheduling and more info:

http://www.peterkreeft.com

--

Customer reviews

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Torpedo Fish

Answers to one of Philosophy's most enigmatic questions

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2020

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I didnt expect to find a satisfying answer to the problem of suffering....But golly, I did. I see things from an entirely new angle now. The book has done what many philosophy courses were unable to do for me. I hope that when my turn to suffer comes, I can remember what I read here and endure things more serenely and peacefully.

11 people found this helpful

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Okanemochi

A profound book on suffering that will help you see it in a new, fuller way

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2018

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Great, great scholarly work rich with insights on suffering from many different disciplines. There is truly meaning to be found in suffering, no matter what. Read this book and give it anyone who may need depth, encouragement, hope, and added faith in the face of difficult suffering. Amazing talent at work to bring together ideas, insights, and examples from across the spectrum of life that there is hope after all and even blessing.

11 people found this helpful

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Marsha

This brief book is one of his best. I appreciate his very thoughtful

Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2018

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I am a fan of Dr. Peter Kreeft. I have read a number of his books, listened to his lectures, and I still have several of his books in my (too large) "to read" bookcase. This brief book is one of his best. I appreciate his very thoughtful, creative, and well informed but humble approach to his thorny problem. Suffering: No matter what we believe about suffering, we are all in this suffering and pain-inflicting world together. We all suffer. And if we believe in a good and powerful God who somehow, to whatever degree, oversees this world and claims to care about His creatures, we have a problem, a tension that we need to examine. Dr. Kreeft does not give easy answers to the problem, but he examines suffering from a number of different perspectives, "clues" to meaning in the face of suffering. In so doing he dismisses the easy answers and constructs a much more nuanced, complex but satisfying approach. He also has some excellent comments about the difficulty that we "moderns" have with suffering. Get this book. Read it. I have bought several copies and given them out to people.

24 people found this helpful

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Customer

Thought-provoking and Insightful Treatment of Suffering

Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2002

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Peter Kreeft has written an intellectually stimulating book on something we all have to face: suffering. He does so by giving us clues from philosophy, the arts, and the Bible to the meaning of suffering. As a Catholic Christian, Kreeft finds the ultimate meaning of suffering in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. It is a book worth reading and re-reading. In my view, his most striking insight is how in literature, including the biblical story of Job, the protagonist must undergo suffering before the final triumph of good over evil. He urges us to view ourselves as protagonists in the midst of our own life stories. If good finally triumphs, as Christians believe, then the story is worthwhile, even with its inevitable suffering. Like a true philosopher, he also includes a thought-provoking chapter on why modernity can't understand suffering. This is a book that will appeal to all Christians, Catholic or non-Catholic, and to all persons searching to understand the meaning of suffering.

127 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Making Sense Out of Suffering by Peter Kreeft

Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2013

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Like all Peter Kreeft books, this book is very easy to read and understand. "Making Sense out of Suffering" is a remarkable book in explaining suffering from a Christian point of view. Why bad things happen to good people turns many people away from God because they don't understand the reason for suffering and blame God for not stopping it. After reading this book you will have a better understanding of the necessity for suffering and why there is suffering in this world. Not everyone want to believe that we were not made for this world but for the next one. Ego and pride are so strong in some people that they make themselves god and blame God [the real God] for not supporting their own godship.I highly recommend buying and reading this excellent book.

11 people found this helpful

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Samuel A. Nigro

Finding Transcendence....

Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2017

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Book Review: Making Sense out of Suffering, by Peter Kreeft, Cincinnati, Servant Books, 1986, 184 pages.
by Samuel A. Nigro,MD, retired psychiatrist, copyright c 2017

When suffering, joy is hard to find, to feel, to believe. The negative sensations loom large as punishment, darkness, despair, anger, bewilderment, pain, loss of function, loss of identity, loss of self, witnessing evil, and the monotony of spiritless matter. Suffering is the constriction into less being until you understand Peter Kreeft, a favorite of mine since discovering "The Transcendental Variables of All Being" (learned from Kreeft's other works: Living the Truth and Guide to Thomas Aquinas) and which I first presented in 1993 (1).
To add to understanding suffering, I summarize: The Transcendental Variables of All Being--I call the first three the Catholic Trivium; and the last four are the Catholic Quadrivium.
1. Ens (Latin)—the being, i.e., what has existence.
2. Res (Latin)—the corporeal body or matter, i.e. the confluence of the being with matter completing it. It is the most visible dimension for those in the material world. In nature, nature rules, neurochemistry and all, on how the being manifests itself in nature. Bodies are needed to relate. They are our physical being by which men interact with all.
3. Aliquid (Latin)—the identity or form of the being, i.e. the confluence of the being with its essence—for humans, not ethnicity, not color, nor anything but humanbeingness—the total embracing of humanity for us—in a word “catholic”—all for and with all.
4. Verum (Latin)--the truth of the being, i.e. the confluence of the being with reality and not fantasy—or for us humans, the confluence with real life and not television shows, movies, magazines, newspapers or figments of imagination from oneself or others.
5. Unum (Latin)—the oneness of the being, i.e. the confluence of the being with itself and all desirability related to it: its integrated, whole entirety, including family, community, country, world, universe.
6. Bonum (Latin)—the good of the being, i.e. the confluence of the being with proper function in nature, or for mental beings, with proper choice in Natural Law (or Rational Environmentalism).
7. Bellezza (“bella”) (Italian...preferred by the author to the Latin “pulchritude” for multicultural reasons)—the beauty of the being, i.e. its confluence with ascendancy or the “bringing out the best of itself and all around it. “

Because of what I learned from Kreeft before, his book on "suffering" rang true,
one, good and beautiful because the negatives intrinsic to suffering were projected into spirituality beyond material and physical misfortune. In Making Sense out of Suffering, Kreeft poignantly clears the mind, not an easy task, but comforting and intriguingly done Socrates style, another intellectual delight from the author.

The confluence of my Statimuum with Kreeft completes his efforts in my mind. The timelessness alluded so many times at Mass and in the Gospel confirms the transient transcendence which will recompress us by suffering into the Eternity of the pre-Big Bang required by contemporary physics. The Immediacy of all positives ever, will be immediate in the timeless spaceless unrestricted Act of Thinking we know as God as suffering turns into sacrifice and success.

Kreeft's Making Sense out of Suffering makes that clear as suffering becomes joy.

REFERENCES:
(1) Samuel A. Nigro, MD, “Male/Female Differences in Natural Law”, Society of Catholic Social Scientists, First Annual Conference, 1993.

One person found this helpful

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farmwife

Gift

Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2020

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Top reviews from other countries

chris brown

Review

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 16, 2021

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Great book which I enjoyed and excellent service.

ww

Fantastic book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 9, 2014

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It provides a lot of inspiration and good reference to make sense of suffering with good reference of philosophical and Christian approaches.

One person found this helpful

Laura Smith

DR. PETER KREEFE

Reviewed in Canada on October 3, 2013

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When Dr. Peter Krieft writes any book I read and I learn and when he speaks, I listen. He has been a tremendous help to me in increasing my spirtitual life by his easily understable explanation of our Christian walk with God. I am extremely grateful to Dr. Kreeft for all the inspirational b ooks he has written - he writes in a fashion that a layman can understand and absorb.
Mrs Laura Smith

One person found this helpful

Katherine Tapley-Milton

The Mystery of Suffering

Reviewed in Canada on August 3, 2013

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I am reading "Making Sense Out of Suffering" by Peter Kreeft and find it to be very interesting. Sometimes, I have to read the sentences twice because there is deep philosophy and theology in it, but it is helping me to understand suffering better. I have not read to the end yet, but already I am seeing that suffering can be beneficial to your soul. The problem Kreeft still has to deal with is why some people have to suffer so much more than others. He states that he has four premises in the book: 1. God is omniscient, 2. God is omnipotent. 3. God is good. and 4. There is evil. Evil and suffering are mysteries that lead many people to bitterness, conversely, they can also mellow people and make them better. Even if Kreeft has the best philosophy and theology in the world, to my mind evil and suffering will always be thorny mysteries. My great nephew had leukaemia when he was just two years old. How does that square with a good God? I'll read the rest of the book and see if Kreeft can clarify issues like this.

Donna Ruth

Kreeft's best work

Reviewed in Canada on February 13, 2013

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After C..S. Lewis, Kreeft is my favourite author. Kreeft has the ability to make difficult concepts readable and real. This book is a gem and balm for any struggling soul.

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