With the publication of “An Ocean Full of Angels,” Peter Kreeft is proving that he can emulate C.S. Lewis in writing great apologetic fiction, as well as non-fiction. Indeed, of all the novels written this century which I have read—and I have read many—this stands alongside the best.
An Ocean Full of Angels, by Peter Kreeft (432 pages, Word on Fire Luminor, 2026)
Of all living writers, the one who reminds me most of C.S. Lewis is Peter Kreeft. Like Lewis, Dr. Kreeft has an uncanny ability to put the most abstract and abstruse philosophical and theological concepts into language that anyone can understand. This is the reason that he is one of the most popular and powerful Christian apologists of our day, emulating Lewis’ own perennial popularity and powerful witness.
With the publication of An Ocean Full of Angels, Kreeft is proving that he can emulate Lewis in writing great apologetic fiction, as well as non-fiction. This might come as a surprise. Lewis was a literature professor; Kreeft is a professor of philosophy. Might we not expect him to be out of his depth, or at least outside his comfort zone? Perhaps so. But Lewis wrote The Problem of Pain and Miracles, both of which were works of philosophy. If the literature professor can dabble in philosophy successfully, might not the philosopher dabble successfully in fiction? The answer, at least in the case of An Ocean Full of Angels is a resounding “yes”!
Although this is Kreeft’s first novel, it does not bear the telltale hallmarks of the novice. On the contrary, it has integrity in its entirety, which is to say that each character and plot line, every detail, serves the whole. Continuing the comparison with Lewis, it reminds me of Lewis’s last and best novel, Till We Have Faces, in which Lewis grapples with the rival claims of religious faith and philosophical reason with respect to authentic conformity to truth. Kreeft does something similar. His principle protagonists are a young and devout Muslim and an equally young and equally devout Jewess. Like a latter-day Romeo and Juliet, these young folks, ostensible enemies, become “lovers”. Unlike Shakespeare’s “lovers” who abandon reason in pursuit of passion, Kreeft’s lovers do not permit the heart’s longing to lead to a headlong descent into heedless and headless self-destructiveness. Both are on a pilgrimage in pursuit of ultimate union with divine truth.
The interaction among the faith traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is handled throughout with dexterous adroitness. Kreeft, a resolute and indefatigable defender of truth, never succumbs to the sort of ecumenism which seeks to eliminate religious differences through the reductio ad absurdum of relativism. On the contrary, and inviting another comparison with Lewis, Kreeft follows the approach of Lewis’ Mere Christianity in which the lowest common denominator of relativist “ecumenism” is spurned in favour of the highest common factor that the faith traditions hold in common. Ultimately, union can only come with communion in Christ. Although this is clear from the trajectory to ultimate truth that Kreeft follows in An Ocean Full of Angels, this truth trajectory is followed without preachiness and without anything akin to superciliousness in the way that he treats non-Christian belief. Instead, the principal characters, irrespective of their theological starting points, or their predilections and prejudices, are invited, in the words of Aslan in The Last Battle, to venture “further up” and “further in”. More to the point, every reader is also invited to venture further up and further into the divine mystery of God’s divine mastery. In this, we might be reminded of Dante’s Divine Comedy and the comparison is just.
Of all the novels written this century which I have read—and I have read many—this stands alongside the best. I might even suggest that only Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin is its superior. Considering that it’s safe to prophesy that Vodolazkin’s masterpiece is destined to be a canonized classic, me judice, this is about as high a praise as I can give to Kreeft’s own literary tour de force.
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This review was first published in the Catholic Telegraph, the official magazine of the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati, and is published here with permission.
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