Peter Kreeft is an American philosopher and prolific author, having published more than 80 books over the past half-century. Gary Furnell reviews his recent account of his conversion, From Calvinist to Catholic (Ignatius Press, 2025).
Peter Kreeft’s From Calvinist to Catholic is a partial autobiography, focused mainly on Kreeft’s formative years, culminating with his entry into the Catholic Church. In his introduction, he states:
The three best things I ever did in my life were (1) to become a Catholic, (2) to marry my wife, and (3) to have kids. This book is about the first thing.
Readers keen for a full autobiography will have to wait. Kreeft portrays his childhood, teenage and college years with lively detail, but his married and family life are largely left unportrayed. This is understandable: his wife, children and grandchildren have their own lives and a legitimate desire for privacy. But the omissions leave obvious gaps.
Also in the introduction, Kreeft admits:
I wrote this book only because Mark Bromley, my Ignatius
Press editor, never stopped politely badgering me to write it.
This alerts the reader that From Calvinist to Catholic is not a work driven by heartfelt desire; rather, it was born from obligation. You don’t get this sense from the effervescent chapters retelling of his first few decades of life. Rather, it’s only finishing the book that a slight sense remains of its being somewhat piecemeal. Interspersing some of the biographical chapters with philosophical chapters broke the narrative for this reader. For another reader, this pattern may be helpful.
Perhaps, too, tighter editing would have helped: deleting seemingly irrelevant anecdotes, flat jokes and accounts of charmless pranks, and changing some words for clarity’s sake. Certain philosophers are twice described as “trustable”, why not use trustworthy or credible?
Kreeft’s recollections of the Dutch immigrant enclave in New Jersey are engaging. He had a joyful, stable, extended family. His grandparents and parents were admirable and conscientious. They were committed to Reformed Church teachings. He received good values and a solid education. He enjoyed significant freedom and benefited from appropriate responsibilities. His love for his parents shines. His respect for his teachers and his society is likewise fulsome.
One of the benefits of reading From Calvinist to Catholic is the reminder of how much has changed in a relatively short period. Kreeft is sensitive to these changes. The 1940s and 1950s, despite World War II and the threat of nuclear warfare, had qualities that seem to have greatly waned. In Kreeft’s working-class neighbourhood, drugs were almost unknown; drinking was episodic and often moderate (but driving could be reckless); inflation, violent crime, gangs and unemployment weren’t problems; divorce was rare, as were pregnancies outside marriage; identity and gender were accepted as givens. Suicide and self-harm were almost unknown. In retrospect, he says, some social expectations had restrictive elements, but they also provided security and direction.
Kreeft identifies the cultural and sexual revolution of the 1960s as the crucial era of change, mostly for the worse. He writes, “The fifties were far from perfect, but they were Eden compared to the about-to-come Sexual Revolution.” The Enlightenment’s simplifications had seeped into popular culture: “… scientific reductionism and a rationalism that lead to scepticism and then, atheism, materialism, relativism, subjectivism, utilitarianism, deconstructionism and nihilism.”
A key to Kreeft’s young adulthood conversion was the beauty of Catholic cathedrals, including, later, the beauty of liturgy and its majestic music. He says his conversion involved assessing arguments and doctrines, but reasoning was only one part of a mesh of intuitions, insights, appreciations and spiritual appetites that worked together to develop certainty that the Catholic Church was instituted by Christ.
In particular, church history convinced him that the Catholic Church alone linked with the apostles, and that the problems Protestants had with Catholicism had not troubled Christians for 1500 years. Perhaps, he realised, the problems lay with the perceptions of the Protestants. Gradually, he came to see that the unity and authority of the Catholic Church were determinative and vital. The thousands of Protestant denominations began to seem fragmentary and often contradictory.
Kreeft is careful to acknowledge the excellence of devout Protestants: they are good people who know the Scriptures, trust Christ for salvation, attend their church’s services regularly, and sing great hymns with joy. Many cradle Catholics exhibit none of these qualities.
Kreeft encourages artists. He rates the impact of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Dostoyevsky’s artistry above the philosophical efforts of Aquinas, Pascal or Kierkegaard. He notes that artistic beauty has an immediate, unarguable effect. For many people, Catholic liturgy and/or architectural beauties are decisive attractants. Beauty is one of Kreeft’s themes.
Another theme is the integration of Kreeft’s analytical faculties and his imaginative faculties: Catholicism honoured his imagination and rationality, his heart and mind.
The Church as a Hospital for Sinners
Throughout, there’s a realistic view of the Church. Her history is a mixture of the grand and the gross: great saints and great hypocrites. The Church has been sometimes lethargic, sometimes enlarging, but always surviving, always enlivening, never retracting her doctrines. Only a divine institution could survive her crises for two millennia and remain coherent. Further, there’s nowhere else for humanity to go for the help we need. Kreeft describes the Church aptly:
As a Catholic, I see her as a hospital for sinners. In that hospital, her patients often fight with her doctors and nurses. In fact, the Church is a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. And I discovered I very much belonged in her.
The modern writers who especially helped Kreeft into the Church are identified: Chesterton, Lewis, Sheen, and Ronald Knox. In later chapters, the effects on his parents of his conversion are detailed: there was hurt and incomprehension, but the respectful, close relationship wasn’t sundered: a credit to the family. He says the difficulties could have been lessened if he’d included his parents in his questions and thinking from the start, rather than presenting his conversion as a (shocking) fait accompli.
Once Kreeft was ensconced in the Church and then lodged comfortably among Boston College’s academics (he taught there for 60 years), his story is foreshortened. He writes about his courtship and engagement, but shares little about married or family life. He reveals his joy of body-boarding, his dislike of committees and his frustrations with the digital realm. He devotes several chapters to a retrospective view of his life, listing important lessons. Then, he speculates about the afterlife and the purgatorial process.
I read From Calvinist to Catholic three times before writing this review. It was time well spent.
Kreeft’s book is easy to read: brisk, personal—as you’d expect— and thoughtful. There is much on offer, including many life lessons to reflect upon and valuable perspectives on our age and the Church to ponder. These insights have added credibility because they are the results of decades of study and experience.