Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Economy of Wonder: Peter Kreeft on Truth, Goodness, and Beauty
Economy of Wonder: Peter Kreeft on Truth, Goodness, and Beauty
Mar 10, 2026 2:56 PM

In the latest video from For the Life of the World, Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft expounds on the Economy of Wonderand how it intersects with our stewardship of God’s house.

Hipster head-bobbingispermitted:

There’s beauty everywhere. We just don’t see it…Life is a mystery to be lived continuously, not a problem to be solved suddenly…

In this life, we are so full and foolish that we appreciate only a few of these things, since we have more and more slaves that we have to take care of, and therefore we have less and less time every generation — less and less leisure. Our slaves are not made of flesh and blood anymore, thank God, but they’re made of steel and plastic puter chips. We are happiest when we play with endlessly fascinating simple things, like the sea or sticks and stones, instead of with puter games that bore us so quickly that we require new ones every month. This is an image of the human condition.

…Everything that exists has some truth, some goodness, and some beauty. Everything is divine revelation. We are creators because we are created in the image of the Creator. We are artists because God is, and it’s because we dimly know this that we weep with both joy and sorrow when we meet someone pulls up the curtain an inch — the curtain that separates the heavenly vision from the earthly.

…How do we use this to save the world? How do you appreciate beauty? You just love it. How do you appreciate goodness? You just love it. How do you find the truth? You love it. Seek and you shall find. Truth, goodness, and beauty. You just do it. It’s like, “How do you love? How do you pray? How do you live?” Just do it.

For more on the Economy of Wonder, purchase For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles, register for Acton University by the end of January and receive a free copy. For routine updates, see the FLOW blog and Oikonomia blog, and follow each on Facebook (here and here).

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Colson Memorial at Washington National Cathedral
A public memorial for Chuck Colson is slated to take place Wednesday, May 16, at 10 a.m. at the Washington National Cathedral. The event is open to the public and will also be streamed live at nationalcathedral.org. Additional information can be found in this DeMoss News news release. For more information on Colson’s life and relationship to the Acton Institute, please visit our Chuck Colson resource page. ...
The Moral Case for Capitalism
The philosophical demise of socialism has caused many on the economic left to change plaint about free-market capitalism. While it may be effective, they now say, es at the cost of human goods munity and social solidarity. Such claims are monplace in policy debates. But are they true? James R. Otteson explains why such criticism are not as strong as some people might think: munity. Capitalism gives us incentives to trade and associate with people outside our munity, plete strangers,...
The Next Civil Rights Movement
During last year’s Acton University—have you signed up for this year yet?—Nelson Kloosterman gave a lecture on the subject of school choice and private education. In the latest issue of Comment magazine, Kloosterman expands on his claim that parental choice is “the next civil rights movement“: Let me begin with some ments designed to set up the discussion that follows. First, and most importantly, I believe that the fundamental issue in this matter involves parental choice, even though the far...
Jacoby, D’Souza debate Religion in the Public Square
Susan Jacoby and Dinesh D’Souza met here in Grand Rapids at Fountain Street Church on Thursday, April 26, to debate the merits of religion in public discourse. The debate, co-sponsored by The Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, was titled, “Is Christianity Good for American Politics?” Susan Jacoby is program director at The Center for Inquiry and author of The Age of American Unreason and Alger Hiss and The Battle for History. She argued for the...
Fair Trade or Free Trade?
Is ‘fair trade’ more fair or more just than free trade? While free trade has been increasingly maligned, The Fair Trade movement has e increasingly popular over the last several years. Many see this movement as a way to help people in the developing world and as a more just alternative to free trade. On the other hand, others argue that fair trade creates an unfair advantage that tends to harm the poor. Dr. Victor Claar addresses this question in...
The Perils of Pedocracy
Portrait of a Child Prince, Wikimedia Commons “Anyone concerned with the future,” wrote Sergius Bulgakov, is most anxious about the younger generation. But to be spiritually dependent on it, to truckle to its opinions and take it as a standard, testifies to a society’s spiritual weakness. In any case, an entire historical period and the whole spiritual tenor of intelligentsia heroism are symbolized by the fact that the ideal of the Christian saint, the ascetic, has been replaced here by...
DeKoster excerpted at The High Calling
Thank you to our friends at The High Calling for excerpting this passage of Lester DeKoster’s Work: The Meaning of Your Life, recently republished by The Acton Institute and Christian’s Library Press. DeKoster, the former professor and director of the library at Calvin College and Seminary, also edited The Banner, the Christian Reformed Church’s monthly publication. Acton is grateful for its relationship with both The High Calling and DeKoster, who left his 10,000+ book library to the Acton Institute upon...
What Christian Education Is Not
“Each generation needs to re-own the rationale for Christian education,” says philosopher James K.A. Smith, “to ask ourselves ‘Why did we do this?’ and ‘Should we keep doing this?’” In answering such questions, Smith notes, “it might be helpful to point out what Christian education is not”: First, Christian education is not meant to be merely “safe” education. The impetus for Christian schooling is not a protectionist concern, driven by fear, to sequester children from the big, bad world. Christian...
How Climate Change Panic Leads to Forced Sterilizations and Death in India
When es to the issue of anthropomorphic climate change, I tend to be “acognostic”—I’m not convinced we even have the cognitive ability to determine whether climate change is occurring, much less whether it can be attributed to human activity. But I have no doubt that the responses to perceived climate change have already been disastrous for humanity. Take, for example, the British government’s use of climate change as an excuse for population control. In 2010, a working paper published by...
Ross Douthat and the Value of Traditional Christianity for America
In his new book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat explores the present decline—economic recession, a divisive, stagnant political climate and a deteriorating moral structure—of American civilization. Rather than citing religious excess or wide scale secularization as the problem, Douthat points his finger at what he calls “bad religion,” or, four basic heresies that present faux-Gospels contrary to the Christian faith. Douthat’s solution, presented in the book’s es in the form...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved