A close friend of yours arranged to go to London for a few days with his wife. At the last minute, he is forced to stay one more day in Athens. He agrees with his wife that she will leave first and he will meet her the next day. She indeed leaves, her plane crashes, the unfortunate woman is killed, and your friend is saved...

What interpretations will be given for such an unfortunate event? Listen to them:

1. Was it her luck or her destiny? As we shall see, these two are not exactly the same, but they do imply that behind the accident there is some, even if unknown to us, "entity," Fortune or Fate, that intervened.

2. The priest, in the brief speech he made at the funeral of the unfortunate woman, said that the Almighty decided, for reasons known only to Him, to take her to Himself prematurely. He refers, perhaps without realizing it, to the powerful, even today, "praedestinatio" of Saint Augustine from the early Christian centuries, according to which everything – including our death – is predetermined in every last detail by a higher power.

3. The modern "cold rationalist" interprets the accident through the lens of probability theory and statistics. Armed with statistical data, he tells us that every month or every year thousands of airplanes fly all over the world and on average a certain number crash. Thus, some crash on that fateful day was statistically expected!

Where is the truth likely to lie? The book may not answer you clearly (because, quite simply, it is unable to do so), but I believe it will contribute to daring to give whatever answer suits you best…