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The classics have a particular knack for capturing what is universal in human experience.
Many of the classics of the past were originally classics in their own time. There have always been contemporary classics. Even if we decide that a classic needs to stand the test of time before fully meeting the criteria of becoming a classic, the passage of time merely validates the status of the work as being a classic. It had the qualities that made it a classic right from the start.
No work of literature is above criticism. The fact that a classic is artistically and intellectually great does not necessarily mean that it embodies the truth.
“There are various legitimate reasons for teaching a diversity of works in college classrooms, but at the heart of our curriculum should be the ‘canon’—a list of classic works that embody in a universally significant manner the common experience of men and women and enable us, by studying them, to grow into the full humanity that we share with others. . . . We teach such works because they help us to discern the order and purpose in human existence. . . . An acquaintance with great literature is certainly no substitute for character, but it enhances the moral imagination and is a good thing in
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The classics are a paradox. On the one hand, they are the best of the best and belong to a very elite circle of the very greatest works. They raise the bar high in terms of what they demand from us. On the other hand, many of them are familiar to us because they have traditionally been central in our educational experience. Some classics that we have not yet read are familiar to us by simple cultural osmosis.
the universal concept classic should not be confused with the adjective classical. Classical literature and art were produced by the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.
The classics are so great that they often remain a permanent part of us even if we read them only once in school. A literary critic has written that “the classics are books that exert a peculiar influence, both when they refuse to be eradicated from the mind and when they conceal themselves in the folds of memory” (Italo Calvino, “Why Read the Classics?”).
A classic “is doubly permanent: for it remains significant, or it acquires a new significance, after the age for which it was written and the conditions under which it was written, have passed away; and yet it keeps, undefaced by handling, the original noble imprint of the mind that first minted it” (Arthur Quiller-Couch, “On the Use of Masterpieces,” in On the Art of Reading).
One of the objective criteria is endurance. A classic has stood the test of time and yet is still current. It is both timeless and timely.
This cultural significance of the classics shows that at some level, they are indispensable to societies and to individuals who claim to be part of their cultures.
The most universally agreed upon component of a literary classic is the criterion of excellence or superiority.
“What we tend to require for something called a literary [classic] is a display of great craftsmanship [and] . . . striking originality. . . . Beyond this . . . the text must make a powerful emotional and intellectual impact, provide a rich reading experience, and leave behind a larger understanding of our past experience and perhaps a new way to think about our lives. In the case of the greatest works we return to them time and again in our minds, even if we do not reread them frequently, as touchstones by which we interpret the world around us.” (Nina Baym, The Scarlet Letter: A Reading)
the classics provide superior entertainment for the people who have developed a taste for them.
We most naturally think of the superiority of the classics as consisting of their form and technique rather than their subject matter and content. But even the content of a classic is superior.
The first reason to value the classics and make room for them in our leisure time is that they are fun to read.
they possess a greater degree of artistic excellence than lesser works. The right term for this ingredient in a work of literature is literary form—the “how” of a piece as distinct from the “what” (the content).
Why should we read the classics? They offer us more beauty, artistry, and formal excellence than ordinary literature possesses. They have an added aesthetic element.
put before them. This is one of the points at which the classics show their superiority over lesser literature. The great writers have the ability to capture the essence of human experience. They are the voice of authentic human experience. A bumper-sticker mentality tells the world that “LIFE SUCKS; THEN YOU DIE.” But in his novel The Stranger, Albert Camus leads us to feel what it is like to live in a universe in which a person finds life meaningless.
This ability to reproduce human experience at its deepest level is something that the classics share with the Bible.
It is that the classics, not counting popular forms such as nursery rhymes and folktales, possess a quality of complexity, density, and multiplicity of levels. This being the case, the classics demand more from us as readers than lesser works do. By demanding more from us, the classics can be said to elicit our best effort.
they demand the most from us and, in the process, enrich us the most.
The masters who produced the classics were great thinkers and should be honored as such. Furthermore, they had a knack for posing life’s questions in a form that makes their ideas easy to discern, explore, and debate.
The usefulness of encountering ideas in the classics is not necessarily that these works tell us the truth, but rather that, by posing the great issues of life, the classics serve as a catalyst to our thinking about those ideas. Whether by agreement or disagreement with the ideas that we encounter in the classics, we sharpen our own understanding of the truth and are affirmed in it. It is not necessarily a matter of literature telling us the truth, but rather of our coming to understand and affirm the truth as we read the classics and interact with their ideas.
In addition, we read the classics from the past because they liberate us from bondage to the contemporary. Several great scholars have written very well on this subject, but none better than C. S. Lewis. His most famous discourse on this topic was a sermon that he preached during the Second World War titled “Learning in War-Time.” Having asserted that “we need intimate knowledge of the past,” Lewis immediately adds, “Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we . . . need something to set against the present.” Then he famously gives the following analogy: “A man who has lived in
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the classics have a particular knack for capturing what is universal in human experience.
The man who is contented to be only himself . . . is in prison.”
One trait that characterizes every true classic is that successive cultures recognize and acknowledge its importance for a society and the individuals in it.
What these tributes show is the supreme status of the Bible as a classic. It is not simply a classic but the classic. While the quoted statements come from literary experts, the Bible has been the possession of common people to an extent unmatched by any other classic. It has been more widely read than any other book in the world. It is the world’s all-time best seller, and some sources claim that it is still the best-selling book in the world.
“The Bible is a book-making book. It is literature which provokes literature. . . . The first and most notable fact regarding the influence of the Bible on English literature is the remarkable extent of that influence. It is literally everywhere” (C. Boyd McAfee, The Greatest English Classic).
An essential feature of a classic is that it lives on in subsequent literature, art, and music. The Bible has done just that.
remaining indifferent to the value of literary classics is not a genuine option if we consider that the Bible is a literary classic. The status of the Bible as a literary classic validates the idea of the classics, just as the fact that it is literary validates literature itself.
It is up to us as readers to determine why and how we read the classics. The wrong way is to brace ourselves to fulfill a required and perhaps unpleasant social obligation. The right way is to regard ourselves as ready to enjoy a leisure time pursuit.
One of the chapters in Tony Reinke’s superb book Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books bears the subtitle “Seven Benefits of Reading Non-Christian Books.” The reasons are impeccable and make good additional reading to the arguments contained in this guide.
to read only Christian classics results in an unnecessarily confined literary life.
Even when the interpretive angle is wrong, we can benefit from encountering the ideas of works authored by non-Christians. We expand our knowledge of the world and culture within which we live. We come to understand the non-Christian mind and life. We sharpen our own understanding and worldview as we interact with alien viewpoints of literature generally and hold the line against them.
Every work of literature is on trial, but at the end of the day we can virtually depend on it that a classic will give us more truth, wisdom, and beauty than lesser literature (and certainly more than the propagandistic literature of the “politically correct” movement).
People who never develop the knack of seeing recognizable, universal human experience in literature are the ones who tend not to see the point of literature.
the form in which the work comes to us is important. Literary form is important to authors, so it needs to be important to us.
A good methodology for reading “worldviewishly” is to regard the characters in literature as undertaking an experiment in living. On the basis of the outcome of that experiment, we can formulate a statement about life.
Be aware that the classics did not escape the effects of the fall.
Our task as Christian readers is not to show that the classics state intellectual and moral truth but to ascertain whether they do.
Francis Schaeffer offered the following advice: “As Christians, we must see that just because an artist—even a great artist—portrays a world view in writing or on canvas, it does not mean that we should automatically accept that world view. . . . The truth of a world view presented by an artist must be judged on separate grounds than artistic greatness” (Art and the Bible).
Even though Christians should read much in addition to the literature of the faith, I believe that Christian readers should especially resonate with the literature of Zion (metaphorically speaking), and I am always perplexed when Christians find their chief literary excitement in non-Christian literature.
The ultimate standard for calling a work Christian is the intellectual content of a work. A Christian literary work is one in which the author asserts a Christian allegiance at the level of ideas and morality. Whether the writer personally embraces that Christian content is not directly relevant and may be impossible to know. What matters is what the work itself asserts.
Christian classics enrich our mind and elevate our soul.
When we read secular writers and find an admirable light of truth in them, it should remind us that the human mind, fallen and perverted as it is from its original integrity, is still clothed and adorned with God’s excellent gifts” (Institutes).
Literature highlights the human condition to which the Christian faith speaks. Often we feel this more strongly when we know that we are being addressed by an unbelieving author who gives testimony to a viewpoint or experience that we do not know directly.
To read secular classics we need to be thoroughly convinced of the doctrine of common grace.
The doctrine of common grace holds that God endows all people, Christian and non-Christian alike, with a capacity for the true, the good, and the beautiful.
The doctrine of common grace leads us to conclude that we can and should spend time reading secular literature as well as Christian literature for our edification and delight.
