A Christian Guide to the Classics

by Leland Ryken

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 many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the [person who knows the past] has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.”