#11: Is New Always Better? The Temptation to be a Chronological Snob

C.S. Lewis defined chronological snobbery as “…the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited.” In this podcast, Stan and JP talk about this idea as a danger to Christians seeking to become mature in their faith, practical tips to wisely discern the value of old ideas, and how to rethink some of our modern assumptions.

In this podcast we discuss:

• The idea of “chronological snobbery”
• The necessity of reading beyond our own time and place
• How our cultural chronological snobbery thwarts our search for happiness in the modern era
• What it means to be a “dinosaur” and why we, like C.S. Lewis, should be one!
• A word about forgotten, pre-Enlightenment ideas
• How to avoid the fallacies of appeal to novelty or tradition
• The “clean sea breeze of the centuries,” and the benefit of historical understanding
• How reading old books can help us become mature Christians

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• More information about Owen Barfield’s life and works
• C.S. Lewis, “On the Reading of Old Books,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics
• C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
• C.S. Lewis, Introduction to Athanasius’ On The Incarnation
• C.S. Lewis, De Descriptione Temporum (Lewis’s inaugural lecture as Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University)
• C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
• C.S. Lewis, “Men Without Chests” in The Abolition of Man
• Michael Ward, After Humanity: A Guide to CS Lewis’s The Abolition of Man
• Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
• Francisco Suarez, On Efficient Causality: Metaphysical Disputations
• More information about Francisco Suárez’s life and works
• J.P. Moreland and Stan Wallace, “Aquinas versus Locke and Descartes on the Human Person and End-of-Life Ethics,” International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. XXXV, no. 3:319-330, 1995
• Aurelius Augustine, The City of God, Volume I (referenced Book 1, Argument 20)
• Stan Wallace, “How To Not Be A Chronological Snob”
• J.P. Moreland, Universals
• J.P. Moreland and Klaus Issler, The Lost Virtue of Happiness: Discovering The Disciplines of The Good Life
• Thomas A. Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: A Timeless Classic for Contemporary Readers
• Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection
• John of the Cross, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross
• Os Guinness and Louise Cowan, Invitation to the Classics
• GK Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse