I’m presently reading Contending for Our All by John Piper, the fourth and final volume in his The Swans Are Not Silent series. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting some excerpts from this book. While all four are excellent books, this one—at least the first section that I have read, on Athanasius—is one of the most important and (for you emergent types), the most currently relevant.

And now I am going to break one of my cardinal rules (#7 here) by quoting C. S. Lewis* simply because I like the way he expresses the following principle:

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. . . . [Students are directed not to Plato but to books on Plato]— all about ‘isms’ and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. . . . But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. . . .
   Now this seems to me topsy-turvy. Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an excusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and a its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. . . .
   It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at east read one old one to every three new ones. . . .
   We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. . . . We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness. . . . The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries bowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

—C. S. Lewis, quoted in Contending for Our All by John Piper, 10-11

by David
TrackBack URL: http://www.thirstytheologian.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/458
Share this post: Email · Del.icio.us · Digg · Facebook · Stumble · Technorati
Posted  in: Contending for Our All · John Piper
Permalink · 0 TrackBacks
← Previous · Home · Next →