For Lewis, people are too easily taken in by the latest cultural and intellectual fashions. Wanting to be "up to date" in their thinking, they uncritically accept the latest ideas they read about in the media. Reading older books, Lewis argues, helps us to realise that "basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods." We need to remember that the ideas we tend to regard as hopelessly old fashioned and out of date were once seen as cutting edge. What was once new and brilliant becomes old and stale. Perhaps Lewis seems a little too scathing when he declares that "much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion."{90} Yet his point is fair: much recent thought is fleeting, lacking the staying power to excite and inform later generations. So is Lewis saying that only old ideas are any good, and that new ideas are invariably wrong? No.{91} He is asking us to be critical. New ideas need to be looked at carefully. They may be good; they may be bad. But ideas are not automatically good because they are new. Similarly, many-but not all-old ideas have permanent value. They have proved themselves through the centuries, and will continue to be important in the future. We need to figure out which ideas and values are of lasting importance, and hold fast to them.
( Alister E. McGrath )
[ If I Had Lunch with C. S. ]
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