On Reading Old Books

Some quotes from C. S. Lewis' famous introduction to St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1993):

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.  Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium.  He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about "isms" and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said (3).

This mistaken preference for the modern book and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology.  Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are not studying St. Luke or St. Paul or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or M. Maritain or M. Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself (3).

Every age has its own outlook.  It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes.  We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period.  And that means the old books (4-5).

Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past.  People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we.  But not the same mistakes.  They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us (5).