Modernism has had us believe for years that we’re getting increasingly cleverer than people of years gone by. I don’t believe it! It’s all tied into the idea of progress that we make advancements in civilisations and so society progresses. We have this tendency to think that people thousands of years ago were stupid. I started to stop believing this a few years ago after reading Augustine’s Confessions (or at least an abridged version of it because I’m not clever enough for the full version!
But after reading what Augustine was writing about 1600 years ago, how he had a bastard kid and all his sin and stuff, I decided that actually, all of that could just as easily have been written today. So I destroyed in my mind this idea that we have or are progressing in every area from cleverness to sin.
I was reminded of all this when I read a sermon by Basil and then another by Chrysostom from the 4th centuries after I bought a second-hand series of 10 hardback books called, The Worlds Great Sermons. The amount of information packed into each sermon would have a contemporary pew-holder befuddled within five minutes! So this has led me to a new point. I now reckon that although we have progressed in our amount of knowledge, we have regressed in our ability to know.
What I mean is, although in comparison to people 1000 or 2000 years ago, we know so much more, it’s not because we’re cleverer than them but simply because of the number of years of increased technology and information. Our ability to know things isn’t any better but I reckon actually worse.
I may be wrong, and I haven’t thought this through as much as I’d like to have done, but heck, I’m putting it out there!
I agree big time. In fact I have been making the same point about the OT Christians and their knowledge of Jesus…