The slavery of chronological snobbery

As a counterpoint to my post having some fun at Augustine's expense here's something in the way of chastening from C.S. Lewis. It comes from Reflections on the Psalms which I plan to write more about in this space time permitting. Lately, "bloggable" subjects come faster than opportunities to put fingers to keyboard. As a lover of the Psalter and CSL I can't believe I'm only now getting around to reading this wonderful little book.

In the following passage Lewis cautions his fellow "moderns" (what would he have thought of us post-moderns?) about the narcissistic temptation to judge my age as more enlightened than all others--a temptation he termed elsewhere "chronological snobbery." He's writing here about allegorical ways of reading the Psalms, but I think the principal applies more generally to the way we approach any Scripture, or any text.

What we see when we think we are looking into the depths of Scripture may sometimes be only the reflection of our own silly faces. Many allegorical interpretations which were once popular seem to me, as perhaps to most moderns, to be strained, arbitrary and ridiculous. I think we may be sure that some of them really are; we ought to be much less sure that we know which. What seems strained—a mere triumph of perverse ingenuity—to our age, seems plain and obvious to another, so that our ancestors would often wonder how we could possibly miss what we wonder how they could have been silly-clever enough to find. And between different ages there is no impartial judge on earth, for no one stands outside the historical process; and of course no one is so completely enslaved to it as those who take our own age to be, not one more period, but a final and permanent platform from which we can see all other ages objectively. (C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms)