Today marks the 43rd anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis (and, incidentally, JFK and Aldous Huxley, which is explored in Peter Kreeft’s book Between Heaven and Hell). It’s times like these, especially in light of the Thanksgiving holiday that’s occuring tomorrow, that I like to remember the great benefits we as Christians, and particularly as Christian’s interested in apologetics, draw from the traditions which the giants of the faith have bequeathed to us.

In generations not so far-removed from our own, men like Lewis, Chesterton, and Francis Schaeffer paved a hard road through interminable and rediculous philosophies which brought challenges to their faith. That we can freely walk down that road now is something to be grateful for. Just think: when the disputes these thinkers engaged in come around and knock on our door (and believe me, they will, and do) we sit securely knowing that we can crack open Mere Christianity, or Escape From Reason and discipline ourselves in that knowledge so that we are able to respond to the challenges.

Furthermore, in facing new and heretofore unseen challenges we still stand on the shoulders of giants who propelled us towards the point that we are at now. Philosophies dead and gone are the bedrock of what creeps up out of the soil today. So be thankful, friend, that though you may go where no man has gone before, you walk also in places that were where no man had gone before when our fore-thinkers walked the earth.

P.S. Blackbeard also died on the 22nd, but that was 288 years ago.