We Can Turn Back the Clock: It is Called Repentance and It is Part of the Good News

I have compared our contemporary culture to Western culture at previous points in the past on this blog at various times and have often received the answer/objection that I am indulging in "nostalgia" and told that "you can't turn the clock back."

For example, if you make the perfectly reasonable point that families were stronger in the late 40s and early 50s than they are today, after the sexual revolution, the chorus comes back: "You can't turn back the clock. That is just nostalgia."

Peter Kreeft, in C. S. Lewis for the Third Millennium says on p. 76 that:

"According to the Bible, to be saved you must first repent. This is the one thing a historicist progressivist assures us we cannot do: turn back, turn back the clock."

To me, this point alone demonstrates the incompatibility of Progressivism with Biblical Christianity. What Christ commands us to do, Progressivism claims we cannot do. So it comes down to who you are going to believe? Jesus Christ or Hillary Clinton?

Kreeft quotes Aragorn in his meeting with Eomer on the plains of Rohan as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli pursue the Orcs who have captured Merry and Pippin. Eomer says:

It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels. The world is all grown strange. Elf and Dwarf in company walk in our daily fields; and fold speak with the Lady of the Wood and yet live; and the Sword comes back to war that was broken . . . How shall a man judge what to do in such times?

"As he has ever judged," said Aragorn. "Good and evil have not changed since yesteryear, nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house."

Aragorn, obviously, has never been infected by cultural relativism; nor has he had the opportunity to set at the feet of Progressivist philosophers like John Dewey. He is not an historicist. Neither is Tolkien, nor is Lewis.

And this is the point: if historicism is true, repentance is impossible and good and evil change with the times. On the other hand, if historicism is a lie then good and evil do not change and the only thing that matters is bringing our lives into alignment with the Good.