As for the fun stuff — Muppets’ Christmas Carol and Treasure Island, PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster — I definitely share my mother’s taste. I think they’re absolutely marvelous.

But comedic pieces are always a problem when discussing Classics. Does a Classic have to be weighty and serious? Is comedy too “light”?

Then again, some comedies have become Classics. Shakespeare’s come immediately to mind. The Princess Bride seems to me to be standing the test of time extremely well.

I certainly hope that Wodehouse and the Muppets make it onto the list of Classics (in their particular genres). I think if they do it will be because people will continue to find them “relevant” to their everyday lives (for example, events in their everyday lives will continue to call to mind scenes and quotations from them).

Modern theologians: Dallas Willard, NT Wright, Richard Foster

Novels: PG Wodehouse Jeeves and Wooster series

(The silly stuff is not because it has lasting value in anything but making one laugh:)

The Psalms are good art. In my field of mathematics, the proofs by Leonhard Euler are good art. This is all very subjective: “My definition … I can … my field.” To be a classic, an artistic work must be something that many (most?) people do not tire of, over a long period of time. On this definition, David’s Psalms and Michelangelo’s David, and Bach’s organ works are classic.

For authors more recent than C. S. Lewis a long period of time has not yet happened. At best I can predict that they are “destined to become a classic.” In our current visual culture, we are more apt to recognize film classics than literary classics. I predict that these are destined to become classics: The Matrix, Babbette’s Feast, and La vita è bella [Life is beautiful].

What things do you think are destined to become classics?

That is a classic moment. In those moments both participants joined a thought that is larger than themselves.