I never heard the reasoning, but RB Harris, and a few of his disciples, like Larry Packard and Jim Spear all seemed to prefer the longer par 3 of the nine as the earlier one, with the shorter one coming later in the nine.
I think it had something to do with their strict adherence to perfect par rotation of 4-5-4-3-4-5-4-3-4. Usually their last par 4 featured a long approach shot, and they wanted a short to medium one on the hole before. And, the first two par 4 holes were usually moderate length, and the second had a short approach, so the fourth could have a long approach.
However, any way they looked at it, somewhere in there, you ended up with short 4, par 5, short par 3, all in a row. Looked like variety on the card, but you ended up with three short approaches, despite variations in par and distance, so I considered the theory to be somewhat flawed.