Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
of wood, just as that was not just any kind of rock, but a rock from which water flowed forth for the thirsty. Nor was that just any kind of stone, but a cornerstone which joined in itself two walls coming from different directions. So neither should you understand the neighbor to be just any kind of wood but a bed. What symbol, what sign, is there, then, in a bed, I ask you? What except that a sick man was carried on a bed but, when healed, is now to carry a bed? What did the Apostle say? "Bear your burdens, each for the other, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ" (Gal 6:2). Now the law of Christ is love, and love is not fulfilled unless we bear one another's burdens, each for the other. "Bearing with one another," he says, "in love, eager to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph 4:2–3). When you were sick, your neighbor was carrying you. You have been healed. Now carry your neighbor. "Bear your burdens, each for the other, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ." So you will fulfill what was lacking to you. "Take up," therefore, "your bed." But when you have taken it up, do not stay put. Walk! In loving your neighbor, in being concerned about your neighbor, you are making a journey. Where are you journeying to, except to the Lord God, to the One whom we ought to love with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind? For we have not yet reached the Lord, but we have our neighbor with us. Therefore, carry the one you are walking with so that you may reach the One you long to stay with. Therefore, take up your bed and walk.49
All Truth Is God's Truth
Medieval and Renaissance thinkers justified their studies of the humanities by appealing to the following passage in Augustine's On Christian Teaching. Here he stresses the value of the liberal arts, arguing that all truth is God's truth, even truths found in pagan literature. He adds that such knowledge can be usefully adapted by Christians to the study of Scripture, and appeals to a famous allegorical exegesis of Exodus that dates back to Philo and Origen.50 From On Christian Teaching, Book 2:
(18.28) We should not avoid music just because of pagan superstition if we can take from it anything useful for comprehending the Sacred Scriptures. . . . We should not ignore literature just because Mercury is reputed to
49. Jo. ev. tr. 17.1–9 (CCL 36:169–75); trans. Rettig, FOTC 79:108–18 (modified). 50. The best known version of this interpretation appears in Origen, Letter to Gregory 2; for a translation, see Michael Slusser, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus: Life and Works, FOTC 98 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 190–91. On the long tradition of this, see Joel Stevens Allen, The Despoliation of Egypt in Pre-Rabbinic, Rabbinic, and Patristic Traditions, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 92 (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2008).