Augustine in His Own Words
The Exegete 191 the truth. The person who thoroughly examines the divine utterances must try and chase down the intent of the author through whom the Holy Spirit brought that segment of the Holy Scriptures into being. [The interpreter] may end up arriving at this intention, or he may chisel out from the words some other meaning which draws its evidence from some other passage within the divine utterances and which does not run counter to right faith. The biblical author maybe saw that very meaning in the same words which we are trying to interpret. Certainly, the Spirit of God—who worked through the author to produce these words—foresaw that this very meaning would, without any doubt, occur to the reader or listener, or rather the Spirit took care that it should occur to the reader or listener because it too is based on the truth. What could God have possibly built into divine eloquence more generously and more exuberantly than that the very same words might be understood in multiple ways, each deriving support from other no-less-divinely-inspired passages?65
Tyconius's Book of Rules
Augustine was intrigued by and learned much from Tyconius, the Donatist theologian, whose Book of Rules sets out seven principles or "keys" for unlocking the mysteries of the Scriptures.66 Scholars have speculated that Tyconius's little book may have inspired Augustine to create his own, namely, On Christian Teaching. When, at the end of his career, Augustine sat down to complete the incomplete On Christian Teaching, he discussed Tyconius's book, quoting its preface and offering a précis of its rules. From On Christian Teaching, Book 3:
(30.42) A man named Tyconius, although he himself was a Donatist, wrote very convincingly against the Donatists and appears, on this issue, absurdly divided in heart, since he was unwilling to leave them altogether.67 He wrote what he called The Book of Rules, because in it he outlines seven rules which, like keys, one can use to unlock the obscurities of the Holy Scriptures. The first of these rules is Concerning the Lord and His Body; the second, Concerning the Lord's Twofold Body; the third, Concerning the Promises and the Law; the fourth, Concerning Species and Genus; the fifth, Concerning Times; the sixth, Con-
65. Doc. Chr. 3.27.38 (Green, 168–70); my trans. 66. For the Latin text with a parallel English translation, see William S. Babcock, trans., Tyconius: The Book of Rules, Texts and Translations 31 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989). For studies on the influence of Tyconius, see the bibliography for this chapter.
67. "Unwilling to leave them": In the 380s, Tyconius was excommunicated by Parmenian, the Donatist bishop of Carthage, because of his overly Catholic views on the Church; see Contra epistulam Parmeniani 1.1.1 (BA 28:208–210).
cerning Recapitulation; and the seventh, Concerning the Devil and His Body. When these rules, in the way he opens them up, have been carefully examined, they help greatly in penetrating hidden meanings within the [Bible's] divine eloquence. Even so, not every hard-to-understand passage can be deciphered by these rules; we must employ several other methods as well. . . .
(30.43) Yet when Tyconius recommended these as rules, he assigned a little too much importance to them, arguing that if we know and apply them fully, we will be capable of understanding everything we find stated obscurely in the Law, that is, in the divine books. He began his book by saying:
I considered it necessary above all, as it seemed to me, to write a little book of rules and, as it were, to forge keys and lamps for the hidden places of the Law. For there are certain mystic rules which give access to the secret recesses of the whole Law and make visible those treasures of truth invisible to many. If the theory of these rules is received without ill will, in the spirit I offer them, every closed door will be opened, and every obscurity will be illuminated, so that anyone strolling through the vast forest of prophecy will be prevented from going astray, guided by these rules as if by pathways of light.
If he had said here: "For there are certain mystic rules which give access to some secret recesses of the Law"; or even: "which give access to great secret recesses of the Law"; and not what he did say: "the secret recesses of the whole Law"; and if he had not said: "every closed place will be opened," but said instead: "many closed places will be opened," he would have spoken accurately, without raising false hopes in his readers by attributing more than the facts warrant for this otherwise painstaking and very beneficial work. I thought that I ought to say this in order that the book may be read by students because, on the one hand, it is a very helpful aid for understanding the Scriptures, and, on the other, one should not hope for more than it has to offer. Certainly, we need to read it with some caution not only because of certain human mistakes he has made in it, but especially because of the things he says as a Donatist heretic. Let me now explain briefly what those seven rules teach or suggest.
(31.44) The first rule is Concerning the Lord and His Body. We know that we get hints sometimes of the Head and the Body—that is, Christ and the Church—that are presented to us as of one person, for it was said to the faithful, not without good reason: "then you are the seed of Abraham" (Gal 3:29), although there is only one seed of Abraham, namely, Christ. We should not be puzzled when a text shifts from Head to Body or from Body to Head, yet the subject does not change, but is one and same person. For example, a single person speaks here: "He placed a garland on me as on a bridegroom, and He adorned me with ornaments as on a bride" (Is 61:10). Yet we have to under-