Teaching Christianity
Did God not speak with Moses face to face? And yet, being extremely prudent and not in the least proud, he accepted advice on how to direct and govern such a great people from his father-in-law, that is to say from a man who was a foreigner.[10] Moses knew, of course, that from whatever soul good advice had issued, it was to be attributed not to that person, but to the one who is truth itself,[11] the unchanging, unchangeable God.
8. Finally, those who can boast of understanding whatever is obscure in the scriptures by a gift from God, without being furnished with any rules, are right indeed to believe, and it is in fact true, that this ability of theirs does not derive from themselves, but has been granted them by God. This shows that they are seeking God's glory and not their own. But since they themselves read the Bible, and understand it without any other human being explaining it to them, why are they so eager to explain it to others, instead of referring them back to God, so that they too may come to understand it through his teaching them inwardly, and not through the teaching of other men? But of course, they are afraid they might hear from the Lord, Wicked servant, you should have given my money to the bankers (Mt 25:26.27).
So these people too make known to others what they understand, either by lecturing or by writing; and if I, in the same way, publish things not only for them to understand but also for them to put into practice when understood, they certainly have no right to blame me for this. None of us, though, should claim our understanding of anything as our very own, except possibly of falsehood. Because everything that is true comes from the one who said, I am the truth (Jn 14:6). What do we have, after all, that we have not received? But if we have received it, why should we boast as though we had not? [12]
9. The person who reads some writing out loud to other listeners obviously knows what he is pronouncing, while the one who teaches people in literacy classes does this so that they too may know how to read. Each of them, all the same, is handing on what he has received. In the same sort of way those too who explain to an audience what they understand in the scriptures are, as it were, performing the office of reader and pronouncing letters they know, while those who lay down rules about how they are to be understood are like the person who teaches literacy, who gives out the rules, that is, on how to read. So just as the person who knows how to read does not require another reader, when he gets hold of a volume, to tell him what is written in it, in the same way, those who have grasped the rules we are endeavoring to pass on will retain a knowledge of these rules, like letters, when they come across anything obscure in the holy books, and will not require another person who understands to uncover for them what is shrouded in obscurity. Instead, by following up certain clues, they will be able themselves to get the hidden meaning of a passage without any error—or at the very least to avoid falling into any absurdly wrongheaded opinion.
Accordingly, while this very work should make it abundantly clear that nobody can rightly object to my dutifully undertaking this laborious task, still this preface provides, I think, a sufficient answer to any such critics. This, then, is how it has seemed right to me to embark upon the road I wish to travel in this book.
Notes
[1]. 1. Antony was the first, or almost the first, hermit in the Egyptian desert. He died in 356 at the age of 105, two years after Augustine was born. Saint Athanasius, whom he had supported with his immense prestige in his life-long battle against the Arians, wrote his life.
[2]. Two manuscripts give his name as Macarius. Augustine, like almost all his contemporaries, could sometimes be very credulous.
[3]. See Acts 2:1–4. It is as well, perhaps, to point out that he is being sarcastic.
[4]. For the linking of these two vices in a pair, see Sermon 399, 7 (Vol
III/10 in this series), where he calls pride the mother of envy. See note 13 there for other references.
[5]. See Mt 4:7; Dt 16:16.
[6]. See Acts 9:3–19.
[7]. See Acts 10:1–6.
[8]. Temples very commonly housed oracles in the pagan world; and the same had been true of Israelite shrines, including the temple in Jerusalem.
[9]. See Acts 8:27–35.
[10]. See Ex 18:13–26.
[11]. See Jn 14:6.
[12]. See 1 Cor 4:7.
Book I
The purpose of scripture study is both to discover its meaning and to pass it on to others; both tasks to be undertaken with God's help
1, 1. There are two things which all treatment of the scriptures is aiming at: a way to discover what needs to be understood, and a way to put across to others what has been understood. Let us first discuss the way of discovery, and after that the way of putting our discoveries across.[1] A great and arduous work, and if it is difficult to keep up, I am afraid it may be thought rash to have undertaken it. And so it certainly would have been, had I been relying solely on my own powers; but as it is, my hopes of carrying this work through rest in the one from whom, in my reflections, I have already received many ideas on this matter; and so there need be no fear that he will refrain from giving me the rest, when I begin spending on others what I have already been given. Every kind of thing, you see, which does not decrease when it is given away, is not yet possessed as it ought to be, while it is held onto without also being given out to others. Now he said himself, Whoever has shall be given more (Mk 4:25). So he will give to those who have; that is, for those who make generous use of what they have received he will complete what he has given, and heap even more upon them.
Those loaves were five and seven in number, before they started being given to the hungry crowds; but when that began to happen, they filled hampers and baskets after satisfying so many thousands of people.[2] So just as that bread increased in quantity when it was broken, in the same way all the things the Lord has already granted me for setting about this work will be multiplied under his inspiration, when I start passing them on to others. And thus not only will I not experience any lack of means in this ministry of mine, but on the contrary I shall even rejoice in a marvelous surplus.
The difference between things and signs
2, 2. All teaching is either about things or signs; but things are learned about through signs. What I have now called things, though, in the strict sense, are those that are not mentioned in order to signify something, such as wood, a stone, an animal, and other things like that. Not, however, that piece of wood which we read of Moses throwing into the bitter water to remove its bitterness; nor that stone which Jacob placed under his head; nor that animal which Abraham sacrificed instead of his son.[3] All these, in fact, are things in such a way as also to be signs of other things. There are, however, other signs which are only used for signifying, such as words. Nobody, after all, uses words except for the sake of signifying something.
From this it will be easy to understand what I am calling signs; those things, that is, which are used in order to signify something else. Thus every sign is also a thing, because if it is not a thing at all then it is simply nothing. But not every single thing is also a sign. And therefore, in this distinction between things and signs, when we are speaking of things let us so speak that even if some of them can be employed to signify, this will not prevent us from dividing up the work in such a way, that we first discuss things, later on signs; and let us bear in mind all the time that what has to be considered about things is that they are, not that they signify something else besides themselves.
The division of things; what is meant by enjoying and using
3, 3. So then, there are some things which are meant to be enjoyed, others which are meant to be used, yet others which do both the enjoying and the using. Things that are to be enjoyed make us happy; things which are to be used help us on our way to happiness, providing us, so to say, with crutches and props for reaching the things that will make us happy, and enabling us to keep them.
We ourselves, however, both enjoy and use things, and find ourselves in the middle, in a position to choose which to do. So if we wish to enjoy things that are meant to be used, we are impeding our own progress, and sometimes are also deflected from our course, because we are thereby delayed in obtaining what we should be enjoying, or turned back from it altogether, blocked by our love for inferior things.
4, 4. Enjoyment, after all, consists in clinging to something lovingly for its own sake, while use consists in referring what has come your way to what your love aims at obtaining, provided, that is, it deserves to be loved. Because unlawful use, surely, should rather be termed abuse or misuse. Supposing then we were exiles in a foreign land, and could only live happily in our own country, and that being unhappy in exile we longed to put an end to our unhappiness and to return to our own country, we would of course need land vehicles or sea-going vessels, which we would have to make use of in order to be able to reach our own country, where we could find true enjoyment. And then suppose we were delighted with the pleasures of the journey, and with the very experience of being conveyed in carriages or ships, and that we were converted to enjoying what we ought to have been using, and were unwilling to finish the journey quickly, and that by being perversely captivated by such agreeable experiences we lost interest in our own country, where alone we could find real happiness in its agreeable familiarity. Well that's how it is in this mortal life in which we are exiles away from the Lord (2 Cor 5:6); if we wish to return to our home country, where alone we can be truly happy, we have to use this world, not enjoy it,[4] so that we may behold the invisible things of God, brought to our knowledge through the things that have been made (Rom
1:20); that is, so that we may proceed from temporal and bodily things to grasp those that are eternal and spiritual.
God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is the ultimate thing to be enjoyed; but he is inexpressible
5, 5. The things therefore that are to be enjoyed are the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, in fact the Trinity, one supreme thing, and one which is shared in common by all who enjoy it; if, that is to say, it is a thing, and not the cause of all things; if indeed it is a cause.[5] It is not easy, after all, to find any name that will really fit such transcendent majesty. In fact it is better just to say that this Trinity is the one God from whom are all things, through whom all things, in whom all things (Rom 11:36). Thus Father and Son and Holy Spirit are both each one of them singly God and all together one God; and each one of them singly is the complete divine substance, and all together are one substance.
The Father is neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit; the Son is neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son; but the Father is only the Father, and the Son is only the Son, and the Holy Spirit is only the Holy Spirit. The three possess the same eternity, the same unchangeableness, the same greatness, the same power. In the Father unity, in the Son equality, in the Holy Spirit the harmony of unity and equality; and these three are all one because of the Father, are all equal because of the Son, are all linked together because of the Holy Spirit.[6]
6, 6. Have I said anything, solemnly uttered anything that is worthy of God? On the contrary, all I feel I have done is to wish to say something; but if I have said anything, it is not what I wished to say. How do I know this? I know it because God is inexpressible; and if what has been said by me were inexpressible, it would not have been said. And from this it follows that God is not to be called inexpressible, because when even this is said about him, something is being expressed. And we are involved in heaven knows what kind of battle of words, since on the one hand what cannot be said is inexpressible, and on the other what can even be called inexpressible is thereby shown to be not inexpressible. This battle of words should be avoided by keeping silent, rather than resolved by the use of speech.
And yet, while nothing really worthy of God can be said about him, he has accepted the homage of human voices, and has wished us to rejoice in praising him with our words. That in fact is what is meant by calling him God. Not, of course, that with the sound made by this one syllable any knowledge of him is achieved; but still, all those who know the English language[7] are moved, when this sound reaches their ears, to reflecting upon some most exalted and immortal nature.
7, 7. When that one God of gods is thought about, after all, even by those people who assume there are other gods whether in heaven or on earth, and who invoke and worship them, he is thought about in such a way that our thoughts strive to attain to something, than which there is nothing better or more sublime.[8] People are, of course, moved by a whole variety of goods, some by those which are available to the bodily senses, some by those which the intelligent spirit can attain to. Those who are given over to the senses of the body consider that either the sky, or what they can see shining brightly in the sky, or the universe itself, is God. Or if they exert themselves to go outside the universe, they imagine something full of light, and either make it infinite, or vainly suppose it to have the shape they think best—or even endow it with a human form, if that is the one they prefer to others. But if they do not think there is one God of gods, and assume rather that there are many, indeed countless gods of equal rank, even these they represent to themselves in imagination as being whatever they consider superlative in bodies.
Those on the other hand, who proceed by using their minds to conclude that God is, place him above all visible and bodily natures, also over all intelligible and spiritual ones—over everything in fact that is subject to change. All of them,[9] however, put up a strenuous and zealous fight for God's excelling everything else there is; nor can any be found who suppose that God is something than which anything else is better. And so all agree that God is whatever they put above all other things.
God as unchangeable Wisdom
8, 8. Now all who think about God think about him as something alive; so those alone can avoid absurdity in their reflections about God who give some thought to life as such, and take as axiomatic that whatever physical form may occur to them, it only lives, or does not live, with life; and hence they understand that the living bodily form, however brilliantly it may shine, however superlatively great it may be in size, however beautiful its proportions, is itself one thing, and the life that quickens it another; and this they acknowledge to be of incomparably greater worth than that mass which it quickens and animates.
Next, they proceed to examine this life, and if they find it simply of a vegetative kind, without sensation, like the life of trees, they put sentient or sensitive life above it, such as the life of animals; and again above this they place intelligent life, such as the life of human beings. When they observe that even this is still subject to change, they are obliged to put above it some kind of unchangeable life, namely that kind which is not sometimes wise, sometimes unwise, but is rather Wisdom itself. The wise mind, after all, the one namely that has acquired wisdom, was not wise before it acquired it, while Wisdom itself, on the contrary, never was unwise, and never can be. If they did not see this, in no way would they confidently prefer life that is unchangingly wise to life that is subject to change. They can see, after all, that the very rule of truth, by which they declare it to be better, is itself unchanging; nor can they see this anywhere, except above their own nature, considering that they observe themselves to be subject to change.
9, 9. Nobody, surely, can be so shamelessly fatuous as to say, "How do you know that the unchangeably wise life is to be preferred to the changeable variety?" The very thing they are querying, after all, how I know, is universally and unchangeably present to all for their contemplation.[10] And anyone who does not see this is like a blind man in the light of the sun, whom that clear, bright light, presently pouring into the place where his eyes should be, benefits not at all. Those, however, who do see it and run away from it, have had the sharpness of their minds blunted by growing accustomed to the dark shadows of the flesh. So people are beaten back from their home country, as it were, by the contrary winds of crooked habits, going in pursuit of things that are inferior and secondary to what they admit is better and more worthwhile.
To see God, the mind must be purified; the example given us by Wisdom incarnate
10, 10. That is why, since we are meant to enjoy that truth which is unchangeably alive, and since it is in its light that God the Trinity, author and maker of the universe, provides for all the things he has made, our minds have to be purified, to enable them to perceive that light, and to cling to it once perceived. We should think of this purification process as being a kind of walk, a kind of voyage toward our home country. We do not draw near, after all, by movement in place to the one who is present everywhere, but by honest commitment and good behavior.
11, 11. Of this we would be quite incapable, unless Wisdom herself had seen fit to adapt herself even to such