Teaching Christianity
they look for some kind of likeness, as far as possible, between the signs themselves and the things being signified. But because a thing can resemble something else in many ways, such signs will not mean anything to people, unless there is prior agreement about them.
39. With pictures, however, and statues, and other representative works of this sort,[88] especially those by skilled artists, nobody can go wrong, when he sees various representations, in recognizing what things they represent. And this whole category of signs is to be counted among the superfluous institutions of mankind, except when a difference is made by what is done, for what reason and where and when it is done, and by whose authority it is done. Finally there are thousands of fictions and fables and falsehoods, lies in which people take pleasure, which are all human institutions.[89] And nothing that human beings derive from themselves is to be reckoned as more proper to them than any kind of falsehood and lie.
But convenient and necessary signs that have been instituted by human beings among themselves are such things as they have agreed upon in dress and bodily adornment to distinguish the sexes or differences in rank, and countless other kinds of signification, without which human society either cannot carry on at all, or at least not so conveniently. And there are things that are peculiar to each city and nation, like weights and measures and distinct coinage, and other things of that sort, which would not vary between different peoples, nor be liable to be changed in each nation at the whim of their rulers, if they were not simply human institutions.
40.[90] But all such human institutions which contribute to the necessary ordering of life are certainly not to be shunned by Christians; on the contrary indeed, as far as is required they are to be studied and committed to memory.
26, For humanly instituted signs bear some sort of sketchy resemblance to natural ones. Those, as we have said, which refer to any association with demons are to be utterly abhorred and repudiated, while those which human beings share with one another are to be made use of, when they are not means of superfluous and self-indulgent extravagance. Chief among these are the shapes of letters, without which we cannot read, and a variety languages, as far as is required, which we have already discussed.[91] To the same class belongs shorthand, learned by those who are called shorthand-writers.[92] All these are useful arts, and it is not unlawful to learn them, nor do they involve you in superstition or dehumanize you with self-indulgence, provided they only take up as much of your time as does not distract you from more important matters, which they ought to be helping you to learn about.[93]
The value of history, and all other human sciences, for the understanding of the scriptures
27, 41. But now we come to those arts and sciences which human beings have developed, not by inventing them but by investigating either what has happened in the past or what has been instituted by God; these cannot be regarded as human inventions. Of these some pertain to the bodily senses, while others are the province of the mind and its powers of reason. As for the ones which are attained by the senses of the body, we either believe them when told about them, or perceive them when they are shown to us, or assess them when we experience them.[94]
28, 42. Everything therefore that we are told about the past by what is called history is of the greatest help to us in understanding the holy books, even that kind that is learned apart from the Church at school, because we often want to work out many dates by means of olympiads and the names of consuls,[95] and ignorance of the consulate in which the Lord was born and of the one in which he suffered has led