Teaching Christianity
seem to be very learned, but in no way at all can he be wise.
The proper frame of mind in which all such secular studies should be undertaken
39, 58. On all these counts it seems to me that the most salutary advice I can give to eager and bright young people who fear God and are seeking the blessed life[117] is that they should not impetuously and unconcernedly pursue any teachings that can be had outside the Church of Christ, as though these could ensure them a happy life; rather they should seriously and carefully distinguish between them, and if they find those of human institution to vary because of the different intentions of those who instituted them, and to be not highly thought of because suspected of error,[118] above all if they have any association with demons, entered into by anything like pacts or agreements about special signs, they should utterly repudiate and forswear them; they should also distance themselves from the study of the superfluous and dissolute arts which are of human institution.
But for the needs of this life, they should not neglect those humanly instituted arts and sciences which are of value for a proper social life. As for the other teachings, though, that are to be found among the heathen, apart from the history of past events, or the natural history of things present to the bodily senses, among which may also be counted the experience and the theories of the useful arts and crafts, and apart from logic, rhetoric and mathematics,[119] I reckon there is nothing among them of any use. In all these matters one should keep to the maxim, Nothing too much,[120] and above all in those that pertain to the senses, and are involved in space and time.
59. Now just as some people have taken all the Hebrew and Syrian[121] and Egyptian words and names, and those of any other language that can be found in the holy scriptures, which figure in them without a translation, and given translations of them in separate lists or booklets, and what Eusebius[122] has done for the history of the ages because of problems raised in the divine books which call for a reference to it, so what these scholars have done in these fields in order to save Christians a great deal of work in their research into just a few points, I see as something that could be done, if any of those who are capable of it would like out of the kindness of their hearts to undertake a work that would certainly be of the greatest use to the brethren, and to compile and commit to writing an explanatory encyclopedia of all the places, and all the animals, herbs and trees, stones and unknown metals and any other species at all that are mentioned in scripture.[123] The same thing could also be done with numbers, and an explanation of the significance of only those numbers be written which scripture records.
Some or all of these things have perhaps been done already, just as I have found many works, which I had never realized existed, elaborated and written by good and learned Christians; but they have escaped general notice, whether as a result of simple neglect by the many, or of deliberate concealment by the envious. Whether the same sort of thing could be done for dialectic and the rules of discourse I do not know, and in fact I rather think not, because these are tied into the whole text of scripture as its very sinews. And thus they are of more help to readers in solving and explaining ambiguities, of which we shall speak later on, than in getting to know the meaning of unknown signs, which we are dealing with now.
40, 60. If those, however, who are called philosophers happen to have said anything that is true, and agreeable to our faith, the Platonists above all, not only should we not be afraid of them, but we should even claim back for our own use what they have said, as from its unjust possessors. It is like the Egyptians, who not only had idols and heavy burdens, which the people of Israel abominated and fled