Teaching Christianity (continued)
from, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and fine raiment, which the people secretly appropriated for their own, and indeed better, use as they went forth from Egypt; and this not on their own initiative, but on God's instructions, with the Egyptians unwittingly lending them things they were not themselves making good use of.[124] In the same way, while the heathen certainly have counterfeit and superstitious fictions in all their teachings, and the heavy burdens of entirely unnecessary labor,[125] which everyone of us must abominate and shun as we go forth from the company of the heathen under the leadership of Christ, their teachings also contain liberal disciplines which are more suited to the service of the truth, as well as a number of most useful ethical principles, and some true things are to be found among them about worshiping only the one God. All this is like their gold and silver, and not something they instituted themselves, but something which they mined, so to say, from the ore of divine providence, veins of which are everywhere to be found. As they for their part make perverse and unjust misuse of it in the service of demons, so Christians for theirs ought, when they separate themselves in spirit from their hapless company, to take these things away from them for the proper use of preaching the gospel. Their fine raiment too, meaning, that is, what are indeed their human institutions, but still ones that are suitable for human society, which we cannot do without in this life, are things that it will be lawful to take over and convert to Christian use.
61. For what else, after all, have so many of our good believers done? Can we not see how much gold and silver and fine raiment Cyprian was crammed with as he came out of Egypt, that loveliest of teachers and most blessed of martyrs? Or Lactantius, or Victorinus, Optatus, Hilary,[126] not to mention the living? Or countless Greek writers? This is what God's most faithful servant Moses had done before, of whom it is written that he was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians (Acts 7:22).
To none of these men would the superstitious culture of the heathen have lent the disciplines which they found useful, and especially not in those times when it was shaking off the yoke of Christ and persecuting Christians, if it had suspected that they were going to turn them into aids to the worship of the one God, by which the futile worship of idols would be extirpated. But they gave gold and silver and fine raiment to the people of God as they went forth from Egypt, quite unaware how the things they were giving would be restored to the allegiance of Christ (2 Cor 10:5). All that happened in the Exodus, after all, was a kind of acted parable, pointing in advance to all this.[127] Let me say that I have given my interpretation without prejudice to any other way of understanding the story that may be as good or better.
41, 62. But when students of the divine scriptures, instructed in this manner, begin to approach the task of searching them,[128] they should never stop reflecting on that maxim of the apostle's, Knowledge puffs up, love builds up (1 Cor 8:1). He is convinced, you see, that even if he comes forth from Egypt a rich man, still he cannot be saved unless he celebrates the passover. But our passover, which is Christ, has been sacrificed (1 Cor 5:7), and there is nothing that Christ's sacrifice teaches us more certainly than this, which he cried out himself, as though he could see them toiling away in Egypt under Pharaoh: Come to me, all you who are toiling away and overburdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, since I am gentle and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my load is light (Mt 11:28–30). For whom is this so, if not for the gentle and humble of heart, who are not being puffed up by knowledge, but built up by love?
So they should remember how those who celebrated the passover at that time as a shadow and image of things to come,[129] after they had been told to mark or sign the doorposts with the blood of the lamb, were themselves signed or marked with hyssop (Ex 12:22)—this is a humble and gentle herb, and there is nothing stronger or more penetrating than its roots—so that rooted and founded in love, we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, that is to say, the Lord's cross. Its breadth refers to the cross-beam, where his hands are stretched out; its length to the part from the ground as far as this breadth, where his whole body from the arms down is fixed; its height to the part from the breadth upward to the top, where his head is; while the depth is what is hidden by being fixed in the ground. This sign of the cross encompasses the whole of Christian activity: doing good works in Christ and persevering in adhering to him; hoping for heavenly things, not profaning the sacraments.[130]
Purified by this kind of activity, we shall have the capacity to know also the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge, in which he through whom all things were made is equal to the Father, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph 3:17–19).
Hyssop also has a purgative or purifying virtue, to prevent the lungs from swelling proudly as a result of anything they inhale, from being puffed up with knowledge about the riches taken away from Egypt: You will sprinkle me with hyssop, it says, and I shall be cleansed; you will wash me and I shall be made whiter than snow. To my hearing you will give exultation and joy. Then it goes on to add, in order to show that it is a purging of pride that is signified by hyssop, and the bones that have been humbled shall exult (Ps 51:7–8).
42, 63. But the supply of gold, silver and fine raiment which that people took with them from Egypt was much less, in comparison with the riches which they acquired later on in Jerusalem, which was most evident in the reign of King Solomon;[131] to the same extent all the knowledge derived from the books of the heathen, which is indeed useful, becomes little enough if it is compared with the knowledge of the divine scriptures. For whatever you learn outside them is there condemned if it is harmful, while if it is useful, it is also to be found there. And when you have found there everything of use that you can learn elsewhere, you will also find there in much greater abundance things that you cannot find anywhere else at all, things that can only be learned in the marvelous heights and equally marvelous lowliness and humility of those scriptures.[132]
So, dear reader, as soon as, furnished with this advice, you are no longer hindered by not knowing what signs mean —being gentle and humble of heart, submitting to Christ's easy yoke, and burdened with his light load, being founded and rooted and built up in love, and so not liable to be puffed up by knowledge—you must now approach the consideration and discussion of ambiguous signs in the scriptures. About these I will now attempt in the third volume to say what the Lord is good enough to grant me.
Notes
[1]. See Jn 12:3–7; the trigger phrase here is "and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment." This is a sign directed to the sense of smell. Jesus explains its meaning in words—that it was done for his burial. But see also Sg 1:3, Latin: "Attract me; we will run after you in the odor of your ointments."
Instead of The Maurists' "the odor of the ointment," CCL rather oddly reads, "the anointing odor," odore ungenti.
[2]. Reading with CCL and several manuscripts, per gustatum. The Maurists follow earlier editors in reading praegustato, giving the sense, "and by first tasting the sacrament, the Lord signified…" But there is very little manuscript support for this; and in Luke's account of the last supper, at least, Jesus deliberately refrained then from eating the passover; and finally, Augustine is clearly wishing to give an instance of a sign directed to the sense of taste. He was no doubt prompted by Wis 16:20, the versicle sung at Benediction.
[3]. See Mk 5:27–34; a sign given through the sense of touch. The act of touching signified for Augustine the act of faith. See Sermons 243, 21; 244, 3; 245, 3. He also says somewhere that the hem of the Lord's garment represents Saint Paul, the last and least of the apostles (1 Cor 15:8–9); and thus the episode of this woman and her cure represents the conversion of the Gentiles. See Sermons 63A, 3; 63B, 3.
[4]. See Gn 11:1–9. Augustine also possibly had in mind, as hinting at dissension and ambition, Gn 10:9–10.
[5]. As those about to be baptized laid aside all their clothes.
[6]. He is here running through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Is 11:2–3, LXX, backward from the last, the fear of the Lord, to the first, the spirit of wisdom. He does this because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, Ps 111:10. He also interweaves the beatitudes into the gifts.
[7]. See Mk 12:30–31.
[8]. An untranslatable little piece of wordplay: qua non potest nisi credere et cedere auctoritati.
[9]. See Mt 5:6. We have just had the previous beatitude, those that mourn, connected with the gift of knowledge. The first one, the poor in spirit, was connected by implication with the two gifts (only one in the Hebrew text) of fear and piety.
[10]. See Mt 5:7.
[11]. That of understanding, which oddly enough he does not actually name.
[12]. See 2 Cor 5:7.6; Phil 3:20.
[13]. See Mt 5:8.
[14]. See Mt 5:9.
[15]. That of knowledge, yoked to the beatitude of those who mourn.
[16]. That is, the apocryphal books. The African Church in Augustine's time was one of the first Latin-speaking regional Churches to publish a list of the books it accepted as canonical, in councils held at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397. Their list is exactly the same as the one put out over a thousand years later by the Council of Trent.
[17]. The Latin says, "in the faith of truth," in fide veritatis, an inversion of the genitive which occurs not infrequently in the sermons. A kind of explanation, or at least illustration, of it occurred to me one day in Lesotho, when a young friend of mine, whose English was rather elementary, introduced two women he had brought to see me as "my wife and my mother's wife."
[18]. So the Maurists; quamquam hoc facile inveniri non possit. But CCL omits facile, giving the sense, in my paraphrase, "though this could not happen."
[19]. In the stage of the gift of knowledge.
[20]. Joshua, son of Nun; but I have to keep Augustine's Septuagint version of Joshua's name, because he and his contemporaries were very conscious of the identity of his name with that of our Lord, and hence of his prefiguring Jesus in a very special way.
[21]. Which we call Kings—or rather which we now call 1 and 2
Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings.
[22]. The Greek name for Chronicles, meaning something like "The leftovers."
[23]. That is, Ezra and Nehemiah.
[24]. See the extract from the Revisions at the beginning of this work.
[25]. It is curious that he reverses the order of the last two, departing from the order of the Septuagint.
[26]. There are several idiosyncratic changes of order in his New
Testament list; the most striking being this placing of Acts after the epistles; and among them, the placing of Colossians after Thessalonians, and of James as the last instead of the first of the socalled "catholic" or general epistles.
[27]. A guess at the meaning of a very elliptical phrase: "if it is lacking, non potest his praeceptis dari"; literally, "it"—what? the memory? —"cannot be given to these precepts." Augustine himself clearly had a prodigious memory, and not only came as close as is possible to knowing the Bible by heart, but also had in his memory a marvelous system of cross-references.
[28]. The Latin language, of course, in the text.
[29]. Paul appears in this passage to have been referring rather to himself. Is the reason Augustine says the evangelist that the ox was already in his time accepted as the symbol of Luke's gospel, being one of the four living creatures supporting God's throne, Rv 4:6–7?
[30]. He just says the Latin language, of course. I retain it here, as well as transposing it as usual into "the English language."
[31]. See Mt 5:22.
[32]. It is surprising that he does not give the translation of these words, which he is always ready to do in his sermons, as occasion arises; telling us, correctly, that Amen means "It's true," and Alleluia means "Praise the Lord."
[33]. Reading sententiae connexae with three manuscripts, instead of sententiae conceptae, "of a thought out sentence," with CCL, the Maurists, and the rest of the manuscripts. CCL does not even mention this "variant" in its apparatus.
[34]. He presumably had in mind Origen's Hexapla, which besides the official Septuagint version included three others, those of Symmachus, Theodotion, and Aquila.
[35]. See Jas 1:18; 1 Pt 1:23; Jn 1:13.
[36]. In its first, less correct form, one of Augustine's favorite quotations.
[37]. See 1 Cor 3:2; Heb 5:12; 1 Pt 2:2. The prime object of faith, for Augustine, is not the eternal truths and mystery of God, but the temporal mystery of the incarnation—more precisely, the flesh of the Word incarnate. See The Trinity, XIII, 25; XIV, 3.
[38]. Augustine probably thought he was quoting Ps 14:3, because Paul in Romans joins several other texts onto it—this particular verse comes from Prv 1:7—and as a result the whole of Paul's chain of quotations, Rom 3:10–18, got incorporated into Ps 14:3 in the Septuagint (where it is numbered Ps 13:3).
[39]. But when I look up vitulamen in Lewis & Short, they give as its meaning, "a shoot, sucker, sprig." They also derive it from the verb vitulo, to celebrate, and not from vitulus, a calf. However, the only text they refer to in support is from a letter of Saint Ambrose, 37, 57, and then this Vulgate text from Wisdom. So very possibly Augustine is right about the proper meaning of the word, and Ambrose is very sensibly interpreting its occurrence in Wis 4:3 to mean what it ought to mean.
[40]. Reading libertas with CCL and the older editors, instead of veritas, truth, which the Maurists prefer on the strength of eleven manuscripts. Augustine is clearly comparing here free with literal translation. The modern equivalent of the literal translation he favors as an aid would be the interlinear cribs of some old-fashioned school textbooks.
[41]. The right and wrong way of saying "among men," with the accusative and the ablative cases respectively.
[42]. Alienae consuetudinis; thus most of the manuscripts, so the Maurists assure us. One sympathizes with the older editors, and perhaps some manuscripts, who substitute latinae consuetudinis. But Augustine probably did write alienae, and had in mind the equivalent of people in Britain speaking "BBC English," or "with an Oxford accent," when they would be much happier relaxing into their native Cockney, Geordie, or West Country burr; in other words, his ordinary Numidian countrymen who naturally spoke their local dialect, but were sometimes pressured into speaking "correct"—and "alien"—Latin.
[43]. See 1 Cor 8:1.
[44]. See Mt 11:29–30.
[45]. A pair of characteristic Hebraisms, Hebrew lacking any equivalent to relative pronouns, and having instead simply a relative particle. Sesotho and related African languages have a similar idiom.
[46]. I wonder if someone like Origen, or his Latin disciple and admirer
Rufinus, Augustine's contemporary and the victim of Jerome's merciless invective and vitriolic pen, had tried to extract some mystical meaning from this Hebraism.
[47]. From here to the end of the section I just paraphrase, for reasons that will be obvious.
[48]. The Greek genitive of comparison instead of the Latin ablative.
[49]. If it were the dative, I suppose it would mean, "… is wiser for men…is stronger for men."
[50]. The Septuagint, or 70, LXX. The Maurists list some of the Fathers who retailed the story of the 70 separate cells. And they also say that Saint Jerome poured scorn on the story, and said that Aristeas, whose letter is at the base of it, only wrote that the 70 scholars were housed by King Ptolemy II Philadelphus, about 250 BC, in a