Teaching Christianity (continued)
Book IV
The value of rhetorical skills; but this will not be a textbook of rhetoric
1, 1. I originally divided this work of ours, which has the title Teaching Christianity, into two parts. After the prologue, in which I gave my answer to those who were going to find fault with it, I said, "There are two things which every treatment of the scriptures should strive for: a way of attaining to an understanding of their meaning, and a way of communicating what has been understood. We shall first discuss how to understand them, and next how to communicate their meaning" (Book I, 1). Because we have already said much about ways of understanding them, and have filled three volumes with this one part, we shall now with the Lord's help say a few things about communication, and so conclude it all, if possible, with one last book, and finish the whole work in four volumes.
2. And so first of all I must preface my remarks by dashing the expectations of any readers, who may think perhaps that I am going to give them the rules of rhetoric which I myself learned and taught in the secular schools. I hereby warn them not to expect such things from me, not because they are of no use at all, but because even if they are of some use, they are to be learned elsewhere, if any good man should chance to have the leisure to study this subject too. Only they should not be looked for from me, either in this work or in any other.
2, 3. Rhetoric, after all, being the art of persuading people to accept something, whether it is true or false, would anyone dare to maintain that truth should stand there without any weapons in the hands of its defenders against falsehood; that those speakers, that is to say, who are trying to convince their hearers of what is untrue, should know how to get them on their side, to gain their attention and have them eating out of their hands by their opening remarks,[1] while these who are defending the truth should not? That those should utter their lies briefly, clearly, plausibly, and these should state their truths in a manner too boring to listen to, too obscure to understand, and finally too repellent to believe? That those should attack the truth with specious arguments, and assert falsehoods, while these should be incapable of either defending the truth or refuting falsehood? That those, to move and force the minds of their hearers into error, should be able by their style to terrify them, move them to tears, make them laugh, give them rousing encouragement, while these on behalf of truth stumble along slow, cold and half asleep?
Could anyone be so silly as to suppose such a thing? [2]
So since facilities are available for learning to speak well, which is of the greatest value in leading people either along straight or along crooked ways, why should good men not study to acquire the art, so that it may fight for the truth, if bad men can prostitute it to the winning of their vain and misguided cases in the service of iniquity and error?
3, 4. But be that as it may, whatever the rules whose observance makes for what is called fluency and eloquence, when habitually applied by a skillful tongue in its choice of a wide and colorful vocabulary, they should be learned apart from what I am writing here, in the proper time and place set aside for such work, and at the most suitable age, by those who can learn them quickly. For even the leading lights of Roman eloquence did not hesitate to say that unless you can master this art quickly, you can never master it at all. Whether this is true or not, what need is there for us to decide? For even if they could eventually be mastered by the slower spirits, we do not consider them of such importance that we would wish to impose the learning of them upon men of mature or even venerable age. It is enough that this subject should be the concern of the young, and not even of all of those whom we desire to have educated for the service of the Church, but only of those who are not yet busy with more urgent requirements, which undoubtedly take precedence over this one.[3]
The fact is that, given a bright and eager disposition, eloquence will come more readily to those who read and listen to eloquent speakers than to those who pore over the rules of eloquence. Nor is there any lack of ecclesiastical writers, over and above the canon of scripture that has been set for our salvation at the summit of authority, by whose style a capable man will be influenced when he reads them, even if that is not his concern, but he is only interested in what they have to say; and he will put this to good use when he has occasion to write, or dictate, or finally even to preach what he has in mind that accords with piety and the rule of faith.
But if such a disposition is lacking, then these rules of rhetoric cannot be grasped; or even if they can be to some extent and with great effort impressed on a person and understood, they will not be of any use, seeing that those who have learned them and are fluent and attractive speakers cannot all think about them, in order to speak in accordance with them, while they are speaking, unless they are actually discussing them. Indeed I imagine that there are scarcely any of them who can do both at the same time, that is speak well, and in order to do this think about those rules for public speaking while they are speaking. You would have to take care, after all, not to let what you had to say escape your mind, while you were giving all your attention to saying it artistically. And yet in the speeches and the style of eloquent speakers you will find that the rules of eloquence have been implemented, which they were not thinking about either in order to speak, or while they were speaking, and this whether they had learned them formally, or never even encountered