Teaching Christianity
the holy scriptures. And what if I had also chosen to point out the figures of speech this art teaches, which are to be found at least in these texts I have quoted to illustrate the apostle's eloquence? [18] Would not serious people readily conclude[19] that I was going beyond what any student might think sufficient? All these things, when taught by professionals, are highly regarded, are bought at a high price, sold with high-flown self-advertisement. This is the kind of self-advertisement I too fear I may reek of, while I am holding forth like this. But I had to answer those less than learned people who think our authors are to be lightly dismissed, not because they lack, but because they do not parade, the eloquence of which these people are altogether too fond.
Examples from biblical authors: Amos
15. But perhaps you may think I have chosen the apostle Paul as being our only eloquent writer. Where he says, after all, Even if unskilled in speaking, but not in knowledge (2 Cor 11:6), he seems in speaking that way to have been granting his detractors something for the sake of argument, not to have been admitting it as if it were really true. If he had said, "Unskilled indeed in speaking, but not in knowledge," it could only have been understood as meaning what it said. He certainly did not hesitate to claim knowledge, without which he would never have qualified as teacher of the nations (1 Tm 2:7). Certainly, if we are offering anything of his as an example of eloquence, we do it, naturally, from those letters which were admitted even by his detractors, who wanted his speech when present in person to be considered beneath contempt, to be weighty and forceful (2 Cor 10:10).[20]
So I see that I must say something also about the eloquence of the prophets, where many things are veiled under a figurative manner of speech. The more thoroughly