"Take Up and Read" Basics of Augustine's Biblical Interpretation

KARLFRIED FROEHLICH

Professor of Ecclesiastical History, emeritus

Princeton Theological Seminary

Augustine was convinced that the Bible is meant to promote one

thing: the love of God and neighbor. Although the human lan­

guage of the inspired scriptures constitutes a formidable chal­

lenge, studying the Bible may be the best use of our limited life

span. God the master rhetorician will teach, delight, and move

anyone who takes it up and reads.

A s in other areas of the theological enterprise, Augustine's influence on the development of biblical interpretation in the West can hardly be overestimated. Medieval and Reformation exegetes eagerly excerpted his commentaries and

other writings, and compilations such as the Ordinary Gloss or Florus Diaconus's flori-legium on the Pauline Epistles kept Augustine's biblical exegesis constantly before the eyes of theologians. The same holds true for his theory of interpretation. For many centuries, Augustine's treatise On Christian Doctrine (or Teaching Christianity) remained the standard treatment, which later attempts such as Hugh of St. Victor's Didascalicon could supplement but not supplant. In more recent times, Augustine has come under much critical scrutiny, but his scriptural expositions are still read and used by pastors in all denominations.

A coherent Augustinian theology is difficult to extract from his writings, for Augustine was not a monolithic thinker. As he developed and changed, so did his view of the Bible, moving from snobbish disdain to unrestrained admiration. He knew the name and the sto­ries of Jesus from his pious mother but, in his teens, he found the Latin Bible unpalatable and unworthy to be regarded as respectable literature (Conf 3.5.8-9). During years of asso­ciation with the Manicheans, Augustine developed a rational criticism of the Old Testament, for its crude anthropomorphisms and seemingly immoral teachings were unac­ceptable to a serious youth in search of the truth. Yet, at the end of his life, his view of the Bible had changed radically. He now praised it as the book of books and celebrated the bib­lical God as the master rhetorician whose eloquent word had the power to persuade, instruct, delight, and move beyond the power of anyone using the instrument of language.

6 Interpretation JANUARY 2 0 0 4

As Augustine tells it, the spiritualizing interpretation of Old Testament texts, especially the prophets, in the sermons of Bishop Ambrose of Milan first opened up for him the possibili­ty of revising his earlier judgment (Conf 5.14.24). Ambrose followed Origen's hermeneutics of ascent: the interpreter of scripture must leave behind the material level of a literal under­standing and move to the spiritual level, scripture's true sense, which concerns the fate of the soul, its predicament, and its salvation. Augustine remembered Ambrose citing 2 Cor 3:6 as a hermeneutical key (Conf 6.4.6). Stimulated by Tyconius's third rule, he himself later interpreted the verse more accurately in terms of the difference between keeping the law outwardly and relying on the inward gift of grace for finding life. The mature Augustine outgrew the methodology of easy allegorization. In fact, during the final decades of his career, he sought wherever he could to vindicate the "proper" sense of biblical words and stories—the literal sense—without discarding the hermeneutics of ascent.

THE DEPTH OF SCRIPTURE

The best example of Augustine's development as an exegete is his lifelong preoccupa­tion with the first chapters of Genesis. Manichean exegesis took the text at face value and poured scorn and contempt on the crass materialism of the story of creation and fall. Augustine's first anti-Manichean writing was a Genesis commentary, On Genesis against the Manicheans (388/89 CE.). Toward the end of his life, looking back at this initial attempt in his RetractationeSy he observed that he had not yet been able to interpret Genesis in its "proper" sense and therefore resorted to allegorization. A second effort, On Genesis According to the Letter, Incomplete (about 393), was abandoned at Gen 1:26 because he felt the project failed to achieve its aims. In the last three books of the Confessions, Augustine returned once more to the interpretation of Gen 1:1-2:3. As he struggled to grasp the meaning of the words of the human author whom he took to be Moses, every detail left him in awe of the riches of truth that unfolded: "What wonderful profundity there is in your utterances! The surface meaning lies open before us and charms beginners. Yet the depth is amazing, my God, the depth is amazing" (Conf 12.14.17).l

Augustine was led by the recognition of this depth to the acknowledgment that, in a particular verse, several interpretations are possible, all of which can be true even if they supersede the author's intention (Conf 12.18.27). Only in his last commentary, On Genesis According to the Letter, which was fifteen years in the making (401-415), did Augustine dare to interpret the first three chapters of Genesis "not in terms of their allegorical signification but in terms of the events themselves" (Retract 2.24. [50]). He acknowledged the strong presence of metaphor in the anthropomorphic language of the creation story and interpret­ed figurative expressions as such but assumed that the basic facts were true and real as

*For translations of Augustine's Confessions, I am using Saint Augustine's Confessions, tr. H. Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

AUGUSTINE Interpretation 7

Augustine defined the function of the Bible

as a privileged means of God's Interaction

with humanity.

reported. Augustine was convinced that figurative speech must and can be validated by careful and rigorous reasoning. "The narrative in these books," he says in introducing his exposition of Gen 2:8, "is not in the genre of figurative language as in the Song of Songs but altogether factual as in the books of Kings and the other writings of this kind" (De Gen. ad Litt. 8.1.2). Thus he defended the logical historical plausibility of narrative details every­where, often to the breaking point, before considering a "twofold meaning" or the purely prophetic signification of a verse or phrase.

Basic to these efforts was the assumption of divine agency behind the words of Moses, the prophets, the evangelists, and apostles. Augustine's conviction of the divine inspiration of scripture was part of the ecclesiastical tradition that defined the canon, which he accept­ed as unquestioned authority when he embraced the faith of his mother and Ambrose. However, despite the fact that divine inspiration was part of what Augustine called the "rule of faith" or "rule of truth," he regarded the inspiration of the Bible as a mat­ter of personal discovery, not doc­trine. Its truth simply imposed itself on him. This becomes quite clear in the story of his last and decisive conversion, the scene in the garden with the unexplained sing-song of a child—Tolle, lege! ("take, read!" Conf 8.11.29). In answer to this divine oracle, he takes the copy of Paul's letters from the table and reads Rom 13:13-14. The words hit home. Rather than the teacher of rhetoric interpreting the Bible, the Bible interpreted him through the providential action of God's Spirit. He had no other choice but to see it this way. In his mature years, Augustine followed Origen's high view of biblical inspiration: not only do the human authors function as "the hands of Christ," but every word, even the entire process of transmission, is inspired, including scribal mistakes.

The decisive power of this conviction is illustrated by Augustine's attitude toward the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which was held in highest esteem by the Christian church and was the basis for the Latin translations used in the North African churches. He knew the Hellenistic Jewish tradition of the miraculous origin of this transla­tion, recorded in the so-called Letter ofAristeas (3rd century B.C.E.), but he told an even more amazing version of the story: the seventy translators not only worked together but were separated in individual cells and still came up with one and the same text (De doctr. christ 2.15.22). For Augustine, the clear inspiration of the Septuagint was reason enough to question Jerome's efforts to produce a new Latin translation from the Hebrew original. It would endanger the unity of the Eastern and Western churches and breed confusion among simple people about the authority of their Bible. Augustine cites the example of a nearby town where the replacement of "ivy" with "gourd" in the reading of Jonah 4:6 from the new translation led to a veritable riot in the congregation (Epistle 71.3.5). With increasing stress on the importance of the literal sense in his later years, however, Augustine seems to have quietly shifted to greater reliance on Jerome's translations and tools in his interpretive work

8 Interpretation JANUARY 2 0 0 4

on Old Testament texts. Augustine acknowledged what he thought was the linguistic com­petence of his older colleague, and his two influential collections of notes on the Heptateuch (Genesis-Judges) from about 419 witness to his own keen interest as well as his far more limited ability in the field of biblical philology.

Augustine's strong inspirationalism accounts for three peculiar features of his biblical interpretation. First, along with most earlier tradition but against the evidence of the Psalm titles, he staunchly maintained David's sole authorship of the entire Psalter (City of God,

Book 17, Chapter 14). David, for him, was a prophet predicting Christ, sometimes speaking in the person of the head, Christ himself, and sometimes in the voice of the body, the church. David added the names of other persons in the titles such as Asaph or the Sons of Korah because they indicated "something pertinent" (although not always easy to explain), as well as the names of subsequent prophets that God may have revealed to him. Second, in his correspondence with Jerome, Augustine waged a fierce controversy over Gal 2:11-14, a passage of some weight in the Pauline literature. Jerome had suggested that Peter's act of withdrawal from table fellowship with Gentile Christians at Antioch was a simulation, and that his public criticism of Paul was a mere show staged to persuade the strict wing of Jewish Christians to join the common conviction of the two apostles. Augustine objected strongly. He maintained that if Paul says that Peter and Barnabas "were not acting consis­tently with the truth of the Gospel," then this was a true statement, and Jerome's suggestion that the apostles used deceit was unacceptable. Apostles may have lied as persons, but not as biblical authors. Any falsehood in scripture would put the Bible's entire authority in jeop­ardy.

The third feature is particularly instructive. Around the turn of the fifth century, dur­ing the time of his growing interest in the "proper" (i.e., the literal) sense of scripture, Augustine authored a treatise, On the Consensus of the Gospel Writers. He attempted, as he put it, to demonstrate the harmony of the four accounts in order to refute critics who used incongruities and discordances in the gospel stories against the church (Retract. 2.16.43). It was clear to him that four inspired authors cannot truly disagree; one must assume an underlying harmony. Augustine acknowledges and methodically discusses a long list of dis­crepancies and apparent contradictions. In most cases, he proposes a rational solution. If Luke reports that Mary and Joseph went up to Jerusalem for Passover "every year" (Luke 2:41) but Matthew says that after their return from Egypt they were afraid of Judea and went to live in Galilee instead (Matt 2:22), they may have taken the risk of a brief annual trip anyway. If the synoptics report that Simon of Cyrene was forced to carry Jesus' cross but John says expressly, "He bore his cross himself" (John 19:17), then John had in mind the beginning of the via dolorosa, not the final stretch. It is interesting to observe Augustine questioning every detail of an episode and noting every unusual feature emerging from the comparison of the reports. Unlike Origen, who sought clues to the higher, "spiritual" mean­ing beyond the text, Augustine wanted to reveal nuances: only the several reports together complete the true picture. In his effort, Augustine was using something like redaction criti­cism. The evangelists were inspired but remained human beings. Each freely selected and arranged the memories of Jesus' life in his or her own way. Thus, their harmony reflected

AUGUSTINE Interpretation 9

not uniformity but complementarity. We notice at the end of the exercise that quite a few discrepancies remain unresolved, but Augustine was willing to let them stand. As in his lit­eral interpretation of Genesis, Augustine raised and discussed all the critical questions but could resign himself to the thought that different, even contradictory, answers were possi­ble. And all of them might be valid and true.

The reason for this liberal attitude of a confirmed inspirationalist is that Augustine's inspirationalism was not fixed on the biblical text as such (as was the case with Origen) but reflected his concept of God. He had experienced God as the master rhetorician in the gar­den scene where the divine Word had moved him through the chant of a child and the words of the Apostle Paul. Of course, ever since he had turned to the "books of the Platonists" (Conf. 7.9.13), his concept of God as the Being of all being, the highest good, the ultimate truth and beauty, included the understanding of an unfathomable depth, an inef­fable mystery in God that was inaccessible to human experience and articulation. Yet the catholic faith that he embraced emphasized the nature and the will of God as relational. The triune relational God spoke and thus brought forth creation out of nothing. God's Word became flesh and thus opened the way for redemption—an aspect that Augustine found missing in the "Platonists." In the context of God-in-relation, Augustine defined the function of the Bible as a privileged means of God's interaction with humanity.

THE FUNCTION OF SCRIPTURE

A graphic passage in the Confessions unfolds Augustine's basic understanding in an ingenious interpretation of the "firmament" in Gen 1:6-8 (Conf 13.15.16-18).2 God made the firmament called heaven to separate the waters above from the waters below. Augustine envisioned the waters above as the "supracelestial peoples," the angelic creation, and the waters below as humanity, the peoples of this world. God made the firmament "for us." The firmament is "the authority of your divine Scriptures," the heavenly shield to protect the weakness of the peoples below, and it is clearly a book: "The heaven will fold up like a book" (Isa 34:4) and "like a skin it is stretched out above us" (Ps 104:2), Augustine suggests. Angels have no need to read this book; they know God's Word face to face. They are eter­nally in its presence. Some undated fragments of a paschal sermon clarify this vision fur­ther:3

Just as by the luminous God light was created, so by the firm God the firmament was made. And we find that in the church "firmament" must be understood as the authority of the divine scrip­tures. First came light, then the firmament. For scripture was produced by righteous persons.

2A good discussion of this passage is found in R. W. Bernard, "The Rhetoric of God in the Figurative Exegesis of Augustiner in Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective: Studies in Honor of Karlfried Froehlich on his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. M. S. Burrows and P. Rorem (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991) 88-99.

3These fragments were published by Dom Cyrille Lambot, "Une série paschale de sermons de saint Augustin sur les jours de la création," in Mélanges offerts à Mademoiselle Christine Mohrmann (Utrecht and Anvers: Spectrum Editeurs, 1963) 213-21; reprinted in RBén 79 (1969) 205-14.

10 Interpretation JANUARY 2 0 0 4

Had they not been made righteous so that they were light, scripture could not have been spread so that it became the firmament between waters and waters, the middle between the human peo­ples below and the peoples of angels above. Why? Because angels have no desire to make progress on the basis of scripture. Therefore, they are not under the firmament, the authority of Scripture. They contemplate the sight of the deity and of wisdom. We, however, deserve to be under the firmament. The will of God is opened to us through the authority of the scriptures (Fragment 1).

Clearly the function of scripture is to make known God's will, to reveal what God

wants to reveal to humans. Augustine connects this revelation not only with the written

word but first and foremost with its proclamation:

The lights in the firmament of heaven are the preachers of the word; the evangelists and apostles, the spiritual gifts. Let us pay attention to the lights who roam through all the world. Look how the waters bring forth swarms of living souls. As the evangelists wander about, people are evan­gelized (Fragmenta).

The evangelists are the lights; God's Scripture is the firmament. But the lights in the firmament of heaven, they are the Gospel which has the testimony of the law and the prophets (Fragment 3).

A passage from the Confessions brings in "the clouds" of heaven at this point.

Ό Lord, your mercy is high as the heaven, and your faithfulness reaches the clouds'' (Ps 36:5). "The clouds pass" (Ps 18:14), but the heaven remains. Preachers of your word pass from this life to another life, but your Scripture is stretched out over the peoples to the end of the age (Conf 13.15.18).

Preachers die. The first generation of biblical authors is long gone. Thus there is an ongoing

function for the Bible. Its parchment pages continue to stretch out and mediate to humans

the word of God, more precisely, the Word of God, the Logos, Jesus Christ: "Now we see

your Word, not as he is, but dimly, through the clouds, in a riddle, through the mirror of

heaven" (Conf 13.15.18; cf. 1 Cor 13:12). Angels behold Christ directly, humans indirectly,

mediated through Christ in the Bible. A passage in the City of God makes the chain of

mediation quite clear: "Christ, having spoken first through the prophets, then through him­

self, and finally through the apostles, as much as he judged to be sufficient, also established

the Scriptures which are called canonical" (City of God 11.3).

Bible and incarnation belong together. It must be stressed that Augustine's reference to

"the scriptures" always includes both Testaments. The same God originates both; Christ is

present everywhere in both; the Spirit speaks in both. There is, however, a definite order of

priority: "What does the term Old Testament imply but the concealing of the New? And

what does the term New Testament imply but the revealing of the Old?" (City of God

16.26). While the Old Testament came first in time, the New has interpretive priority.

Augustine would not be true to himself if he did not find a Bible verse to prove this point.

He found Matt 13:52: "Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like

the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old," not

"what is old and what is new" (City of God 20.4).

In light of this Christocentric understanding of both Testaments, Augustine defines the

AUGUSTINE Interpretation 11

purpose of the Bible's mediating function in Book One of his hermeneutical treatise. "Whoever thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all" (De doctr. christ 1.36.40).4 The substance of this sentence is, of course, Jesus' summary of the commandments (Matt 22:37-39; Mark 12:29-31; Luke 10:27). According to Augustine, scripture has one goal, and one goal only: to promote the love of God and neighbor. For him, the love of God is placed in the framework of the soul's ascent, the

task of human life here on earth to Augustine draws the logical conclusion:

be completed in the eschatological *h* Bible Is not absolutely necessary.

vision of God, when the transition Not everyone needs It. There may be other from the world below to the world means to reach the goal. above will have occurred, and the firmament will no longer be neces­sary. This movement is as much part of an upward eschatology as an apocalyptic expectation forward. In the passage from the Confessions that interprets the "firmament" of Gen 1:6-8, Augustine quoted Isa 34:4 as proof for his equation of firmament (= heaven) and scripture: "The heaven will fold up like a book." He picks up the content of this remark two paragraphs later: "The skin will be folded up, and the grass above which it was stretched out will pass away with its beauty, but your Word abides forever" (Conf 13.15.18). There will be a time when the world below will be gone. There will be a time when scripture will be no more.

SCRIPTURE'S LIMITATIONS

With this idea, we touch on an important aspect of Augustine's thinking about the function of scripture: its limitations. God's Word is eternal, but scripture is not. The firma­ment was placed between the waters for our sake. It is an accommodation of God to the weakness of our frame, an accommodation that has become even more necessary as our ability to perceive God has been further diminished by the fall. Augustine formulates the following summary of scripture's function:

The plenitude and the end of the law and of all the sacred Scriptures is the love of a Being which is to be enjoyed and of a being that can share that enjoyment with us That we might know this and have the means to implement it, the whole temporal dispensation was made by divine Providence for our salvation. We should use it, not with an abiding but with a transitory love and delight, like that in a road or in vehicles or in other instruments, or, if it may be expressed more accurately, so that we love those things by which we are carried for the sake of that toward which we are carried (De doctr. christ. 1.35.39).

4For quotations from De doctrina Christiana, I am using the translation by D. W. Robertson, Jr., Saint Augustine: On Christian Doctrine, The Library of Liberal Arts 80 (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1958).

12 Interpretation JANUARY 2 0 0 4

The Bible is part of God's temporal dispensation; no more than a means to an end, an instrument for the journey. Augustine draws the logical conclusion: the Bible is not absolutely necessary. Not everyone needs it. There may be other means to reach the goal.

A person supported by faith, hope, and charity, with an unshaken hold upon them, does not need the Scriptures except for the instruction of others. And many live by these three things in solitude without books. Whence in these persons I think the saying [of 1 Cor 13:8] is already exemplified: "[charity never falls away], whether prophecies shall be made void or tongues shall cease or knowledge shall be destroyed" (De doctr. christ. 1.39.43).

The love of God can be fully present in a person without the Bible, although the prac­tice of the love of neighbor may need this tool. In his treatise, On the Ways of the Catholic

Church and the Ways of the Manicheans, Augustine invoked the ascetic heroes of his time: "Rejoicing in their converse with God, they adhere to him with pure minds and are com­pletely happy in contemplation of his beauty, which can be perceived only by the under­standing of saints" (De mor. eccl. cath. 1.31.65). The temporal dispensation includes much more than scripture, however. Augustine saw the entire creation pointing to God as its ori­gin and, in this way, inciting the human soul to the love of God on its road to the blessed life. In a late sermon on Matt 11:25-27, Augustine speaks eloquently of this natural revela­tion:

Some people read books in order to find God. But the very appearance of God's creation is a great book. Look above you, look below you! Take note! Read! God does not write down in ink with letters how you can know him. He has set right before your eyes the very things he has made. Why do you ask for a louder voice? Heaven and earth cry out to you: God made me! You read what Moses wrote. Why does the time-bound human read so that Moses had to write? Ponder heaven and earth religiously. There were, you know, people different from Moses, differ­ent from the numerous prophets who saw and understood all this with the help of God's Spirit, the Spirit which they drew with their faith, imbibed with the throat of their devotion, and regur­gitated with the mouth of their inner person. Yes, there were different people who were able to arrive at the knowledge of the creator through that creation itself.5

The preacher, for good measure, adds references to the classical New Testament texts on this subject, Acts 17:28 and Rom 1:19-20. And finally: the temporal dispensation also includes all realities of the natural world and of history to which the Bible refers. In this one book, not only do the words have signification, but indeed the events told and the facts reported are themselves signs of another "thing," the reality of God's world and God's mes­sage of salvation. Hermeneutically, this is neither allegory nor typology. Robert Bernard has called it Augustine's "figurative exegesis."6

Words function as signs for things. With this notion we face another limitation of the function of scripture. God's word is communicated to the peoples below by means of the

5Sermo Mai 126, in Supplementum Patrologiae Latinae, ed. A. Hamman (Paris: Editions Gamier Frères, 1960) 2:505.

6See n. 2.

AUGUSTINE Interpretation 13

Augustine took great delight in the peculiar­

ities of biblical language. Many instances of

his figurative exegesis are based on

"delightful discoveries."

firmament, the authoritative language of the scriptures. God must accommodate this com­munication, however, to the weakness inherent in human language. Just as God stooped down to our human level in the incarnation, taking on our flesh, God stooped down to our human language. Augustine realized that language not only presents infinite opportunities for interaction but also comes with its own set of problems. God's revelation in scripture, God's pulling back the veil, necessitates a new covering: God's perfect Word takes on the veil of our imperfect language. The focal point of Augustine's sign theory is his considera­tion of language, words being for him the primary category of signs.

The application of this theory to the interpretation of scripture determines the outline of On Christian Doctrine after Book 1. Scholars often call this treatise a handbook of hermeneutics. Even if this is a correct designation, we must be prepared for the unexpected: Augustine develops his hermeneutical rules, not as parts of a "method" of interpretation, but as remedies for the obstacles by which the "signs" of language block the view of the true "thing" of scripture, the love of God and neighbor. The category of "unknown signs" in the Bible calls for the study of Greek and Hebrew, as well as of a number of human arts. The study of natural sciences such as the earth sciences, astronomy, and mathematics (Augustine himself was keenly inter­ested in numerology) is as necessary as that of history, logic, even music in order to clarify obscurities in the

biblical text. In this connection, Augustine applies his famous analogy of "despoiling the Egyptians." Just as God commanded the Israelites to take with them the gold and silver of Egypt (Exod 12:35-36), so the biblical interpreter should not hesitate to take from pagan scholars what is useful and true (De doctr. christ. 2.40.60). "Ambiguous signs" are still more problematic, requiring careful discernment. Grammar, pronunciation, and punctuation must be considered. Figures of speech and tropes as well as provisional cultural elements such as the polygamy of the patriarchs must be recognized as such. And, of course, the con­text must be taken into account. The "seven rules" of the Donatisi Tyconius that Augustine sets forth as a help for the task at the end of Book 3 have a similar objective: They are meant to cut for the reader a "path of light" through the obscurities of the "immense dark forest of prophecy."

In his actual exegesis, Augustine relied especially upon Rule Two, "On the Lord and His Body," and Rule Six, "On Recapitulation." The former allowed him to assign particular utterances in the Psalter either to Christ or to the church. The latter solved such issues as the dinner and anointing at Bethany (John 12:1 says that it occurred six days, Mark 14:1 and Matt 26:2 two days before the Passover). Matthew and Mark report "by recapitulation" what in fact occurred earlier (De cons, evang. 2.78.153). The warnings not to take figurative language literally or literal language figuratively culminate in the disarming pronouncement that any interpretation commensurate with the rule of faith and promotes the love of God

14 Interpretation JANUARY 2 0 0 4

and neighbor is true and unobjectionable (De doctr. christ. 3.17.38). We are back where the summary of Book 1 left us: "Whoever finds a lesson [in scripture] useful to the building of charity, even though he has not said what the author may be shown to have intended in that place, has not been deceived, nor is he lying in any way" (De doctr. christ. 1.36.40).

AUGUSTINE'S PREACHING

Augustine himself used scripture for this purpose in his public exegesis, primarily in his preaching, which exhibited a creativity and imagination rarely matched in the history of pulpit oratory. At Hippo, Augustine preached regularly to his congregation, at least two times a week; sometimes daily during Lent or the Easter Octave; and frequently at assem­blies and synods elsewhere in North Africa or in pulpits other than his own. The volume of his extant sermons is astonishing.7 They are all "biblical," following the scripture readings, even when they address the specific celebrations of the church year and saints' days. A num­ber of his biblical "commentaries" were actually series of sermons on particular biblical books: John, 1 John, and large parts of the Psalter. It is clear today that most of them, like most of his topical treatises, were dictated or recorded by others. He was convinced that the permanent, written form of the words of inspired writers deserves a permanent, published form of commentation. His biographer reports that Augustine himself assembled collec­tions of his sermons that could be read to a congregation by others. Even quite recently, previously unidentified sermons by Augustine have been found and published. Besides their exegetical and theological content, they are precious sources for the ecclesiastical and cul­tural history of Roman North Africa and stand out as abiding witnesses to Augustine's exegetical skill and ingenuity. He possessed an amazing recall of biblical details and a con­cordant memory of biblical texts that allowed him to heed his own general admonition to let scripture interpret itself. He loved the Bible deeply and tried to instill a similar love in others, fellow preachers as well as his congregations.

In Book 4 of On Christian Doctrine, Augustine presents a rationalization of his preach­ing practice in terms of Cicero's description of the purpose of oratory: to teach, to delight, to move. As he states in his introduction, two things are necessary for biblical interpreta­tion: discovering what must be understood and teaching what has been learned. The first three books were devoted to the process of discovering. The fourth book deals with the application, the process of communicating the message. Again, Augustine does not outline a positive theory of Christian homiletics. The practice of public speaking follows the rules of rhetoric and should be learned in "secular schools" under good teachers and as early in life as possible. Considering the rhetorical education that he himself had received and taught, Augustine was impressed by the biblical authors' full command of the technical rules—

7An updated list, including the most recent finds, is printed in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. A. D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) 774-89.

A U G U S T I N E Interpretation 15

another indication of their inspiration. His prime example is the Apostle Paul, an extraordi­nary rhetorician. For the Christian tradition in general, Paul was a special case. The last of the apostles, he was also the first Christian teacher, the opening link in the chain of the authoritative transmitters of Christian theology. Thus there was no need to interpret his writings allegorically. Rather, Paul practiced and taught figurative exegesis himself. As the conversion scene in the garden suggests, Augustine had studied the Pauline epistles early, during his years as a Manichean sympathizer. He commented in writing on some of them, Romans and Galatians, as early as the 390s. In a way, he regarded Paul as a colleague, a fel­low rhetorician, very much his senior, of course, but demonstrably employing the same skills. At the same time, he recognizes Amos as an outstanding Old Testament model of the "eloquence of the prophets." Augustine discusses excerpts from Amos 6 and 7, this time "as these passages are translated by the priest Jerome, a skilled translator who knew both lan­guages" (De doctr. christ. 4.7.16).

The eloquence of biblical authors is not displayed in their books for its own sake. It is an expression of the wisdom that God wanted to communicate and the interpreters of scripture should continue to preach. This means that among the three goals of oratory, teaching and moving, in that order, must have priority as Cicero himself implies. But just as the secular orator tries to please as well, so "delight has no small place in the art of (biblical) eloquence" (De doctr. christ 4.13.29). Augustine took great delight in the peculiarities of biblical language. Many instances of his figurative exegesis are based on "delightful discov­eries" that he made in the most unlikely places and that never ceased to intrigue him. His well-known figurative reading of Cant 4:2 in Book 2 of On Christian Doctrine is character­istic: "Thy teeth are like flocks of sheep that are shorn, coming up from the washing, all with twins, and there is none barren among them." A plain "teaching," he contends, makes its case without adornment. Augustine cites an instance: the example of a saint can destroy error and lead a convert out of a worldly life into the community of God's church through baptism and its twofold fruit, the double love of God and neighbor. He seems to be think­ing of his own experience with Ambrose in Milan. True enough, he suggests, but boring.

In a strange way I contemplate the saints more pleasantly when I envisage them as the teeth of the Church cutting off men from their errors and transferring them to her body after their hard­ness has been softened as if by being bitten and chewed. I recognize them most pleasantly as shorn sheep who have put aside the burdens of the world like so much fleece and who are ascending from the washing, which is baptism, all to create twins, which are the two precepts of love, and I see no one of them sterile of this holy fruit (De doctr. christ. 2.6.7).

This passsage is not so much an apology for the author's own exuberant imagination, which tends to run away with him, as it is an invitation to his readers to exercise such imag­ination themselves and find delight in doing so. At the end of the book, Augustine does offer some practical advice to preachers in the context of discussing the three classical styles of delivery (subdued, moderate, and grand): start modestly! Save your big guns until it real­ly matters! (De doctr. christ. 4.23.52).

16 Interpretation JANUARY 2 0 0 4

WHY BIBLE STUDY?

In the light of the basic picture of Augustine's biblical interpretation sketched here, one question imposes itself. If even an inspired Bible suffers under such serious limitations and its interpretation is beset by so many problems, why did Augustine expend so much energy studying and expounding the Bible and enjoin such study on nearly every Christian? After all, the lesson to be learned, the double love of God and neighbor, is so simple, he told us, that this goal may be reached without any academic sweat.

One could point to a professional reason. Augustine accepted the practice and the mandate of the Church, which demanded the effort of biblical exegesis. He started his career at Hippo as a preacher of the Word and continued to regard this task as a priority throughout the nearly forty years of his episcopate. In his discussion of the problems of biblical language, Augustine suggested that God intentionally made work difficult for the biblical interpreter. It was a means of disciplining and exercising the faculties of the soul, to humble the proud, fight boredom, and provide greater intellectual satisfaction (De doctr.

christ. 2.6.7-8). Origen had already suggested that all the traps in the Bible, the stylistic and logical incongruities and impossibilities, were put there by the divine author in order to stimulate research and challenge the mental capacities of the exegete.

Augustine could have added another thought. His treatment of the problem of time in Book 11 of the Confessions suggests that he regarded one's individual life span as the most precious gift a person receives from God. Nothing is so much and so exclusively "ours" as the time we are allotted for the short sojourn in this world. What do we do with our time? How do we spend it? If our life is a pilgrimage to our final home, the blessed vision of God, then spending time with the Bible, that merciful firmament between the waters, may indeed be preferable to most, if not all, other preoccupations that vie for our attention while we are on the way.

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