Complex Authorial Intention in Augustine’s Hermeneutics

Augustinian Studies 45:2 (2014) 203-225

doi: 10.5840/augstudies201411118

Complex Authorial Intention in Augustine’s Hermeneutics

Brett W. SmithThe Catholic University o f America

Abstract: Augustine held that scripture could have multiple true meanings, and scholars of Augustine have given this topic considerable treatment. Some have recognized the importance of divine authorial intention in this matter, but the relevance of ancient semantics to Augustine’s hermeneutics has not received sufficient attention. Ancient speakers would often explain a concept in varied ways that could all be considered true. This practice created the possibility that an author could intend for certain terms to be understood in multiple ways. I call this a complex authorial intention. After describing some of the prominent views on Augustine’s multiple meanings of scripture, I will establish the concept of complex authorial intention from ancient semantic practice. In the light of these first two sections I will proceed to analyze three key texts in Augustine’s corpus: Confessions 12.30.41 and 13.24.37, as well as De Doctrina Christiana 3.2.2. I will argue that Augustine saw complex divine authorial intention as a theoretical justification for the multiplicity of meanings in scripture and that this view sets objective limits on the range of possible meanings.

Introduction

A ugustine’s view that scripture can have m ultiple meanings has been variously understood. Some scholars have appreciated the significance o f dual authorship (human and divine) for this phenom enon,1 but the relevance o f ancient semantics

1. One scholar who relates dual authorship to authorial intention in Augustine’s hermeneutics is Tarmo Toom. In Tarmo Toom “Was Augustine an Intentionalist? Authorial Intention in Augustine’s Hermeneutics,” SP 70 (2013): 186-189, Toom shows that Augustine agreed with the rhetorical manuals that uoluntas auctoris (the will or intention of the author) was preferable to the scriptum

SMITH: COMPLEX AUTHORIAL INTENTION IN AUGUSTINE’S HERMENEUTICS

has not received sufficient attention. Ancient speakers would often explain a term or concept in different ways that could all be considered true. This expansive approach to semantic usage created the possibility that an author could intend for certain terms to be understood in multiple ways. I call this a complex authorial intention.* 2 This concept, when considered along with dual authorship, may be the key to understanding this difficult aspect of Augustine’s hermeneutics.

I will concentrate on three key texts in Augustine’s corpus: Confessions (conf.) 12.30.41-12.32.43 and 13.24.37, as well as De doctrina Christiana (doctr.: chr.) 3.2.2. After describing some of the prominent views on Augustine’s multiple meanings of scripture, I will provide some background on ancient semantics to establish the concept of complex authorial intention. Then I will analyze the three key texts in light of the foregoing sections. I will argue that Augustine saw complex divine authorial intention as a theoretical justification for the multiplicity of meanings in scripture and that this view sets objective limits on the range of possible meanings.

Prominent Views on Augustine’s Hermeneutics

No one can doubt that Augustine allowed for multiple valid meanings to be attributed to a text of scripture, but beyond this datum, interpretations of Augustine diverge throughout the whole spectrum of the larger debate on textual interpretation in general.3 At one end of the spectrum are those who consider Augustine to be a

(the lexical/syntactic meaning) if ever the two happened to disagree. Augustine also held that the intention of the divine author was more important than that of the human author if they were not identical. For a theory very similar to the one I defend in this paper, minus the discussion of ancient semantics, see Richard A. Norris, Jr., “Augustine and the Close of the Ancient Period of Interpretation,” in A History of Biblical Interpretation Volume 1: The Ancient Period, ed. Alan J. Hauser and Duane F. Watson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 397-399.

2. The term “complex authorial intention” is my own. Nevertheless, Gerald Downing, “Ambiguity, Ancient Semantics, and Faith,” New Testament Studies 56 (2009): 150, seems to affirm the possibility of such a phenomenon in his discussion of conf. 12: “Moses can be taken to invoke ‘an idea’ or a plurality of ideas.”

3. Recent and contemporary discussions of textual interpretation in general have often addressed authorial intent, and scholars have arrived at differing answers. Some, like E. D. Hirsch, have argued that “the meaning of a text is the author’s meaning,” and that a valid interpretation therefore requires “the re-cognition of what an author meant.” See E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 25, 126. Others, like Jacques Derrida, have argued that texts cannot mediate the presence of their authors. See Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 141-145. It would follow from this that texts are isolated from their authors, who thus have no right to restrict their possible meanings unless readers choose to grant it. See Robert Morgan and John Barton, Biblical Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 6-8. For a discussion of this problem that focuses upon Gadamer and his opponents, including Hirsch, see Burhanettin Tatar, “Inter-

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proto-intentionalist in that he makes it the interpreter’s task to seek the intention of the human who wrote the biblical text. They would explain his allegorical interpretation as “a last resort if everything else fails.”* * 4

Pamela Bright

Toward the other end of the spectrum are those who read Augustine as supporting multiplicity of meaning throughout scripture with little limitation to the range of possible meanings. Within her essay, “Augustine: The Hermeneutics of Conversion,” Pamela Bright addresses the multiplicity of meanings in scripture through book 12 of conf., where Augustine discusses the Gen. 1 creation account. Here Bright finds that “the abyss of the scriptures, with all its diversity and multiplicity . . . is the special focus of Book XII.”5 Yet for Bright it is not only the character of scripture, but also the relationship of humans to truth itself that leads to multiplicity. Concerning conf. 12.27.37, she states, “The point is that truth cannot be ‘grasped’ or possessed in a single unfaltering glance (at least in the human condition); neither can it be possessed by the individual interpreter.”6

In a passage about how different authors find divergent but true meanings in the words of Gen. 1, she notices the phrase “truthful diversity” and Augustine’s plea for humility and love among interpreters.7 She further observes that Augustine sees diverse interpretations as potentially good. After a long quotation from conf. 12.30.41-12.31.42, she explains, “From such a perspective, hermeneutics in the ecclesial community is to be governed by the scope of scripture which is to build up the ecclesial community in love (not to divide by hubris), and to welcome diversity of opinion as a richness.”8 Here Bright offers some limitation to the range of possible meanings: they must promote love in the church. While this, like several of Bright’s observations, is correct, it is rather vague as a limit to the range of possible

pretation and the Problem of Authorial Intention” (PhD diss., Catholic University of America,1997), 47-105.

4. A. D. Fitzgerald, ed., AttA (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999), s.v. “Hermeneutical Presuppositions” by Karla Pollmann, 427; See also Frances Young, “Augustine’s Hermeneutics and Postmodern Criticism,” Interpretation 58, no. 1 (Jan. 2004): 50.

5. Pamela Bright, “Augustine: The Hermeneutics of Conversion,” in C. Kannengiesser, Handbook of Patristic Exegesis, Volume 2, The Bible in Ancient Christianity, ed. D. J. Bingham (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 1226.

6. Ibid.; See quotation from conf. 12.27.37 (n.80).7. Conf. 12.30.41 (CCSL 27:240); Bright, “Hermeneutics,” 1225 (n.5); See my comments on this

passage in the subsection dedicated to it below.8. Bright, “Hermeneutics,” 1233 (emphasis hers) (n.5); cf. my comments on this passage in the

subsection dedicated to it below.

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SMITH: COMPLEX AUTHORIAL INTENTION EM AUGUSTINE’S HERMENEUTICS

meanings. She adds, “At the same time, this dialogic mode would subject the interpretive process to an austere critical reflection” and “the scriptures call for a community of interpreters.”9 In this way Bright places meaningful limitations on the individual interpreter, but there remains no clear, objective limitation on how the community may decide to interpret or re-interpret scripture. She conveys the overall thrust of her view near the end of the essay: “What Augustine says of the power of memory. . . can be transposed to describe the scriptures: ‘an awe-inspiring mystery, my God, a power of profound and infinite multiplicity. It is characterized by diversity, by life of many forms, utterly immeasurable’ (conf. X 17.26).”10

Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams interprets the semiotics of doctr. chr. in a similar vein. He quotes Geoffrey Hartman with approval: “There is no absolute knowledge but rather a textual infinite, an interminable web of texts or interpretation.”* 11 Williams understands the prominence of signs (signa) in Augustine’s theory to be “moving in this direction” and to have “affinities with the popular notion that everything is language, everything is interpretation.”12 Although Williams says that “all this does not amount to a self-indulgent relativism,” the only control he finds for the interpretation of scripture is that it must be directed towards caritas.13 This is the love demonstrated by Christ in his incarnation and crucifixion, which for Williams is “a central metaphor to which the whole world of signs can be related.” This metaphor teaches that God only relates to humans in this fife through “absence and deferral.”14

9. Ibid.10. Ibid.11. Rowan Williams, “Language, Reality, and Desire in Augustine’s De Doctrina,” Journal o f Litera

ture and Theology 3, no. 2 (July 1989): 145.12. Ibid., 145, 146.13. Ibid., 143, 148.14. Ibid., 148; Jeffrey McCurry, “Towards a Poetics of Theological Creativity: Rowan Williams reads

Augustine’s De doctrina after Derrida,” Modern Theology 23, no. 3 (July 2007), 423, has argued that Williams is reading Augustine in the framework of Derrida’s differance to develop a scriptural hermeneutic in which the meaning is “always future and always non-identical to a meaning we now possess.” He states with approval that in this reading Williams “is not seeking after Augustine’s authorial intention” (ibid.). If McCurry is correct, I will have to be content to talk past Williams on this point of methodology. I am seeking to discern Augustine’s authorial intention in the passages I analyze below. Whether Williams really is seeking Augustine’s authorial intention, or whether he is only trying to offer a coherent reading of doctr. chr. as a Christian text, my interpretation of doctr. chr. 3.2.2 below challenges the validity of his reading by identifying a passage that does not seem compatible with the thrust of his interpretation.

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"Everything is language, everything is interpretation."

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Rowan Williams - "Towards the concept of caritas." + conceptul de caritas drept metafora centrala a Scripturilor.


This control rules out any theological interpretation of scripture in univocal terms, but otherwise it seems to leave the signs of scripture open to whatever meanings the interpretive framework of the reader may suggest.

Bertrand de Margerie

Bertrand de Margerie offers what may be a mediating position on Augustine’s hermeneutics. He interprets Augustine as believing that each human author of scripture had a primary meaning in mind, and possibly secondary meanings as well. 15

These intended meanings must form the biblical interpreter’s starting point, but additional secondary meanings may also come from the biblical text over time. 16 This occurs due to the “diachronic nature” of language: different audiences at different times inevitably understand the same written words to mean different things. 17 De Margerie calls this phenomenon “unipluralism” or “unified polysemy.” 18 He places no clear limitation on how or in what directions the secondary meanings of the text may change over time, but he does imply a general limitation by recognizing that “Augustine felt that the ownership of biblical assertions is collective, ecclesial, and divine.” 19

One challenge to placing Augustine in the contemporary debate turns upon the fact that he believed any given book in the Bible to have two authors, one human and one divine, whose intention(s) may be relevant.20 For Augustine, the question of how authorial intent governs the meaning of a text hangs upon the further

15. Betrand de Margerie, An Introduction to the History o f Exegesis Volume III: Saint Augustine, trans. Pierre de Fontnouvelle (Petersham, MA: Saint Bede’s Publications, 1991), 59-60.

16. Ibid., 73-74.17. Ibid., 75.18. Ibid., 60, 73; De Margerie traces his own interpretation of Augustine through Gadamer and

Ricoeur (ibid., 74). He also builds self-consciously upon the tradition of Seraphin Zarb (ibid., 58). According to Seraphin M. Zarb, “Unite ou multiplicity des sens litteraux dans la Bible?” Revue Thomiste 15 (1932): 299, there are two kinds of literal sense, which he refers to as “le sens principal et sens adapte.” Zarb explains: “[L]e premier est celui que l’hagiographe a eu en vue; le second, qui n’est pas necessairement compris par Thagiographe, est le sens litteral que d’autres peuvent comprendre dans les paroles inspirees” (ibid., 199-300). Zarb understands both Thomas Aquinas and Augustine to espouse this view (ibid., 298).

19. De Margerie, History o f Exegesis III, 62 (n.15).20. See n. 1 above for references to recent scholarship on the relevance of divine authorial intention;

Hirsch, Validity, 126 (n.3), actually sees the dual authorship of scripture as consistent with his theory in that the “sensus plenior” does not go beyond the willed type of the divine author. In order to avoid violating the intention of the human author, he distinguishes the human author’s text from that of the divine author, even though they contain the same words.

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question of which author’s intent is in view. He is devoted to the authorial intent of the divine author, but he sees this as much broader than the single meaning that a human author of scripture may have had in mind. In order to understand how Augustine conceives of this situation, it is helpful to consider some aspects of the ancient semantics in which he was trained.

Ancient SemanticsScholars today are aware of the issue of ambiguity in ancient semantics.21 Am

biguity, or the phenomenon of one word having multiple meanings, was a topic of discussion in the rhetorical manuals that Augustine studied, and he treats the topic himself in De dialectica {dial. ) . 22 The manuals generally treated ambiguity as an intentional feature of style used for questionable purposes.23 Aristotle’s statement is noteworthy: “People do this [i.e., use ambiguity] when they have nothing to say but are pretending to say something.” 24 The Stoics, who also may have influenced dial. ,25 saw ambiguity as a hindrance in language to be overcome.26 In the context of dialectic, Augustine says, “Every ambiguous word will . . . be explained by non-ambiguous discussion.” 27 Clearly, ambiguity was a problem to be solved; the ambiguous word or phrase should receive clarification.28

21. For a discussion of how ancient authors generally described and dealt with ambiguity, see Tarmo Toom, “Augustine on Ambiguity,” AugStud 38, no. 2 (2007): 407-408; For an extensive study of Stoic thought on ambiguity, which also includes some treatment of Aristotle and Augustine, see Catherine Atherton, The Stoics on Ambiguity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

22. Toom, “Augustine on Ambiguity,” 407^408 (n.21); Michael Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s early figurative exegesis, in Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 48-61.

23. See Toom, “Augustine on Ambiguity,” 408 (n.21), where he shows that ambiguity was used, for example, in interpretation of legal texts, obscene entertainment, and political speeches; from the manuals, see especially Quintilian, Inst. 8.2.

24. Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.4.5 1407a, quoted in Toom, “Augustine on Ambiguity,” 408 (n.21); See also Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations, where, considering them as fallacies of argument, he discusses the various forms of ambiguity used by the Sophists. For a neat summary of the forms of ambiguity in the Sophistical Refutations, see Atherton, Stoics, 505-506 (n.21).

25. Atherton, Stoics, 456 (n.21): “In the de dialectica he retails what may be Stoic argumentation defending the Chrysippean thesis ‘every word is ambiguous by nature,’ in which an assumption is made of the possibility of disambiguation of single terms by context.” See also 289-298.

26. Ibid., 502-504.27. Dial. 9, quoted in Toom, “Augustine on Ambiguity,” 414 (n.21); the Latin is “O m ne. . . ambiguum

uerbum non ambigua disputatione explicabitur” (ibid.).28. Ibid., 433.

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"People do this when they have nothing to say but are pretending to say something."


Expansive Semantics

What scholars have not always noticed, however, is a certain way ancient authors often clarified the meaning of their words.29 F. Gerald Downing has argued that, rather than defining their terms the way scholars would today, ancient authors often explained their meaning with paraphrases, examples, and alternative explanations.30 Their general conviction was that the “idea” they had in mind could be evoked in various ways.31 Expressions may be “shorter, longer, better illustrated,

29. Downing, “Ancient Semantics,” 142 (n.2), writing in the field of New Testament studies, lists several works which have failed to take proper account of ancient semantics. For these references see his nn.14, 15.

30. Downing, “Ancient Semantics,” 149 (n.2).31. Ibid., 146; One can perhaps see this view reflected in Plato’s preference for oral dialogue over

written discourse, as he explains it in the Pliaedrus 275d-275e (LCL [1914] 36:565-567 [trans. Fowler]), where Socrates says of written words, “[I]f you question them . . . they always say only one and the same thing.” The consequence of this feature of writing is that “[E]very word, when once it is written. . . always needs its father to help it; for it has no power to protect or help itself.” A written composition is limited to conveying the meaning(s) the author wrote down, but in person the author can expand upon what he has in mind until the reader/interlocutor understands. See also Phdr. 276a-277a (LCL 36:567-571). For a discussion of Plato’s views on oral and written discourse generally, see Paul Friedlander, Plato: An Introduction, trans. Hans Meyerhoff (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958), 108-115. As for why Plato thought that an idea could legitimately find expression in different linguistic explanations, Friedlander, Plato, 108, offers an important clue: “Logos with Plato becomes a living thing, pre-existing, as it were, before particular verbal expressions and to be realized by the speaker.” For Plato, there seems to be a kind of thought that occurs prior to language in the mind. It is only natural, then, that such thought could find expression in multiple verbal formulae and could even require multiple formulations for its full expression. Plato’s theory of recollection (avdpvqtrtq), inasmuch as it assumes knowledge that is prior even to the acquisition of language, pushes in the same direction. For a good discussion of the platonic texts relevant to recollection, see Charles Kahn, “Plato on Recollection,” in A Companion to Plato, ed. Hugh H. Benson (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 119-132. (Kahn, however, does not seem to see the implication of pre-linguistic thought.) The Stoics also appear to have believed that thought could precede language in the mind. See Jeffrey Bamouw, Propositional Perception: Phantasia, Predication, and Sign in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002), 282-289. Bamouw argues that “A complete lekton is the mental proposing, that is composing and affirming, of a fact” (ibid., 289). This inner mental proposition may be put into language, but it does not have to be. Barnouw explains, “[T]his internal articulation of perception, before language enters in, makes it possible for language to enterin’’ (ibid., 283). If there is mental articulation before mental speech, then it makes good sense to think that speech, when it does enter, could convey the pre-linguistic thought in various ways. Augustine seems to have held a view not unlike those of Plato and the Stoics (trim 5.prol. 1.1 [CCSL 50:206, trans. Hill, WSA, The Trinity second ed., 1/5, 189]): “From now on I will be attempting to say things that cannot altogether be said as they are thought by a man—or at least as they are thought by me (Hinc iam exordiens ea dicere quae dici ut cogitantur uel ab homine aliquo uel certe a nobis non omni modo possunt).” Since Augustine believed he could think more (or more precisely) than he could express in words, he must have believed that at least some thoughts were pre-linguistic.

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more elegantly expressed, more or less persuasive,” but all evoked the same “idea.”32 In this way, clarification could be a matter of expanding meaning, rather than contracting it. I call this approach to explaining one’s intention “expansive semantics.”33

The practice of expansive semantics goes back at least as far as Plato, who used his dialogues to explore the various meanings associated with concepts such as justice and piety.34 For example, in the Euthyphro Plato has the characters Socrates and Euthyphro attempt a definition of piety (to ootov). They never arrive at a final answer. Rather, the dialogue primarily analyzes and critiques a popular conception of piety— that it is “what is dear to the gods.”33 In order to explain this idea, which the character Euthyphro advances early in the dialogue, Plato engages in expansive semantics. He has Euthyphro state, as a revised definition, that piety is “what all the gods love.”36 After Socrates demonstrates the problems with this description, Euthryphro eventually suggests that piety is “the part of the right which has to do with attention to the gods.”37 With Socrates’s help, he gradually explains that this is understood to include gratifying the gods through prayer and sacrifice.38 Then he says it is a “science (£7n<xnjpr|)”39 of such practices and soon thereafter an “art

32. Downing, “Ancient Semantics,” 146 (n.2).33. The term “expansive semantics” is my own. Downing, “Ancient Semantics,” 141, 146-147 (n.2),

distinguishes between semantic polyvalence and the “semantic richness” of ancient “naming.” By “expansive semantics” I mean to summarize and clarify the general import of Downing’s discussion of both issues. I disagree with Downing, however, on one point—the question of excluded meanings. Downing, “Ancient Semantics,” 146 (n.2), states that normally among the ancients “[T]here is no attempt to discriminate—let alone then to prioritise and exclude—various possible senses, connotations, of the various possible terms deployed.” Plato’s Euthyphro, however, does carefully exclude some notions in the process of exploring the meaning of piety, as will be clear below. While practicing expansive semantics generally adds meaning, rather than taking it away, this does not mean that meanings may be added without rule or limitation, as Downing could be understood to suggest.

34. Downing, “Ancient Semantics,” 145 (n.2).35. Plato, Euthphr. 6e (LCL [1914] 36:22, trans. Fowler): “”Eaxt xoivuv xo psv xotq 0£oiq 7cpoa<pikEC

Satov.”36. Plato, Euthphr. 9e (LCL 36:34, trans. Fowler): “AXX’ fiycyyE cpaiqv dv xobxo slvat xo oatov 6 dv

itavxEC oi 0soi (pAmoiv.”37. Plato, Euthphr. 12e (LCL 36:46-47, trans. Fowler): “xo uspoq xou Succdot) slvat eiiaefiec xe Kai

6cnov, xo itepi xqv xffiv Gecov Gepajtstav.”38. Plato, Euthphr. 14b (LCL 36:52): “Leyco, 5xi eav psv Ksxaptcpeva xiq Eitiaxqxai xoiq QeoTc Xeyew

xe Kai ttpaxxEtv suxopevoq xe Kai Oucov, xaux’ foxt xa 8aia.”39. Plato, Euthphr. 14c (LCL 36:54, trans. Fowler): “LflKPATHX.. . . ouyi E7tioxf|pr|v xiva xou Gustv

xe Kai EU'/EoGat; EY0YOPDN. "EytoyB.”

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(texvri)” of bartering with the gods.40 Finally, Euthyphro indicates that piety is “that which is precious to the gods.” 41 Socrates judges this notion as inadequate, and the dialogue ends shortly thereafter.42 Regarding the definition of piety, Plato seems to have gotten nowhere, but he has explained something. Beginning from “what is dear to the gods” and circling back to the same definition, he has both explained and criticized different aspects of the conception of piety held by the character Euthyphro. This is but one way expansive semantics were used.

At least some ancient scholars recognized and understood Plato’s practice of expansive semantics. Roughly three centuries after Plato wrote, one of his followers would describe the master’s method in this way:

Speaking with multiple voices (To jroA,u<pcovov) is characteristic of Plato, and even the subject of telos is expressed by him in several ways (noXXay&q). He uses a variety of expressions because of his lofty eloquence, but he is contributing to a single concordant item of doctrine. That doctrine is that we should live in accordance with virtue.43

Plato’s immediate student and greatest opponent, Aristotle, left no dialogues that survive but seems to have had the same idea about semantics. He saw that “being is described in many ways (to 8v Myzzm no/JMyjbq) .” 44 In his Metaphysics, after showing by example some of the very different ways one can correctly speak

40. Plato, Euthphr. 14e (LCL 36:54, trans. Fowler): “SI2KPATHX. ’EfXTtopucfi apex ziq as eft), <x> EuOtkppov, xexvt| f| dcrtdxiv; 0sot<; Kai dvOpomoic nap' aXhjljjov. EY0YOPQN. ’Epropuaj, ei oiixwq rjSiov aoi ovopdtxiv.”

41. Plato, Euthphr. 15b (LCL 36:56, trans. Fowler): “EGKPATHE. Touxo dp’ 6cmv a\>, dx; soike, to Saiov, to xou; OeoTi; tpikov. EY0YOPDN. MdXiaxa ye.”

42. Plato, Eythphr. 15c (LCL 36:56-58).43. Ioannes Stobaeus, Anthologium 2.7.3f. (ed. Hense and Wachsmuth [Berlin: Weidmann, 1884]

2:49-50): “To 5s ye Jtokncpcovov xov nXdxcovoq (‘on 7tokn5o^ov’). Elpr|xai 56 Kai xa repi xon xekorn; anxqj noKKa’/ptc,. Kai xr|v p6v Ttouakiav xrjc tppdaecoq sysi 8ia xo koytov Kai peya),r|yopov, si<; 86 xanxo Kai anpcpcovov xon Soypaxoq auvxEXst. Touxo 5’ sari to Kax’ apExf|v Cpv.”; According to Downing, “Ancient Semantics,” 145 (n.2), who also cites this text, Stobaeus, writing in the fifth century AD, is here relaying the opinion of a first-century BC Platonist; The translation, quoted from Downing (ibid.) is G. H. Van Kooten, Paul’s Anthropology in Context: The Image o f God, Assimilation to God, and Tripartite Man in Ancient Judaism, Ancient Philosophy and Early Christianity (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 146.

44. Aristotle, Metaph. 4.2, 1003b5 (LCL [1933] 271:146); Metaph. 4.2, 1003b (LCL 271:147-149, trans. Tredennick): “so ‘being’ is used in various senses, but always with reference to one principle. For some things are said to ‘be’ because they are substances; others because they are modifications of substance; others because they are a process towards substance, or destructions or privations or qualities of substance, or productive or generative of substance or of terms relating to substance, or negations of certain of these terms or of substance.”

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of being, he says that they all “express one common notion (keyovxou Ka0’ ev).”45 Aristotle, an enemy of the sort of ambiguity that hides meaning, is a practitioner of the sort of “ambiguity” (or polysemy, polyvalence, etc.) that expands it. Here, unlike the discussions where ambiguity was a problem to be solved, the multiple meanings of a word could help to convey an author’s intention. The key difference between these situations seems to be the presence of explanation(s) to clarify the ambiguity.

Complex Authorial Intention

Aristotle’s discussion of being is also an example of what I call “complex authorial intention.”46 This occurs when an author intends for a word or other linguistic expression to be understood in multiple ways. Plato may or may not exemplify complex authorial intention. In his dialogues, he may be exploring ideas as he writes, rather than having multiple meanings in mind with the first (or any other) usage of a term. Aristotle, however, states the fact of multiplicity before he gives the various meanings. Therefore, he must already have multiple meanings of “being” in mind when he writes that “being” can be described in many ways.47

The Stoics did not typically use complex authorial intention in Aristotle’s way,48 but they clearly understood that it was possible for someone to intend that his words be understood in multiple ways. Diogenes Laertius (D.L., third century AD), reporting on Stoic philosophy of language, writes, “Verbal ambiguity (Apqn(3oMa) arises when a word (ke^v;) properly, rightfully, and in accordance with fixed usage denotes two or more different things, so that at one and the same time we may take it in several distinct senses.”49 Aulus Gellius preserves the thesis of the Stoic Chrysippus (d. ca. 206 BC): “Every word (uerbum) is by nature ambiguous (ambiguum), since

45. Aristotle, Metaph. 4.2, 1003bl5 (LCL 271:148).46. On this term see n.2.47. The famous passage on “being” in the Metaph. 4 is by no means the only place Aristotle intends

and explains multiple meanings of a key term. In book 5 of the same work, he catalogues numerous terms and explains the multiple possible meanings of each. Atherton, Stoics, 102 (n.21), citing Metaph. 5, notes that many Aristotelian terms are systematically ambiguous. She ultimately concludes that “Aristotle came to see systematic ambiguity as an invaluable analytical and constructive philosophical tool” (ibid., 504).

48. Atherton, Stoics, 502-504 (n.21), concludes that the Stoics primarily saw ambiguity as a hindrance in language to be overcome. If they did not favor ambiguity or polyvalence, obviously they would tend to avoid complex authorial intention.

49. D.L. 7.62 (LCL [1925] 185:170-171, trans. Hicks): “Ap(pt[!o/.ia 8s sail ? Sno t) Kai itksiova 7tpctypara atipaivouoa Xsktik(Bi; Kai Kopicot; Kai Kara to auxo 60o<;, d>a0’ fipa xa 7tXsiova EK5s£aa0at koto xai>TT|v xr|v Xs t̂v.”; Atherton, Stoics, 131 (n.21), states that this is “[t]he only securely Stoic definition of ambiguity to survive.”

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"When an author intends for a word or other linguistic expression to be understood in multiple ways."


two or more things may be understood from the same word.”50 Chrysippus probably did not mean that every word fits the definition of ambiguity found in Diogenes Laetrius.51 Nevertheless, these two witnesses to Stoic thought show that at least some Stoics understood language in such a way that a single linguistic expression could bear more than one meaning.52 Semantic polyvalence does not by itself yield complex authorial intention. One who is aware of polyvalence, however, could hardly fail to perceive that multiple meanings could be intended.53

Even if it was not the norm, some Stoics did write with complex authorial intention. The clearest evidence of this practice comes from reports of their teachings by Sextus Empiricus (second century AD) and Ioannes Stobaeus (fifth century AD). In his Aduersus Mathematicos (A/.), Sextus relays that the Stoics had three distinct meanings for “good (ayaGov).” The term may indicate: (1) that from or by which one gains benefit, (2) that according to which one happens to benefit, or (3) that which is of such a kind as to cause benefit.54

More specifically, Stobaeus reports that Chrysippus explained the term “element (oxoixstov)” in three ways. It may be fire, the four elements (including fire), or any first component that provides the origin of something.55 These examples

50. Aulus Gellius, noct. alt. 11.12.1 (LCL [1927] 200:324-325, trans. Rolfe): “Chrysippus ait omne verbum ambiguum natura esse, quoniam ex eodem duo uel plura accipi possunt. ”

51. The Greek original of Chrysippus’s thesis does not survive, but Atherton, Stoics, 299 (n.21), suggests that 6vopa is the Greek word behind uerbum here.

52. These two witnesses are not alone. Atherton, Stoics, 69-71 (n.21), lists several examples of 7io7Xax<&i; AsyopEva (“semantically multiple expressions”) found in Stoic thought, which show that the Stoics clearly understood semantic polyvalence.

53. Of course, all the ancient discussions of the nefarious uses of ambiguity, mentioned above, presuppose complex authorial (or speaker’s) intention on the part of an abuser, such as a sophist. Such abuses are not the best examples for understanding the positive possibilities of complex authorial intention, so I omit them here.

54. Sextus Empiricus, M. 11.25-27 (ed. Mau and Mutschmann [Leipzig: Teubner, 1914] 2:380- 381): “6v0ev Kai Kara aicoAnuGiav xptxcoc; Et7toVT8g ayaGov ttpoaayopEdsaGai, Sicacrrov xfiiv ctqpaivopevtov kot’ iStav ttakiv EJtt[)oA.r|v wtoypdtpoumv. AiyExat yap ayaGov, (path, xaG’ 6va psv xpojtov to dtp’ on i) dip’ on fiaxiv dxpEA-EioGat. . . xaG’ Sxspov 8e to xaG’ o aopPaivet axpsAEtaGai . . . Kara 8s xov xpixov Kat xsAsoxatov xporcov A-syexat ayaGov to oiov te axpEAstv.”; For an explanation of how these meanings are related, see M. 11.30. In short, Atherton, Stoics, 105 (n.21): “The second intension/extension includes the first, and the third the other two.” Under all three meanings goodness depends upon virtue.

55. Ioannes Stobaeus, Anthologium 1.10.16c. (Hense and Wachsmuth 1:130 [n.43]): “Tptxcoi; 5r| ksyopEVOt) Kara Xpuatrorov xou axoixsiou, Ka0’ eva psv xpojtov xou Jiupog . . . xaG’ EXEpov 8e, KaGo ksysxai xa xscroapa oxoixsta, 7rup, df)p, I)8cop, yfj . . . Kaxa xplxov koyov ksyexai oxotxetov filvat 6 7tpa>xov cn>veoxr|Ksv oiixtoi;, dioxe yEvsatv StSovat dtp’ auxoh o5& psxpt xeX.ou<; Kai EKEivon xf|v avakucnv 8dxEtt0at Eiq dauxo xf[ opoip oScp.”

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from Setxus and Stobaeus suggest that the Stoics were not always averse to using semantic polyvalence to convey their ideas.56 When Chrysippus wrote “element (oroixetov)” and then moved on, as planned, to the three meanings he wanted his readers to associate with that word, he, not unlike Aristotle,57 must have intended for his key term to be understood in multiple ways (complex authorial intention) before going on to explain the different meanings he had in mind (expansive semantics). Whatever Stoic originally wrote what Sextus conveys about the good would have done the same, as well as the authors that explained a number of the terms Atherton lists as being multivalent in Stoic or Stoic-inspired works.58

Additional Examples

Building upon Downing’s work, Frank Thielman may have found an instance of complex authorial intention and expansive semantics in the Pauline corpus of the New Testament. In an attempt to help resolve the centuries-old debate over the righteousness of God (5ucavocruvT| 0eot>) in the book of Romans, Thielman suggests Paul intended the phrase to be understood in multiple ways.59 The apostle introduces the phrase as part of a programmatic statement: “I am not ashamed of the gospel . . . for in it the righteousness of God (Sucaioouvr) 0eou) is revealed from faith to faith” (Rom. 1:16-17). Then he goes on to explain the varied aspects of his idea throughout the letter. He reveals, as it were, the righteousness of God. According to Thielman, the “righteousness of God” has three different meanings for Paul. It is “God’s saving activity” (what God does) as well as “the gift of acquittal from sin” (what one receives from God) and God’s fairness in distributing salvation (a quality of God’s character).60

Downing believes that the use of expansive semantics continued at least down to the time of Augustine. In fact, he cites conf. 12.18.27 and 12.31.42 as evidence that Augustine recognized and approved of this phenomenon in the Old Testament.61

56. Atherton, Stoics, 109 (n.21), grants that the Sextus Empiricus passage shows some Stoics did present “good” as ambiguous or multivalent. She says that this fact “strongly suggests that they belonged to some later phase of the school.”

57. This is not to suggest that he got the idea from Aristotle. Atherton, Stoics, 109 (n.2I), believes Aristotle influenced the Stoics very little on the subject of ambiguity.

58. Atherton, Stoics, 69-71 (n.21), lists a total of 13 such “noXkax&c keyopeva”.59. Frank Thielman, “God’s Righteousness as God’s Fairness in Romans 1:17: An Ancient Perspec

tive on a Significant Phrase,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 54, no. 1 (March 2011): 35,45.

60. Ibid., 35, 44.61. Downing, “Ancient Semantics,” 150 (n.2).

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Downing is correct about Augustine, but the interpretation of these particular texts is complicated due to Augustine’s theory of the dual authorship of scripture. It is better to show Augustine’s approval of expansive semantics from his own literary practice and only then to relate the phenomenon to the dual authorship of scripture that is part of Augustine’s hermeneutics.

In one of his earliest writings, De ordine lord.) (386-387), Augustine exhibits this ancient mode of discourse. As Virgilio Pacioni has put it, “Just as Aristotle discovers the polysemantic character of on e on, Augustine discovers the polysemantic character of the term ortfo.”62 Augustine uses dialogue to explore the multiple meanings of this term.63 He begins with a general statement: “There is an order to be found, within things and between them, which binds and directs this world.”64 Through this order God governs all things rationally.65 There is nothing outside God’s order.66 Augustine also treats specific aspects of ordo. There is an order of nature and an order of the state.67 There is an order of learning the disciplines.68 In fact, the ordering of the soul through proper learning can lead one to God.69 All of these (and more) examples of order, even though very different, help to express Augustine’s idea of ordo.

The practice of expansive semantics is clear in ord. It is not clear whether the work shows complex authorial intention. The dialogue may be a device for unfolding the multifaceted idea Augustine already has in mind (complex authorial intention

62. A. D. Fitzgerald, ed., AttA, s.v. “Order” by Virgilio Pacioni, trans. Matthew O’Connell, 598.63. Ibid.64. Ord. 1.1.1 (Borruso, 3): “Ordinem rerum, Zenobi, consequi ac tenere cuique proprium, turn uero

uniuersitatis quo coercetur ac regitur hie mundus, uel uidere uel pandere difficillimum hominibus atque rarissimum est”; Quotations of both Latin text and English translation are from On Order, trans. Silvano Borruso (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2007). Borruso’s Latin text is a reproduction of the Benedictine text translated by Russell in 1942, checked against Migne’s Pa- trologia Latina and the 1986 Doignon text; see Borruso, “Introduction,” xvi.

65. Ord. 1.5.14 (Borruso, 18): “Quis neget, Deus magne, inquit, te cuncta ordine administrare?”; ord. 1.10.28 (Borruso, 36): “Ordo est, inquit, per quern aguntur omnia quae Deus constituit.”

66. Ord. 1.6.15 (Borruso, 20): “Nam quomodo esse contrarium quidquam potest ei rei quae totum occupauit, totum obtinuit? Quod enim erit ordini contrarium, necesse erit esse praeter ordinem. Nihil autem esse praeter ordinem uideo.”

67. Ord. 2.4.12 (Borruso, 64, 66): “ciuitatis ordinem . . . naturae ordo”.68. Ord. 2.5.17 (Borruso, 70): “si quis temere ac sine ordine disciplinarum in harum rerum cognitio-

nem audet irruere.”69. Ord. 1.9.27 (Borruso, 34): “Ordo est quern si tenuerimus in uita, perducet ad Deum”; ord.

2.19.50-51 (Borruso, 116): “Haec et alia multa secum anima bene erudita loquitur atque agitat . . . Cum autem se composuerit et ordinauerit ac concinnam pulchramque reddiderit, audebit iam Deum uidere.”

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with expansive semantics), or it may be a tool he uses to discover the multiple meanings of ordo, with his intention growing in the discovery (expansive semantics only). Either way, in the conf. Augustine does affirm both expansive semantics and complex authorial intention (without using the terms, of course), and these concepts play an important role in his hermeneutical theory.70 It is to a pair of key texts in the conf., along with an equally important text in doctr. chr., that I shall now turn.

Three Key Texts in Augustine

The texts I have chosen to examine are conf. 12.30.41-12.32.43 and 13.24.37, as well as doctr. chr. 3.2.2. These three texts recommend themselves as especially relevant for four reasons. First, conceptually, they are relatively clear. Second, they balance one another. The first two texts primarily justify multiplicity of meaning in scripture, and the third text limits the range of possible meanings. Considering all three together will, I hope, prevent over-interpretation in either direction. Third, these texts map out the interpretive territory that Augustine actually inhabits (interpreting scripture in multiple ways) while upholding the principles he articulates about the importance of authorial intention.71 Fourth and finally, these texts are important because they appear in major works that Augustine acknowledges as conveying his views on the interpretation of scripture. The first three books of doctr. chr. are expressly about interpreting the Bible, and to the end of his life Augustine sees them as beneficial for that task.72 While the conf. cover a vast array of topics, the last three books, by Augustine’s description, focus upon Gen. 1:1—2:2.73 Because the key texts in conf. 12 and 13 appear in discussions of a biblical passage that Augustine finds especially subject to multiple true interpretations—i.e., the Gen. 1 creation account—one would expect these passages to reflect Augustine’s stable, considered position on scriptural polyvalence, provided he has one. The conf. 13 passage carries the added benefit of being an actual example of Augustine’s exegesis.

70. If complex authorial intention is absent from ord., it is not a strike against my construction of Augustine’s theory. What is important here is not Augustine’s own discourse per se, but his understanding of how discourse works. He can show this understanding through practice, as in ord. (above), or through theory, as in conf. (below).

71. For examples of the former, see the discussion of conf. 13.24.37 and n.94 below. For an example of the latter, see the discussion of conf. 12.30.41-12.32.43 below.

72. Retr. 2.4 (CCSL 57:92-93): “quattuor libris opus illud impleui, quorum primi tres adiuuant ut scripturae intellegantur.”

73. Retr. 2.6 (CCSL 57:94): “A primo usque ad decimum de me scripti sunt, in tribus ceteris de scrip- turis sanctis, ab eo quod scriptum est: In principio fecit deus caelum et terram, usque ad sabbati requiem.”

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Conf. 13.24.37

In conf. 13.24.37, Augustine finds biblical imagery that illuminates a key aspect of his hermeneutical theory.74 Having noticed that only two classes of creatures are specifically told to “increase and multiply (crescite et multiplicamini),” sea creatures and humans, he relates each to a particular kind of multiplication endorsed by God. Sea creatures represent spoken signs, and humans represent intelligible concepts. He says that the multiplication of the creatures in the waters illustrates how one thing (res) can be explained (enuntietur) in many ways (multis modis), that is, with multiple “signs (signa) given corporeal expression.” The multiplication of signs has a parallel in the conceptual realm, where, as illustrated by the multiplication of humans, one verbal expression (una enuntiatio) can be understood in multiple ways (.multis modis).'75 In summary, he says to God, “By this blessing I understand you to grant us the capacity and ability to articulate in many ways what we hold to be a single concept, and to give a plurality of meanings to a single obscure expression in a text we have read.”76

Augustine’s thought here is as complex as it is artful.77 The statement of ability beginning with “to articulate” contains the same parallel ideas he has mentioned

74. The secondary literature on conf. is vast and considers the work from multiple perspectives, such as biography, theology, and psychology. For a standard account of Augustine’s biography for the period of his life described by conf., see Peter Brown, Augustine o f Hippo: A Biography, new edition with an epilogue (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 1-175. For a thorough, chapter-by-chapter, exposition of the text, see John M. Quinn, A Companion to the Confessions o f St. Augustine (New York: Peter Lang, 2002). Among other things, Quinn attends to the theological and philosophical background and meaning of the text. For an attempt to distinguish between the theological and biographical or historical elements of conf, see Pierre Courcelle, Recherches sur les Confessions de Saint Augustin: Nouvelle edition augmentee et illustree (Paris: Editions E. de Boccard, 1968), 13-39. For a collection of studies that analyze conf. from a psychological perspective, see Donald Capps and James E. Dittes, eds., The Hunger o f the Heart: Reflections on the Confessions o f Augustine (The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion,1990) .

75. Conf. 13.24.37 (CCSL 27:264, trans. Chadwick, Confessions [Oxford: Oxford University Press,1991] , 296): “In his omnibus nanciscimur multitudines et ubertates et incrementa; sed quod ita crescat et multiplicetur, ut una res multis modis enuntietur et una enuntiatio multis modis intel- legatur, non inuenimus nisi in signis corporaliter editis et rebus intellegibiliter excogitatis.”

76. Conf. 13.24.37 (CCSL 27:264, trans. Chadwick, 296): “In hac enim benedictione concessam nobis a te facultatem ac potestatem accipio et multis modis enuntiare, quod uno modo intellectum tenuerimus, et multis modis intellegere, quod obscure uno modo enuntiatum legerimus.”

77. The Latin, beginning at “to articulate” forms an ABBA chiasm with the tenns enuntiare/intellectum/ intellegere/ enuntiatum in conf. 13.24.37 (CCSL 27:264; phrase divisions mine): “et multis modis enuntiare/quod uno modo intellectum tenuerimus/et multis modis intellegere,/quod obscure uno modo enuntiatum legerimus.”

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above. To articulate a single concept in many ways, or to explain one thing with many signs, is to practice expansive semantics. The parallel in the conceptual realm is difficult. He is not saying that the interpreter of a single expression intuits the single concept to which it refers and then proceeds to multiply it to many concepts. The fact that the expression is obscure implies that the interpreter does not fully grasp the idea to which it refers. Nevertheless, humans have the mental capacity to assign multiple meanings to an expression as if it were a single concept that they were explaining in multiple ways. Augustine is using the phenomenon of expansive semantics to illustrate how he can see so many different meanings in an obscure text. In the case of scripture, Augustine trusts that God can guide the interpreter to see meanings that are true: “For I do not believe I give a true exposition if anyone other than you is inspiring me.”78

Conf. 12.30.41-12.32.43

As we have seen, conf. 13.24.37 demonstrates that Augustine understands and espouses expansive semantics, but it does not directly explain how this phenomenon relates to the divine authorial intention of scripture. Augustine addresses this problem in conf. 12.30.41-12.32.43.79 This passage appears in the context of another interpretation of the Gen. 1 creation account. Augustine has already acknowledged that Moses’s words have been understood in different but true ways.80 Now he addresses the implicit question of whose view is right. As it unfolds, Augustine’s answer to this question shows that he believes all the true and admissible meanings were intended by the Holy Spirit.

In 12.30.41, Augustine confesses that he does not know which view Moses intended, but he is sure that almost all of them are true explanations; they represent

78. Conf. 13.25.38 (CCSL 27:264-265, trans. Chadwick, 296): “Neque enim alio praeter te inspirante credo me uerum dicere.”

79. It is worth noticing that both 13.24.37 and 12.30.41-12.32.43 are included in the explicitly doctrinal portion of conf. As Courcelle, Recherches, 20 (n.74), states, “L’observateur le plus superficiel ne peut manquer d’etre frappe par une discordance: les trois demiers livres sont des developpe- ments abstraits sur la doctrine, et non plus un recit biographique comme etaient les dix premiers.” This being the case, it is highly probable that the Bishop of Hippo intended his reflections in these passages to represent his present theological views at the time he composed conf, i.e., ca.397-401.

80. Conf. 12.27.37 (CCSL 27:237, trans. Chadwick, 266): “So also the account given by your minister, which was to benefit many expositions, uses a small measure of words to pour out a spate of clear truth. From this each commentator. . . may draw what is true, one this way, another that, using longer and more complex channels of discourse (ita narratio dispensatoris tui sermocinatu- ris pluribus profutura paruo sermonis modulo scatet fluenta liquidae ueritatis, unde sibi quisque uerum . . . hie illud, file illud, per longiores loquellarum anfractus trahat.)”

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"For I do not believe I give a true exposition if anyone other than you is inspiring me."


a “diversity of true views (diuersitate sententiarum uerarum).”81 Rather than excluding some true interpretations, he says to God that the scriptures are “rich in meaning contained in few words (pauca copiose)'’ More specifically, he states that “these texts contain various truths (in eis uerbis uera)!’*2 His advice, then, is that each reader should believe Moses “to have intended that meaning which supremely corresponds both to the light of truth and to the reader’s spiritual profit.”83

At first, Augustine’s advice may seem to support Williams’s interpretation of doctr. chr.M As the passage continues, however, Augustine pulls the full, multifaceted meaning of the text away from the reader and gives it back to Moses. He wants to affirm that Moses did grasp the multivalent truth of Genesis 1 when he wrote it. Augustine says that, if he were writing scripture, he would “choose to write so that my words would sound out with whatever diverse truth in these matters each reader was able to grasp, rather than to give a quite explicit statement.”85 Augustine would intend for his words to be understood in multiple ways, i.e., he would have a complex authorial intention. Since he wants to believe that Moses could only have been more, not less, sophisticated than himself, he concludes that Moses received a gift from God such that “When he wrote this passage, he perfectly perceived and had in mind all the truth we have been able to find there, and all the truth that could be found in it which we have not been able, or have not as yet been able, to discover.”86

81. Conf. 12.30.41 (CCSL 27:240): “In hac diuersitate sententiarum uerarum . . . Et scio tamen illas ueras esse sententias.”

82. Conf. 12.30.41 (CCSL 27:240, trans. Chadwick, 270): “quos tamen bonae spei paruulos haec uerba libri tui non territant alta humiliter et pauca copiose—sed omnes, quos in eis uerbis uera cemere ac dicere fateor, diligamus nos inuicem.” Chadwick appears to have suppbed “various” here, and he was correct to do so. In this context, it is clear that the “truths (uera)” are different, even though the emphasis is on the fact that all of them are true. The words of scripture that Augustine and others interpret are the same, but interpreters exposit truths (uera) instead of the truth precisely because the true meanings they see are different.

83. Con/.'12.30.41 (CCSL 27:240, trans. Chadwick, 270): “eundemque famulum tuum, scripturae huius dispensatorem, spiritu tuo plenum, ita honoremus, ut hoc eum te reuelante, cum haec scriberet, attendisse credamus, quod in eis maxime et luce ueritatis et fruge utilitatis excellit.”

84. For Williams’s interpretation of doctr. chr., see the above section, “Rowan Williams.”85. Conf. 12.31.42 (CCSL 27:240, trans. Chadwick, 271): “Ego certe . . . si ad culmen auctoritatis

aliquid scriberem, sic mallem scribere, ut, quod ueri quisque de his rebus capere posset, mea uerba resonarent, quam ut unam ueram sententiam ad hoc apertius ponerem.”

86. Conf. 12.31.42 (CCSL 27:240-241, trans. Chadwick, 271): “Sensit ille omnino in his uerbis atque cogitauit, cum ea scriberet, quidquid hie ueri potuimus inuenire et quidquid nos non potuimus aut nondum potuimus et tamen in eis inueniri potest.”

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Augustine immediately backpedals from this conclusion, granting the possibility that “human insight perceived less than the truth.”87 He then places the meaning of the text where he ultimately thinks it lies—in the Holy Spirit who both inspired Moses and leads the subsequent interpreters. Yet he reserves a sort of primacy for whichever intention Moses actually had in mind, if he had only one, calling it “superior to all others.”88 This primacy implies that one cannot purposely disregard or contradict the human authorial intent, if it is known.89 Therefore, Augustine’s theory must not be identified with semantic relativism or any other theory that discounts human authorial intent.

A close look at Augustine’s reasoning about the Holy Spirit here will pay rich dividends. He writes to God, “[S]urely whatever you were intending to reveal to later readers by those words could not be hidden from ‘your good Spirit who will lead me into the right land’ (Ps. 142:10).”90 The logic seems to be as follows: (1) All true interpretations of Genesis 1 come to the readers through the help of the Holy Spirit;91 (2) The Holy Spirit knew when He inspired Moses how He would lead interpreters to see these various meanings. Therefore, (3) the Holy Spirit intended for the text to be interpreted in these multiple true ways from the beginning.92 In other words, the Holy Spirit had a complex authorial intention which He purposed to expound through the use of expansive semantics, not with varied explications in

87. Conf. 12.32.43 (CCSL 27:241, trans. Chadwick, 271): “si quid homo minus uidit.”88. Conf. 12.32.43 (CCSL 27:241): “Quod si ita est, sit igitur ilia quam cogitauit ceteris excelsior.”89. In cases where the identity of the human author(s) is unknown, much of his (or their) intended

meaning may still be discernible within the text itself, although the number of possibly legitimate meanings may be higher. In any case, the broader controls, discussed below, would still apply.

90. Conf. 12.32.43 (CCSL 27:241, trans. Chadwick, 271): “numquid et spiritum-tuum bonum, qui deducet me in terram rectam, latere potuit, quidquid eras in eis uerbis tu ipse reuelaturus legenti- bus posteris.”; Augustine applies this model to himself as an interpreter: conf. 12.32.43 (CCSL 27:241): “Ecce, domine deus meus, quam multa de paucis uerbis, quam multa, oro te, scripsimus! Quae nostrae uires, quae tempora omnibus libris tuis ad istum modum sufficient?”

91. The language of revelation (quidquid eras . . . tu ipse reuelaturus) indicates that the Holy Spirit is only leading (qui deducet me in terram rectam) when the interpreter gives a true interpretation 0conf. 12.32.43, quoted above). If Augustine, or anyone else, gives a false interpretation, the Holy Spirit is not implicated; cf. conf. 13.25.38 (CCSL 27:264—265, trans, Chadwick, 296): “For I do not believe I give a true exposition if anyone other than you is inspiring me.” (Neque enim alio praeter te inspirante credo me uerum dicere.)

92. Norris, “Augustine and the Close,” 399 (n.l), makes essentially the same point both from this text and from doctr. chr. 3.27.38 (for both the Latin and English of doctr. chr., see Augustine Dedoctri- na Christiana, ed. and trans. R. P. H. Green [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995], 168-171); note that I follow the older numbering given by Green in the margins; Quinn, Companion, 794 (n.74), explains these lines similarly, if tersely: “What Moses may have missed seeing can be laid bare by the Spirit that compressed the various truths in Moses’s lines.”

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the text of Genesis itself, but with varied explications in the successive exegetical efforts of scriptural interpreters.93

Augustine has transformed the ancient linguistic patterns of complex authorial intention and expansive semantics by applying them to God the Holy Spirit and separating the performance of the expansive explanations from the original discourse in which the terms to be explained appear. God, the ultimate author of scripture, has the complex authorial intention. As He used human authors to write the scriptures, so He also uses human interpreters to explain His “ideas” in different ways, depending upon which aspect of the truth is applicable to a particular interpreter’s situation.

This is at least one way Augustine theoretically justifies the multiplicity of meanings in scripture. This theory harmonizes Augustine’s emphasis on authorial intent with his practice of finding all kinds of meanings in texts that clearly were not intended by the human authors. It even justifies the particularly difficult cases where Augustine finds allegorical meanings that are not typological of Christ and the Church.94 The primary limitation of meaning on the philosophical level is that each text can only mean one or more of the things that God intended, whether through or independent of the human author. As I have shown, all true meanings were intended by the Holy Spirit, so every interpretation outside God’s intention is necessarily false. No one may interpret scripture outside of God’s intention or contrary to the human author’s intention, if the latter is known.

The question at this point is how to determine whether God intended one’s interpretation. For Augustine, it appears that no interpreter can discover all aspects of God’s complex authorial intention. If this were all Augustine said, De Margerie would appear to be right. It would seem that the meaning of scripture could continue to expand with each successive generation with no definite limitation on the

93. Some may object to my explaining Augustine’s theory in terms that are not his own. To this objection I reply that we only need the terms “expansive semantics” and “complex authorial intention” today because we are not accustomed to ancient discourse in the way Augustine was. Insofar as these terms both represent Augustine’s thought and describe phenomena that are unfamiliar to most readers today, I maintain that they are important for understanding Augustine clearly.

94. For example, in lo. eu. tr. 9.6 (CCSL 36:93-94), he interprets the six water pots from the wedding at Cana as the six ages of human history. R. R. Reno, “From Letter to Spirit,” International Journal o f Systematic Theology 13, no. 4 (October, 2011): 466, has defended Augustine by arguing that the evangelist actually intended to be understood symbolically. If my view is correct, Reno’s efforts were not necessary, at least as they relate to the defense of Augustine. Augustine was acting in accord with his own hermeneutical theory. Supposing that the bit about ages of history is true and is not contrary to the evangelist’s intent, the Nicene Creed, or any clear passage of scripture (see below), Augustine’s theory would suggest that the Holy Spirit intended Augustine’s allegory, even if the evangelist did not.

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“secondary meanings.”95 Thus, to give a fair sketch of Augustine’s theoretical justification of scriptural polysemy, I must include a third key text and indicate more clearly how he understands the limits to the range of possible meanings.

Doctr. chr. 3.2.2

Roughly a year before beginning the conf. (397^-01), Augustine wrote books 1-3.25.35 of doctr. chr.96 In doctr. chr. 3.2.2, Augustine identifies clear, objective limitations to what scripture may mean. The interpreter facing ambiguity should “consult the rule of faith, as it is perceived through the plainer passages of the scriptures and the authority of the church.”97 The content of the rule of faith is the Christian belief summarized in the Nicene Creed98 and explained in book 1 of doctr.

95. De Margerie, History o f Exegesis III, 72-75 (n. 15); see also discussion of De Margerie’s view in the above section, “Bertrand de Margerie.”

96. On the occasion and local setting of doctr. chr., see Charles Kannengiesser, “Local Setting and Motivation of De doctrina Christiana,” in Augustine: Pesbyter Factus Sum, ed. Joseph T. Lien- hard, Earl C. Muller, and Roland J. Teske (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 331-336, esp. 335. Kannengiesser argues that Augustine defines his own approach to scriptural interpretation over against Tyconius and the Donatist exegetical tradition. For the philosophical background and outlook of the work, see Frederick Van Fleteren, “St. Augustine, Neoplatonism, and the Liberal Arts: The Background to De doctrina Christiana,” in De doctrina Christiana: A Classic o f Western Culture, ed. Duane W. H. Arnold and Pamela Bright (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 14—24. Van Fleteren argues that doctr. chr. represents Augustine’s mature position vis-a-vis neoplatonic philosophy and the liberal arts (ibid., 23) and suggests that the work should be considered “the charter of the Christian intellectual” (ibid., 14).

97. Doctr. chr. 3.2.2 (text and trans. Green, Augustine De doctrina Christiana, 132-133): “Cum ergo adhibita intentio incertum esse perviderit quomodo distinguendum aut quomodo pronuntiandum sit, consulat regulam fidei, quam de scripturarum planioribus locis et ecclesiae auctoritate perce- pit, de qua satis egimus cum de rebus in libro primo loqueremur.” It has been noticed by Toom, “Augustine on Ambiguity,” 423^127 (n.21), that Augustine here is specifically dealing with ambiguities of the written text (scriptum) rather than of authorial intention (voluntas auctoris). Still, I think it is fair to assume that Augustine means this rule to limit possible meanings in general, not only possible resolutions of the ambiguities in the written text. P. Caelestis Eichenseer, Das Sym- bolum Apostolicum Beim Heiligen Augustinus mit Beriicksichtigung des Dogmengeschichtlichen Zusammenhangs (St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, 1960), 120-121, explains this text as follows: “Die Glaubensregel, die also primar auf der Schrift aufruht, reguliert auch die Schriftauslegung selber, und zwar unter Zuhilfenahme des Lehramtes, das in der lebendigen Tradition verankert ist. Als kurze Zusammenfassung dieser Faktoren kann freilich gelegentlich auch das Symbolum genannt werden, so dafi Augustinus neu eine lebendige Briicke zwischen diesen beiden GroBen schlagt, deren objektive Ubereinstimmung er mehrfach hervorhebt.”

98. I am using the term “Nicene Creed” for the sake of simplicity. Augustine rarely refers to that specific formulation, but the three baptismal creeds he does use, although perhaps closer to the Roman creed, contain the basic Christian doctrines defined at Nicaea. For the text of these creeds see A. D. Fitzgerald, ed., AttA, s.v. “Creed, Symbolum” by Joseph T. Lienhard, 254-255. If interpret-

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chr." Elsewhere, Augustine affirms that the Creed (1) legitimately comes from scripture100 and (2) is truth from God.101 These two beliefs taken together suggest a correspondence between God’s intention as the author of scripture and the interpretations summarized in the Creed. The Creed states explicitly and in summary some essential doctrines that God intended to convey through the Bible. If God did not have such an intention, either 1 or 2 would have to be false. Therefore, we can positively state that the Creed outlines the most important portion of God’s complex divine authorial intention.

By giving this rule in doctr. chr., Augustine does not say how to find God’s full authorial intention, but he does explain how to discover what demonstrably lies outside God’s intention, what interpretations are inadmissible.102 He gives an example

ers wish to utilize Augustine’s theory today, they should use the Nicene Creed rather than the Roman because Augustine clearly follows the more precise Nicene doctrine (among other places, in doctr. chr. 1.5.5 [Green, Augustine De doctrina Christiana, 16]: “et simul omnes una substantia.”) and explains the Symbolum accordingly. Citing j. 186, 2.2 (PL 38:1000), Eichenseer, Das Sym- bolum, 119 (n.97), observes, “Der Text zeigt, daB das richtige Verstandnis des Symbolumsatzes durch den Ruckgriff auf die Glaubensregel zu gewahrleisten ist, so wenn wie hier die rechte Sicht der Person Christi bezuglich seiner gottlichen und menschlichen Natur auf dem Spiele steht.”

99. Doctr. chr. 3.2.2 (Green, Augustine De doctrina Christiana, 132): “de qua satis egimus cum de rebus in libro primo loqueremur”; Concerning the regula fidei in doctr. chr., James A. Andrews, Hermeneutics and the Church: In Dialogue with Augustine (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 136, has observed that “throughout the work, he continually points back to book one in order to aid (or, indeed, to correct) interpretation.”; It is clear that Augustine regards the Nicene Creed as a summary of the regula fidei, not only because the definition of the Trinity he uses in doctr. chr. 1.5.5 (Green, Augustine De doctrina Christiana, 16) clearly depends upon the conciliar definition, but also because he says as much about a similar creed elsewhere: s. 59, 1.1 (CCSL 41:221): “ideo prius symbolum didicistis, ubi est regula fidei uestrae breuis et grandis: breuis numero uerborum, grandis pondere sententiarum.” See also s. 213, 2 (MA 1:442^143): “symbolum est ergo breuiter conplexa regula fidei.” Eichenseer, Das Symbolum, 188 (n.97), observes from the latter passage, “Wenn das Symbolum als kurzgefaBte Glaubensregel zu verstehen ist, ergibt sich daraus, daB das Glaubensbekenntnis nur ein Auszug, namlich eine kurze Fassung der weiter zu denkenden Glaubensregel ist.”

100. Symb. cat. 1.1 (CCSL 46:185): “Accipite regulam fidei, quod symbolum dicitur . . . Hoc est enim symbolum, quod recensuri estis et reddituri. Ista uerba quae audistis, per diuinas scripturas sparsa sunt, sed inde collecta et ad unum redacta, ne tardorum hominum memoria laboraret, ut omnis homo possit dicere, possit tenere quod credit.”

101. S. 362, 7.7 (PL 39:1614): “Camis autem resurrectionem habemus in regula fidei, et earn confi- tentes baptizamur. Et quidquid ibi confitemur, ex ueritate et in ueritate confitemur, in qua uiui- mus et mouemur et sumus”; Cf. Acts 17:28; c. Max. 2.14.8 (CCSL 87A:582): “sic teneres rectam regulam fidei, ut non contradiceres ueritati” ; Cf. symb. cat. 1.1 (CCSL 46:185) and en. Ps. 115.1 (CCSL 40:1652).

102. Augustine gives other rules in doctr. chr. that also help in this regard, but I am focusing upon the regula fidei because it most effectively limits the possible meanings of scripture in the face of

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of an inadmissible interpretation from John 1:1. The bishop notes that different punctuation could change the meaning: “The well-known heretical punctuation ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and there was God,’ giving a different sense in what follows (‘this Word was in the beginning with God’) refuses to acknowledge that the Word was God.”103 This meaning would be based on the canonical text, in accord with Williams’s approach.104 Yet Augustine says, “This is to be refuted by the rule of faith, which lays down for us the equality of the members of the Trinity.”105 One can be sure that nothing contrary to the Creed could be an aspect of God’s complex authorial intention.

Furthermore, nothing contrary to any clear scripture passage could be an aspect of God’s complex authorial intention. Augustine’s description of the rule of faith shows that he believes there are some passages of scripture which are plain enough (the planiores loci) that their meanings can serve as norms for interpreting other passages. It would seem that for such texts Augustine assumes the human author’s intent is relatively simple and accessible to the reader, conveying a clear portion of the divine authorial intent. Something similar must be true of the Creed. Otherwise, it is hard to see how the Creed and the clear passages could serve as norms for interpreting the difficult passages of scripture. For Augustine, then, it simply is not true that “everything is interpretation.”106 Some human language—that of the Creed and the clear passages of scripture, at least—is both unambiguous (enough for the task at hand) and divinely authoritative.

This does not violate Augustine’s theory of complex divine authorial intention; rather, it completes it. It is safe to allegorize the obscure passages precisely because the clear passages ensure that one does not contravene the divine authorial intent of scripture. One may also allegorize clear passages, such as historical narratives,

the expansive interpretation theories of De Margerie, Bright, and Williams. The rule of love also deserves consideration. See doctr. chr. 1.36.40 (Green, Augustine De doctrina Christiana, 48).

103. Doctr. chr. 3.2.3 (text and trans. Green, Augustine De doctrina Christiana, 134—135): “Ilia hae- retica distinctio ‘in principio erat uerbum, et uerbum erat apud deum, et deus erat,’ ut alius sit sensus: ‘uerbum hoc erat in principio apud deum,’ non uult deum uerbum confiteri.”

104. See McCurry, “Rowan Williams,” 429 (n.14); See also the discussion of Williams’s interpretation of Augustine above.

105. Doctr. chr. 3.2.3 (text and trans. Green, Augustine De doctrina Christiana, 134-135): “Sed hoc regula fidei refellendum est qua nobis de trinitatis aequalitate praescribitur, ut dicamus, ‘et deus erat uerbum,’ deinde subiungamus, ‘hoc erat in principio apud deum.’”; Here, too, Augustine goes beyond the Roman creed to the Nicene Creed, at least in doctrine.

106. The quoted phrase is from Williams, “Language,” 146 (n.l 1). See discussion of Williams’s interpretation of doctr. chr. above.

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provided one only adds to and does not contradict the known meaning. 107 Thus, although Williams and Bright are right to point out the importance of love and the ecclesial community for limiting the possible meanings of scripture, they should adjust their accounts to allow the Nicene Creed and the plain passages of scripture to serve as clearer limits. 108 For Augustine, these are norms that neither individual interpreters nor the church are free to violate.

Conclusion

I have shown that Augustine sees complex divine authorial intention as a theoretical justification for the multiplicity of meanings in scripture. God inspired each word and phrase in the Bible with full knowledge and approval of the true meanings that interpreters would later draw from them. In this way, Augustine sees God’s intention as analogous to the complex authorial intention that he knows human authors can have. Since this theory is arguably the only one that Augustine both articulates clearly and follows consistently, I suggest that it may be his ultimate theoretical justification for the multiplicity of meanings in scripture. 109 At the same time, Augustine believes God has provided objective limits for the range of possible meanings. Although the number of possible meanings is practically limitless, their scope is circumscribed. They must remain within the bounds of the Nicene Creed and the clear passages of scripture.

107. In such a case, one moves beyond the human authorial intention but may remain within the divine. For an example of this in Augustine, see n.94 above.

108. See above for Williams’s and Bright’s accounts of multiplicity of meaning in Augustine’s hermeneutics.

109. Augustine repeats the basic ideas of conf. 12.32.43 (CCSL 27:241) (see above) some 25-30 years later in doctr. chr. 3.27.38 (Green, Augustine De doctrina Christiana, 168-171), on which see Norris, “Augustine and the Close,” 399 (n.l).

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Complex Authorial Intention in Augustine’s Hermeneutics