On Christian Doctrine

Summary

On Christian Doctrine (De doctrina christiana) is Augustine's handbook for those who read, teach and preach the Bible. The Latin doctrina means teaching more than dogma, and the book is about how Scripture is to be understood and then handed on. Augustine wrote most of it soon after becoming bishop of Hippo in 395-396, stopped partway through Book III, and finished it some thirty years later, around 426-427, when he came across the incomplete draft while reviewing his works for the Retractations. J. F. Shaw's 1873 translation, reprinted in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers in 1887, is attached. The prologue defends the need for rules of interpretation against readers who think the Spirit makes them unnecessary. Book I then lays the foundation: all teaching concerns either things or signs. Among things, some are to be enjoyed, loved for their own sake, and some used, loved for the sake of something else. Only the Triune God is to be enjoyed; everything else, including our neighbour and ourselves, is to be loved in relation to God. The whole of Scripture aims at the double love of God and neighbour, so that a reading which builds up that love, even if it misses the author's precise meaning, is not a pernicious error, though it should be corrected. Along the way Augustine describes Christ as both physician and medicine, healing pride by humility. Books II and III turn to signs. Augustine distinguishes natural from given signs, and unknown from ambiguous ones. To deal with unknown signs the interpreter needs the biblical languages, a good translation (he prefers the Itala among the Latin versions and defends the Septuagint), and a range of secular knowledge: history, natural history, numbers, music, logic. Pagan learning is to be treated as Israel treated the gold of Egypt, taken for a better use; superstitious arts, astrology and amulets are rejected. Book II also sets out seven steps toward wisdom, from fear of God through piety, knowledge, fortitude, counsel and purification of heart. Book III treats ambiguous signs, the danger of taking figurative language literally or literal language figuratively, the rule that whatever does not refer to good morals or true faith must be figurative, and the seven interpretive rules of the Donatist Tyconius. Book IV, added at the end of Augustine's life, is the first Christian rhetoric. Augustine refuses to write a technical manual, but he adapts Cicero's three aims of the orator (to teach, to delight and to move) and three styles (subdued, temperate and majestic) to preaching, and he shows from Paul and the prophets that Scripture itself is eloquent. Wisdom matters more than eloquence, and the preacher's life is his most persuasive argument. The book shaped medieval education, the reading of Scripture through the senses of meaning, and the Christian use of the liberal arts, and it remains a primary source for the classical Christian claim that all truth belongs to God.

Plot or Argument

• Prologue: why rules are needed

  Augustine answers three objections: that some will not understand the rules, that others will misapply them, and that those with the gift of the Spirit need no instruction. Even the apostles learned from human teachers.

• Book I: things to be enjoyed and used

  All teaching concerns things or signs. God alone is to be enjoyed; created things are to be used in the journey home to him. The Incarnation heals human pride, the order of love is set out, and love of God and neighbour is made the goal and test of all interpretation.

• Book II: unknown signs and the learning they require

  Natural and conventional signs; the seven steps to wisdom; the canon of Scripture; Hebrew, Greek and Latin versions; what is useful in pagan history, natural science, mechanics, logic and number, and what is superstition; the spoils of Egypt.

• Book III: ambiguous signs

  Punctuation and pronunciation; how to tell figurative from literal meaning by the rule of faith and charity; customs of the patriarchs judged by their own times; tropes; and the seven rules of Tyconius, examined with qualified approval.

• Book IV: how to teach what has been found

  Eloquence is lawful for Christians; wisdom matters more than style; the biblical authors are eloquent; Cicero's aims of teaching, delighting and moving and his three styles are applied to preaching, with examples from Paul, Cyprian and Ambrose; the preacher must pray and live what he teaches.

Lessons

• Use and enjoyment

  Augustine's distinction asks what each thing is loved for. Created goods are real goods, but loving them as final ends turns a journey into a detour. The distinction orders the whole book, including how students should treat learning itself.

  • Why does Augustine compare our life to travellers returning to their homeland?
  • Is it unloving to say we should 'use' our neighbour, and how does Augustine refine the term?
  • What would it mean to enjoy a book rather than use it?

• Charity as the test of interpretation

  A reading of Scripture that does not build up love of God and neighbour has not yet understood it. Augustine joins this rule to careful study rather than substituting it, and insists that mistaken readings should still be corrected.

  • Why is a loving misreading not a lie, according to Augustine?
  • What dangers does he see in being satisfied with such a reading?
  • How does Book III's rule for figurative language follow from Book I?

• Plundering the Egyptians

  Pagan learning contains both superstitions and gold. Augustine permits the Christian to take history, logic, natural knowledge and even the moral insights of the Platonists, because wherever truth is found it belongs to the Lord. He also warns against pride in learning.

  • Which disciplines does Augustine accept, and which does he reject?
  • Why does he distinguish swallowing a herb from hanging it round the neck?
  • How does this argument shape a classical Christian curriculum?

• Teach, delight, move

  Book IV adapts Cicero to the pulpit. Teaching depends on what is said; delighting and moving depend on how. Augustine values clarity above ornament and says a preacher who cannot speak well should at least live well.

  • Why does Augustine refuse to give a full rhetorical manual?
  • Which of the three styles does he think suits each purpose?
  • Can eloquence be dangerous to a Christian teacher?

Context

Augustine had taught rhetoric at Carthage, Rome and Milan before his conversion in 386, and as bishop he preached several times a week to a mixed North African congregation. The book answers practical questions of a Church with competing Latin Bible versions, pagan schools that still held the liberal arts, and Donatist rivals with their own exegetes, including Tyconius.

Composition

Begun about 396-397, the work broke off in Book III (at III.25.35 in modern numbering). In the Retractations (II.4), written about 426-427, Augustine says he found it unfinished, completed Book III and added Book IV. Shaw's translation first appeared in the Edinburgh edition of Augustine's works (1873) and was reprinted in Schaff's Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (1887).

Reception

Cassiodorus and later Hugh of St Victor built curricula on its plan; medieval preachers used Book IV as their rhetoric, and Renaissance and Reformation humanists cited it to justify classical learning. Its theory of signs has interested modern semioticians, and Book II's spoils-of-Egypt argument remains a standard text in debates over faith and learning.

Comparisons

• Confessions

  The Confessions narrates how Augustine, a professional rhetorician, learned to read Scripture humbly; On Christian Doctrine turns that experience into method and rules for others.

• City of God

  City of God applies the order of love worked out in Book I to whole societies: two cities formed by two loves, one enjoying God and the other enjoying itself.

• On Duties (De Officiis)

  Augustine had absorbed Cicero's rhetorical works; Book IV quotes Cicero's aims of the orator directly and keeps his styles while changing the purpose from civic persuasion to the saving of souls.

• On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Topics and Sophistical Refutations

  Augustine recommends logic as a tool for interpreters while warning against sophistical arguments; Aristotle's Topics and Sophistical Refutations give the systematic treatment he assumes.

• Summa Theologica

  Aquinas's account of the literal and spiritual senses (Part I, Q. 1, art. 10) depends on Augustine's distinction of things and signs, especially things in Scripture that are also signs.

Quotes

Medical Lens

Augustine uses the physician as a theological image (Christ as healer and medicine, curing by contraries and by likes as surgeons do), and in Book II he draws a line between remedies that act by their nature and amulets that depend on signs. He condemns charms and ligatures that the medical art itself rejects, and he accepts a herb drunk for stomach pain while rejecting the same herb hung round the neck. These passages show a late antique bishop endorsing empirical medicine against magical healing.

• Book I, Ch. 14

  The Wisdom of God as physician and medicine, compared with a surgeon who binds wounds neatly and treats by contraries and by likes.

  Ancient Medicine
• Book II, Ch. 20

  Amulets, incantations, marked characters and earrings worn as cures are classed as superstition, including remedies passed off as 'physica'.

  Quackery Charlatans Ancient Medicine
• Book II, Ch. 29

  Drinking a pounded herb for stomach pain is approved; hanging it round the neck is a superstitious charm. Where the mode of action is unclear, intention matters.

  Ancient Medicine Quackery Charlatans

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Sort a list of twenty things (a friend, money, music, a Bible, a game) into Augustine's categories of use and enjoyment, and explain the hard cases.

• Essay

  Using Book II's spoils of Egypt, write a defence of one subject in your school's curriculum as gold worth carrying out of Egypt.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between Augustine and a student who says the Holy Spirit makes study of Scripture unnecessary, drawing on the prologue.

• Classroom

  Prepare a two-minute talk on one Bible verse three times, once in each of Augustine's three styles, and have classmates identify which is which.

Further Reading

• Confessions, Augustine

• Retractations, Augustine

  Book II, ch. 4 explains how De doctrina christiana was completed.

• Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, Peter Brown

• Institutes of Divine and Secular Learning, Cassiodorus

  A sixth-century curriculum built on Augustine's plan.