Five-minute digest
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.
Top 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.
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.
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.
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.
Verified Quotes
“All instruction is either about things or about signs; but things are learnt by means of signs”
“Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought”
“let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master”
“To teach is a necessity, to delight is a beauty, to persuade is a triumph”
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.
- Book II, Ch. 20
Amulets, incantations, marked characters and earrings worn as cures are classed as superstition, including remedies passed off as 'physica'.
- 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.