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ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
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by St Augustine of Hippo |
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Ch 7. Steps to wisdom: first, fear; second, piety;
third, knowledge; fourth, resolution; fifth, counsel; sixth,
purification of heart; seventh, stop or termination, wisdom |
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9. First of all, then, it is necessary that we should be led by
the fear of God to seek the
knowledge of His will, what He commands us to desire and what to
avoid. Now this fear will of
necessity excite in us the thought of our mortality and of the
death that is before us, and crucify all
the motions of pride as if our flesh were nailed to the tree. Next
it is necessary to have our hearts
subdued by piety, and not to run in the face of Holy Scripture,
whether when understood it strikes
at some of our sins, or, when not understood, we feel as if we
could be wiser and give better
commands ourselves. We must rather think and believe that whatever
is there written, even
though it be hidden, is better and truer than anything we could
devise by our own wisdom.
10. After these two steps of fear and piety, we come to the third
step, knowledge, of which I
have now undertaken to treat. For in this every earnest student of
the Holy Scriptures exercises
himself, to find nothing else in them but that God is to be loved
for His own sake, and our
neighbour for God's sake; and that God is to be loved with all the
heart. and with all the soul, and
with all the mind, and one's neighbour as one's self--that is, in
such a way that all our love for our
neighbour, like all our love for ourselves, should have reference
to God. And on these two
commandments I touched in the previous book when I was treating
about things. It is necessary,
then, that each man should first of all find in the Scriptures
that he, through being entangled in the
love of this world--i.e., of temporal things--has been drawn far
away from such a love for God
and such a love for his neighbour as Scripture enjoins. Then that
fear which leads him to think of
the judgment of God, and that piety which gives him no option but
to believe in and submit to the
authority of Scripture, compel him to bewail his condition. For
the knowledge of a good hope
makes a man not boastful, but sorrowful. And in this frame of mind
he implores with unremitting
prayers the comfort of the Divine help that he may not be
overwhelmed in despair, and so he
gradually comes to the fourth step,--that is, strength and
resolution,--in which he hungers and
thirsts after righteousness. For in this frame of mind he
extricates himself from every form of fatal
joy in transitory things, and turning away from these, fixes his
affection on things eternal, to wit,
the unchangeable Trinity in unity.
11. And when, to the extent of his power, he has gazed upon this
object shining from afar, and
has felt that owing to the weakness of his sight he cannot endure
that matchless light, then in the
fifth step--that is, in the counsel of compassion--he cleanses his
soul, which is violently agitated,
and disturbs him with base desires, from the filth it has
contracted. And at this stage he exercises
himself diligently in the love of his neighbour; and when he has
reached the point of loving his
enemy, full of hopes and unbroken in strength, he mounts to the
sixth step, in which he purifies
the eye itself which can see God, so far as God can be seen by
those who as far as possible die to
this world. For men see Him just so far as they die to this world;
and so far as they live to it they
see Him not. But yet, although that light may begin to appear
clearer, and not only more tolerable,
but even more delightful, still it is only through a glass darkly
that we are said to see, because we
walk by faith, not by sight, while we continue to wander as
strangers in this world, even though
our conversation be in heaven. And at this stage, too, a man so
purges the eye of his affections as
not to place his neighbour before, or even in comparison with, the
truth, and therefore not
himself, because not him whom he loves as himself. Accordingly,
that holy man will be so
single and so pure in heart, that he will not step aside from the
truth, either for the sake of
pleasing men or with a view to avoid any of the annoyances which
beset this life. Such a son
ascends to wisdom which is the seventh and last step, and which he
enjoys in peace and tranquility. For the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. From
that beginning, then, till we
reach wisdom itself, our way is by the steps now described.
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Ch 8. The canonical books |
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12. But let us now go back to consider the third step here
mentioned, for it is about it that I have
set myself to speak and reason as the Lord shall grant me wisdom.
The most skilful interpreter of
the sacred writings, then, will be he who in the first place has
read them all and retained them in
his knowledge, if not yet with full understanding, still with such
knowledge as reading
gives,--those of them, at least, that are called canonical. For he
will read the others with greater
safety when built up in the belief of the truth, so that they will
not take first possession of a weak
mind, nor, cheating it with dangerous falsehoods and delusions,
fill it with prejudices averse to a
sound understanding. Now, in regard to the canonical Scriptures,
he must follow the judgment of
the greater number of catholic churches; and among these, of
course, a high place must be given
to such as have been thought worthy to be the seat of an apostle
and to receive epistles.
Accordingly, among the canonical Scriptures he will judge
according to the following standard: to
prefer those that are received by all the catholic churches to
those which some do not receive.
Among those, again, which are not received by all, he will prefer
such as have the sanction of the
greater number and those of greater authority, to such as are held
by the smaller number and
those of less authority. If, however, he shall find that some
books are held by the greater number
of churches, and others by the churches of greater authority
(though this is not a very likely thing
to happen), I think that in such a case the authority on the two
sides is to be looked upon
as equal.
13. Now the whole canon of Scripture on which we say this judgment
is to be exercised, is
contained in the following books:--Five books of Moses, that is,
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, Deuteronomy; one book of Joshua the son of Nun; one of
Judges; one short book
called Ruth, which seems rather to belong to the beginning of
Kings; next, four books of Kings,
and two of Chronicles, these last not following one another, but
running parallel, so to speak, and
going over the same ground. The books now mentioned are history,
which contains a connected
narrative of the times, and follows the order of the events. There
are other books which seem to
follow no regular order, and are connected neither with the order
of the preceding books nor with
one another, such as Job, and Tobias, and Esther, and Judith, and
the two books of Maccabees,
and the two of Ezra, which last look more like a sequel to the
continuous regular history which
terminates with the books of Kings and Chronicles. Next are the
Prophets, in which there is one
book of the Psalms of David; and three books of Solomon, viz.,
Proverbs, Song of Songs, and
Ecclesiastes. For two books, one called Wisdom and the other
Ecclesiasticus, are ascribed to
Solomon from a certain resemblance of style, but the most likely
opinion is that they were written
by Jesus the son of Sirach. Still they are to be reckoned among
the prophetical books, since they
have attained recognition as being authoritative. The remainder
are the books which are strictly
called the Prophets: twelve separate books of the prophets which
are connected with one another,
and having never been disjoined, are reckoned as one book; the
names of these prophets are as
follows:--Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum,
Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai,
Zechariah, Malachi; then there are the four greater prophets,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel.
The authority of the Old Testament is contained within the limits
of these forty-four books. That
of the New Testament, again, is contained within the
following:--Four books of the Gospel,
according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke,
according to John; fourteen
epistles of the Apostle Paul--one to the Romans, two to the
Corinthians, one to the Galatians, to
the Ephesians, to the Philippians, two to the Thessalonians, one
to the Colossians, two to
Timothy, one to Titus, to Philemon, to the Hebrews: two of Peter;
three of John; one of Jude; and
one of James; one book of the Acts of the Apostles; and one of the
Revelation of John.
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Ch 9. How we should proceed in studying Scripture |
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14. In all these books those who fear God and are of a meek and
pious disposition seek the will
of God. And in pursuing this search the first rule to be observed
is, as I said, to know these books,
if not yet with the understanding, still to read them so as to
commit them to memory, or at least
so as not to remain wholly ignorant of them. Next, those matters
that are plainly laid down in
them, whether rules of life or rules of faith, are to be searched
into more carefully and more
diligently; and the more of these a man discovers, the more
capacious does his understanding
become. For among the things that are plainly laid down in
Scripture are to be found all matters
that concern faith and the manner of life,--to wit, hope and love,
of which I have spoken in the
previous book. After this, when we have made ourselves to a
certain extent familiar with the
language of Scripture, we may proceed to open up and investigate
the obscure passages, and in
doing so draw examples from the plainer expressions to throw light
upon the more obscure, and
use the evidence of passages about which there is no doubt to
remove all hesitation in regard to
the doubtful passages. And in this matter memory counts for a
great deal; but if the memory be
defective, no rules can supply the want.
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Ch 10. Unknown or ambiguous signs prevent Scripture
from being understood |
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15. Now there are two causes which prevent what is written from
being understood: its being
veiled either under unknown, or under ambiguous signs. Signs are
either proper or figurative.
They are called proper when they are used to point out the objects
they were designed to point
out, as we say bos when we mean an ox, because all men who with us
use the Latin tongue call it
by this name. Signs are figurative when the things themselves
which we indicate by the proper
names are used to signify something else, as we say bos, and
understand by that syllable the ox,
which is ordinarily called by that name; but then further by that
ox understand a preacher of the
gospel, as Scripture signifies, according to the apostle's
explanation, when it says: "Thou shalt not
muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn."
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Ch 11. Knowledge of languages especially of Greek and
Hebrew, necessary to remove ignorance of signs |
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16. The great remedy for ignorance of proper signs is knowledge of
languages. And men who
speak the Latin tongue, of whom are those I have undertaken to
instruct, need two other
languages for the knowledge of Scripture, Hebrew and Greek, that
they may have recourse to the
original texts if the endless diversity of the Latin translators
throw them into doubt. Although,
indeed, we often find Hebrew words untranslated in the books, as
for example, Amen, Hallelujah,
Racha, Hosanna, and others of the same kind. Some of these,
although they could have been
translated, have been preserved in their original form on account
of the more sacred authority that
attaches to it, as for example, Amen and Hallelujah. Some of them,
again, are said to be
untranslatable into another tongue, of which the other two I have
mentioned are examples. For in
some languages there are words that cannot be translated into the
idiom of another language. And
this happens chiefly in the case of interjections, which are words
that express rather an emotion of
the mind than any part of a thought we have in our mind. And the
two given above are said to be
of this kind, Racha expressing the cry of an angry man, Hosanna
that of a joyful man. But the
knowledge of these languages is necessary, not for the sake of a
few words like these which it is
very easy to mark and to ask about, but, as has been said, on
account of the diversities among
translators. For the translations of the Scriptures from Hebrew
into Greek can be counted, but the
Latin translators are out of all number. For in the early days of
the faith every man who happened
to get his hands upon a Greek manuscript, and who thought he had
any knowledge, were
it ever so little, of the two languages, ventured upon the work of
translation.
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Ch 12. A diversity of interpretations is useful.
Errors arising from ambiguous words |
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17. And this circumstance would assist rather than hinder
the understanding of Scripture, if only
readers were not careless. For the examination of a number of
texts has often thrown light upon
some of the more obscure passages; for example, in that passage of
the prophet Isaiah, one
translator reads: "And do not despise the domestics of thy seed;"
another reads: "And do not
despise thine own flesh." Each of these in turn confirms the
other. For the one is explained by the
other; because "flesh" may be taken in its literal sense, so that
a man may understand that he is
admonished not to despise his own body; and "the domestics of thy
seed" may be understood
figuratively of Christians, because they are spiritually born of
the same seed as ourselves, namely,
the Word. When now the meaning of the two translators is compared,
a more likely sense of the
words suggests itself, viz., that the command is not to despise
our kinsmen, because when one
brings the expression "domestics of thy seed " into relation with
"flesh," kinsmen most naturally
occur to one's mind. Whence, I think, that expression of the
apostle, when he says, "If by any
means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and
might save some of them;" that
is, that through emulation of those who had believed, some of them
might believe too. And he
calls the Jews his "flesh," on account of the relationship of
blood. Again, that passage from the
same prophet Isaiah: "If ye will not believe, ye shall not
understand," another has translated: "If ye
will not believe, ye shall not abide." Now which of these is the
literal translation cannot be
ascertained without reference to the text in the original tongue.
And yet to those who read with
knowledge, a great truth is to be found in each. For it is
difficult for interpreters to differ so
widely as not to touch at some point. Accordingly here, as
understanding consists in sight, and
is abiding, but faith feeds us as babes, upon milk, in the cradles
of temporal things (for now we
walk by faith, not by sight); as, moreover, unless we walk by
faith, we shall not attain to sight,
which does not pass away, but abides, our understanding being
purified by holding to the
truth;--for these reasons one says, "If ye will not believe, ye
shall not understand;" but the other,
"If ye will not believe, ye shall not abide."
18. And very often a
translator, to whom the meaning
is not well known, is deceived by an ambiguity in the original
language, and puts upon the passage
a construction that is wholly alien to the sense of the writer. As
for example, some texts read:
"Their feet are sharp to shed blood;" for the word "oxus" among
the Greeks means both sharp
and swift. And so he saw the true meaning who translated: "Their
feet are swift to shed blood."
The other, taking the wrong sense of an ambiguous word, fell into
error. Now translations such as
this are not obscure, but false; and there is a wide difference
between the two things. For we must
learn not to interpret, but to correct texts of this sort. For the
same reason it is, that because the
Greek word "moschos" means a calf, some have not understood that "moscheumata"
are shoots
of trees, and have translated the word "calves;" and this error
has crept into so many texts, that
you can hardly find it written in any other way. And yet the
meaning is very clear; for it is made
evident by the words that follow. For "the plantings of an
adulterer will not take deep root," is a
more suitable form of expression than the "calves;" because these
walk upon the ground with their
feet, and are not fixed in the earth by roots. In this passage,
indeed, the rest of the context also
justifies this translation.
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