 |
|
ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
(cont) |
|
|
|
by St Augustine of Hippo |
 |
|
|
|
Ch 25. The intercourse and agreement with demons
which superstitious observances maintain |
|
38. But when all these have been cut away and rooted out of the
mind of the Christian, we must
then look at human institutions which are not superstitious, that
is, such as are not set up in
association with devils, but by men in association with one
another. For all arrangements that are
in force among men, because they have agreed among themselves that
they should be in force, are
human institutions; and of these, some are matters of superfluity
and luxury, some of convenience
and necessity. For if those signs which the actors make in dancing
were of force by nature, and
not by the arrangement and agreement of men, the public crier
would not in former times have
announced to the people of Carthage, while the pantomime was
dancing, what it was he meant to
express,--a thing still remembered by many old men from whom we
have frequently heard it. And
we may well believe this, because even now, if any one who is
unaccustomed to such follies goes
into the theatre, unless some one tells him what these movements
mean, he will give his whole
attention to them in vain. Yet all men aim at a certain degree of
likeness in their choice of signs,
that the signs may as far as possible be like the things they
signify. But because one thing may
resemble another in many ways, such signs are not always of the
same significance among men,
except when they have mutually agreed upon them.
39. But in regard to pictures and statues, and other works of this
kind, which are intended as
representations of things, nobody makes a mistake, especially if
they are executed by skilled
artists, but every one, as soon as he sees the likenesses
recognizes the things they are likenesses
of. And this whole class are to be reckoned among the superfluous
devices of men, unless when it
is a matter of importance to inquire in regard to any of them, for
what reason, where, when, and
by whose authority it was made. Finally, the thousands of fables
and fictions, in whose lies men
take delight, are human devices, and nothing is to be considered
more peculiarly man's own and
derived from himself than, anything that is false and lying. Among
the convenient and necessary
arrangements of men with men are to be reckoned whatever
differences they choose to make in
bodily dress and ornament for the purpose of distinguishing sex or
rank; and the countless
varieties of signs without which human intercourse either could
not be carried on at all, or would
be carried on at great inconvenience; and the arrangements as to
weights and measures, and the
stamping and weighing of coins, which are peculiar to each state
and people,and other things of the same kind. Now these, if they
were not devices of men, would not be different in different
nations, and could not be changed among particular nations at the
discretion of their respective sovereigns.
40. This whole class of human arrangements, which are of
convenience for the necessary intercourse of life, the Christian
is not by any means to neglect, but on the contrary should pay a
sufficient degree of attention to them, and keep them in memory.
|
|
Ch 26. What human contrivances we are to adopt, and
what we are to avoid |
|
For certain institutions of men are in a sort of way
representations and likenesses of natural
objects. And of these, such as have relation to fellowship with
devils must, as has been said, be
utterly rejected and held in detestation; those, on the other
hand, which relate to the mutual
intercourse of men, are, so far as they are not matters of luxury
and superfluity, to be adopted,
especially the forms of the letters which are necessary for
reading, and the various languages as
far as is required--a matter I have spoken of above. To this class
also belong shorthand characters,
those who are acquainted with which are called shorthand writers.
All these are useful, and there
is nothing unlawful in learning them, nor do they involve us in
superstition, or enervate us by
luxury, if they only occupy our minds so far as not to stand in
the way of more important objects
to which they ought to be subservient.
|
|
Ch 27. Some departments of knowledge, not of mere
human invention, aid us in interpreting Scripture |
|
41. But, coming to the next point, we are not to reckon
among human institutions those things
which men have handed down to us, not as arrangements of their
own, but as the resell of
investigation into the occurrences of the past, and into the
arrangements of God's providence.
And of these, some pertain to the bodily senses, some to the
intellect. Those which are reached by
the bodily senses we either believe on testimony, or perceive when
they are pointed out to us, or
infer from experience.
|
|
Ch 28. To what extent history is an aid |
|
42. Anything, then, that we learn from history about the
chronology of past times assists us very
much in understanding the Scriptures, even if it be learnt without
the pale of the Church as a
matter of childish instruction. For we frequently seek information
about a variety of matters by
use of the Olympiads, and the names of the consuls; and ignorance
of the consulship in which our
Lord was born, and that in which He suffered, has led some into
the error of supposing that He
was forty-six years of age when He suffered, that being the number
of years He was told by the
Jews the temple (which He took as a symbol of His body) was in
building. Now we know on the
authority of the evangelist that He was about thirty years of age
when He was baptized; but the
number of years He lived afterwards, although by putting His
actions together we can make it out,
yet that no shadow of doubt might arise from another source, can
be ascertained more clearly and
more certainly from a comparison of profane history with the
gospel. It will still be evident,
however, that it was not without a purpose it was said that the
temple was forty and six years in
building; so that, as this cannot be referred to our Lord's age,
it may be referred to the more secret
formation of the body which, for our sakes, the only begotten Son
of God, by whom all things
were made, condescended to put on.
43. As to the utility of history, moreover, passing over the
Greeks, what a great question our
own Ambrose has set at rest! For, when the readers and admirers of
Plato dared calumniously to
assert that our Lord Jesus Christ learnt all those sayings of His,
which they are compelled to
admire and praise, from the books of Plato--because (they urged)
it cannot be denied that Plato
lived long before the coming of our Lord!--did not the illustrious
bishop, when by his
investigations into profane history he had discovered that Plato
made a journey into Egypt at the
time when Jeremiah the prophet was there, show that it is much
more likely that Plato was
through Jeremiah's means initiated into our literature, so as to
be able to teach and write those
views of his which are so justly praised? For not even Pythagoras
himself, from whose successors
these men assert Plato learnt theology, lived at a date prior to
the books of that Hebrew race,
among whom the worship of one God sprang up, and of whom as
concerning the flesh our Lord
came. And thus, when we reflect upon the dates, it becomes much
more probable that those
philosophers learnt whatever they said that was good and true from
our literature, than that the
Lord Jesus Christ learnt from the writings of Plato,--a thing
which it is the height of folly to
believe.
44. And even when in the course of an historical
narrative former institutions of men are
described, the history itself is not to be reckoned among human
institutions; because things that
are past and gone and cannot be undone are to be reckoned as
belonging to the course of time, of
which God is the author and governor. For it is one thing to tell
what has been done, another to
show what ought to be done. History narrates what has been done,
faithfully and with advantage;
but the books of the haruspices, and all writings of the same
kind, aim at teaching what ought to
be done or observed, using the boldness of an adviser, not the
fidelity of a narrator.
|
| |
Ch 29. To what extent natural science is an
exegetical aid |
| |
45. There is also a species of narrative resembling description,
in which not a past but an existing
state of things is made known to those who are ignorant of it. To
this species belongs all that has
been written about the situation of places, and the nature of
animals, trees, herbs, stones, and
other bodies. And of this species I have treated above, and have
shown that this kind of
knowledge is serviceable in solving the difficulties of Scripture,
not that these objects are to be
used conformably to certain signs as nostrums or the instruments
of superstition; for that kind of
knowledge I have already set aside as distinct from the lawful and
free kind now spoken of. For it
is one thing to say: If you bruise down this herb and drink it, it
will remove the pain from your
stomach; and another to say: If you hang this herb round your
neck, it will remove the pain from
your stomach. In the former case the wholesome mixture is approved
of, in the latter the
superstitious charm is condemned; although indeed, where
incantations and invocations and marks
are not used, it is frequently doubtful whether the thing that is
tied or fixed in any way to the body
to cure it, acts by a natural virtue, in which case it may be
freely used; or acts by a sort of charm,
in which case it becomes the Christian to avoid it the more
carefully, the more efficacious it may
seem to be. But when the reason why a thing is of virtue does not
appear, the intention with
which it is used is of great importance, at least in healing or in
tempering bodies, whether in
medicine or in agriculture.
46. The knowledge of the stars, again, is not a matter of
narration, but of description. Very few
of these, however, are mentioned in Scripture. And as the course
of the moon, which is regularly
employed in reference to celebrating the anniversary of our Lord's
passion, is known to most
people; so the rising and setting and other movements of the rest
of the heavenly bodies are
thoroughly known to very few. And this knowledge, although in
itself it involves no superstition,
renders very little, indeed almost no assistance, in the
interpretation of Holy Scripture, and by
engaging the attention unprofitably is a hindrance rather; and as
it is closely related to the very
pernicious error of the diviners of the fates, it is more
convenient and becoming to neglect it. it
involves, moreover, in addition to a description of the present
state of things, something like a
narrative of the past also; because one may go back from the
present position and motion of the
stars, and trace by rule their past movements. It involves also
regular anticipations of the future,
not in the way of forebodings and omens, but by way of sure
calculation; not with the design of
drawing any information from them as to our own acts and fates, in
the absurd fashion of the genethliaci, but only as to the motions of the heavenly bodies
themselves. For, as the man who
computes the moon's age can tell, when he has found out her age
today, what her age was any
number of years ago, or what will be her age any number of years
hence, in just the same way men
who are skilled in such computations are accustomed to answer like
questions about every one of
the heavenly bodies. And I have stated what my views are about all
this knowledge, so far as
regards its utility.
|
| |
Ch 30. What the mechanical arts contribute to
exegetics |
| |
47. Further, as to the remaining arts, whether those by which
something is made which, when
the effort of the workman is over, remains as a result of his
work, as, for example, a house, a
bench, a dish, and other things of that kind; or those which, so
to speak, assist God in His
operations, as medicine, and agriculture, and navigation: or those
whose sole result is an action,
as dancing, and racing, and wrestling;--in all these arts
experience teaches us to infer the future
from the past. For no man who is skilled in any of these arts
moves his limbs in any operation
without connecting the memory of the past with the expectation of
the future. Now of these arts a
very superficial and cursory knowledge is to be acquired, not with
a view to practicing them
(unless some duty compel us, a matter on which I do not touch at
present), but with a view to
forming a judgement about them, that we may not be wholly ignorant
of what Scripture means to
convey when it employs figures of speech derived from these arts.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
