On Christian Teaching (On Christian Doctrine)

by Augustine of Hippo

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed...

there are two kinds of knowledge which are in vogue among the heathen.

things instituted by men,

things which they ha...

All the arrangements made by men for the making and worshipping of idols are superstitious, pertaining as they do either to the worship of what is created or of some part of it as God,

Examples of these are the earrings on the top of each ear, or the rings of ostrich bone on the fingers, or telling you when you hiccup to hold your left thumb in your right hand.

men are so superstitious as to venture upon striking a dog who has run between them,—not with impunity however, for instead of a superstitious remedy, the dog sometimes makes his assailant run in hot haste for a real surgeon.

sell inexperienced men into a miserable bondage.

Romans made an attempt to dedicate the star which we call Lucifer to the name and honor of Cæsar.

For example, we have changed the names of the months Quintilis and Sextilis to July and August, naming them in honor of the men Julius Cæsar and Augustus Cæsar;

And when any one is born, it is easy to observe the point at which this movement has arrived, by use of the rules discovered and laid down by those who are rebuked by Holy Writ in these terms: "For if they were able to know so much that they could weigh the world, how did they not more easily find out the Lord thereof?" [Wisd. 13. 9.]

twins are in many cases born under the same stars, while they do not meet with equal fortune either in what they do or what they suffer, but often meet with fates so different that one of them has a most fortunate life, the other a most unfortunate. As, for example, we are told that Esau and Jacob were born twins, and in such close succession, that Jacob, who was born last, was found to have laid hold with his hand upon the heel of his brother, who preceded him. [Gen. 25. 24.]

For in this way it comes to pass that men who lust after evil things are, by a secret judgment of God, delivered over to be mocked and deceived, as the just reward of their evil desires.

deluded and imposed on by the false angels,

fornication of the soul;

"Even if what they tell you should come to pass, hearken not unto them." [Cf. Deut. 13. 1-3.]

drawn omens by conjectures of their own,

hurtful curiosity, torturing anxiety, and deadly slavery.

IN HUMAN INSTITUTIONS WHICH ARE NOT SUPERSTITIOUS, THERE ARE SOME THINGS SUPERFLUOUS AND SOME CONVENIENT AND NECESSARY. But when all these have been cut away and rooted out

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.

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.

For certain institutions of men are in a sort of way representations and likenesses of natural objects.

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.

But, coming to the next point, we are not to reckon among human institutions those things which men nave handed down to us, not as arrangements of their own, but as the result 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.

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?

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

For it is one thing to tell what has been done, another to show what ought to be done.

this kind of knowledge is serviceable in solving the difficulties of Scripture,

for that kind of knowledge I have already set aside as distinct from the lawful and free kind now spoken of.

in which case it becomes the Christian to avoid it the more carefully, the more efficacious it may seem to be.

The knowledge of the stars, again, is not a matter of narration, but of description.

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.

WHAT THE MECHANICAL ARTS CONTRIBUTE TO EXEGETICS.

example, a house, a bench, a dish, and other things of that kind;

assist God in His operations, as medicine, and agriculture, and navigation:

action, as dancing, and racing, and wrestling;—in all these arts experience teaches us to inf...

USE OF DIALECTICS. OF FALLACIES.

There remain those branches of knowledge which pertain not to the bodily senses, but to the intellect,

science of reasoning and that of number are the chief.

must guard against the love of wrangling, and the childish vanity of entrapping an adversary.

a style of speech which is not intended to entrap, but only aims at verbal ornamentation more than is consistent with seriousness of purpose, is also called sophistical.

There are also valid processes of reasoning which lead to false

by following out to its logical consequences the error of the man with whom one is arguing;

conclusions are sometimes drawn by a good a...

leading him to give up his error

And yet the validity of logical sequences is not a thing devised by men, but is observed and noted by them that they may be able to learn and teach it; for it exists eternally in the reason of things, and has its origin with God.

For as the man who narrates the order of events does not himself create that order;

says, "When the consequent is false, the antecedent must also be false," says what is most true; but he does not himself make it so, he only points out that it is so. And it is upon this rule that the reasoning I have quoted from the Apostle Paul proceeds.

But in the case of false conclusions, too, there is a validity of inference in some such way as the following.