Scott's Reviews > Saint Augustine: On Christian Doctrine

Really enjoyable. I hadn't known much about the book expect some general things that Augustine would cover. His exploration of how to rightly order one's loves in Book I was great, and I found it fascinating to see how he envisioned using different academic disciplines to understand and teach the Scriptures. The most in-depth exploration of this is in Book IV, where he works from Cicero's ideas about rhetoric: the speaker aims to teach in simple style, to guide his audience's pleasures and displeasures in a moderate style, and to persuade the audience in the grand style. Augustine adapts them to the goal of a teacher of Christian doctrine and gives examples of these rhetorical style in the Scriptures. I'd like to return to it again sometime.