Jacob Rush's Reviews > On Christian Teaching

A definite read and reread for the Christian seriously interested in rhetoric. It was great to read Augustine's basic take of signs and thing signified—the implications for language are fascinating. Book IV gets into his more practical instruction on rhetorical delivery, and he utilizes (it seems) a modified faith, hope, love triad to explain the goal and function of rhetoric. The Christian teacher wants his listener to understand, delight in and obey the truth, and must utilize different modes of speech to attain this end since different audiences have different needs. Sometimes they need to be instructed out of ignorance; other times you need to smash hard hearts with hard words.