Liberal Arts as Admission of Need

Presaging the extended foray into the rationale of a Liberal Arts education for Christians, in Book II of Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana, the Bishop of Hippo prefaces his project with a defense against those who would reject the making of rules for the interpretation of Scripture. Augustine imagines basically three types of objections, the first two of which do not really trouble him. He answers both of them in a single paragraph while spending the rest of the prologue on the third objection, namely that his regulae are unnecessary since the Spirit can give us all we need to read Scripture well. Augustine contends that not only does sociality go to the heart of human being; the desire to evade it has its roots in a lack of charity, which (he will later say) is the precondition of interpreting Scripture well.

Those who raise this objection have received knowledge of the Scriptures from some kind of charismatic inspiration rather than a careful and orderly inquiry into the text. These objectors "will declare that these regulations are necessary to no one, but that everything which may laudably be revealed about the obscurities of those books can be revealed with divine assistance."  Augustine fears that those who boast in divine inspiration may also be tempting "Him in whom we have believed," expecting "to be 'caught up to the third heaven,' as the Apostle says, 'whether in the body or out of the body,' and there to hear 'secret words that man may not repeat'" (cf. 2 Cor. 12:2,4). They would rather, perhaps, hear the gospel only from Jesus "rather than from men."

Augustine responds in a two-fold way to this objection. First, he reminds such people that there is frankly no escaping dependence anyway. For one thing, "they have learned at least the alphabet from men." Additionally, "any one of us has learned his own language by hearing it spoken habitually from childhood, and any other language such as Greek or Hebrew or the like either by hearing it or by human instruction." That is, there is no escaping human dependence even if we wish to. The Spirit who inspires the St. Antony's of the world is the same Spirit who presided over creation and vivified human beings who were created male and female, i.e., as social creatures.

His second response to his (apparent) detractors takes the form of detailed reflection upon Paul's Corinthian correspondence and the book of Acts, each of which explore the relationship of charismata to catechism, of power to parish, of the Spirit to the body of Christ. Reflection upon these texts allows Augustine to concede the possibility of such a blessing while casting real doubt on its efficacy, given that the objectors show an ignorance of Paul's doctrine of charity and Luke's ecclesiology. Sure, Paul was drawn up into the third heaven, but this is the same Paul who insisted that the gathered community ("ya'll") is the Temple of the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 3:17). Paul may have heard the gospel directly from Jesus, but he "was nevertheless sent to a man that he might receive the sacraments and be joined to the church" (cf. Acts 9:3-18). Likewise, Cornelius experienced the advent of the Spirit upon the Gentiles, but still he received sacraments from Peter and was taught by the Apostle what should be believed, hoped, and loved (Acts 10, cf. 1 Cor. 13:13). "Charity itself, which holds men together in a knot of unity," is the most important virtue a Christian can have. And the development of that virtue necessitates that the ordinary way of Christian catechism take place between people.

De Doctrina will proceed, in Book II, to make an extended defense of the liberal arts, of the value of learning biblical languages, history, and philosophy, on the grounds that the human arts enable us to learn the Scriptures. The willingness to undergo serious study, for the sake of knowing and loving God, can itself be an act of charity, by which we learn to love and hallow our neighbor. Augustine does not stake out a hard and fast position here; those who receive inspiration to know the Scriptures "do not rejoice in a mediocre gift." Equally, knowledge can puff up (cf. 1 Cor. 8:1), but charity can build up. Study can be an occasion for pride, but those who are enlightened by the Spirit may also fall victim to that great temptation. Charity alone edifies, and without it no one will see the Lord, either in Scripture or in the eschatological kingdom. In the prologue to De Doctrina, then, we see that not only is charity the rule for reading Scripture (Book II) but the one measure by which we may know whether apparent spiritual gladiators are inspired by God's Spirit or another. It is hard to imagine a more satisfying interpretation of the great 13th chapter of Paul's first letter to Corinth.

New Voices, Old Songs

The opening of Book IX of the Confessions finds Augustine engaged in a delicate exposition of Psalm 4, by which he exclaims upon the sweetness of his rediscovery of Scripture. At earlier points in his life, he had been famously contemptuous of the Scriptures, thinking them profane, immoral, and rhetorically unpolished. Book IX retains some of this legacy, for Augustine's meditation upon the newfound sweetness of Scripture comes directly on the heels of his retirement from the professorship of rhetoric. Indeed, the meditation on Scripture seems positioned precisely as the antidote to Augustine's defilement of language in his former life. Once a latrator amarus et caecus adversus litteras (IX.4), he now finds them honey-covered, an herb and medicine that heals him of the vain sophistry of the rhetoricians. With his own language purged and healed by God's own grammar, he cries out to God, who brings forth in Augustine a new voice from old songs.
"You delivered my tongue," Augustine confesses to the Lord, as he reflects upon the day he retired from his professorship, employing the verb used by Isaiah to speak of the Lord's saving his soul (Is. 38:17) and employed to describe God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt (Exod. 18:10). His reflection upon his life as a rhetor mirrors a common critique of sophists in ancient Rome: namely, that they peddled wordplay to the highest bidder without regard for the truth of what was said. Augustine's derisive formulation, nundinae loquacitatis, expresses his newfound disavowal of dishonest vanities (insanias mendaces). Originality and novelty were values, but beneath the florid cover of their belles lettres, both teachers and students suffered from incurable avarice and vice. The education industry found itself deeply corrupted. The "cedars of the schools," impressive as they might appear, are no remedy "against serpents."
Retiring from rhetoric, Augustine undergoes a profound internal transformation. Once a player in the marketplace, he submits to a "domestication" (perdomueris) that will prepare him to be a servant of the house of the Lord. Concurrent with that domestication is a revision of language, its uses and its beauty.
The first thing that changes is the value of originality. Instead of selling his own verbal prowess, Augustine finds himself wishing that the Manicheans could hear him recite the Psalms. That is, Augustine is learning to make his own the words of the Psalmist: "accendebar eos recitare." And yet, those words are sung in the whole world! They are not his; he can lay no claim of his own to them. Another change is the relation of his words to truth. His rehearsal of the Scripture begins to fill the words with the content of God's saving work in his own life. The Spirit, who had spoken in the Psalms, ait nobis. And when the psalmist questions humankind about their heaviness of heart and their love of vanity, Augustine senses himself in the dock. At the proclamation that God had raised his Holy One, audivi et contremui, quoniam talibus dicitur, qualem me fuisse reminiscebar. When the text summons humanity to be angry and sin not, Augustine is moved to anger, and as a result his own sinfulness becomes distasteful to him.

The rehearsal of the Scriptures serves to reorient Augustine's tastes, as God grows sweet (dulcescere) to him. This is a profound reversal; the recitation of the words of others, words which are sung in the entire world (here we see the incipient catholic impulse that will animate Augustine's critique of Donatism), has allowed those words to become true of him. He thus subverts the aims of the sophists on both counts: he speaks the words others wrote, and they become true as God changes Augustine into a man whose life is best described in those terms. Once the great professor, "neque enim dico recti aliquid hominibus, quod non a me tu prius audieris, aut etiam tu aliquid tale audis a me, quod non mihi tu prius dixeris."