Hermeneutics and the Church: In Dialogue with Augustine

1 Augustine’s De doctrina christiana

13 1 augustine’s De doctrina christiana history and context if, as the introduction argued, the goal is to allow augustine to be an active dialogue partner with contemporary theology, a good way to allow him a say—to allow him to be a voice from outside—is to allow him to set the parameters of the discussion. it has already been decided, on the basis of the topic under consideration— biblical interpretation—and on the basis of the classical status of De doctrina christiana, that this work will be the primary focus. Such a decision is pragmatic: it delimits the topic considerably. it is also necessary: De doctrina is unlike any other work by a church father in that it focuses explicitly on the act of biblical interpretation. even more than Origen’s De principiis and tyconius’s Liber regularum,1 De doctrina represents a systematic, theoretical handbook on why and how one interprets scripture.2 For a dialogue about scriptural interpretation, it is an ideal choice. paying attention to the whole of augustine’s text will set the parameters for a dialogue with contemporary theologians while mitigating the worry that i am making augustine say what i want him to say. in addition to discovering insights for contemporary theological hermeneutics, i have suggested that engaging with augustine 14 ■ He rme n e utics an d tHe cHurcH in the manner i propose will also yield insights into the text of De doctrina. putting it into close proximity with contemporary concerns will inevitably lead to new ways of construing its internal logic and its own concerns. the danger exists, however, that the contemporary concerns will override augustine’s voice. it would be easy simply to focus on the philosophical ideas of the work, or even upon its indebtedness to the classical education system. indeed, such work has been done time and again. But to allow augustine to be an outside voice, it becomes necessary to follow him where he goes, and attention to only one of these areas would hinder the investigation. an interdisciplinary approach is therefore essential; augustine—as all of us are—was a product of his culture. he was influenced by plotinus and cicero, among others. he is eclectic, unafraid to wander through the fields of philosophy or classical rhetoric, unafraid to pluck from them certain fruitful metaphors, certain ways of understanding the world. One reads him only partially if this point is forgotten . nonetheless, attention to the whole of De doctrina reveals that, though he is eclectic in his sources, augustine is in theological territory from the start. Such a point must be demonstrated, and allowing him to set the parameters for the subsequent dialogue will do so. De doctrina, in spite of being composed over the span of thirty years, and in spite of being partially released early on, is a unified theological treatise, intended principally for ministers of the gospel. grasping its overall structure and its relationship to texts written around the same time will make this (contested) point persuasive. augustIne, bIshop(s) of hIppo, on InterpretatIon De doctrina represents a singular text in augustine’s corpus: not only is it one of the first works he began as a bishop, but it is also one of the last works he completed before his death in 430 c.e. as he says in Retractiones 2.4.1: “When i discovered that the books, De doctrina christiana, were unfinished, i preferred to finish them rather than leave them incomplete and pass on to the reconsideration of other augustine’s De doctrina christiana: history and context ■ 15 works.”3 after beginning the work in 396 or 397, he ceased working on it sometime before 400. theories abound as to why he stopped,4 but they are less interesting than the fact that he picked it back up again.5 he left several works incomplete,6 even after reviewing them at the end of his life, but for some reason, the aging bishop found this text and decided that its four books were important enough to finish some thirty years later. he relates exactly where he stopped: “i had finished the third book, which had been written up to the place where the testimony of the gospel is related concerning the woman who ‘concealed yeast in three measures of flour, until the whole loaf was leavened.’”7 R.p.h. green is surely correct...