Judaism, Christianity, and, outside the western tradition, Buddhism and Islam, are religions of the word. They are based on sacred writings, and they developed preaching as a feature of their rituals. This was not the case with paganism; pagan priests performed rituals and sometimes delivered prophecies, but they did not preach. Christianity, in particular, had a commandment to preach the gospel. It sought to convert the world through the grace of God and by claims of miracles, testimony, sermons, biographies of saints, epistles, and other appeals or demonstrations; by example or a way of life, including martyrdom in the final necessity; and later in its history by the use of the rhetoric of architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and pageantry. This chapter will examine some rhetorical features of the Old and New Testaments, and the relationship between Christianity and classical rhetoric during the first four centuries of the Christian era, culminating in Saint Augustine’s influential treatise, On Christian Learning.1
The books of the Old Testament were written at different times (some material perhaps as early as 900 B.C., other parts as late as the third century), not in the sequence in which they now appear, and are often the product of redaction, or composition by editors out of earlier material that was sometimes different in form and purpose. What is known as “form criticism” has brought about the recognition of types of biblical narrative, prophecy, poetry, and wisdom literature and of their Sitz im Leben, or setting in society, which includes the purpose for which they were written and the often different purposes for which they were used.2 In antiquity the Jewish philosopher Philo (c. 30 B.C.–A.D. 45), the Christian bishop Augustine (A.D. 354–430), and other learned Jews and Christians made use of their training in rhetoric to interpret the Old Testament. Jewish and Christian interpreters in the Renaissance, including Martin Luther, did so as well, but rhetorical criticism of the Bible faded in the modern period with the decline of rhetoric as a discipline, only to be revived with the rebirth of rhetorical studies in the last third of the twentieth century. There is now a substantial body of scholarship applying the concepts of classical rhetoric and the techniques of modern literary criticism to both the Old and the New Testament.3
Taking the Old Testament as we have it, the evidence for rhetoric begins with the first chapter of Genesis, where creation is initially described not in terms of God’s action, but of speech: “And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” One of the very few references to the Jewish Scriptures by a pagan writer is the quotation of this passage in the rhetorical treatise of Longinus, On Sublimity (9.9). In contrast to creation by enunciation, the second chapter of Genesis records a different tradition in which God, like gods of pagan myth, acts, forming man, for example, out of the dust of the ground. Whoever put the first chapter first had a strong sense of the power of speech and in particular of the authoritative speech of God.
The fundamental rhetorical technique of the Old Testament is assertion of authority. God has given his law to his people. They are convinced because of who he is, what he has done for them, how he will punish them if they transgress, and how his word is revealed to them. In the New Testament the message of God is extended from a national group to all individuals in the world. Authority is a nonartistic analogy to ethos in classical rhetoric. It is confirmed by miracles and bolstered by pathos in the remembrance of the past suffering of people and by their fears of future punishment or hopes of future reward. In its purest form, Judeo-Christian rhetoric shows some similarity to philosophical rhetoric: it claims to be the simple enunciation of truth, uncontaminated by adornment, flattery, or sophistic argumentation; it differs from philosophical rhetoric in that this truth is known from revelation or established by signs sent from God, not discovered by dialectic through human effort. However, like Greek philosophical rhetoric, Judeo-Christian rhetoric gradually came to use features of classical rhetoric to address audiences educated in rhetorical schools, which appeared in Palestine following Alexander’s conquest of the East. Judaism in the Hellenistic period already shows some influence of classical rhetoric, and early Christians gradually adapted features of classical rhetoric to their needs.
The fourth chapter of Exodus gives a valuable picture of rhetoric as found in the Old Testament. God has commissioned Moses to bring the children of Israel out of Egypt, but Moses distrusts his ability to persuade them. “But behold,” he says, “they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’” (Exod. 4:1). He feels the lack of personal authority. The Lord’s reply is typical of the subsequent tradition; it is a series of signs or miracles demonstrating the authority of the commission; a rod is cast down and becomes a serpent, but Moses picks it up and it becomes again a rod; a hand becomes leprous and is restored; the Nile water will become blood. Authority is confirmed by miracles, and this, rather than logical argument, will be the primary mode of persuasion.
Moses, however, is not content. “Oh, my Lord,” he says (Exod. 4:10), “I am not eloquent, either heretofore or since thou hast spoken to thy servant; but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” The Lord replies (Exod. 4:11–12), “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” The preacher is thus to be a vehicle through which an authoritative message will be expressed. If not Moses, it can be Aaron if Moses instructs him, and in fact it is Aaron who becomes the “orator” of the Jews. Some practical recognition is given to natural ability, but the Judeo-Christian orator, at least in theory, has little need of practice or knowledge of art as is required of the orator in the classical tradition. He needs only the inspiration of the Spirit.
Moses is to go back to Egypt and try to persuade Pharaoh to let Israel leave. In this effort another feature of Judeo-Christian rhetoric appears. Moses’ success will depend entirely on the extent to which God allows Pharaoh to listen. “When you go back to Egypt,” the Lord tells him (Exod. 4:21), “see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.” And so it is. Moses does not persuade Pharaoh until the Egyptians are utterly despoiled and eager that the Jews depart. Persuasion takes place when God is ready, and not through the verbal activities or even the authority of Moses. Similarly, in the view of many Christians, God must act, through grace, to move the hearts of an audience before individuals can receive the Word, and if he does pour out his grace, the truth of the message will be recognized because of its authority and not through its logical argumentation. In its purest and most fundamental form, therefore, the basic modes of proof of Judeo-Christian rhetoric are grace, authority, and logos, the divine message that can be understood by human beings. These partially correspond, respectively, to the pathos, ethos, and logos of Aristotelian rhetoric.
Reason, or something taking the form of a reason, for belief or action, however, are needed by the human mind, and enthymemes are common in the Bible. The Ten Commandments of Exodus 20:2–17 provide examples, in that five of them are supported with some reasoning. When the Lord proclaims, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,” he adds a witness of his authority. The commandment not to make a graven image is followed with an explanation and a threat and a promise, “For I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” Similarly, the commandment against taking the name of God in vain becomes an enthymeme with the addition, “For the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” The commandment to keep the Sabbath is followed by an explanatory minor premise and conclusion, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” Finally, “Honor your father and your mother,” with the reason “that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.”
Speeches in the Old Testament often contain calls for judgment of the past, narrative of action in the future, and praise or blame, so, with a few exceptions, they are often not easily classifiable in the classical genres of judicial, deliberative, and epideictic oratory. The most characteristic form of extended speech in the Old Testament is the “covenant speech,” an address built on the assumption of a covenant between God and the people of Israel. The general pattern of a covenant speech is, first, to strengthen the authority of the Lord by reminding the audience of what he has done; second, to add new commandments; and third, to conclude with a warning of what will happen if the commandments are disregarded. In a sense, the Old Testament as a whole could be thought of a vast covenant speech, consisting of the narrative of God’s actions toward the people, his commandments to them, and the warnings of the prophets when the people fall away from their duty. Within the Old Testament there are, however, many specific examples of covenant speeches. Deuteronomy is made up in large part of three (chs. 1–4, 5–28, and 29–30), each containing a narrative of what has happened in the past, commandments, and warnings about the consequences of disobedience or promises of the blessings of obedience.
The pattern can also be seen in examples closer to the situation of classical public address. An example is the speech in the twenty-fourth chapter of Joshua. This consists of a narration of what God has done in Jewish history, put in the mouth of God himself and therefore given heightened authority (24:2–13). Joshua then adds his own injunction: “Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and faithfulness. . . . Choose this day whom you will serve . . . but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (24:14–15). The people accept Joshua’s examples as authoritative and agree that they will serve a lord who had done what the Lord has done. Joshua then reminds the people that the Lord is a jealous God, and gets them to commit themselves completely to the covenant, of which he sets up a stone as witness. The covenant speech of 1 Samuel 12 follows the same general pattern but prefaces it with a personal introduction. A characteristic of the covenant speech is that whatever the specific occasion, the basic message of Judaism—the covenant with God—is incorporated in the speech. This survives as a feature of some Christian preaching, in which whatever the text or starting point of the orator, the message tends to come down to a single theme of overriding importance, the kernel of the gospel, that “God sent into the world his only begotten son that through him we may have eternal life.”
A second form of address in the Old Testament is that of prophecy.4 The twenty-fourth chapter of Ezekiel shows how a covenant speech can be adapted to the circumstances of prophecy. Old Testament prophecy was to be very important for Christian rhetoric. Prophecy of the coming Messiah in Isaiah, for example, was converted into a basis of authority for Christianity as early as the preaching of the apostles and the composition of the gospels. Students of form criticism distinguish several different kinds of prophecy in the Old Testament. One is the “prophecy of disaster,” which usually consists of an introductory word, an indication of the situation, a prediction of disaster, and a concluding characterization. Thus there is an analogy to the proemium, narration, proof, and epilogue of classical oratory based on the natural logic of development of ideas. Another kind of prophecy is “prophecy of salvation,” and there are also some secondary forms, including one based on a trial situation, seen, for example, in Isaiah 41:21–19.5
Pure epideictic rhetoric in the Old Testament is represented by speeches in praise of God. In Exodus 15 is the song of praise sung by Moses and the people after the crossing of the Red Sea, and many of the Psalms are songs of praise. The Psalms also illustrate features of style that are characteristic of biblical epideictic. One is parallelism, a basic device of Hebrew poetry and of elevated language in many other cultures around the world. For an example, consider Psalm 80:8–11:
Thou didst bring a vine out of Egypt;
thou didst drive out the nations and plant it.
Thou didst clear the ground for it;
it took deep root and filled the land.
The mountains were covered with its shade;
and the mighty cedars with its branches;
it sent out its branches to the sea,
and its shoots to the River.
The second line of each couplet parallels the first, explaining or expanding it. It thus is a poetic analogy to the use of enthymemes in discursive language. Note too the use of allegory, in this case the “vine” brought out of Egypt. The imagery of the Psalms and of Isaiah, drawn either from nature or the agricultural life, is the source of much of the poetic language of Christian hymns and preaching. There are many examples, the most famous of which is perhaps Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Imagery of this sort at first seemed very exotic and obscure to Greek and Roman readers, but it became a characteristic device of Christian style, and allegorical interpretation was accepted at an early time as a necessary tool of biblical exegesis.6
The Book of Proverbs, in its present form probably one of the latest parts of the Old Testament, has a special rhetorical interest in that it includes a number of precepts about fine speech. These resemble and are perhaps partly derived from Egyptian wisdom literature, such as the Instruction of Ptahhotep.7 Rhetorical precepts in Proverbs, though not systematically organized, provide rules similar to those of Ptahhotep: for example, initial silence when confronted with verbal attack: “A man of understanding remains silent” (Proverbs 11:12), and, as Ecclesiastes says (3:7), there is “a time to keep silence and a time to speak”; restraint: “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (15:1); fluency: “The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters; the fountain of wisdom is a gushing stream” (18:4); and especially truth: “He who speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness utters deceit” (12:17); and finally, the need for a pleasing style: “Pleasant speech increases persuasiveness” (16:21), and “pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body” (16:24). When in the fifteenth century Judah Messer Leon wrote, in Hebrew, a description of the rhetoric of the Old Testament using classical Greek and Latin concepts, he entitled his work The Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow.8
The books of the New Testament were written in Greek by and for speakers of Greek, many of whom were familiar with public address in Greek or had been educated in Greek schools. They thus employ some features of classical rhetoric combined with Jewish traditions and are modified by beliefs and values of Christianity.
Jewish Sabbath services in the Hellenistic period (that is, the last three centuries before Christ) and in later times included the reading of lessons from the Scriptures, followed by interpretation of the passages read and exhortations to the congregation to follow the law or to strive for moral excellence. This form of preaching, rather informal and spontaneous, shared among different members of the congregation, is the ancestor of the homily, the informal sermon of the early Christian churches. The homily was also influenced by Greek forms, in particular the diatribe, or moral exhortation, of the Stoic and Cynic philosophers, and later by methods of Neoplatonic philosophy.9
In the fourth chapter of Luke, Jesus is described as coming into Galilee and teaching in the synagogues in the way just described. In Nazareth he reads the lesson for the day, which is Isaiah’s prophecy of the Messiah. Then he interprets what he has read: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). There is murmuring against him, but he refuses to perform miracles here to demonstrate his authority in his own country and with some difficulty escapes from the town. Later, at Capernaum he again teaches on the Sabbath, and “they were astonished at his teaching, for his word was with authority” (Luke 4:32). This time, according to the evangelist, he confirms his authority by expelling an unclean demon from a man, and the reaction in the congregation is: “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out” (Luke 4:36). Similar accounts can be found in Matthew, chapter 4, and Mark, chapter 1.
As a result of Jesus’ preaching in the synagogues he attracted crowds from all parts of the country and, according to Matthew (5:1), preached to them the Sermon on the Mount. The sermon may be a composite document put together later by one of Jesus’ followers on the basis of a variety of sermons and sayings; in Luke, verbally similar material appears in different contexts. The Sermon on the Mount is, however, the most extensive example of Jesus’ preaching as envisioned in the early Church. It consists of five parts, the first being a poetic introduction, the Beatitudes, with their marked anaphora, or repetition of the same initial word in each clause. Second comes an expression of assurance not unlike a classical proemium (5:13–17). Then there is a statement of the relation of Jesus’ teaching to Jewish law (5:17–48), followed by a series of injunctions about almsgiving, praying, fasting, and the like (6:1–7:20). Finally, there is an epilogue with a strong warning, and a parable comparing those who build on the rock of authoritative knowledge and those who build on the sand of foolishness (7:21–27). Although some elements are reminiscent of classical rhetoric, the techniques employed, including the parable, are largely drawn from Jewish traditions of speech. The persuasive quality of the sermon comes primarily from the authority projected by the speaker, seen especially in his relation to the law, but supporting statements are added to the Beatitudes and to the injunctions in the second half of the speech, thus creating enthymemes; for example, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth, . . . for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (6:19–21). Jesus is described in the gospels as adept at argumentation. His encounters with the Pharisees show an ability even at dialectic (for example, Matthew 15.1–9 and 22:15–22).
The basis of persuasion attributed to Jesus by the writers of the gospels, writing a generation or more after his death, is much like that found in the Old Testament. In Mark, for example, Jesus envisions Christians brought into court and says:
But take heed to yourselves; for they will deliver you up to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them. And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. And when they bring you to trial and deliver you up, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say; but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. And brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved. (Mark 13:9–13)
Mark may have projected back to Jesus a prophecy for things that happened between Jesus’ death and the time Mark was writing. Among the points to be noted in this passage are the importance of testimony up to and including the example of martyrdom; the fact that no special eloquence is required, for as in Exodus God will provide the words; and an apparent assumption that the disciples cannot expect to persuade their judges of the righteousness of their cause: that is God’s work, and as with Pharaoh, he seems to intend to harden their hearts. All of this is contrary to the assumptions of the classical orator, who expected to use his eloquence to overcome opposition to his ideas.
The word for “preach” in Mark 13:10 and commonly in the New Testament is kêrusso, which literally means “proclaim.” It is what a herald (kêryx) does with a message, a law, or a commandment. The message is a kêrygma, or proclamation, and constitutes the gospel (euangelion, or “good news”). Christian preaching in this tradition, which still exists, is thus not persuasion but proclamation, and is based on authority and grace, not on proof. Augustine says (On Christian Learning 4:21) that a good listener warms to the Scriptures not so much by diligently analyzing them as by pronouncing them energetically. Scriptural truth must be apprehended by the listener, not proved by the speaker. Somewhat surprisingly, and in contrast to the use of kêrygma, the early Church adopted the Greek word pistis to mean “Christian faith.” In classical Greek, the meanings of pistis range over the spectrum of “trust, belief, persuasion”; it was, however, the word used by Aristotle for proof in rhetoric, and this usage became standard among teachers of rhetoric. The acceptance of pistis to mean “Christian faith” by the early Church implied at the very least that faith came from hearing speech, and provided a future opening for the acceptance of classical rhetoric within Christian discourse.10
A repeated message of the gospels is that not all will comprehend: some lack the strength for the gospel. In the parable of the sower (Mark 4) some seed falls along the path, some on rocky ground, some among thorns, and some in good soil. The parable ends with: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”; but even the disciples do not understand and have to have the parable explained to them. To the generation after Jesus there was irony in the failure of those who heard or saw him to believe, and this irony is further developed in other ways as well, particularly in Matthew’s gospel. The first will be last, the last first; the humble great, the great humble; the one who loves life shall lose it, the one who gives up life shall save it; and so on (cf. 16:25, 183, 20:26–28, 23:11). In these statements, and in the Beatitudes as well, there is a subtle but radical appeal, especially addressed to those in a lowly socio-economic station, to become Christians and identify themselves with the select. Such paradoxes become a permanent part of the Christian style of preaching, as do the vivid metaphors contained in the first-person proclamations so characteristic of John’s gospel: “I am the living bread” (6:51); “I am the door to the sheep” (10:7); “I am the true vine” (15:1); and others.
Rhetorical criticism of the gospels and of the other parts of the New Testament, often employing some techniques of form criticism, literary criticism, and social history, has made great progress in the late twentieth century; a substantial body of scholarship is now available.11 An important goal of rhetorical criticism is to try to hear the biblical texts as an ancient audience would hear them, and that means an audience familiar with classical rhetorical practice whether from study in school or from experience of the secular world. Among the early Christians there were many simple people with little formal education, but there were many others who had had some formal training in Greek language and rhetoric, and in the sophisticated Greek-speaking communities of Antioch, Miletus, Ephesus, Corinth, Alexandria, Athens, and Rome most hearers would have had some expectations of how a speech should be arranged and delivered. The gospels and the epistles were read aloud in Christian churches, and necessarily received by the congregation as speech.
In the case of the gospels, their four authors employ somewhat different rhetorical techniques, resulting from their own education and the audiences they addressed.12 The gospel of Mark is probably the earliest and is an example of “radical Christian rhetoric,” relying on authority with little appeal to logical argument. Matthew seems to have used Mark’s gospel as one of his sources, but he is much more inclined to support proclamation with reason. It is notable that statements with no supporting reason in Mark often become enthymemes in Matthew’s text. Matthew seems to be addressing a Greek-speaking Jewish audience with some education. Luke was a physician and well educated, probably including some study of rhetoric. He wrote for an audience that included Greeks and used the most polished Greek of the evangelists. His gospel resembles Greek historiography or biography to a greater extent than do the others. John’s gospel, written later than the others and making some use of them, was apparently originally addressed to members of a Christian sect in Asia Minor, and has a distinctive eloquence, derived often from metaphor and evident from its opening words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The concept of “the Word” as the meaning and reason inherent in existence is found in Greek philosophy, of which John probably had some knowledge. He then identified the Word with Christ. John’s gospel carries within it three factors of Christian rhetoric identified earlier—grace, authority, and the message “proclaimed” to mankind—and has provided an image elaborated by Christian preachers through the centuries.
Examples of preaching in the early Church can be found in the Book of Acts, traditionally attributed to Luke. Unfortunately, the picture may not be entirely historical. Many New Testament scholars believe that Acts was influenced by the conventions of Greek historical writing and that the speeches in Acts, like those in Greek historiography, are reconstructions of what might have been said, not evidence for what was actually said. That may be the case, but the speeches are not classical orations; they are generally consistent with Jewish rhetorical traditions and those developing in early Christianity as seen elsewhere. The speech of Stephen (7:2–53), which enrages the high priest and precipitates the first martyrdom, is similar in structure to Old Testament rhetoric as we saw it in the speech of Joshua and may be derived from a Jewish homily. It furnished an example for the rhetoric of later martyrs and is a Christian analogue to Socrates’ apology. There are also seven speeches in Acts attributed to Peter and six attributed to Paul. Paul’s speech of farewell at Miletus (Acts 20:18–35), his speeches while he was on trial at the end of the book, and Peter’s first speech proposing a replacement for Judas (1:16–33) have special features, but the rest fall into the category of what is known as the “missionary sermon,” the Christian counterpart of the Jewish covenant speech. A few examples may be considered briefly.
In the third chapter of Acts, Peter, after healing a cripple, stands on Solomon’s porch in Jerusalem and addresses the people. He begins with the miracle just performed: “The faith which is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all” (3:16). In explaining how this can be, Peter recapitulates the prophecy of the Messiah and the life and death of Jesus. He warns the people to repent and supports his warning with the authority of Moses, and at the end he returns to the miracle God has performed. The rhetorical elements are thus the familiar ones of authority or the law, prophecy and fulfillment, and warnings of the future.
Simpler in structure is the sermon delivered by Paul on a Sabbath day in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia (13:16–41). The law has been read, an invitation to speak is extended, and Paul rises. He rehearses Jewish history and the prophecy of the coming of the savior. He proclaims Jesus to be that savior and supports his claim with the prophecy of two Psalms. And he ends with a warning to those who do not believe. The only miracle cited is God’s raising Jesus from the dead.
The most famous of all missionary sermons is that of Paul on “Mars’ Hill,” the Athenian Areopagus (Acts 17:22–31).13 Here the message is adapted to Greek ears: it is not the prophecy of the Old Testament that is fulfilled, but the Greeks’ own search for the unknown god, who is the God of all mankind. Paul does not attempt the dialectical reasoning of a Greek orator or philosopher: he proclaims the gospel, but the proclamation is supported by a Greek quotation: “As even some of your poets have said” (17:28). Then comes the usual call to repentance and warning of judgment. Up to this point, God has repeatedly been mentioned, but not Jesus, who is only referred to at the very end as the man through whom judgment will come. God has given assurance of this by raising his son from the dead, so that we have the miracle as a sign, but its truth is dependent, as is the proclamation as a whole, on the willingness of those present to accept Paul’s authority. The claim that Jesus rose from the dead would not have seemed totally impossible to Greeks familiar with the stories of the descent into the underworld and return by Odysseus, Theseus, Heracles, and Orpheus; and Stoicism, the leading philosophical movement of this period, entertained monotheistic views not entirely inconsistent with Christianity.
Rhetorical schools were common in the Hellenized cities of the East when Paul was a boy, and he could have attended one, as did some other Jews. One of the most famous rhetoricians of the previous century, Caecilius of Calacte, was a Jew. Paul quotes Greek poets and was certainly familiar with the rhetorical conventions of speeches in Roman lawcourts, the oral teachings of Greek philosophers, and the conventions of Greek letter writing. Some biblical scholars see in his epistles an influence of the arrangement of contents, argumentations, and figures of speech of classical rhetoric that also appear in the diatribes of Stoic and Cynic philosophers.14 The Epistle to the Galatians, for example, can be analyzed in terms of an exordium, narration, proposition, proof, and epilogue; and conventional rhetorical structures and devices of invention and style have been found in many of his other letters as well. What Paul has to say about rhetoric in his epistles, however, anticipates historically what is found in the gospels and in Acts. Probably the most important passage is the opening of First Corinthians. There were factions in the church at Corinth, and Paul’s preaching had apparently been criticized as philosophically simplistic (3:1–4). In reply he says:
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach [kêrussomen, “proclaim”] Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Cor. 1:22–25)
The message is proclaimed, not proved; it is persuasive to those who are called or chosen by God. Paul employs an oxymoron, “wise foolishness,” which ironically reverses the expectations of those who seek rational wisdom. He continues with an appeal to the less fortunate of the congregation:
For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption; therefore, as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord.” (1.26–31)
This extended sentence has the structure of a syllogism. Its emotional intensity is built up by its constant repetition and by the way it plays on the paradox of the wise and the foolish, the weak and strong. Paul claims that this is all part of God’s plan, and it is all summed up in one figure, Christ. Nothing else matters. Paul continues his apology:
When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words of wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling; and my speech and my message were not in plausible [peithois] words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power, that your faith [pistis] might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. (2.1–5)
Paul is here probably comparing himself to his rival, the more conventionally eloquent Apollos (see Acts 18:24–28). Paul claims that as an orator he himself is nothing; his words are not persuasive as words; all lies with God. He continues:
Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written [Isaiah 64:4], “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him,” God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what person knows a man’s thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit. (2:6–13)
This dialectical passage, with its succession of enthymemes, seems to reject the whole of classical philosophy and rhetoric. For rhetoric, the Pauline Christian can rely on God, both to supply words and to accomplish persuasion if it is God’s will. In place of worldly philosophy there exists a higher philosophy, only dimly apprehended by human beings. Much of the work of Christian exegesis in the following centuries is built on the assumption that there is a wisdom in the Scriptures, deliberately obscure, which human beings can, in part, come to understand with God’s help. The view of Saint Augustine and many other Christian exegetes was that God had deliberately concealed that wisdom to keep it from those who were indifferent to it, but would allow those who sought the truth to find a road to understanding.
The Roman government was generally tolerant of the many religious cults found throughout the empire so long as these were themselves tolerant of others and did not seem to offer any threat to civil authority or public order. Christians, however, became suspect in the mid-first century and were intermittently persecuted for two hundred and fifty years because of their prophecies of the coming end of the Roman Empire, Romans’ misunderstanding of what went on at Christian services, and Christians’ refusal to sacrifice to the cult of the deified emperors. There was, however, widespread malaise in the Roman public, brought on by wars, economic depression, political oppression, natural disasters, and epidemics that created a cultural exhaustion and search for meaning outside the present life. Christianity seemed to offer hope to the hopeless and disaffected, and the number of Christians grew. After a final attempt to put down Christianity at the beginning of the fourth century, the Roman government gave in. In A.D. 313 the emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, on toleration of the Christians. Subsequently the Church became more worldly and the phenomenon of the nominal Christian with a good education (the Latin poet Ausonius, for example) made its appearance. During the course of the fourth century the legal standing of the Church changed from an object of persecution, to toleration, to official status, and finally to a position of exclusive religious authority when Theodosius prohibited pagan worship in A.D. 392. Many pagan temples were converted into Christian churches. Worship of the old gods survived privately or among country folk (pagani) for two or three centuries, but with little influence. With its political victory, the Church began to exert strong influence on the rulers of the state, and they in turn began to use aspects of Christianity to secure and extend their power in society.15
In the second century, when Christianity was growing in many parts of the empire and hostile notice of it was being taken by Roman officials,16 some educated Christians sought to defend the new religion in written works addressed to influential and educated Greeks and Romans, making use of ideas from Greek philosophy, employing techniques of classical rhetoric, and seeking to refute charges and rumors directed against the new religion. These “apologists” probably did not expect their arguments to convert the addressees or readers to Christianity—that could happen only through the grace of God—but they could hope to improve the public image of Christianity. Charges made against Christians were often outrageous slanders, derived from rumors about what went on in Christian ritual, such as the allegation that Christians met at dawn to kill small children, drink their blood, and eat their flesh. About A.D. 125 a Greek named Quadratus composed a defense of Christianity and presented it to the emperor Hadrian on one of his visits to Athens, a center of schools of rhetoric and philosophy. The single fragment of this work that is preserved (in Eusebius, Church History 4.3.2) emphasizes that the miracles of Jesus were genuine and well attested by many people. More philosophical in tone are the extant works of Justin Martyr, who addressed his Apology to the emperor Antoninus Pius and also wrote a philosophical dialogue with the Jew Trypho, arguing for the fulfillment of prophecies of Christ. Athanagoras composed his Apology, or Appeal for the Christians, about A.D. 180 in Alexandria, using references to Greek philosophers and poets to support his claims that Christian worship and teaching were innocent, reasonable, and moral.17
The Greek apologist who made the greatest use of the techniques of classical rhetoric is probably Tatian. He composed his Oration to the Greeks around A.D. 167. This is largely an invective against Greek claims of intellectual and moral superiority and is an odd mixture of sophistic cleverness and Christian piety. He seeks to show that Moses was older and greater than Homer and that the Greeks learned most of what they claimed to know from non-Greeks, but he says it with figures of speech, a care for composition, and quotations from the Greek poets. Even the Greek language does not escape his criticism, and there are a few nasty words about Greek rhetoric: “You have contrived rhetoric for injustice and slander, for a price selling the free power of speech, and often representing something as now just, and again as not good, and [you have contrived] the art of poetry to describe battles and the loves of the gods and the soul’s corruption” (1.2c). The use of rhetoric to denounce rhetoric is not rare in Christian writing, but of course it is also often found in some philosophical writing beginning with Plato’s dialogues. Tatian’s rhetorical apology is not unique. Another example from about the same time is the Letter to Diognetus by an unknown author who attacks paganism and Jewish sacrifices in an artificial, antithetical style.
The age of the apologists was the age of the Second Sophistic. The great sophists of the time took little notice of the new religion, but in their celebrations of Greek religion and culture it is possible to see a defensive note against new ideas creeping into society. Around A.D. 178 a Greek Platonist named Celsus became alarmed at what he viewed as the threat of Christianity to Roman society and security, and he sought to check the growth of the new religion and persuade Christians to become more responsible citizens in a work called The True Teaching. The original text is lost, suppressed later by the Church, but it inspired Origen’s reply, Against Celsus, which was published in 248 and is often regarded as the greatest of Christian apologetic treatises. We shall return to Origen below.
Apologists also appeared in Latin, where they gave a new vigor to literary composition from the intensity of their feeling against paganism. The first great Latin representative of Christian invective is Tertullian (ca. A.D. 160–225), a native of Carthage who practiced as an advocate in Rome, was converted to Christianity, and returned to Africa to devote himself to the Christian cause. His apologetic works include the fiery appeal To the Heathen, which pleads against repression of Christianity, and the Apologeticus, written in A.D. 197, which is addressed to the governors of Roman provinces and seeks to refute the arguments against Christians in judicial terms. Tertullian also wrote on moral and doctrinal subjects and attacked heretical groups. When Tertullian became a Christian he did not cease to be a rhetorician. Not only does he fully exercise the stylistic techniques of rhetoric, such as figures of speech, but he follows the rules for judicial oratory as a basis of the structure of his works, he makes use of stasis theory in defining issues, and he draws on traditional topics or finds their counterparts in the Scriptures.18
Almost from the beginning, Christianity was divided into sects with differing beliefs about theology and the sacraments. Each group regarded itself as orthodox and others as heretical, and they quarreled bitterly about even trivial matters, promising that their opponents would burn in Hell. Some major Christian thinkers, including Tertullian and Origen, were accused of heresy by opponents within the Church. Very little of the writing of groups eventually judged heretical survives, since it was suppressed by the victorious orthodox, but there is a considerable body of extant works attacking heresies in which their teaching can be found. The earliest major polemicist whose writing survives was Irenaenus, a Greek from Smyrna who became bishop of Lyons in Gaul in the second half of the second century. His treatise Against Heresies not only attacks splinter groups but includes an early systematic presentation of orthodox Christian doctrine. A later and larger work of the same sort is the Refutation of All Heresies, written about A.D. 200 by Hippolytus, bishop of Rome, but almost all major Christian writers, including Augustine, engaged in attacks on heresy.
There were four major forms of preaching in the early Church: the missionary sermon, prophetic preaching, the homily, and the panegyrical sermon. The first three will be discussed here, the fourth later in this chapter. A missionary sermon aimed at conversion of non-Christians to the new faith. The best early examples are those found in the Book of Acts, discussed above. Prophecy, a continuation of the Jewish tradition, is occasionally mentioned (e.g., Acts 11:27). It was characterized by inspiration, including “speaking in tongues,” and might be practiced by anyone and in any kind of setting. No very good example of it survives unless we use the term to describe the so-called Second Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians. This is not an epistle and not the work of any known author; the imagery in its seventh chapter suggests that it may be a sermon delivered at Corinth in the second quarter of the second century on a day when the city was thronged with visitors to the games. Passages of Scripture from the Old and New Testaments are taken up and exegesis offered. There is some allegorical interpretation. The language, even when the Bible is not being quoted, is often biblical. There is no clear outline or structure, but the various quotations and themes are strung together to make an exhortation to the Christian life, more moral than theological in emphasis. The greatness of salvation imposes duties on human beings, in the author’s view, which they dare not refuse for fear of punishment. Unity is given chiefly by the repeated call to repentance, which becomes more insistent as the end of the work approaches. It is this tone that justifies calling the work an example of the prophecy sermon.
The third, and most important, form of Christian preaching was the homily. Homilia is a Greek word meaning “coming together, conversation,” or informal address, which came to be used to describe an oral interpretation of a text of Scripture. The word is also used in Latin, though the Latin word sermo also meant “conversation” and not a formal sermon (oratio). The structure of a homily was determined by the order of words in the text being elucidated, to which material from other texts might be added. In its most natural form, homily is lacking in artifice and does not aspire to systematic exposition of theology. The speaker simply tells the congregation what they need to know to understand the text and apply it to their lives. In an early Christian context the speaker would ordinarily be a bishop, whose chair, like that of a sophist, gave him the right to speak, and the congregation would be made up of catechumens (people preparing for admission to the Church) or fully baptized members.
As the Church gradually began to employ more artificial rhetoric addressed to cultured audiences, some homilies ceased to be simple words, in style, structure, or content, addressed to simple hearts. Around A.D. 165, when the Second Sophistic was in full flower, Melito, bishop of Sardis, composed a sermon on Easter that is a homily, since it is based on a text, but is characterized by a flamboyant literary style reminiscent of the sophist Gorgias.19 This is how Melito begins:
This account of the Hebrew exodus has been read,
and the words of the mystery have been made clear,
how the Lamb has been sacrificed
and how the people have been saved.
Learn then, beloved,
how the paschal mystery is new and old,
eternal and transitory,
corruptible and incorruptible,
mortal and eternal:
but new according to the Word,
ancient according to the Law,
transitory in prefiguration,eternal in grace,
corruptible through slaughter of the Lamb,
incorruptible through the life of the Lord,
mortal through his burial in the tomb,
immortal through his resurrection from the dead.
The text is prose, but setting the words as poetry illustrates the affinity of the style to Hebrew poetry.
Less flamboyant in style but more sophistic in content is the homily What Rich Man Is Saved? by Clement of Alexandria, dating from around A.D. 200. Clement was a learned Greek, a student of Platonism who became a teacher in the Christian catechetical school in Alexandria. In his numerous and often elegant writings Clement began to make serious use of Greek philosophy and to take a step toward the Christian Platonism of the following century. Clement’s sermon is a homily on Mark 10:17–31 and was addressed to a prosperous congregation that found biblical injunctions against wealth rather inconvenient. After a proemium comparing rich men to athletes, a prayer, and a reading of the text, Clement enters on exegesis. Ostensibly simple passages, he says, often require more careful attention than obscure ones. In telling the rich man to sell all that he has and give to the poor, Clement says, Jesus is not literally talking about wealth, but enjoining man to strip his soul of its passions! The style of this homily is antithetical, and the thought is often complex. Most quotations are from the Bible, but there are references to pagan philosophy (for example, in chapter 11).
The history of homiletics, and preaching in general, is closely related to the history of hermeneutics, the science and method of exegesis or interpretation of texts. What dialectic is to rhetoric in Aristotelian rhetoric, hermeneutics is to homiletics in Christian rhetoric. The most important figure in the development of Christian hermeneutics and the greatest Christian thinker between Paul and Augustine was Origen (ca. 184–254), who passed his life in times of trouble and persecution in Egypt and Palestine. It is largely because of Origen’s scholarship that the homily abandoned casual structure, even when keeping a simple style of expression, and took on the complexity of analysis of a text at several layers of meaning.20 Allegorical interpretation was fundamental to Origen’s method, and here he had the model of interpretations of Greek poetry by Stoic and Neoplatonic philosophers and of the Old Testament by the Jewish philosopher Philo.
In the fourth book of his treatise De Principiis, or On First Principles, Origen discussed the interpretation of the Scriptures. His discussion was widely known both in Greek in the East and in the West in the Latin translation of Rufinus. Origen regarded the Bible as divinely inspired in every respect. Just as man consists of body, soul, and spirit, so does Scripture have three similar levels, arranged intentionally by God for man’s salvation (4.1.11). The corporeal level is that of the letter, the literal meaning, and is addressed to those who are still children in soul and do not yet recognize God as their father. This level of meaning, however, imparts edification (knowledge of religious law and history, for example). The interpretation is one of the soul when a passage is interpreted to have a specific but nonliteral application to the audience addressed. This might often be regarded as the moral level. Origen has the least to say about this level, but he cites 1 Corinthians 9:9, where Paul applies to his own ministry an injunction from Deuteronomy against muzzling the mouth of an ox: “Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not speak entirely for our sake?” Finally, the interpretation is spiritual when we recognize in it essential truths of Christianity. This might be called the theological level.
Since all of the Bible was regarded as inspired, all of it contains the spiritual level. Origen thought, however, that there were many things in the Scriptures that could not possibly be interpreted literally. Such otherwise incomprehensible passages include metaphors or figures to be interpreted allegorically. Origen calls these figures typoi, or types (4.1.9), and explains their function: “God has arranged that certain stumbling-blocks, as it were, and offences and impossibilities should be introduced into the midst of the law and the history in order that we may not, through being drawn away in all directions by the merely attractive nature of the language, either altogether fall away from the true doctrine, as learning nothing worthy of God, or by departing from the letter come to the knowledge of nothing more divine” (4.1.15). Obscurity thus alerts the attention of the reader and encourages meditation. Origen was not troubled by the possibility that many different meanings can be found in a single text when interpreted allegorically, for we may be sure that the inspiration of Scripture contains far more meaning than we can ever succeed in fathoming (4.1.26). Nor was he disturbed by the possibility of misinterpretation, since by definition the spiritual meaning is a portion of the universal message of Christianity, which provides a test of validity. Origen concludes the discussion (4.1.27) by saying that we must not be concerned about words and language, for every nation has its own, but look to the meaning of the words, remembering at the same time that there are things that cannot be conveyed by the words of human language and are made known directly through apprehension. The truth of the Christian message is seized by the soul without reasoning about it. This apprehension is then strengthened and explored by study of Scripture, where meaning exists at an immediate logical level, but where there are one or more parallel and higher levels of meaning that the Christian can hope to perceive. Such a view opens the floodgates of mysticism and allegory but is inconsistent neither with Christian rhetoric as it had earlier been defined nor with the use of myth in the works of Plato, which Origen knew well. Origen’s three levels of interpretation might be renamed the logical, the ethical, and the emotional. In that case, they can be thought of as hermeneutic counterparts of Aristotle’s logos, ethos, and pathos, the modes of rhetorical persuasion. Origen’s emphasis on seeking God’s intent in a text rather than in the literal meaning can be compared to that part of stasis theory in rhetoric that explored the issue of the intent versus the letter of a law.
Origen applied his hermeneutic theory in homilies and commentaries on books of the Bible. We have 21 homilies in Greek and another 186 in Latin translations made by Saint Jerome (ca. 348–420) and by Rufinus of Aquileia (345–411). Like the homilies of other famous Fathers of the Church, these were read in churches in later times in place of original sermons. Some seem addressed to a general congregation, some to catechumens, some to a small group of disciples. According to Eusebius (Church History 6.36), Origen allowed shorthand writers to take down his dialexeis, or disquisitions, which he delivered in public later in life at Caesarea in Palestine. (A system of shorthand had been developed in the first century B.C. and was widely used during the Roman Empire in both Greek and Latin.) It is occasionally possible to compare Origen’s treatment of a biblical text in a homily with his treatment in a commentary. The content is generally similar, but the style is different. In the homily the speaker is mindful to persuade his audience not only to understand and believe the text but to live in accordance with it, whereas the commentaries are generally limited to exposition of the meanings. The three levels of meaning discussed in On First Principles can all be illustrated in the homilies, but the emphasis is on the moral and spiritual levels. The homilies are in a simple, generally classical style, filled with direct address, imperatives, and rhetorical questions to maintain audience contact. The structure is essentially that of the text, but considerable intensity of emotion is sometimes achieved. This is chiefly because of the spiritual nature of the material and the fact that since all the text is inspired, the great features of the Christian message are inherent in every verse.
From A.D. 230 until his death in 254 Origen was head of a school of Christian studies at Caesarea in Palestine. One of his students was Gregory of Pontus, usually distinguished from the many other Gregorys by the name Gregory Thaumaturgus, “The Wonderworker.” Gregory was born around A.D. 215, studied rhetoric and Latin in Pontus, and at the age of around fourteen was sent to the famous school of Roman law that had developed at Beirut. Because of family connections he ended up in Caesarea instead, and entered Origen’s school. He remained there eight years before returning to play an important role in the Christianization of his native province. On departing from Origen’s school, about A.D. 238, Gregory delivered a speech of which a text survives. It is the first true example of Christian epideictic oratory, one of the very few surviving speeches of the third century, and the only extant example of a Greek farewell speech.
Despite a general movement away from rhetorical conventions as the speech unfolds, there can be no doubt that Gregory set out to create an epideictic speech in the manner of the sophists. The style, for which he apologizes on the grounds that for some years he has been studying Latin and law and not Greek oratory, is the affected Greek of a rather inept sophist, filled with elaborate sentences and amplification. The proemium, by far the most sophistic part, utilizes commonplaces from the rhetorical schools, including the inexperience of the orator and the analogy of oratory and painting. There are echoes of Homer, Euripides, Demosthenes, and Plato and a quotation (141) from the Delphic oracle. Although the point of view is certainly Christian, Christianity is treated as philosophy and there is no mention of Christ. It is very much the kind of speech that a student leaving the school of a sophist might give as a tribute to his teacher if the latter were a Christian and if the audience were made up of individuals educated in both Christianity and sophistic rhetoric.
It is clear that some tension existed between rhetoric and religion in Gregory’s society. He attempts to meet this problem by careful definition. He says (4–5) that it is not the case that Christian philosophers do not desire beauty and accuracy of expression for their thoughts, but rather that they give a second order of priority to words, and faced with the choice between cultivating holy and divine power of thought or practicing speech, they choose the former. Origen, says Gregory (74), had used every resource of speech to persuade him to join the school, although he regarded the teaching of rhetoricians as a small and unnecessary thing (107). In fact, Gregory found Origen’s love and moral influence the most persuasive thing about him (84). He treats Origen as almost divine (10, 13) and describes the relationship between them in terms of David and Jonathan in the Old Testament (85). Gregory criticizes pagan philosophers at length (160–69). They are irrational, choose doctrines at random, and stick to them unreasonably without considering the evidence, as opposed to the more objective and truth-loving Christian philosophers. Origen in particular has, he says, encouraged his students to study widely in all but the atheistic writers and to draw conclusions on the basis of the evidence. It would be interesting to know what Origen thought of this performance. His reaction may have been negative. A letter from Origen to Gregory survives, probably written after the oration. It is time, Origen says, for Gregory to move beyond philosophy to Christianity and to become a partaker of Christ and of God.21
Gregory’s speech is not a sermon and thus not an example of Christian preaching, but it serves as an introduction to the fourth form of preaching, which is Christian epideictic, sometimes also called the panegyrical sermon. This is chiefly known from the fourth century, when Christianity and public life came together. Unlike other forms of preaching it has no Jewish antecedents. An early figure in Christian epideictic was Eusebius (A.D. 260–340), who had been trained in the same Christian school in Caesarea that Origen had once headed and is a leading authority for our knowledge of Origen. After escaping the persecutions of the opening years of the fourth century, Eusebius became bishop of Caesarea and later a friend and adviser of Constantine, the first Christian emperor. His most famous work is his Church History in ten books, which includes a panegyrical sermon he delivered at Tyre, probably in 326 or 327.22 It ostensibly honors Paulinus, bishop of Tyre, for his reconstruction of the church there, which had been destroyed in the persecutions. Eusebius says that all of the rulers of the Church delivered panegyrics to the assembly in the rededicated church. “One of moderate talent,” that is, himself, then came forward, having prepared an arrangement of a speech. This probably means that he had premeditated his topics and their order, but perhaps not his expression, for which he relied on extempore inspiration and experience. Possibly a shorthand transcription was made at the time of delivery; in any event, the speech was written up, polished, and published in the Church History (10.4).
Although Eusebius calls this speech a panegyric, it has few of the elements of sophistic encomium. We are told nothing at all about Paulinus except that he directed the rebuilding of the church. The church itself, however, is described in detail (10.4.37–46), in which we may see an example of rhetorical ecphrasis. The visible and material church is made a counterpart of a greater and invisible spiritual Church; God has chosen the emperor to cleanse and reconstruct the spiritual world. The speech has a strong religious movement, and the issues involved were life-and-death matters to the speaker, who had witnessed the persecutions and the victory of his faith. On this occasion he symbolically recapitulates the whole history of Christianity and sees it justified. There are often great advantages to a speaker in being against something as well as for something; Eusebius exploits this in saying that the devil’s frustrations at Christ’s power led him to attack the rebuilding of the church. This leads to a comparison (syncrisis in rhetoric) of Christ and Satan (10.4.14); but Christ is the cornerstone, and the devil is foiled again.
A second panegyrical sermon by Eusebius is the speech he delivered in A.D. 336 in honor of Constantine’s thirtieth jubilee.23 The first ten chapters seem to be addressed to the court and celebrate the emperor’s rule and his theological, political, and moral virtues. That the emperor had come to power by deceit and violence, including murder, is overlooked; Christian panegyrists were no less given to flattery than were pagans. There is very little use of Scripture here, but neither does the speech observe the specific topics of classical encomium. The second half (chs. 11–17) is addressed to Constantine and is a sermon on the glory of God, intended to lead the uninitiated to the truth and to show the religious basis of Constantine’s deeds. This part of the speech draws more heavily on scriptural sources and makes a spirited attack on pagan cults.
The great masters of the panegyrical sermon are the three Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory of Nazianzus (ca. 329–89), his friend Basil the Great (ca. 330–79), and Basil’s younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 331–95). Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil studied rhetoric and philosophy together at Athens in the 350s. One of their teachers was the pagan Himerius, whose highly artificial declamations and orations survive; another was Prohaeresius, who was a Christian, although his school seems to have differed very little from those of his pagan counterparts.24 All three of the Cappadocians were intimately familiar with classical Greek literature, especially with the works of Plato. All three were masters of Greek prose, Gregory of Nazianzus being the most ornate, Basil the most restrained. Virtually every figure of speech and rhetorical device of composition can be illustrated from their sermons, treatises, and numerous letters; they were also influenced by rhetorical theories of argumentation and arrangement, and probably by theories of memory and delivery as well, though direct evidence is lacking. Yet all three are repeatedly critical of classical rhetoric as something of little importance for the Christian, and none of them made, or even seriously attempted, a synthesis of classical and Christian rhetorical theory to describe their own practice. They were more successful in uniting Greek philosophy with Christian theology.
Forty-four orations by Gregory of Nazianzus are extant.25 A number of these deal with specific occasions in his life or events involving members of his family. Others are doctrinal, such as the sermon on baptism (40) or the five “theological” sermons preached in Constantinople in 380. Two (4 and 5) are invectives against the emperor Julian, who attempted to reestablish paganism, and are interesting for Gregory’s outrage at Julian’s prohibition against Christians teaching classical literature and rhetoric. Eight speeches are encomia showing strong influence of the structure and topics of such works as delivered by sophists of the period or as described in the handbook on epideictic by the rhetorician Menander. Funeral orations for Gregory’s father, his sister Gorgonia, and his brother Caesarius, as well as his encomium for Basil, are especially close to sophistic models. The latter is probably the masterpiece of sophistic Christian oratory, an extraordinary tour de force, replete with subtle variations on familiar topics, figures of speech, rhetorical comparisons, reminiscences of Plato and Greek history and mythology, and an emotional peroration. The following passage shows some of the equivocation, or at least complexity, of Gregory’s feelings about the place of eloquence and pagan learning in Basil’s life:
When he was sufficiently instructed at home, as he was to neglect no form of excellence nor to be surpassed in diligence by the bee that collects what is most useful from every flower, he hastened to the city of Caesarea [in Cappadocia] to attend its schools. I mean this illustrious city of ours, since she was also the guide and mistress of my studies, and not less the metropolis of letters than of the cities which she rules and which have submitted to her power [as provincial capital]. To rob her of her supremacy in letters would be to despoil her of her fairest and most singular distinction. Other cities take pride in other embellishments, either old or new, depending, I think, on their annals or their monuments. This city’s characteristic mark, like the identification marks on arms or on plays, is letters.
What followed, let those tell the story who instructed him and profited by his instruction. Let them tell of his standing in the eyes of his masters and his companions, as he equaled the former and surpassed the latter in every form of learning. Let them tell what glory he attained in a short time in the sight of all, both of the common people and the leaders of the city, exhibiting a learning beyond his years and constancy of character beyond his learning. He was an orator among orators even before the sophist’s chair, a philosopher among philosophers even on questions of philosophical theory. And, what constitutes the highest tribute in the eyes of Christians, he was a priest even before attaining the priesthood. In such wise did all defer to him in everything. With him, eloquence was only an accessory, and he culled from it only what would be helpful for our philosophy, since its power is necessary for the exposition of thought. For a mind incapable of expressions is like the movement of a paralytic. But philosophy was his pursuit, as he strove to break from the world, to unite with God, to gain the things above by means of the things below, and to acquire, through goods which are unstable and pass away, those that are stable and abide.26 (§ 13)
Gregory goes on to describe their years together in Athens, “the home of eloquence, Athens, a city to me, if to anyone, truly golden, patroness of all that is excellent.”
Basil himself is not so outspoken about the glories of eloquence. He delivered several panegyrical sermons, but even in one of these (On Gordius the Martyr 142d–143a) he belittles the rules of encomium that he sometimes employs. As a preacher he is best known for his homilies, especially the Hexahemeron, a series on the six days of creation. A work of considerable interest is a short address, To the Young On How They Should Benefit from Greek Literature.27 This is in the general tradition of Plato’s exclusion of the poets from his ideal state, but it takes a moderate point of view: pagan literature can be usefully read by Christians, but careful choice should be exercised to avoid mythological stories contrary to truth and morality. Portions of the poems of Homer, Hesiod, and Theognis, and Prodicus’s Choice of Heracles are approved. Nothing is said about the study of oratory or prose style.
The most admired Christian orator in Greek is John Chrysostom (“John the Golden-Tongued,” A.D. 347–407), a student of the pagan sophist Libanius and later patriarch of Constantinople. A number of his panegyrics survive, of which seven on Saint Paul are the most famous, but he was most at home in the homily. Even so, the style and mannerisms of classical rhetoric were a part of his nature, and he could not resist flamboyant comparisons, jingles, and parallelisms.28 His most striking homilies are probably the twenty-one entitled On the Statues, delivered in 377, which illustrate his compassion as well as his social responsibility in a time of political crisis. He acknowledges that style can be helpful in relieving the tedium of an audience and in securing variety, and says, “When we have the care of the sick, we must not set before them a meal prepared at haphazard, but a variety of dishes, so that the patient may choose what suits his taste. Thus we should proceed in the spiritual repasts. Since we are weak, the sermon must be varied and embellished; it must contain comparison, proofs, paraphrases, and the like, so that we may select what will profit our soul.”29
The rhetorical practice of Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom, and to a lesser extent Basil and Gregory of Nyssa, goes considerably beyond what they seem to tolerate in theory. The reason for this is partly their education; they were so thoroughly imbued in school exercises with the use of figures of speech and devices of comparison that these had become second nature to them. Partly their audiences are responsible. Chrysostom tried in vain to prevent congregations from applauding in church (see Homilies 30.4 = 60, p. 225 Migne). We need not charge such thoughtful Christians as Gregory or John with pandering to the mob, but they were concerned with moving the hearts of their audience and inspiring their lives; their sermons were usually addressed to sophisticated urban congregations, and the devices of sophistic rhetoric had become the cues to which their audiences responded and by which their purposes could be best accomplished. This trend was a victory for classical rhetoric. Ambitious young Christians now did not hesitate to study in the schools of rhetoric, and as the fourth century advanced, the Christian communities included more and more educated people.
A case in point, and the most classical of fourth-century Christian preachers, was Synesius of Cyrene (ca. 370–413), who became a Christian bishop on the stipulation that he be allowed to keep his wife and to retain his Neoplatonic philosophical belief that human souls existed before birth. Among his works is a striking epideictic speech, On Royalty, delivered to the young emperor Arcadius in 400, urging him to be a ruler in the image of God. Such “royal discourses” were a tradition among sophists. His playful encomium of baldness is also preserved. His treatise called Dion is named for the sophist Dio Chrysostom and starts with him, but becomes an apology for Synesius’s Greek way of life and his interest in philosophy and rhetoric. Intellectually and morally, Synesius was superior to many sophists, but he retained a sense of the traditional culture and kept his independence.30
By the end of the fourth century, leaders in the Greek Church had reached an accord with classical culture that made it possible for some Christians to draw on the rich tradition of Greek philosophical thought and to utilize the forms of classical rhetoric, but no theoretical restatement of a Christian Greek rhetoric was made. Consideration of this subject will be resumed in Chapter 8. In the Latin-speaking West the situation was somewhat different. There was, long before Christianity, some Roman hostility to Greek culture, which never entirely faded away. For example, Gn. Julius Agricola, governor of Britain in the late first century after Christ and the subject of a biography by his son-in-law, Tacitus, always remained grateful to his mother “for preventing him from going more deeply into the study of philosophy than was suitable for a Roman senator” (Tacitus, Agricola 4.4). The teaching of rhetoric had met with initial hostility at Rome in the second and early first centuries B.C., but by the Augustan period rhetoric was entirely acclimatized throughout the Roman Empire. Unlike philosophy, it seemed to be useful, concrete, and manly. This distrust of philosophy and acceptance of rhetoric is often reflected in the Christian Latin writers. In addition, it is a remarkable fact that of the eight greatest Latin Fathers of the Church, five (Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, Lactantius, and Augustine) were professional teachers of rhetoric before they became Christians, while the other three (Ambrose, Hilary, and Jerome) had been thoroughly trained in the rhetorical schools.
Tertullian (ca. A.D. 160–225) had deep distrust of Greek philosophy; it was he who phrased the famous questions “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?” (On Prescription of Heretics 7), but the sentence following these questions, and the context as a whole, shows that what really concerned him was the way philosophical arguments became the basis of heresies or agnosticism. Tertullian wrote with respect of Demosthenes and Cicero (Apologeticus 11 and 15–16), and he never directly attacked rhetoric as such.31 Christians should not teach it; they can and must study it (On Idolotry 10). We have already seen how deeply colored by rhetoric was Tertullian’s own writing.
Cyprian (To Donatus 2), writing in the mid-third century, and Arnobius (Against the Nations 1.58–59), writing late in the third century, both distinguished secular from Christian rhetoric, claiming that in the latter the subject and not the style mattered, although Arnobius regarded syllogisms, enthymemes, and the like as useful to a Christian controversialist. Ambrose (ca. 337–97) anticipated Augustine in finding eloquence in the Scriptures, especially in what he called the “historical” style of Luke’s gospel (On Luke, prologue 1). He was himself an orator of great power, both in the homily form, where he follows the exegetical method of Origen and shows the influence of Basil, and in the panegyrical sermon, such as his funeral orations for the emperors Valentinian II and Theodosius. These are the earliest extant Christian panegyrics in Latin.32
Of all the Fathers, Saint Jerome (ca. 348–420) was the one most torn between a feeling for style or love of eloquence and a belief that the art of rhetoric is a worldly product, at best of no true importance for a Christian and possibly inimical to the Christian life. His greatest achievement was his Latin translation of the Bible, and he says that translations of Scripture should avoid deliberate literary qualities in order to speak more directly to the human race in general than to rhetoricians or philosophers (Epistles 48). Characteristic of Jerome is the story he tells in the long epistle to Eustochium33 in which, imitating Tertullian, he asks, “What has Horace to do with the Psalms, Virgil with the gospels, Cicero with the apostle?” (Epistles 22.29); we ought not to drink both the cup of Christ and that of the devils. Jerome describes how he had tried to cut himself off from pagan learning but could not forego his library. He would fast, but he would then read Cicero. When he read the Old Testament prophets, their style revolted him. He became distraught and ill; preparations were made for his funeral. Suddenly, in a dying condition, he had a vision (22.30) in which he seemed to be caught up to heaven and the judgment seat. He threw himself on the ground and averted his eyes before the heavenly judge, who asked him to state his “condition.” Jerome replied that he was a Christian. “You lie,” came the answer. “You are a Ciceronian, not a Christian; ‘For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’ [Matthew 6:21].” The bystanders prayed for his forgiveness, and Jerome himself promised to mend his ways: “Lord, if I ever have secular books, if I ever read them, I have denied thee.” Like Saint Peter, it is doubtful that he could keep his promise.
Two Latin writers attempted statements of rhetoric in terms that could, perhaps, resolve some of the tensions felt by Christians like Jerome. The earliest of these is Lactantius (ca. 250–320), whose major work was written forty years before Jerome’s birth. Although Lactantius’s literary abilities were appreciated in antiquity, the synthesis he attempted was not widely understood until the Renaissance, when he emerged as a founder of Christian humanism: “the Christian Cicero.”
Lactantius was a North African teacher of rhetoric who acquired fame and was appointed by the emperor Diocletian to teach Latin rhetoric in the Greek-speaking city of Nicomedia in Bithynia, the eastern capital of the empire before the foundation of Constantinople. There he was converted to Christianity and lost his chair under the oppressive Galerius, but later Constantine named him the tutor of his son Crispus. Lactantius is the master of a beautiful Ciceronian prose style and was very familiar with Latin literature and classical philosophy. As a Christian, he saw in philosophy numerous superstitions and errors that needed refutation, but he also saw a reflection of the same divine truth that was more authoritatively revealed in the Bible. It troubled Lactantius that educated pagans would not give serious attention to Christianity because of the illiterate style in which the Scriptures were written and because Christian apologists defended their faith with prophecies and revelations that seemed absurd to many intellectuals. He thus took upon himself the mission of setting forth the teachings of Christianity in a style that would win the respect of the most discriminating readers, with arguments based on evidence in Greek and Latin writers, not solely on that in the Bible. The most important result of this effort was the treatise in seven books entitled Divine Institutes, completed around A.D. 313.34 The time was a crucial one. Constantine had decreed the toleration of Christianity and many people were beginning to give serious attention to the new faith for the first time.
The introductory chapters to the separate books of Divine Institutes contain discussion of Lactantius’s objective and methods, and from these and a few other passages (e.g., 3.13) a philosophical Christian rhetoric emerges. Although Lactantius had probably read Plato, his main sources are the writings of Cicero and the Neoplatonists of his own time, and secondary Latin sources. Lactantius’s basic position is not unlike Aristotle’s: if the truth is defeated, we have only ourselves to blame; if the attention of the audience is once secured, the truth can be demonstrated, and good will prevail. To Lactantius, of course, the truth is divine truth, the Word. He does not reject inspiration, revelation, and miraculous conversion, and he claims (e.g., 6.1.1) the tutelage of the Holy Spirit, but he associates divine intervention in the rhetorical act with the mind’s recognition of truth when effectively presented. The Christian orator thus has much he can do. The passage in which this view is best summed up is the introductory chapter to the third book.
Though a learned, reasonable, and eloquent man, Lactantius was not a powerful thinker. His work probably had the greatest appeal to an audience already favorably disposed to a religion being adopted by the court, but unwilling to put aside everything education and tradition had taught it to admire. Lactantius’s synthesis did not satisfy a Christian like Jerome, who was still troubled by the conflicting claims of Christian and classical learning. A more successful and more widely accepted answer was to be that of Augustine.
Aurelius Augustinus was born 13 November 354 at Thagaste, about two hundred miles southwest of Carthage on the edge of the Numidian desert.35 In the Confessions, completed about 400, he has left a remarkable portrait of his psychological, religious, and intellectual development from birth to middle age. Although Monica, his mother, was a devout Christian and a strong influence upon him, Augustine was thirty years old before he fully accepted Christianity. After elementary studies at Thagaste he was sent to the larger town of Madaura to begin rhetoric. His father, however, wanted more for him and decided to keep him home for a year while money was saved to pay for rhetorical studies in Carthage. These he began in 370 and continued for three years, planning a career as a pleader in the lawcourts (Confessions 3.4.6), but at this point there occurred the first step in what proved eventually to be his conversion to Christianity: “In the usual order of study I came to a book of a certain Cicero, whose tongue almost all admire, but not his heart to the same extent. But there is a book of his containing an exhortation to philosophy and called Hortensius. That book changed my perception and changed my prayers, O Lord, to you” (Confessions 3.4.7). Strangely, given Augustine’s praise of it, the dialogue Hortensius is one of the few works of Cicero that medieval scribes neglected, so it has not survived.
As Augustine goes on to explain, what pleased him in Cicero was the advice to love and search for wisdom, though what gave him pause was the absence of the name of Christ. Under his mother’s influence, it was to Christianity to which he tended to look for “philosophy”; thus he turned, apparently for the first time, to the serious reading of the Scriptures. And he was totally put off. This may be partly the result of the version he read: Augustine’s knowledge of Greek was not very good; Jerome’s translation of the Bible had not yet been made, and Augustine read the Scriptures in an inferior earlier Latin version. But even with a better version of the Bible he probably would have been dissatisfied. The whole object of his education up to this point had been the cultivation of literary taste. What he found in the Bible seemed quite “unworthy to be compared to the dignity of Cicero” (3.5.9). Dissatisfied with Christianity, he turned to Manichaeism, which combined some features of Christianity with a dualism of good and evil, derived from Zoroastrianism. He says (4.1.1) that from his nineteenth to his twenty-eighth year he was led astray and led others astray. What he means is that he continued his association with the Manichaeans and that he supported himself as a teacher of rhetoric, teaching declamation first in Thagaste (4.4.1–7), after 376 in Carthage (4.7.12). He tells only a little about his school (4.2.2–3) but claims he was motivated by a desire to make money and that though he taught how to save the guilty, he did not teach how to condemn the innocent. Cicero had recommended the same principle (De Officiis 2.51).
In 383 Augustine decided to go to Rome and teach rhetoric there. Friends urged him to do so, and he claims he was persuaded, not because of the higher fees and great glory he could earn there, but because student discipline was so much better than in Carthage (5.8.14). About this time he became dissatisfied with Manichaeism and interested in Academic philosophy, by which he means the skeptical tradition found in Cicero’s philosophical works. He spent less than a year in Rome (5.12.22–13.23). Although his school seems to have been successful, and discipline was indeed better than at Carthage, he was not really satisfied with the situation. When the great pagan orator Symmachus was asked to nominate a candidate for the chair of rhetoric at Milan, Augustine applied. Symmachus listened to him declaim and gave him the nomination. Thus Augustine arrived in the city that was the administrative capital of the western empire and far more thoroughly Christianized than either Carthage or Rome at the time. In Milan he taught rhetoric for two academic years (384–86), but he also heard the sermons and enjoyed the friendship of Ambrose, bishop of Milan, and from him learned the method of explaining the Old Testament figuratively, which made it possible for him to accept the Scriptures with full faith.
Augustine’s spiritual and intellectual quest culminated in the summer of 386 with the events in the garden that he describes in the eighth book of the Confessions and that involved the act of will that made him in his own eyes a Christian. One consequence of that conversion was the resignation of his chair of rhetoric, but he resigned quietly, waiting until the fall vacation and alleging poor health as a reason (9.2.2–4 and 9.5.13). With a group of relatives and friends he then withdrew into the country to engage in meditation, study, and conversation, which resulted in a series of philosophical dialogues including Against the Academics, On the Happy Life, and On Order. In the spring of 387 he returned to Milan and was baptized by Ambrose on Easter Sunday. In the following years he went to Ostia, to Rome, to Carthage, and home to Thagaste. In 391 he was ordained a priest at Hippo and in 395 was consecrated bishop there, a position he held until his death in 430.
Augustine’s output of sermons, commentaries, treatises, and letters was enormous and is in large part preserved. Those that are most directly related to rhetoric are reviewed in the following paragraphs.
In the spring of 384, perhaps as preparation for beginning to teach in Milan, Augustine planned a series of handbooks on the liberal arts. He apparently completed the one on grammar, though it does not survive. In the case of the other arts, including rhetoric, he wrote some notes, but only those on dialectic survive. There is a small Latin treatise on rhetoric that is attributed in one manuscript to Augustine; it is of some importance for information about Hermagoras’s stasis theory but is probably not by Augustine.36
The early dialogue On Order is a discussion of divine providence in terms that reminded Augustine of his earlier composition of a panegyric (1.9.27). It culminates in a description of the introductory studies appropriate for those who wish to understand the order of the universe and to live in accordance with God’s law. Knowledge, Augustine says (2.9.26), comes by authority or by reason, and reason embraces an exposition of the seven liberal arts of grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy, all somewhat purified of pagan elements. Dialectic, to be studied before rhetoric, deals with how to teach and how to learn, in which reason reveals its nature, desires, and powers. But ordinary people follow their feelings and habits, and for them to be taught the truth it is necessary not only to make use of logical reasoning, but to arouse emotion. Here is the realm of rhetoric, which is described as a seated allegorical figure with a lap full of charms to scatter to the crowd in order to influence it for its own good (2.13.38). We shall meet a similar allegory in Martianus Capella’s slightly later treatment of the liberal arts. What is said in On Order can be taken as Augustine’s preliminary thoughts in the winter between his conversion and his baptism. It was to be followed by more profound considerations of the role of rhetoric in Christian knowledge.
The dialogue On the Teacher (De Magistro) was finished around 389. From the outset the tone is more religious and Christian than in On Order, but references to Cicero and Virgil still came naturally to Augustine. The basic argument is to deny the possibility of human communication through rational signs (words) without a knowledge of reality (God). Persuasion cannot be accomplished by rhetorical means unless the truth is first known or simultaneously revealed by divine grace.
Augustine wrote many controversial or polemical works intended to refute heresies. His antagonists were at first Manichaeans, later, Donatists, and toward the end of his life, Pelagians. About A.D. 400 he composed a treatise attacking a Donatist bishop named Petilian. (Donatism was an austere Christian sect that required rebaptism of anyone who joined it.) In reply, the grammarian Cresconius took up Petilian’s cause and attacked Augustine. The latter then composed the four books Against Cresconius around 406. Cresconius had not only attacked Augustine’s arguments but had criticized his eloquence and dialectic as unchristian, and it is to this point that Augustine devotes three-fourths of the first book. His position is that neither eloquence nor skill at disputation is un-Christian, which he seeks to prove by numerous scriptural examples, especially those of Jesus and Paul. Eloquence, he says (1.2), is the faculty of speaking or explaining appropriately what we feel. It is to be used when we have perceived truth. The utility of eloquence is a function of the utility of what is being said, and the speaker is comparable to the soldier. We cannot fail to take up arms for the state just because arms are sometimes used against the state. The true disputator seeks first to be sure he is not himself being deceived (1.19), then he tries to use his audience’s knowledge of some of the truth. Although Augustine does not explain here how knowledge of the truth is to be discovered, it is clear from his method that consistency with Scripture is an important test. A Christian may use dialectic and rhetoric, but a Christian bishop must do so. He cannot allow error to continue, and his responsibility is not limited to his own church, but extends to the world around him. As is often the case, Augustine advances his views vigorously and pushes Cresconius hard, but without personal abuse; he is chiefly concerned to show the inconsistency of his opponent’s view and to confront him with dilemmas. For example, if Cresconius is not himself a dialectician, why does he engage in dialectic? If he is, why does he object to dialectic (1.16)? Some of the contents foreshadow the fourth book of On Christian Learning, and in one passage (1.20) there is even allusion to the existence of different kinds of style, a major theme in the later work.
On Christian Learning (De Doctrina Christiana) is Augustine’s major contribution to the history and theory of rhetoric.37 From reference to it in his Retractations (2.4.1) and elsewhere it seems likely that the first two-thirds of the work (through 3.25.35) was written in the early months of 397, not long after he became bishop of Hippo. Before that, he had taught catechumens; as bishop he was expected to preach regularly to a Christian congregation. The rest of the work was completed in 426 or 427. It is thus a fully mature work, and the discussion of rhetoric in it represents Augustine’s views near the end of a lifetime of Christian study and preaching. What he says about Christian rhetoric here is generally in accord with his own practice in homiletic preaching. He does not discuss panegyrical sermons and did not practice Christian epideictic.
In a short prologue, Augustine states that he is writing precepts for treating the Scriptures that will be useful to teachers, and proceeds to a praemunitio, or anticipation of the objections that some may make. One category of objections is that everything that should be known about the obscurities of Scripture will be revealed by divine assistance to the preacher or teacher. Augustine’s answer is that this claim is a form of pride and leads to the extreme position in which one would not go to church nor read the Scriptures at all: “The condition of man would be lowered if God had not wished to have men supply his word to men” (Prologue 6).
Book 1 then begins with the statement that there are two things necessary in the treatment of the Scriptures: discovery of what is to be understood there, and teaching of what has been learned there. The first subject is discussed in Books 1 through 3, the second in Book 4. The subjects correspond respectively to dialectic and rhetoric. In Augustine’s view, all doctrine concerns “things” or “signs” (1.2). A natural object like a stone is a “thing,” but it may also be a “sign” of something else, as when in Genesis 28:11 Jacob places a stone on his head. This distinction becomes the basis of finding separate levels of meaning in the sacred text. Book 1 is devoted to things. Some are to be enjoyed, some to be used, some to be enjoyed and used (1.3). Things to be enjoyed are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, discussed in sections 5 through 21 (as numbered in Robertson’s translation). Things to be used include four kinds of things to be loved: those above us, ourselves, those like us, and those below us. These are discussed in sections 22 to 38. The direction of Augustine’s thought emerges clearly at the end of Book 1 (1.39–40), where he says that the sum and end of the Scriptures is the love of God. The whole temporal dispensation was made that we might know and implement this love, and the basis of all interpretation of Scripture is love: “Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all. Whoever finds a lesson there useful to the building of love, even though he has not said what the author may be shown to have intended in that place, has not been deceived, nor is he lying in any way” (1.40).
Books 2 and 3 are devoted to signs. Signs are natural or conventional; known, unknown, or ambiguous; literal or figurative. God has provided unknown and ambiguous signs “to conquer pride by work and to combat disdain in our minds, to which those things that are easily discovered seem frequently to become worthless” (2.7). That which is sought with difficulty is discovered with more pleasure (2.8). Knowledge is the third of the seven steps to wisdom (2.9–11), and Augustine asks what knowledge is necessary for the Christian teacher, much as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian had considered what knowledge was necessary for the civic orator. Augustine’s speaker needs, first, a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He can thus use those things that are clear to explain those that are not. All teaching involving faith is said openly in the Scriptures, as is that necessary for the Christian life. If we know this, we have a basis for explaining what is obscure (2.14). In subsequent chapters Augustine considers knowledge of languages, numbers, and music.
More delicate is the matter of knowledge of literature and philosophy. Should the Christian study pagan writings? Yes. “We should not think that we ought not to learn literature because Mercury is said to be its inventor” (2.28). Doctrines current among the pagans are said to involve either institutions (2.36–40) or things we perceive (2.41–58), the latter through the body or through reason. Augustine dislikes sophistry and criticizes argument for the sake of argument (2.48), but he thinks that valid inference was instituted by God and then observed by humans (2.50). Definition, division, and partition are part of the order of things (2.50). The Christian has every right to take true ideas from the Platonists and transform them as “Egyptian gold” (2.60). Augustine suggests that it would be useful to have an index of the various signs used in the Scriptures, a suggestion that was taken up by later students and led to the collections of distinctiones current in the Middle Ages.38
Book 3 deals with ambiguous signs. When literal interpretation causes ambiguity, the rule of faith as found “in the more open places of the Scriptures and in the authority of the Church” (3.2) should be consulted. There is considerable danger in too literal interpretations (3.9): “The letter killeth, but the spirit quickened,” as Paul said (2 Corinthians 3:6). If an admonition in Scripture is to something useful or good, it is not figurative; if it is to something criminal or vicious it must be figurative (3.24). Figurative signs do not have the same meaning in all passages (3.35); the context must be judged. Augustine is not concerned that something may be read into a passage that the author did not intend (3.39). What is important is the intent of God, who foresaw whatever is found in the passage and more. The rule of faith and the context are the best guides to the interpretations of Scripture. In the last resort, reason can also be used, but it is dangerous (3.39). Book 3 ends (42–56) with a critique of the “Rules” of Tyconius. These are categories of figurative language that resemble topics, some more than others. For example, the third rule, “of promises and the law,” deals with matters of the spirit and the letter, and the fourth rule with matters of species and genus.
Having completed his discussion of the discovery of the meaning of Scripture, Augustine turns in Book 4 to the teaching of what has been discovered.39 This fourth book falls into six parts: a brief introduction (§§ 1–5), a description of Christian eloquence (§§ 6–26), an examination of the duties of the orator applied to Scripture and preaching (§§ 27–33), a similar examination of the three kinds of style (§§ 33–58), a discussion of ethos (§§ 59–63), and a conclusion (§ 64).
Augustine does not set out all the rules of rhetoric. They are useful, he says (4.2), but should be learned elsewhere. Yet he summarizes many of them in one characteristic passage:
Who would dare to say that truth should stand in the person of its defenders unarmed against lying, so that they who wish to urge falsehoods may know how to make their listeners benevolent or attentive or docile in their presentation [i.e., in the exordium], while the defenders of truth are ignorant of that art? Should they speak briefly, clearly, and plausibly [in the narration], while the defenders of truth speak so that they tire their listeners, make themselves difficult to understand and what they say dubious? Should they oppose the truth with fallacious arguments and assert falsehoods [in the proof], while the defenders of truth have no ability either to defend the truth or to oppose the false? Should they, urging the minds of their listeners into error, ardently exhort them, moving them by speech so that they terrify, sadden, and exhilarate them [in the peroration], while the defenders of truth are sluggish, cold, and somnolent? Who is so foolish as to think this to be wisdom? While the faculty of eloquence, which is of great value in urging either evil or justice, is in itself indifferent, why should it not be obtained for the uses of the good in the service of truth if the evil usurp it for the winning of perverse and vain causes in defense of iniquity and error? (4.3)
Rhetoric may be studied by the young and by those not engaged in something more important, Augustine continues, but the Christian speaker must beware of forgetting what should be said while considering the artistry of the discourse (4.4). In fact, study of rules is not necessary at all, for eloquence can be learned from imitation of eloquent models (4.5). Imitation had, of course, been a major pedagogical tool of classical rhetoricians, based on a canon of models such as those discussed in Quintilian 10.1. Augustine would replace that canon with a new canon of the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church.
The description of Christian eloquence (4.6–26) begins with the statement that the expositor and teacher of the Scriptures should teach the good and extirpate the bad. There is thus both a positive and a negative form, as there was in the three species of civic oratory. Augustine anticipates here his later discussion of the duties of the orator, saying that the Christian teacher should “conciliate those who are opposed, arouse those who are remiss, and teach those ignorant of his subject” (4.6). In the subsequent discussion, he finds many examples of classical rhetorical techniques in writings of Paul and the Old Testament book of Amos, including climax, periodic sentences, and tropes. But he concludes of Amos, “A good listener warms to it not so much by diligently analyzing it as by pronouncing it energetically. For these words were not devised by human industry, but were poured forth from the divine mind both wisely and eloquently, not in such a way that wisdom was directed toward eloquence, but in such a way that eloquence did not abandon wisdom” (4.21). As to the virtues of style as seen in the Scriptures or practiced by a Christian, clarity is the only real consideration (4.23), though appropriateness was noted earlier (4.9). Ornamentation and grammatical correctness, the two other traditional virtues of style, are not of great importance to Augustine (4.24).
Next (4.27–33) comes consideration of the three duties of the orator—to teach, to delight, and to move—which Cicero had developed out of the Aristotelian modes of proof. To teach is, of course, the most important, but Augustine holds that it is necessary to delight listeners in order to retain them as listeners and to move them in order to impel them to do what is right. Moving is equated with persuasion (4.27). Moreover, “When that which is taught must be put into practice and is taught for that reason, the truth of what is said is acknowledged in vain and the eloquence of the discourse pleases in vain unless that which is learned is implemented in action” (4.29). Persuasion is thus not left entirely to God. Ultimately, the orator needs both expertise and divine guidance: “He who would both know and teach should learn everything which should be taught and acquire a skill in speaking appropriate to an ecclesiastic, but at the time of the speech itself he should think what the Lord says more suitable to good thought” (4.32). And then Augustine quotes the familiar passage from Matthew (10:19–20): “For it is not you that speak, but the spirit of your father that speaketh in you.”
In sections 33 through 58 Augustine ties the three duties of the orator to the three kinds of style, as Cicero had done in The Orator: teaching to the plain style, delighting to the middle style, and moving to the grand style. Examples of each are given, both from the Scriptures and from the Fathers (Cyprian and Ambrose). The three styles should be mingled, “but the whole speech is said to be in that style which is used most in it” (4.51). He concludes, “It is the universal office of eloquence in any of these styles to speak in a manner leading to persuasion; and the end of eloquence is to persuade of that which you are speaking. In any of these three styles if an eloquent speaker speaks in a manner suitable to persuasion, but without persuasion the end of eloquence has not been attained” (4.55).
Addressing the fifth topic, character (4.59–63), Augustine points out that the life of the speaker as known to the listeners has greater weight than any grandness of eloquence. He thus revives ethos as a major factor in rhetoric, though not ethos as projected in a speech, which is what Aristotle discussed. That quality had been transmuted by Cicero into the second duty of the orator, to delight. To Augustine, ethos is Christian works, the life of the teacher, and the extent to which it accords with his teaching, as known to the audience. Ethos thus becomes moral authority. Under certain circumstances, however, a bad man can become a good orator. Quintilian would have been surprised. Augustine recognizes that there may be someone who can speak well but cannot think of anything to say. Such a preacher can take eloquent sermons composed by another and deliver them to his congregation, as was often done in the following centuries. Thus, “it may happen that an evil and wicked man may compose a sermon in which truth is preached which is spoken by another not wicked but good. And when this is done, the wicked man hands down to another what is not his own, and the good man accepts what is his from another” (4.62). This doctrine, original with Augustine, has reappeared in modern criticism in the view that the value of a work of art is not dependent on the morality of the author.
Several observations may be made about On Christian Teaching as a whole. First, it is not concerned with either missionary preaching or panegyrical preaching. What Augustine discusses is teaching those already drawn to Christianity who are undertaking instruction preparatory to baptism (i.e., catechumens) and homiletic preaching to a Christian congregation in church. The function of Christian eloquence in these contexts is to deepen understanding and to convert belief into works. Now that persecution was over and Christianity was the established religion of the state, there were many Christians who lacked the intensity and dedication of those in earlier times. There was in Augustine’s view also the ever-present danger that some Christians might be attracted by the false doctrines of heretical sects.
Second, Christian rhetoric as viewed by Augustine is popular rhetoric. Christianity is addressed to all sorts and conditions of life, and the Christian teacher or preacher should be able to instruct and move the illiterate and unlearned as well as the sophisticated and erudite. The importance of rhetoric was surely especially evident to Augustine because of his background as a rhetorician.40
Third, Augustine deals with two related matters: in Books 1, 2, and 3 with discovery of the meaning of the Scriptures, in Book 4 with exposition of that meaning. As suggested earlier, these correspond to dialectic and rhetoric in classical education. In religious studies they are regularly given the names of hermeneutics and homiletics, respectively, and are the arts of exegesis and of preaching.
Fourth, rhetorical invention in Christian rhetoric as described by Augustine is limited to the exposition of the Scriptures and their meaning for the Christian life, especially for the cultivation of the love of God and of one’s neighbor. Proof in Christian rhetoric derives from the authoritative utterances in the sacred texts and from the moral authority of the speaker, not from argumentation. In practice, the testimony of witnesses and examples of the saints were also often important means of persuasion, but these are not discussed here. Augustine engaged in argumentation with other Christians on matters of doctrine, but his views of rhetoric and preaching left open to dialectic the whole area of religious disputation, which was much cultivated in later centuries.
Fifth, matters of style play a greater role than does invention in Augustine’s account of Christian rhetoric. The fourth book of On Christian Learning helped to canonize the view that rhetoric is largely a matter of style. Even Christian exegesis is more strongly influenced by the factor of style than by reasoning, since much exegesis involves the interpretation of figurative signs. Peter Brown has pointed out how characteristic this was of a writer of late antiquity: “No one else would have made such a cult of veiling his meaning. Such a man lived among fellow-connoisseurs, who had been steeped too long in too few books. He no longer needed to be explicit; only hidden meanings, rare and difficult words and elaborate circumlocutions, could save his readers from boredom, from fastidium, from the loss of interest in the obvious that afflicts the overcultured man. He would believe . . . that the sheer difficulty of a work of literature made it more valuable.”41
Sixth, although Christian rhetoric as described by Augustine has a distinct subject matter, he does not distinguish it as an art from secular rhetoric. It is characteristic of him to strip secular institutions and arts of their pagan associations. In The City of God, even the Roman Empire is so treated, and Augustine’s writings on grammar, dialectic, music, rhetoric, and other subjects equally show his effort to make them religiously neutral, capable of utilization by a Christian for Christian purposes.42
Seventh, On Christian Learning has sometimes been viewed as a repudiation of the sophistic tradition.43 This is only partially true. In common with most other Christians and with philosophically minded pagans, Augustine rejected empty bombast and trivial forms of declamation practiced in rhetorical schools in the late empire. On the other hand, certain features of sophistic are retained, including emphasis on the function of the orator as well as on imitation and style. Augustine’s account of rhetoric belongs largely in what we have called the technical tradition of the handbooks, with some features of the sophistic tradition, and a demand for truth characteristic of the philosophical tradition.
Finally, On Christian Learning exemplifies two sound critical principles that had been more appreciated by the rhetoricians than by grammarians and dialecticians: interpretation should be based not only on an understanding of the context in which a word or passage occurs but also on the overall meaning or structure of the work in which it occurs. Christianity, with its consciousness of its message, would have everything consistent with one theme.
On Christian Learning proved to be an authoritative statement of Christian rhetoric for many medieval writers. Among others, Hrabanus Maurus, Thomas Aquinas, Alan of Lille, Humbert of Romans, Robert of Basevorn, Hugh of Saint Victor, and Peter Lombard drew on it, and it continued to be influential later, for example, on Fénelon. Augustine’s defense of scriptural obscurity became a part of poetic theory from Petrarch to the sixteenth century. Augustine had made it possible for Christians to appreciate and teach eloquence without associating it with paganism, and in so doing permanently enriched Christian literature and criticism.