Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) was raised as a Christian by his mother, Monica, in northern Africa, but gave up his religion when he went to school in Carthage, near present-day Tunis. As a student, he chose the conventional route to a successful career—the study of rhetoric—and indulged in a carefree social life, fathering a son out of wedlock. These events and his youthful conversion to Manichaeanism are recounted in his Confessions. Moving to Rome in 383, he became a successful master, or teacher, of rhetoric, and went to Milan in 384 to assume an imperial appointment to teach rhetoric. Despite this success in his secular career, he fell into great anxiety and mental unrest over the next two years. Growing doubts about Manichaeanism were heightened by studies of Platonism, Stoicism, and Skepticism and by the fervent preaching of Bishop Ambrose of Milan. The result was that Augustine had a conversion experience and was baptized as a Christian in 387. Returning to his birthplace, he formed a monastic community with a number of friends; and in 391, during a visit to the city of Hippo in present-day Algeria, he reluctantly agreed to be ordained as a priest to serve the Christians there. Four years later he was consecrated Bishop of Hippo and remained in this office until his death during the siege of the city by the Vandals.
Selection #7 is drawn from De Doctrina Christiana, which is variously translated as “On Christian Learning,” “On Christian Education,” or “On Christian Teaching.” Less studied today than his Confessions or his explicitly theological works, Augustine’s On Christian Learning became during the middle ages the most important and widely cited authority on behalf of the Christian appropriation of pagan culture and the liberal arts. Some even maintain that the Puritan’s first curriculum of Harvard College was “directly or indirectly derived from St. Augustine’s On Christian Learning,”4 although others have questioned its influence on later programs of study and argued that the purpose and audience of the work are uncertain.5 Nevertheless, scholars still affirm that Augustine’s “program of the liberal arts . . . is the cardinal theme of the work and . . . represents its central importance for the history of Christian thought.”6
The background of this treatise lies in the cultural conflict between Christians and educated pagans in the Roman Empire, outlined above. In 396 Augustine addressed that controversy when writing the first three books of On Christian Learning, which defend pagan learning as necessary for Biblical hermeneutics or “discovery.” This defense involves the claim that classical learning was not invented by pagans, but discovered in the divinely created nature of things. In these three books, Augustine was elaborating the view, first made by Clement of Alexandria, that the liberal arts and secular philosophy are gifts of God.7
Returning to On Christian Learning in 426, Augustine completed Book IV, addressing primarily the role of rhetoric—the art of preaching and teaching what one has discovered—which crowned the liberal arts both in his own education and in that of leading Roman citizens. As with the other liberal arts, he justified the study of rhetoric for Christians not only by his analysis, but also by quoting the works of Vergil and Cicero, the leading figures of Roman letters anathematized by Christian rigorists. In this fashion, Augustine adopted the forms of classical erudition, thus legitimating their use by other Christians, at the same time that he met pagan critics on their own ground. He also implied, as argued in the City of God, that Christianity had not caused the decline of the empire. Rather, pride and love of praise—the antithesis of the Christian virtue of humility—had rotted out the civilization. At the same time, he admonished Christians that their faith and classical culture shared certain values, and for this reason the latter could not be completely condemned. Augustine in this way laid the foundation for the accommodation between Christianity and liberal education.
[43] With reference to the usefulness of history, if I may omit the Greeks, what a question our Ambrose solved after the calumnies of the readers and admirers of Plato, who dared to say that all the lessons of our Lord Jesus Christ, which they were forced to admire and to teach, were learned from the writings of Plato, since it cannot be denied that Plato lived long before the advent of the Lord! Did not the famous bishop, when he had considered the history of the pagans and found that Plato had traveled in Egypt during the time of Jeremiah, show that Plato had probably been introduced to our literature by Jeremiah so that he was able to teach or to write doctrines that are justly commended? Pythagoras himself did not live before the literature of the Hebrew nation, in which the cult of one God took its origin and from which Our Lord came “according to the flesh” [Romans 9: 5], was written. And from the disciples of Pythagoras these men claim that Plato learned theology. Thus from a consideration of times it becomes more credible that the Platonists took from our literature whatever they said that is good and truthful than that Our Lord Jesus Christ learned from them. To believe the latter view is the utmost madness. . . .9
[48] There remain those [arts]10 which do not pertain to the corporal senses but to the reason, where the sciences of disputation and number hold sway.11 The science of disputation is of great value for understanding and solving all sorts of questions that appear in sacred literature. However, in this connection the love of controversy is to be avoided, as well as a certain puerile ostentation in deceiving an adversary.12 There are, moreover, many false conclusions of the reasoning process called sophisms, and frequently they so imitate true conclusions that they mislead not only those who are slow but also the ingenious when they do not pay close attention. For example, a man holding a discussion with another submits the proposition: “What I am, you are not.” The other, because it is true in part, or because the speaker is deceitful and he is simple, agrees. Then the first adds, “I am a man.” When this too is agreed upon, he concludes, saying, “Therefore you are not a man.” As I see it, the Scripture condemns this kind of captious conclusion in that place where it is said, “He that speaketh sophistically is hateful.” [Ecclesiastes 37: 23] At times a discourse which is not captious, but which is more abundant that is consistent with gravity, being inflated with verbal ornament, is also called sophistical.
[49] There are also valid processes of reasoning having false conclusions which follow from the error of the disputant. An error of this kind may be led to its conclusions by a good and learned man so that the disputant, being ashamed of them, relinquishes his error. For if he maintains it, he will also be forced to maintain conclusions which he himself condemns. . . . Since [valid] inferences may be made concerning false as well as true propositions, it is easy to learn the nature of valid inference even in schools which are outside of the Church. But the truth of propositions is a matter to be discovered in the sacred books of the Church.13
[50] However, the truth of valid inference was not instituted by men; rather it was observed by men and set down that they might learn to teach it. For it is perpetually instituted by God in the reasonable order of things. Thus the person who narrates the order of events in time does not compose that order himself; and he who shows the location of places or the natures of animals, plants, or minerals does not discuss things instituted by men; and he who shows the location of places or the natures of animals, plants, or minerals does not discuss things instituted by men; and he who describes the stars or their motions does not describe anything instituted by himself or by other men. In the same way, he who describes the stars or their motions does not describe anything instituted by himself or by other men. In the same way, he who says, “When a consequent is false, it is necessary that the antecedent upon which it is based be false also,” speaks very truly; but he does not arrange matters so that they are this way. Rather, he simply points out an existing truth. . . . The principle that if the consequent is false the antecedent must also be false was not instituted by men, but discovered. And this rule applies to the validity of inferences, not to the truth of propositions. . . .
[52] In this way it is one thing to know the rules of valid inference, another thing to know the truth of propositions. Concerning inferences, one learns what is consequent, what is inconsequent, and what is incompatible. It is logical that “If one is an orator, he is a man”; it is illogical that “If one is a man, he is an orator”; and the parts of “If one is a man, he is a quadruped” are incompatible. In these instances, the inferences themselves are judged. Concerning the truth of propositions, however, the rules of inference are not relevant and the propositions are to be considered in themselves. But when true and certain propositions are joined by valid inferences to propositions we are not sure about, the latter, also, necessarily become certain. There are those who boast when they have learned the rules of valid inference as if they had learned the truth of propositions. And on the other hand, there are some who know many true propositions but think ill of themselves because they do not know the rules of inference. But he who knows that there is a resurrection of the dead is better than another who knows that it follows from the proposition that there is no resurrection of the dead that “then Christ is not risen.” . . .
[54] There are, moreover, certain precepts for a more copious discourse which make up what are called the rules of eloquence, and these are very true, even though they may be used to make falsehoods persuasive.14 Since they can be used in connection with true principles as well as with false, they are not themselves culpable, but the perversity of ill using them is culpable. Men did not themselves institute the fact that an expression of charity conciliates an audience, or the fact that it is easy to understand a brief and open account of events, or that the variety of a discourse keeps the auditors attentive and without fatigue. There are other similar principles which may be employed either in false or in true causes, but which are themselves true in so far as they cause things to be known or to be believed, or move men’s minds either to seek or to avoid something. And these are rather discovered than instituted.15
[55] But when these precepts are learned they are to be applied more in expressing those things which are understood than in the pursuit of understanding. However, a knowledge of inference, definition, and division aids the understanding a great deal, provided that men do not make the mistake of thinking that they have learned the truth of the blessed life when they have learned them. Moreover, it frequently happens that men more easily learn the things themselves on account of which these principles are learned than the very knotty and spiny precepts of these disciplines. It is as if one should wish to give rules for walking and admonishes that the rear foot is not to be raised until the first foot is put down, and then goes on to describe in detail how the hinges of the joints and knees are to be moved. He speaks truly, nor is it possible to walk in any other way. Yet men more easily do these things when they walk than pay attention to them while they are doing them or understand them when they are described. And those who cannot walk care about the rules much less, since they cannot try them by experience. In the same way an ingenious person more easily discerns a false conclusion than he learns the rules governing it. And a stupid person who does not discern it is much less apt to understand the rules.16 And in all of these things the semblances of truth more frequently delight us than prove themselves helpful to us in disputing or judging. They make men’s discernment more alert, but they may also make men malign and proud so that they love to deceive with specious arguments and questions these things and therefore place themselves above good and innocent people.
[56] It is perfectly clear to the most stupid person that the science of numbers was not instituted by men, but rather investigated and discovered. Vergil did not wish to have the first syllable of Italia short, as the ancients pronounced it, and it was made long.17 But no one could in this fashion because of his personal desire arrange matters so that three threes are not nine, or do not geometrically produce a square figure, or are not the triple of the ternary, or are not one and a half times six, or are evenly divisible by two when odd numbers cannot be so divided. Whether they are considered in themselves or applied to the laws of figures, or of sound, or of some other motion, numbers have immutable rules18 not instituted by men but discovered through the sagacity of the more ingenious.
[57] But whoever delights in these things in such a way that he boasts among the unlearned, and does not seek to learn the source of the truths which he has somehow perceived and to know whence those things are not only true but immutable which he has seen to be immutable, and thus, arising from corporal appearances to the human mind, when he finds this to be mutable since it is now learned and now unlearned, does not come to understand that it is placed between immutable things above it and other mutable things below it, and so does not turn all his knowledge toward the praise and love of one God from whom he knows that everything is derived—this man may seem to be learned. But he is in no way wise.
[58] Thus it seems to me that studious and intelligent youths who fear God and seek the blessed life . . . should not neglect those human institutions helpful to social intercourse in the necessary pursuits of life. Among other teachings to be found among the pagans, aside from the history of things both past and present, teachings which concern the corporal senses, including the experience and theory of the useful mechanical arts, and the sciences of disputation and of numbers, I consider nothing to be useful. And in all of these, the maxim is to be observed, “Nothing in excess.” And this is especially true with reference to those arts pertaining to the corporal senses, since they are limited by times and places. . . .
[60] If those who are called philosophers, especially the Platonists, have said things which are indeed true and are well accommodated to our faith, they should not be feared;19 rather, what they have said should be taken from them as from unjust possessors and converted to our use. Just as the Egyptians had not only idols and grave burdens which the people of Israel detested and avoided, so also they had vases and ornaments of gold and silver and clothing which the Israelites took with them secretly when they fled, as if to put them to a better use. They did not do this on their own authority but at God’s commandment, while the Egyptians unwittingly supplied them with things which they themselves did not use well. [Exodus 3: 22, 11: 2, 12: 35] In the same way all the teaching of the pagans contain not only simulated and superstitious imaginings and grave burdens of unnecessary labor, which each one of us leaving the society of pagans under the leadership of Christ ought to abominate and avoid, but also liberal disciplines more suited to the uses of truth, and some most useful precepts concerning morals. Even some truths concerning the worship of one God are discovered among them. These are, as it were, their gold and silver, which they did not institute themselves but dug up from certain mines of divine Providence, which is everywhere infused, and perversely and injuriously abused in the worship of demons. When the Christian separates himself in spirit from their miserable society, he should take this treasure with him for the just use of teaching the gospel. . . .
[1] This work of ours entitled On Christian Learning was at the beginning divided into two parts. For after the Prologue in which I replied to those who would criticize it, I wrote, “There are two things necessary to the treatment of the Scriptures: a way of discovering those things which are to be understood, and a way of teaching what we have learned. We shall speak first of discovery and second of teaching.” Since we have already said much concerning discovery and devoted three books to that one part, with the help of God we shall say a few things concerning teaching, so that, if possible, we shall conclude everything with one book and thus complete the whole work in four books. . . .20
[3] For since by means of the art of rhetoric both truth and falsehood are urged, 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, while the defenders of truth are ignorant of that art? Should they speak briefly, clearly, and plausibly while the defenders of truth speak so that they tire their listeners, make themselves difficult to understand and what they have to say dubious? Should they oppose the truth with fallacious arguments and assert falsehoods, 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, 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] But whatever observations and rules concerning this matter there may be, in accordance with which one acquires through exercise and habit a most skillful use of vocabulary and plentiful verbal ornaments, are established by what is called eloquence or oratory. Those who are able to do so quickly, having set aside an appropriate period of time, should learn them at a proper and convenient age outside of these writings of mine. For the masters of Roman eloquence themselves did not hesitate to say that, unless one can learn this art quickly, he can hardly learn it at all. Why should we inquire whether this is true? For even if these rules can sometimes be learned by those who are slow, we do not hold them to be of such importance that we would wish mature and grave men to spend their time learning them. It is enough that they be the concern of youths; nor should they concern all of those whom we wish to educate for the utility of the Church, but only those who are not pursuing some more urgent study, or one which obviously ought to take precedence over this one.
For those with acute and eager minds more readily learn eloquence by reading and hearing the eloquent than by following the rules of eloquence.21 There is no lack of ecclesiastical literature, including that outside of the canon established in a place of secure authority, which, if read by a capable man, even though he is interested more in what is said than in the eloquence with which it is said, will imbue him with that eloquence while he is studying. And he will learn eloquence especially if he gains practice by writing, dictating, or speaking what he has learned according to the rule of piety and faith. But if capacity of this kind to learn eloquence is lacking, the rules of rhetoric will not be understood, nor will it help any if they are in some small measure understood after great labor. Even those who have learned these rules and speak fluently and eloquently cannot be aware of the fact that they are applying them while they are speaking unless they are discussing the rules themselves; indeed, I think that there is hardly a single eloquent man who can both speak well and think of the rules of eloquence while he is speaking. And we should beware lest what should be said escape us while we are thinking of the artistry of the discourse. Moreover, in the speeches and saying of the eloquent, the precepts of eloquence are found to have been fulfilled, although the speakers did not think of them in order to be eloquent or while they were being eloquent, and they were eloquent whether they had learned the rules or never come in contact with them. They fulfilled them because they were eloquent; they did not apply them that they might be eloquent. . . .
[6] Thus the expositor and teacher of the Divine Scripture, the defender of right faith and the enemy of error, should both teach the good and extirpate the evil.22 And in this labor of words, he should conciliate those who are opposed, arouse those who are remiss, and teach those ignorant of his subject what is occurring and what they should expect. But when he has either found his listeners to be benevolent, attentive, and docile, or has caused them to be so, other aims are to be carried out as the cause requires. If those who hear are to be taught, exposition must be composed, if it is needed, that they may become acquainted with the subject at hand. In order that those things which are doubtful may be made certain, they must be reasoned out with the use of evidence. But if those who hear are to be moved rather than taught, so that they may not be sluggish in putting what they know into practice and so that they may fully accept those things which they acknowledge to be true, there is need for greater powers of speaking. Here entreaties and reproofs, exhortations and rebukes, and whatever other devices are necessary to move minds must be used. . . .
But since some do these things dully, unevenly, and coldly, while others do them acutely, ornately, and vehemently, he should approach this work about which we are speaking who can dispute or speak wisely, even though he cannot do so eloquently, so that he may be of benefit to his hearers, even though he benefits them less than he would if he could also speak eloquently. But he who is foolish and abounds in eloquence is the more to be avoided the more he delights his auditor with those things to which it is useless to listen so that he thinks that because he hears a thing said eloquently it is true. This lesson, moreover, did not escape those who thought to teach the art or rhetoric. They granted that “wisdom without eloquence is of small benefit to states; but eloquence without wisdom is often extremely injurious and profits no one.”23 If those who taught the rules of eloquence, in the very books in which they did so, were forced by the power of truth to confess this, being ignorant of that true wisdom which descends supernal from the Father of Lights, how much more ought we, who are the sons and ministers of this wisdom, to think in no other way? . . .
[27] Therefore a certain eloquent man said, and said truly, that he who is eloquent should speak in such a way that he teaches, delights, and moves. Then he added, “To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.”24 Of the three, that which is given first place, that is, the necessity of teaching, resides in the things which we have to say, the other two in the manner in which we say it. . . .
[28] But if they still do not know this, instruction should come before persuasion. And perhaps when the necessary things are learned, they may be so moved by a knowledge of them that it is not necessary to move them further by greater powers of eloquence. But when it is necessary, it is to be done, and it is necessary when they know what should be done but do not do it. And for this reason teaching is a necessity. But men may act and still not act in accordance with what they know. But who would tell them to do something in accordance with what they do not know? And therefore persuasion is not a necessity because it need not always be applied if the listener consents through teaching and even through delight also. But it is also true that persuasion is victory, for people may be taught and pleased and still not consent. And of what use are the first two if the third does not follow? But delight is not a necessity either. . . .
[29] It is necessary therefore for the ecclesiastical orator, when he urges that something be done, not only to teach that he may instruct and to please that he may hold attention, but also to persuade that he may be victorious.25 For it now remains for that man, in whom the demonstration of truth, even when suavity of diction was added, did not move to consent, to be persuaded by the heights of eloquence . . .
[34] He who seeks to teach in speech what is good, spurning none of these three things, that is, to teach, to delight, and to persuade, should pray and strive that he be heard intelligently, willingly and obediently. When he does this well and properly, he can justly be called eloquent, even though he fails to win the assent of his audience. To these three things—that he should teach, delight, and persuade—the author of Roman eloquence himself seems to have wished to relate three other things when he said, “He therefore will be eloquent who can speak of small things in a subdued manner, of moderate things in a temperate manner, and of grand things in a grand manner.”26 It is as though he had added these to the three mentioned previously and said, “He is therefore eloquent who in order to teach, can speak of small things in a subdued manner, and in order to please, can speak of moderate things in a temperate manner, and in order to persuade, can speak of great things in a grand manner.”