On Christian Doctrine 1.40–2.14

Therefore, when anyone has learned that “the end of the commandment is love, from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned,” and is ready to refer all understanding of the divine Scriptures to these three, let him approach the handling of those books without anxiety. For when he said “love,” he added “from a pure heart,” so that nothing is loved but what is to be loved. He joined “a good conscience” because of hope; for one who has the scruple of a bad conscience despairs of reaching what he believes and loves. Third, he says, “and faith unfeigned.” For if our faith is free of falsehood, then we do not love what is not to be loved, and by living rightly we hope for that in which our hope can in no way be deceived. I have wished, then, to say about the things contained in the faith as much as I thought sufficient for the present, because much has already been said in other volumes, whether by others or by us. Let this, then, be the limit of this book. The rest, about signs, we shall discuss as far as the Lord grants.

When I was writing about things, I began by warning that no one should attend in them to anything but what they are, and not to anything else they may signify besides themselves; so now, in discussing signs, I say in turn that no one should attend in them to what they are, but rather to the fact that they are signs, that is, to what they signify. For a sign is a thing which, besides the impression it makes on the senses, causes something else to come into the mind from itself: as when we see a footprint, we think that the animal whose footprint it is has passed by; when we see smoke, we know that there is fire beneath; when we hear the cry of a living creature, we perceive the feeling in its mind; and when the trumpet sounds, soldiers know that they must advance or retreat, or do whatever else the battle requires.

Of signs, then, some are natural, others given. Natural signs are those which, without any intention or desire of signifying, make something else besides themselves known from themselves, as smoke signifies fire. For it does not do so wishing to signify; but by observing and noting things we have experienced, we know that there is fire beneath, even if only smoke appears. The footprint of a passing animal also belongs to this kind; and the face of someone angry or sad signifies the feeling of his mind, even without any intention on the part of the one who is angry or sad; and so with any other motion of the mind that is betrayed by the face as its index, even when we are not trying to betray it. But it is not our purpose now to discuss this whole kind. Yet since it came into our division, it could not be passed over entirely; and let it suffice to have noted it so far.

Given signs are those which living beings give one another to show, as far as they can, the motions of their minds, or whatever they have sensed or understood. Nor have we any reason for signifying, that is, for giving a sign, except to bring out and transfer into another's mind what the one who gives the sign has in his own mind. It is this kind of signs, then, so far as it concerns human beings, that we have decided to consider and treat; because even the signs given by God, which are contained in the holy Scriptures, have been made known to us through the human beings who wrote them. Animals too have certain signs among themselves by which they show the desire of their minds. For the cock, when he finds food, gives the hen a vocal sign to run to him; the male dove calls the female with cooing, or is called by her in turn; and many things of this kind are commonly observed. Whether these, like a face or the cry of someone in pain, follow the motion of the mind without the intention of signifying, or are truly given in order to signify, is another question and does not belong to the matter in hand; we remove that part from this work as unnecessary.

Of the signs, then, by which human beings communicate their thoughts to one another, some belong to the sense of sight, most to that of hearing, very few to the other senses. For when we nod, we give a sign only to the eyes of the person we wish to make a sharer in our will by this sign. And some signify a great deal by movements of the hands; actors give certain signs to those who understand by movements of all their limbs, and as it were talk with their eyes; and military standards and dragon banners convey the will of the commanders through the eyes. And all these are, so to speak, visible words. Those that belong to the ears, as I said, are more numerous, chiefly in words. For the trumpet, the flute, and the lyre often give a sound that is not only pleasant but also meaningful. But all these signs are very few compared with words. For words have gained absolute preeminence among human beings for signifying whatever is conceived in the mind, if anyone wishes to express it. For the Lord too gave a sign by the odor of the ointment with which his feet were anointed; and by the sacrament of his body and blood, which he tasted beforehand, he signified what he wished; and when the woman was healed by touching the fringe of his garment, it signifies something; but the countless multitude of signs by which human beings express their thoughts consists in words. For all those signs whose kinds I have briefly touched on I could express in words; but words I could in no way express by those signs.

But because words pass away as soon as they have struck the air, and last no longer than they sound, signs of words were established by means of letters. So sounds are shown to the eyes, not in themselves but through certain signs of their own. These signs, then, could not be common to all nations, because of a certain sin of human discord, when each grasps at preeminence for himself. A sign of that pride is the tower built up toward heaven, where ungodly men deserved to have not only discordant minds but also discordant voices.

So it came about that even the divine Scripture, by which such great diseases of human wills are relieved, set out from one language, in which it could conveniently be spread through the whole world, and, spread far and wide through the various languages of translators, became known to the nations for their salvation. Those who read it desire nothing else than to find the thoughts and will of those by whom it was written, and through them the will of God, according to which we believe such men spoke.

But those who read rashly are deceived by many and manifold obscurities and ambiguities, taking one meaning for another; and in some places they cannot find even a false guess, so thick is the darkness some sayings spread over them. I do not doubt that all this was provided by God, to tame pride by labor and to rescue the understanding from disdain, since things easily searched out usually seem cheap to it. For what is it, I ask, that makes this less delightful to the hearer if someone says that there are holy and perfect men, by whose life and conduct the Church of Christ cuts off those who come to her from every kind of superstition and, by their imitation of the good, somehow incorporates them into herself; good, faithful, and true servants of God who, laying down the burdens of the world, have come to the holy washing of baptism, and, rising from it, by the conception of the Holy Spirit bear the fruit of a twofold love, that is, of God and of neighbor: what is it, then, that makes this less delightful if someone says it, than if he expounds to the same effect that passage of the Song of Songs where it is said to the Church, praised as a beautiful woman, “Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes coming up from the washing, all of which bear twins, and there is not a barren one among them”? Does a person learn anything different from when he heard it in the plainest words without the help of this comparison? And yet somehow I contemplate the saints with more pleasure when I see them as the teeth of the Church, cutting men off from their errors and, once their hardness is softened, transferring them into her body, as if bitten off and chewed. And I recognize with the greatest delight the shorn sheep, having laid down the burdens of the world like fleeces, coming up from the washing, that is, from baptism, all bearing twins, that is, the two commandments of love, and I see that none is barren of that holy fruit. But why I see it with more pleasure than if no such comparison were drawn from the divine books, though the thing is the same and the knowledge the same, is hard to say, and is another question. Yet no one now doubts both that things are learned more willingly through comparisons and that what is sought with some difficulty is found with much more pleasure. For those who do not find at all what they seek suffer hunger; but those who do not seek, because they have it ready to hand, often waste away from disdain; and in both cases faintness is to be avoided. Magnificently and wholesomely, then, the Holy Spirit has so arranged the holy Scriptures as to meet hunger with the plainer passages and to wipe away disdain with the more obscure. For hardly anything is dug out of those obscurities that is not found said very plainly elsewhere.

Before all else, then, one must be turned by the fear of God to knowing his will, what he commands us to seek and to shun. This fear must strike into us the thought of our mortality and of our future death, and nail all the motions of pride to the wood of the cross, as if our flesh were fastened with nails. Next one must become gentle through piety, and not contradict the divine Scripture, whether understood, if it strikes at some of our vices, or not understood, as if we could know better and command better; but rather think and believe that what is written there, even if it is hidden, is better and truer than what we can know by ourselves.

After these two steps of fear and piety, one comes to the third step, that of knowledge, which I have now undertaken to treat. For in it every student of the divine Scriptures exercises himself, and he will find nothing else in them than that God is to be loved for God's sake, and one's neighbor for God's sake: God with all one's heart, all one's soul, all one's mind, and one's neighbor as oneself, that is, so that all love of one's neighbor, as also of ourselves, is referred to God. We treated these two commandments in the previous book, when we were dealing with things. It is necessary, then, first of all, that each person find himself in the Scriptures entangled in the love of this world, that is, of temporal things, and far removed from as great a love of God and as great a love of neighbor as Scripture itself prescribes. Then that fear by which he thinks of the judgment of God, and that piety by which he cannot but believe and yield to the authority of the holy books, compel him to mourn over himself. For this knowledge of good hope makes a person not boastful but lamenting; in this frame of mind he obtains by earnest prayer the comfort of divine help, so that he is not broken by despair, and he begins to be in the fourth step, that of fortitude, in which one hungers and thirsts for righteousness. For in this frame of mind he draws himself out of all deadly pleasure in passing things, and, turning away from them, turns to the love of eternal things, namely the unchangeable Unity which is also the Trinity.

When he has seen it, as far as he can, shining in the distance, and has perceived that because of the weakness of his sight he cannot endure that light, in the fifth step, that is, in the counsel of mercy, he cleanses his soul, which is in a sort of tumult and clamor against itself from the filth contracted through desire for lower things. Here he exercises himself vigorously in the love of neighbor and is perfected in it; and now full of hope and whole in strength, when he has reached even the love of his enemy, he ascends to the sixth step, where he now cleanses that very eye by which God can be seen, as far as he can be seen by those who die to this world as far as they can. For they see to the extent that they die to this world; but insofar as they live to it, they do not see. And so, although the sight of that light begins to appear more certain, and not only more bearable but also more delightful, still it is said to be seen “in an enigma and through a mirror,” because we walk more by faith than by sight while we are on pilgrimage in this life, although our citizenship is in heaven. In this step he so cleanses the eye of his heart that he does not prefer or even compare his neighbor to the truth; therefore not himself either, since not even him whom he loves as himself. This holy man, then, will be of so single and pure a heart that he will not be turned aside from the truth either by the desire to please men or by regard for avoiding any of his own troubles that oppose this life. Such a son ascends to wisdom, which is the seventh and last step, and which he enjoys in peace and tranquility. For “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” From that, then, through these steps, one strives and comes to wisdom itself.

But let us bring our consideration back to that third step, about which we have undertaken to discuss and treat what the Lord suggests. He, then, will be the most skillful investigator of the divine Scriptures who has first read them all and has them known, if not yet by understanding, at least by reading, at any rate those that are called canonical. For he will read the others more safely when he is instructed in the faith of the truth, so that they do not take possession of a weak mind and, mocking it with dangerous falsehoods and fantasies, prejudice it against sound understanding. In the canonical Scriptures, he should follow the authority of the greatest number of catholic churches, among which are surely those that have been found worthy to have apostolic sees and to receive letters. He will hold to this rule, then, in the canonical Scriptures: to prefer those which are accepted by all catholic churches to those which some do not accept; and among those which are not accepted by all, to prefer those which more numerous and weightier churches accept to those held by fewer churches and of lesser authority. And if he should find some held by more churches and others by weightier ones, though he could not easily find this, I think they should be held to be of equal authority.

The whole canon of the Scriptures, to which we say this consideration is to be applied, is contained in these books: the five of Moses, that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; one book of Joshua son of Nun, one of Judges, one little book called Ruth, which seems rather to belong to the beginning of Kingdoms; then four of Kingdoms, and two of Chronicles, not following on but as it were joined alongside and running together. This is history, which contains times linked to one another and the order of events. There are others, as it were of a different order, which are connected neither with this order nor with one another, such as Job, Tobit, Esther, Judith, the two books of Maccabees, and the two of Ezra, which seem rather to follow that ordered history ending with Kingdoms or Chronicles. Then the Prophets, among whom are one book of Psalms of David, and three of Solomon: Proverbs, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. For those two books, one entitled Wisdom and the other Ecclesiasticus, are said to be Solomon's because of a certain likeness; for it is most consistently reported that Jesus son of Sirach wrote them; yet since they have been found worthy to be received into authority, they are to be counted among the prophetic books. The rest are the books of those who are properly called Prophets: the twelve single books of the Prophets, which, joined together because they have never been separated, are counted as one; the names of these Prophets are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi; then there are four Prophets of larger volumes, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel. With these forty-four books the authority of the Old Testament is concluded. That of the New is concluded with the four books of the Gospel, according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke, according to John; the fourteen letters of the apostle Paul, to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, two to the Thessalonians, to the Colossians, two to Timothy, to Titus, to Philemon, to the Hebrews; two of Peter; three of John; one of Jude and one of James; one book of the Acts of the Apostles; and one book of the Apocalypse of John.

In all these books those who fear God and are made gentle by piety seek the will of God. The first rule of this work and labor is, as we have said, to know these books, if not yet so as to understand them, at least by reading them either to commit them to memory or not to be wholly unacquainted with them. Next, the things that are set down plainly in them, whether rules of living or rules of faith, are to be searched out more skillfully and diligently; and the more of these anyone finds, the more capable of understanding he is. For among the things set down plainly in the Scriptures are found all those that contain faith and the conduct of life, namely hope and love, which we treated in the previous book. Then, after gaining some familiarity with the very language of the divine Scriptures, one must go on to open up and examine the obscure passages, so that examples from the plainer expressions are taken to throw light on the more obscure, and certain testimonies of sure statements remove doubt from uncertain ones. In this matter memory is of the greatest value; and if it is lacking, it cannot be given by these rules.

There are two reasons why what is written is not understood: it is veiled either by unknown signs or by ambiguous ones. Signs are either literal or figurative. They are called literal when they are used to signify the things for which they were instituted, as when we say “ox” and mean the animal which all who speak Latin with us call by this name. They are figurative when the very things we signify by literal words are used to signify something else: as when we say “ox” and by these two syllables understand the animal usually called by that name, but again by that animal understand an evangelist, whom Scripture signified, as the Apostle interprets it, when it says, “You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain.”

Against unknown literal signs a great remedy is the knowledge of languages. And people who speak Latin, whom we have now undertaken to instruct, need two other languages for knowing the divine Scriptures, namely Hebrew and Greek, so that recourse may be had to the earlier copies if the endless variety of the Latin translators raises any doubt. Although we also often find Hebrew words untranslated in the books, such as Amen, Alleluia, Racha, Hosanna, and any others; of these, some have kept their ancient form because of their more sacred authority, though they could have been translated, such as Amen and Alleluia; others are said to be untranslatable into another language, like the other two we have mentioned. For there are some words of particular languages that cannot pass into the usage of another language by translation. This happens most of all with interjections, words that signify a motion of the mind rather than any part of a formed thought; and these two are reported to be of that kind, for they say that Racha is the word of someone indignant, Hosanna of someone rejoicing. But it is not because of these few, which are very easy to note and ask about, but because of the diversity of the translators, as has been said, that knowledge of those languages is necessary. For those who translated the Scriptures from Hebrew into Greek can be counted, but the Latin translators by no means. For in the first days of the faith, whenever a Greek manuscript came into anyone's hands and he thought he had a little skill in both languages, he ventured to translate it.

This situation has in fact helped understanding more than it has hindered it, provided readers are not careless. For comparing several manuscripts has often made some more obscure statements clear, as with that saying of the prophet Isaiah, where one translator says, “And do not despise the members of the household of your seed,” but another says, “And do not despise your own flesh”; each confirms the other. For the one is explained by the other, since “flesh” could be taken literally, so that someone might think himself warned not to despise his own body, and “the household of your seed” could be taken figuratively to mean Christians, born spiritually with us of the same seed of the word. But now, when the translators' sense is compared, the more probable meaning that occurs is that the commandment is literally about not despising one's blood relations; for when you relate “the household of your seed” to the flesh, blood relations come to mind first of all. Hence, I think, the Apostle's saying, “If by any means I may provoke to emulation my flesh, and save some of them,” that is, that they too might believe by emulating those who had believed. For he called the Jews his flesh because of kinship of blood. Likewise that saying of the same prophet Isaiah, “Unless you believe, you will not understand,” another has translated, “Unless you believe, you will not endure.” Which of these followed the words is uncertain unless copies in the original language are read. But from both something great is conveyed to those who read with knowledge. For it is hard for translators to differ so much from one another that they do not touch at some point. Since, then, understanding lies in eternal sight, while faith nourishes little ones as with milk in the cradles, so to speak, of temporal things; and now “we walk by faith, not by sight,” and unless we walk by faith we shall not be able to come to the sight that does not pass away but endures, as we cling to the truth through a purified understanding: therefore one says, “Unless you believe, you will not endure,” and the other, “Unless you believe, you will not understand.”

And a translator is often deceived by an ambiguity in the original language, when the meaning is not well known to him, and he renders a sense wholly foreign to the writer's meaning: as some manuscripts have, “Their feet are sharp to shed blood”; for ὀξύς among the Greeks means both “sharp” and “swift.” So the one who translated, “Their feet are swift to shed blood,” saw the meaning; but the other, carried the other way by an ambiguous sign, went wrong. And such readings are not obscure but false, and their case is different; for one should rather teach that such manuscripts are to be corrected, not understood. From this source too comes the following: since μόσχος in Greek means “calf,” some did not understand that μοσχεύματα means “plantings,” and translated it “calves”; this error has taken possession of so many manuscripts that one hardly finds it written otherwise. And yet the meaning is very plain, because it becomes clear from the following words; for “Bastard plantings will not strike deep roots” is a more fitting expression than “calves,” which walk on the ground with their feet and do not cling with roots. The rest of the context in that place also bears out this rendering.

But since the meaning itself, which many translators try to express each according to his ability and judgment, does not become clear unless it is examined in the language they are translating, and since a translator often strays from the author's sense unless he is very learned, we must either seek a knowledge of those languages from which Scripture has come into Latin, or have the translations of those who bound themselves rather closely to the words; not because these are sufficient, but so that by them the truth or error of others, who preferred to follow meanings rather than words in translating, may be detected. For not only single words but also idioms are often carried over which cannot pass into Latin usage at all, if one wishes to keep the custom of the ancients who spoke Latin. Sometimes these take nothing from the understanding, yet they offend those who take more delight in things when a certain correctness is also preserved in their signs. For what is called a solecism is nothing else than when words are not fitted together according to the rule by which those who spoke before us, not without some authority, fitted them. For whether one says inter homines or inter hominibus (“among men”) does not matter to one who wants to know the things. Likewise, what is a barbarism but a word not pronounced with the letters or sound with which those who spoke Latin before us usually pronounced it? For whether ignoscere (“to pardon”) is pronounced with the third syllable long or short does not much concern one who asks God to pardon his sins, however he may be able to pronounce that word. What, then, is correctness of speech but the preservation of the custom of others, confirmed by the authority of ancient speakers?

Yet people are the more offended by these things the weaker they are; and they are the weaker the more they wish to seem learned, not in the knowledge of things by which we are built up, but in that of signs, by which it is altogether hard not to be puffed up, since even the knowledge of things often lifts up the neck unless it is held down by the Lord's yoke. For what harm does it do to one who understands that it is written: “What is the land in which these dwell upon it, whether it is good or bad; and what are the cities in which they dwell in them?” I think this expression belongs to a foreign idiom rather than to some deeper meaning. And that which we can no longer take from the mouths of the singing congregations, “But upon him my holiness shall flourish” (floriet), certainly takes nothing from the meaning; yet a more skilled hearer would prefer it corrected so that it said not floriet but florebit, and nothing stands in the way of the correction except the habit of the singers. These things, then, can easily be disregarded even if someone does not care to avoid them, since they take nothing from sound understanding. But that saying of the Apostle, “The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men”: if anyone had wished to keep the Greek idiom in it, so as to say, “The foolishness of God is wiser of men, and the weakness of God is stronger of men,” the attention of an alert reader would indeed go to the truth of the meaning, but someone slower would either not understand it or even understand it wrongly. For such an expression is not only faulty in Latin, but also falls into ambiguity, so that the foolishness of men or the weakness of men might seem to be wiser or stronger than that of God. Although even “wiser than men” (hominibus) is not free from ambiguity, even if it is free from solecism. For whether hominibus is said as the dative, as in “to this man,” or as the ablative, as in “by this man,” does not appear except from the light of the meaning. So it is better said, “wiser than men” and “stronger than men” (quam homines).

We shall speak of ambiguous signs later; now we are dealing with unknown ones, of which, as far as words are concerned, there are two forms. For either an unknown word or an unknown idiom brings the reader to a halt. If these come from foreign languages, they must either be asked of people who speak those languages, or the languages themselves must be learned, if there is leisure and ability, or a comparison of several translators must be consulted. But if we do not know some words and idioms of our own language, they become known through the habit of reading and listening. Certainly nothing is more to be committed to memory than those kinds of words and idioms that we do not know, so that, when either a more knowledgeable person comes along whom we can ask, or a passage that shows from what precedes or follows, or both, what force and meaning the thing we do not know has, we can easily notice and learn it with the help of memory. Although the power of habit is so great even for learning that those who have been, as it were, nourished and brought up on the holy Scriptures are more surprised at other expressions, and think them less Latin, than those they have learned in the Scriptures, which are not found in Latin authors. Here too a number of translators, examined and discussed by comparing manuscripts, helps very much; only let there be no falsity. For the skill of those who desire to know the divine Scriptures should first of all be devoted to correcting the manuscripts, so that uncorrected ones give way to corrected ones, at least those that come from the same translation.