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Available
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Collection
Publication
Bobbs-Merrill / Prentice Hall (1976), Paperback, 169 pages
Description
'The Doctrina Christiana' (On the Teachings of Christianity) is one of Augustine's most important works. In particular, it spells out just how far Christians may use the legacy of their classical, pagan past. This translation, has a brief introduction that takes into account recent studies. The book includes a freshly edited complete text.
User reviews
LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
There are two possible aims implied in the title of this work: “On Christian Teaching”: to distinguish the Christian from the pagan—“a manifesto for a particularly Christian culture” (translator Green, viii, dismisses this idea—but see my remarks below on Book III), OR “On Christian
The treatise is sometimes understood as consisting of two parts, according to its compositional history. There was an interruption of two or three decades at III.78. Green indicates “a certain bittiness” in the later part of Book III (xi). Many readers, including Green, seem to understand the first three books as properly about learning rather than teaching, while leaving the real doctrina to Book IV. They take that division as reflecting Augustine’s initial distinction between discovery (inventio) and presentation (I.1, IV.1).
I seem to detect a tension between the conception of evil as absence/nonquality on the one hand, and the implication of (original) sin as a positive condition on the other.
At the end of Book III, Augustine credits Tyconius (and downplays the latter’s Donatism), but his frequent citations from Cicero are all tacit. Is this discrepancy in his treatment of Christian and pagan sources a demonstration of how to “spoil the Egyptians”?
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Teaching”: to identify and communicate the pedagogical process (per Augustine’s preface). Augustine here works in four connected fields of thought, roughly one in each of the Books I through IV of the treatise: ethics, semiotics, hermeneutics, and rhetoric.The treatise is sometimes understood as consisting of two parts, according to its compositional history. There was an interruption of two or three decades at III.78. Green indicates “a certain bittiness” in the later part of Book III (xi). Many readers, including Green, seem to understand the first three books as properly about learning rather than teaching, while leaving the real doctrina to Book IV. They take that division as reflecting Augustine’s initial distinction between discovery (inventio) and presentation (I.1, IV.1).
I seem to detect a tension between the conception of evil as absence/nonquality on the one hand, and the implication of (original) sin as a positive condition on the other.
At the end of Book III, Augustine credits Tyconius (and downplays the latter’s Donatism), but his frequent citations from Cicero are all tacit. Is this discrepancy in his treatment of Christian and pagan sources a demonstration of how to “spoil the Egyptians”?
Show Less
LibraryThing member chriszodrow
One of my favorites. Profound and stimulating. Should be required reading in every hermeneutics class.
LibraryThing member nicholasjjordan
Great and still useful, insightful, challenging, and encouraging for preachers especially.
LibraryThing member stillatim
A fascinating little book for all kinds of people: late antiquity buffs; philosophers; hermeneuts; and of course, Christians. Augie usually manages to find his way to a reasonable middle position: against biblical literalism, also against waiting for a direct experience of God.
Book one describes
We then move on to 'signs, ambiguities and difficulties of,' which is full of fairly sensible advice for anyone who wants to read anything. There are some things you have to know in order to interpret words: languages, for instance, institutions, general facts, logic, rhetoric. But we shouldn't take too much pleasure in these. It sometimes seems, unfortunately, that Augie really thinks you should only know things that are boring and will help you conform to society. I suspect that this claim needs to be put in some kind of historical context--in a solidly Christian culture, presumably, we would be more free to enjoy "human-made institutions," since, he goes on to say, there is much of value to be found even in pagan literature.
Having dealt with the difficulties, we move on to the division between literal and figurative understanding of signs. If sections of scripture are not related to moral behavior or to faith, they should be interpreted figuratively (which, though he doesn't say it, means pretty much all of it should be interpreted figuratively). He goes on to discuss morality at some length, making a nice distinction between the corruption of one's own mind and body (wickedness) and harm to another (wrongdoing). Augie, and almost every religious thinker after him, focuses too much on wickedness, and nowhere near enough on wrongdoing.
Interestingly, book three was started in the 390s, but abandoned, and only finished in the 420s; much of the later work is less interesting, though classicists might appreciate his description of Tyconius, who wrote his own system of interpretation.
Book four, also late, is a defense of the rhetorical beauty of the bible. Not riveting. Not at all.
But on the whole, a fascinating, quickish read.
Book one describes
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'things' rather than signs, and we get some of Augie's less up to date opinions: you shouldn't love people for themselves, but for the sake of God, and the same thing goes for one's self. But these are backed by more liberal-friendly ideas. The neighbor who we are to love, for instance, is pretty much everyone. We then move on to 'signs, ambiguities and difficulties of,' which is full of fairly sensible advice for anyone who wants to read anything. There are some things you have to know in order to interpret words: languages, for instance, institutions, general facts, logic, rhetoric. But we shouldn't take too much pleasure in these. It sometimes seems, unfortunately, that Augie really thinks you should only know things that are boring and will help you conform to society. I suspect that this claim needs to be put in some kind of historical context--in a solidly Christian culture, presumably, we would be more free to enjoy "human-made institutions," since, he goes on to say, there is much of value to be found even in pagan literature.
Having dealt with the difficulties, we move on to the division between literal and figurative understanding of signs. If sections of scripture are not related to moral behavior or to faith, they should be interpreted figuratively (which, though he doesn't say it, means pretty much all of it should be interpreted figuratively). He goes on to discuss morality at some length, making a nice distinction between the corruption of one's own mind and body (wickedness) and harm to another (wrongdoing). Augie, and almost every religious thinker after him, focuses too much on wickedness, and nowhere near enough on wrongdoing.
Interestingly, book three was started in the 390s, but abandoned, and only finished in the 420s; much of the later work is less interesting, though classicists might appreciate his description of Tyconius, who wrote his own system of interpretation.
Book four, also late, is a defense of the rhetorical beauty of the bible. Not riveting. Not at all.
But on the whole, a fascinating, quickish read.
Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
397 (Books I-III)
426 (Book IV)
Physical description
169 p.; 7.9 inches
ISBN
0672602628 / 9780672602627
Local notes
Library of Liberal Arts