On Christian Doctrine 2.28–3.1

Whatever, then, what is called history shows about the order of past times helps us very greatly in understanding the holy books, even if it is learned outside the Church as part of a boy's education. For we often seek many things by Olympiads and by the names of consuls; and ignorance of the consulship in which the Lord was born and in which he suffered has led some into the error of thinking that the Lord suffered at the age of forty-six, because the Jews said that the temple, which bore the image of the Lord's body, had been forty-six years in building. And indeed we hold on the authority of the Gospel that he was baptized at about thirty years of age; but how many years he spent in this life afterwards, although it can be gathered from the very record of his actions, nevertheless, so that the darkness of doubt may not arise from another source, it is gathered more clearly and certainly from the history of the nations compared with the Gospel. For then it will be seen that it was not said in vain that the temple was built in forty-six years, so that, since this number cannot be referred to the Lord's age, it may be referred to a more hidden lesson about the human body, which the only Son of God, through whom all things were made, did not disdain to put on for our sake.

As for the usefulness of history, to pass over the Greeks, what a great question our Ambrose solved when the readers and admirers of Plato slandered us, daring to say that our Lord Jesus Christ learned all his sayings, which they are compelled to admire and proclaim, from the books of Plato, because it cannot be denied that Plato lived long before the Lord's coming as man! Did not the bishop I have mentioned, having considered the history of the nations, and having found that Plato traveled to Egypt in the times of Jeremiah, where that prophet then was, show that it is more probable that Plato was instructed in our writings through Jeremiah, so that he could teach or write what is rightly praised? For not even Pythagoras himself, from whose followers these people assert that Plato learned theology, lived before the writings of the Hebrew nation, in which the worship of the one God shone forth, and from which our Lord came according to the flesh. So when the times are considered, it becomes much more credible that they rather had from our writings whatever good and true things they said, than that the Lord Jesus Christ had them from Plato's, which it is utter madness to believe.

But although past human institutions are also narrated in historical narrative, history itself is not to be counted among human institutions; because things that have passed and cannot be undone are to be reckoned in the order of times, whose founder and administrator is God. For it is one thing to narrate what has been done, another to teach what is to be done. History narrates what has been done faithfully and usefully; but the books of soothsayers and any similar writings aim to teach what is to be done or observed, with the boldness of an adviser, not the faithfulness of a witness.

There is also a kind of narration similar to demonstration, by which present things, not past ones, are made known to those who do not know them. To this kind belongs whatever has been written about the geography of places and the natures of animals, trees, plants, stones, or other bodies. We dealt with this kind above, and showed that this knowledge is valuable for solving the enigmas of the Scriptures; not so that these things should be used as certain signs, as for the remedies or devices of some superstition; for we have already separated that kind from this lawful and free one. For it is one thing to say, “If you crush this plant and drink it, your stomach will not ache,” and another to say, “If you hang this plant on your neck, your stomach will not ache.” In the first case a wholesome mixture is approved; in the second a superstitious signification is condemned. Although where there are no incantations, invocations, or characters, it is often doubtful whether the thing that is tied on, or in any way attached to heal the body, has force by nature, in which case it may freely be used, or comes about through some binding signification; and the more effectively it seems to help, the more prudently a Christian should beware of it. But where the reason why something has force is hidden, it matters with what intention each person uses it, at least in healing or tempering bodies, whether in medicine or in agriculture.

The knowledge of the stars is not a narration but a demonstration, and Scripture mentions very few of them. And just as the course of the moon is known to very many, which is also used solemnly for celebrating the Lord's passion every year, so the risings and settings and other moments of the other stars too are known without any error to very few. This knowledge in itself, though it does not bind with superstition, still helps the handling of the divine Scriptures not much, almost not at all, and hinders it rather by fruitless attention; and because it is akin to the most pernicious error of those who chant foolish fates, it is more fittingly and honorably disregarded. Besides demonstrating the present, it has also something like a narration of the past, in that from the present position and motion of the stars one can go back by rule to their past tracks. It has also regular predictions of the future, not suspicious and ominous but fixed and certain; not so that we should try to draw anything from them into our actions and fortunes, such as are the ravings of the genethliaci, but only as concerns the stars themselves. For just as one who calculates the moon, when he has seen today what day of it it is, can say what day it was any number of years ago and what it will be any number of years hence, so those who calculate the stars skillfully are accustomed to answer about each one of them. About this whole branch of knowledge, as far as its use is concerned, I have made clear what I think.

Of the other arts, too, by which something is made, either something that remains after the artisan's work as his product, such as a house, a bench, a vessel, and the like; or arts that provide a kind of service to God's working, such as medicine, agriculture, and navigation; or those whose whole effect is an action, such as dancing, racing, and wrestling: in all these arts experience of the past enables one to infer the future as well; for no artisan in any of them moves his limbs in working unless he joins the memory of the past with the expectation of the future. The knowledge of these arts is to be used lightly and in passing in human life, not for practicing them, unless perhaps some duty requires it, which we are not now discussing, but for judging, so that we may not be wholly ignorant of what Scripture means to convey when it inserts some figurative expressions drawn from these arts.

There remain the things that belong not to the bodily senses but to the reason of the mind, where the discipline of argument and of number reigns. The discipline of argument is of very great value for all kinds of questions that have to be penetrated and resolved in the holy writings; only the lust for wrangling must be avoided there, and a certain childish display of tripping up an opponent. For there are many things called sophisms, false conclusions of reasonings, often so imitating true ones that they deceive not only the slow but even the clever when they are not careful enough. For someone once proposed, saying to the man he was talking with, “What I am, you are not.” And he agreed; for it was partly true, if only because the one was crafty and the other simple. Then the first added, “But I am a man.” When he had accepted this too from him, he concluded, saying, “Therefore you are not a man.” Scripture, as far as I can judge, abhors this kind of captious conclusion in the place where it is said, “He who speaks sophistically is hateful.” Although speech that is not captious, but pursues verbal ornament more abundantly than befits seriousness, is also called sophistical.

There are also true connections of reasoning that have false propositions, which follow from the error of the person one is dealing with; yet they are brought in by a good and learned man for this purpose, that the one whose error they follow may be ashamed of them and abandon that error, since if he chooses to remain in it, he will necessarily be forced to hold also what he condemns. For the Apostle was not inferring true things when he said, “Then neither has Christ risen,” and the other, “Our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain,” and the further ones, which are all false, because Christ has risen, and the preaching of those who proclaimed it was not vain, nor the faith of those who believed it; but these false things were most truly connected with the proposition that said there is no resurrection of the dead. When these false things are rejected, since they would be true if the dead do not rise, the resurrection of the dead will follow. Since, then, there are true connections not only of true but also of false propositions, it is easy to learn the truth of connections even in those schools which are outside the Church. But the truth of propositions is to be sought in the holy books of the Church.

Yet the truth of connections itself was not instituted by human beings, but observed and noted by them so that they could learn or teach it; for it is perpetual in the reason of things and instituted by God. For just as one who narrates the order of times does not compose it himself; and one who shows the positions of places or the natures of animals, plants, or stones does not show things instituted by human beings; and one who demonstrates the stars and their motions does not demonstrate something instituted by himself or any other human being: so too one who says, “When what follows is false, what precedes must be false,” says something most true, and does not himself make it so, but only shows that it is so. From this rule comes what we mentioned about the apostle Paul. For the antecedent is that there is no resurrection of the dead, which those whose error the Apostle wished to destroy were saying. Now from that antecedent proposition, by which they said there is no resurrection of the dead, there necessarily follows, “Then neither has Christ risen.” But this consequent is false, for Christ has risen; therefore the antecedent is also false. The antecedent is that there is no resurrection of the dead; therefore there is a resurrection of the dead. The whole is briefly stated thus: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ risen; but Christ has risen; therefore there is a resurrection of the dead.” This, then, that when the consequent is removed the antecedent is necessarily removed too, human beings did not institute but showed. And this rule belongs to the truth of connections, not to the truth of propositions.

But in this place, where the resurrection was being discussed, both the rule of connection is true and the proposition itself in the conclusion. In false propositions, however, the truth of connection works in this way: suppose someone has granted, “If a snail is an animal, it has a voice.” Once this is granted, when it has been proved that a snail has no voice, since the antecedent is removed when the consequent is removed, it is concluded that a snail is not an animal. This proposition is false, but from the false concession the connection of the conclusion is true. So the truth of a proposition is valid in itself, but the truth of a connection rests on the opinion or concession of the person one is dealing with. And so, as we said above, something false is inferred by a true connection, so that the person whose error we wish to correct may regret having granted the antecedents whose consequences he sees must be rejected. From this it is now easy to understand that just as there can be true conclusions from false propositions, so there can be false conclusions from true propositions. For suppose someone has proposed, “If that man is just, he is good,” and it is granted; then he has added, “But he is not just,” and when this too is granted, he has drawn the conclusion, “Therefore he is not good.” Even though all these things may be true, the rule of the conclusion is not true. For as the antecedent is necessarily removed when the consequent is removed, so the consequent is not necessarily removed when the antecedent is removed. For it is true when we say, “If he is an orator, he is a man”; but if from this proposition we add, “But he is not an orator,” it will not follow when you infer, “Therefore he is not a man.”

Therefore it is one thing to know the rules of connections, another to know the truth of propositions. In the former one learns what follows, what does not follow, and what is incompatible. It follows: “If he is an orator, he is a man.” It does not follow: “If he is a man, he is an orator.” It is incompatible: “If he is a man, he is a four-footed animal.” Here, then, the connection itself is judged. But in the truth of propositions, the propositions themselves are to be considered in themselves, not their connection; but when uncertain propositions are joined by a true connection to true and certain ones, they too must become certain. Some, however, boast as if the truth of propositions itself were the truth of connections they have learned. And again, some who hold a true proposition wrongly despise themselves because they do not know the laws of conclusion; though he is better who knows that there is a resurrection of the dead than he who knows that it follows that, if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ risen.

Likewise the science of defining, dividing, and distributing, although it is often applied to false things as well, is not itself false, nor instituted by human beings, but discovered in the reason of things. For it is not false, because poets have been accustomed to apply it to their fables, and false philosophers or even heretics, that is, false Christians, to the opinions of their error, that in defining, dividing, or distributing nothing should be included that does not belong to the thing itself, nor anything that does belong to it be left out. This is true even if the things defined or distributed are not true. For even the false itself is defined when we say that the false is the signification of a thing that is not as it is signified, or something of the kind; and this definition is true, although the false cannot be true. We can also divide, saying that there are two kinds of the false: one of things that cannot exist at all, the other of things that do not exist, although they could. For one who says that seven and three are eleven says what cannot be at all; but one who says, for example, that it rained on the Kalends of January, even if it did not happen, still says what could have happened. So the definition and division of false things can be most true, although the false things themselves are certainly not true.

There are also certain rules of a fuller kind of argument, which is now called eloquence, which are nonetheless true, although falsehoods too can be urged persuasively by them; but since truths can be too, the faculty itself is not blameworthy, but the perversity of those who use it badly. For it was not instituted by human beings that an expression of goodwill wins over the hearer, or that a brief and clear narration easily conveys what it aims at, and variety holds the attention without boredom; and other observations of this kind, which, whether in false or in true causes, are nevertheless true, insofar as they cause something to be known or believed, or move minds to seek or shun, and have been discovered to be so rather than instituted so that they would be so.

But when this part is learned, it is to be used more for setting forth what has been understood than for understanding. That other part, concerning conclusions, definitions, and distributions, helps the one who seeks to understand very greatly; only let there be no error by which people seem to themselves to have learned the very truth of the happy life when they have learned these things. Although it often happens that people grasp the things for the sake of which these are learned more easily than the most knotty and thorny disciplines of such rules. As if someone wishing to give rules for walking were to warn that the back foot is not to be lifted until you have put down the front one, and then describe in detail how the hinges of the joints and knees should be moved. For he says what is true, and one cannot walk otherwise; but people walk more easily by doing these things than they notice them when they do them or understand them when they hear them. And those who cannot walk care much less for what they cannot even attend to by experience. So a clever person often sees that a conclusion is invalid sooner than he grasps its rules; but a slow one does not see it, and much less what is taught about it. And in all these things the very spectacle of truth often delights us more than it helps us in arguing or judging; unless perhaps they make minds more practiced, if they do not also make them more malicious or more puffed up, that is, so that those who have learned these things either love to deceive with plausible talk and questions, or think they have attained something great by which to set themselves above good and innocent people.

Now it is clear to anyone, however slow, that the science of number was not instituted by human beings but rather investigated and discovered. For it is not as with the first syllable of Italia, which the ancients pronounced short and Virgil chose to make long, and long it became: no one can bring it about at will that three times three are not nine, or cannot make a square figure, or are not triple in relation to three, one and a half times six, and double no number, since intelligible numbers have no half. Whether, then, they are considered in themselves or applied to the laws of figures, of sounds, or of other motions, numbers have unchangeable rules, by no means instituted by human beings, but discovered by the sagacity of the clever.

Yet whoever loves all these things so as to wish to boast among the unlearned, and not rather to seek from what source those things are true which he has only perceived to be true, and from what source some things are not only true but also unchangeable which he has grasped to be unchangeable; and so, passing from the beauty of bodies to the human mind, and finding that it too is changeable, since it is now learned, now unlearned, yet set between the unchangeable truth above it and the other changeable things beneath it, to turn all things to the praise and love of the one God, from whom he knows that all things exist: such a man may seem learned, but in no way can he be wise.

Therefore it seems to me that studious and clever young men, who fear God and seek the happy life, are wholesomely advised not to venture to follow, as if securely, any branches of learning practiced outside the Church of Christ as means of obtaining the happy life, but to judge them soberly and carefully. And if they find any instituted by human beings, varying because of the different wills of those who instituted them, and unknown because of the suspicions of those in error, especially if they also involve fellowship entered into with demons through certain significations, like agreements and covenants, let them reject and abhor them utterly; let them also withdraw their zeal from the superfluous and luxurious institutions of human beings. But those institutions of human beings that serve the society of people living together they should not neglect, for the sake of the very necessity of this life. In the other branches of learning found among the pagans, apart from the history of things past or present that belong to the bodily senses, to which are added the experiments and conjectures of the useful bodily arts, and apart from the science of argument and of number, I think nothing is useful. In all of these one must hold to “nothing in excess,” and especially in those which, belonging to the bodily senses, revolve in times and are contained in places.

Just as some have done with all the Hebrew, Syriac, Egyptian words and names, or those of any other language that can be found in the holy Scriptures and are placed in them without translation, translating them separately; and as Eusebius did with the history of times, because of the questions in the divine books which require its use: as these men did with these matters, so that a Christian need not labor much for the sake of a few things, so I see that it could be done, if any of those who are able would be pleased to devote a kindly labor to the benefit of the brothers, that whatever places of the earth, or animals, plants, trees, stones, or metals unknown, or any kinds of things, Scripture mentions, he should arrange them by kinds and commit only these, explained, to writing. It could also be done with numbers, so that the explained meaning of only those numbers which the divine Scripture mentions should be written down. Some or all of these things have perhaps already been done, as we have found many things worked out and written down by good and learned Christians which we did not think existed; but they lie hidden, either because of the crowds of the careless or because of the concealment of the envious. Whether this can be done for the science of argument I do not know; and it seems to me that it cannot, because it is bound throughout the whole text of the Scriptures like sinews; and so it helps readers more to resolve and explain ambiguous signs, of which we shall speak later, than to know unknown signs, which we are now dealing with.

As for those who are called philosophers, if they have said anything that is true and in harmony with our faith, especially the Platonists, not only is it not to be feared, but it is even to be claimed from them for our use, as from unlawful possessors. For just as the Egyptians not only had idols and heavy burdens, which the people of Israel abhorred and fled, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and clothing, which that people, going out of Egypt, secretly claimed for themselves as for a better use; not on their own authority, but at God's command, the Egyptians themselves unknowingly lending them things they were not using well: so all the branches of pagan learning contain not only feigned and superstitious fictions and heavy burdens of needless labor, which each of us, going out of the society of the pagans under Christ's leadership, ought to abhor and avoid, but also liberal disciplines more suited to the use of truth, and some very useful moral precepts; and even concerning the worship of the one God some true things are found among them. This, their gold and silver, as it were, which they did not institute themselves but dug out of certain mines, so to speak, of divine providence, which is poured out everywhere, and which they perversely and injuriously misuse in the service of demons, the Christian, when he separates himself in mind from their miserable society, ought to take from them for the just use of preaching the Gospel. Their clothing too, that is, institutions which are indeed human but suited to human society, which we cannot do without in this life, it will be lawful for a Christian to take and have, to be turned to use.

For what else have many good believers of ours done? Do we not see with how much gold, silver, and clothing Cyprian, that most charming teacher and most blessed martyr, went out of Egypt loaded? With how much Lactantius? With how much Victorinus, Optatus, Hilary, to say nothing of the living? With how much countless Greeks? This is what Moses himself, that most faithful servant of God, had done before, of whom it is written that he was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. To all these men the superstitious custom of the pagans, especially in those times when, shaking off the yoke of Christ, it persecuted Christians, would never have lent the disciplines it held useful if it had suspected that they would be turned to the use of worshiping the one God, by which the vain worship of idols would be cut off. But they gave their gold, silver, and clothing to the people of God going out of Egypt, not knowing how the things they gave would yield to the service of Christ. For that event in Exodus was without doubt a figure, so that it might foreshadow this; which I would say without prejudice to another understanding, either equal or better.

But when the student of the divine Scriptures, instructed in this way, begins to approach them to search them out, let him not cease to think of that apostolic saying, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” For in this way he will feel that, although he goes out of Egypt rich, yet unless he has kept the Passover he cannot be saved. “For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed,” and nothing teaches us more by the sacrifice of Christ than what he himself cries out, as if to those whom he sees laboring in Egypt under Pharaoh: “Come to me, you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” To whom, if not to the gentle and humble of heart, whom knowledge does not puff up but love builds up? Let them remember, then, that those who at that time celebrated the Passover in images of shadows, when they were commanded to mark their doorposts with the blood of the lamb, marked them with hyssop. This plant is gentle and lowly, and nothing is stronger and more penetrating than its roots; so that, “rooted and grounded in love, we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth,” that is, the cross of the Lord: its breadth is said to be in the crossbeam on which the hands are stretched out; its length, from the ground up to the breadth, along which the whole body is fixed from the hands downward; its height, from the breadth upward to the top, against which the head rests; and its depth, the part that is hidden, fixed in the earth. By this sign of the cross the whole of Christian action is described: to do good works in Christ, to cling to him perseveringly, to hope for heavenly things, not to profane the sacraments. Cleansed by this action, we shall be able to know also “the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,” in which he is equal to the Father, through whom all things were made, “that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.” There is also a cleansing power in hyssop, so that the swollen lung may not pant out anything proudly, puffed up by knowledge of the riches taken from Egypt: “You will sprinkle me with hyssop,” he says, “and I shall be clean; you will wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. You will give joy and gladness to my hearing.” Then he goes on to add, to show that cleansing from pride is signified by hyssop, “And the bones that have been humbled will rejoice.”

But as much as the quantity of gold, silver, and clothing which that people carried off with them from Egypt is less in comparison with the riches which it afterwards obtained at Jerusalem, which are shown above all in King Solomon, so small does all knowledge become, even the useful knowledge collected from the books of the pagans, if it is compared with the knowledge of the divine Scriptures. For whatever a person has learned outside, if it is harmful, it is condemned there; if it is useful, it is found there. And when anyone has found there all that he usefully learned elsewhere, he will find there much more abundantly things that are learned nowhere else at all, but only in the wonderful loftiness and wonderful humility of those Scriptures. When, then, unknown signs do not hinder the reader furnished with this instruction, gentle and humble of heart, gently subjected to Christ and burdened with a light burden, grounded and rooted and built up in love, whom knowledge cannot puff up, let him go on to consider and examine the ambiguous signs in the Scriptures, of which I shall now begin to speak in the third volume, as far as the Lord deigns to grant.

The person who fears God diligently seeks his will in the holy Scriptures. Made gentle by piety, so as not to love contention; equipped also with a knowledge of languages, so as not to be stuck on unknown words and idioms; equipped also with an acquaintance with certain necessary things, so as not to be ignorant of the force and nature of those used for comparison; helped also by the accuracy of manuscripts, which skillful diligence in correction has secured: let him come, so instructed, to examining and resolving the ambiguities of the Scriptures. That he may not be deceived by ambiguous signs, as far as he can be instructed by us (it may happen that he laughs at these ways which we wish to show as childish, either from the greatness of his ability or the brightness of a greater enlightenment); but nonetheless, as I had begun to say, as far as he can be instructed by us, whoever is in such a frame of mind as to be capable of being instructed by us should know that the ambiguity of Scripture lies either in literal words or in figurative ones, kinds which we showed in the second book.