English 480

Series 1: Handout #3

“Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.”

Augustine of Hippo (354-430): was a teacher of rhetoric in Rome and Milan (there’s hope of salvation, even for English professors). After his conversion, he returned to North Africa and became bishop of Hippo and wrote his Confessions among other works. He shares Plato’s desire for clarity and truth, but with a Christian, metaphysical difference. In religion, there is a need to get documents exactly right—to establish a canon of sanctioned texts that reveal the inspired Truth of God, rather than apocryphal texts that contain errors and are, therefore, not inspired. This process requires a confident method of literary exegesis.

“On Christian Doctrine”: Links natural signs with language as a system of signs to be interpreted with some certainty. When one has to know what a text means, it is necessary to be able to restrict the range of figurative interpretation of words. Words mean something; they do not mean anything. For this reason, one must learn several languages and understand the literary tropes such as allegory, metaphor, and irony.

But in what context do texts mean something? How can we know what something means that was written long ago in another culture, even if we understand their language and some of their tropes?

“The Trinity”: Explains how figurative language—allegory—can communicate mysterious concepts such as the Trinity using a “heart” meaning. Modern critics would say Augustine can only make the truth claims by pointing to some transcendental signifier (God, Logos, a word outside of time and place); Augustine would probably agree. One must have faith—as a Christian or other believer in things that cannot be rationally demonstrated—that the signifiers are determinate (though, perhaps, our absolute comprehension might be limited by our fallen nature). E.G. “In the beginning, Gad said . . . ,” “the Word was God,” and Christ as the “Word of God made flesh.” A Transcendental Signifier becomes a material signified in the latter case.

But what keeps that faith from becoming a justification for self-interest? How do we know that the believer is not lying, or that we are not deceiving ourselves? (You see how “faith” can stand for “love” and “literature”?)

“The call me, ‘the dumb ox.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274): A theology professor with an interest in establishing the infallibly true meaning of holy scripture.

Summa Theologica: Like Augustine, Aquinas is dealing with the problem of getting precise meaning out of figurative language. Aquinas accepts the possibility of multiple meanings (literal, allegorical, moral, and mystical), but insists that the literal meaning alone offers certainty (akin to modern Fundamentalism).

But isn’t something important lost when we limit the range of possible meaning (e.g., Eve was really made out of Adam’s rib)? Fundamentalism has the strength of certainty, but inflexible things are easily shattered (by, for example, Darwin). And isn’t “literal” meaning contextual too? Is this another appeal to authority: “It means what I say it means”?

AUGUSTINE	AQUINAS
Multiple meanings are useful.	Multiple meanings are confusing.
Meaning is not, however, unlimited.	Everything but the literal is irrelevant.
We must learn ancient languages and tropes to interpret sacred texts.	The literal meaning does not change based on language; tropes should be eliminated.
The deepest meanings, however, are revealed by faith.	The deepest meanings are self-evident.
True faith reveals leads to correct interpretation.	Bad faith leads to distortions of clear meaning.

This doesn’t quite re-play Gorgias and Plato, but it is similar. Augustine is not so slippery as Gorgias; he believes there IS truth. Aquinas seems more literal-minded and anti-art than Plato, though both believe in truth.