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THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY of AMERICA Doctrina Christiana THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA Doctrina Christiana: Christian Learning in Augustine's De doctrina christiana A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of Medieval and Byzantine Studies School of Arts and Sciences Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy © Copyright All Rights Reserved By Timothy A. Kearns Washington, D.C. 2014 Doctrina Christiana: Christian Learning in Augustine's De doctrina christiana Timothy A. Kearns, Ph.D. Director: Timothy B. Noone, Ph.D. In the twentieth century, Augustinian scholars were unable to agree on what precisely the De doctrina christiana is about as a work. This dissertation is an attempt to answer that question. I have here employed primarily close reading of the text itself but I have also made extensive efforts to detail the intellectual and social context of Augustine’s work, something that has not been done before for this book. Additionally, I have put to use the theory of textuality as developed by Jorge Gracia. My main conclusions are three: 1. Augustine intends to show how all learned disciplines are subordinated to the study of scripture and how that study of scripture is itself ordered to love. 2. But in what way is that study of scripture ordered to love? It is ordered to love because by means of such study exegetes can make progress toward wisdom for themselves and help their audiences do the same. 3. Exegetes grow in wisdom through such study because the scriptures require them to question themselves and their own values and habits and the values and habits of their culture both by means of what the scriptures directly teach and by how readers should (according to Augustine) go about reading them; a person’s questioning of him or herself is moral inquiry, and moral inquiry rightly carried out builds up love of God and neighbor in the inquirer by reforming those habits and values out of line with the teachings of Christ. This dissertation by Timothy A. Kearns fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in Medieval and Byzantine Studies approved by Timothy B. Noone, Ph.D., as Director, and by Willemien Otten, Ph.D., and Tarmo Toom, Ph.D. as Readers. _______________________________ Timothy B. Noone, Ph.D, Director _______________________________ Willemien Otten, Ph.D., Reader _______________________________ Tarmo Toom, Ph.D., Reader iii To my father, Michael Joseph Kearns, “tall he stands”, Who never throws books away. iv Quas dederis solas semper habebis opes. - Martial, Epigrams, V.42.8 v Table of Contents Chapter 1 - Introduction: Studying the De doctrina christiana pg. 1 Chapter 2 - De doctrina christiana: Texts pg. 50 Chapter 3 - Three Texts of the De doctrina: Context and Relevant Content pg. 92 Chapter 4 - Christian Learning as Moral Inquiry: The Fourth Text pg. 185 Chapter 5 - Conclusion: The Subject of the De doctrina christiana pg. 238 Bibliography pg. 245 vi Chapter 1 Introduction: Studying the De doctrina christiana Since the De doctrina is not one of Augustine’s more obviously rhetorical or controversial works, one might think it easy to approach the book and easy to glean its message, purpose, and method. Moreover, given the scholarship that has been done in Late Antique studies these last forty years, one might also expect to find the necessary work already done on the De doctrina, which would facilitate understanding it and its writer in their historical and intellectual context. But before consulting the literature, one might try to turn to the book itself. Perhaps it is in need of little interpretation to begin with. The impression that the book’s message and importance are easy to draw out from a good critical edition or a translation, with the occasional note indicating a possible allusion to Plotinus or some similar wording to a Stoic, is quickly dispelled. Augustine wrote Books I and II, and two-thirds of Book III, probably in short order during the first or second year of his episcopacy. Then, he put it down, not to pick it up again for thirty years. One might expect Augustine to be the sort of figure who picks up right where he left off, unchanged.1 But this is not the Augustine that has emerged from modern study. Even some interested in Augustine’s underlying philosophical system, for example, Etienne Gilson, 1 But even some recent students of Augustine have taken this kind of approach. See, for example, Walter Hannam’s thesis Non intenta in eloquentia sapientia, sed a sapientia non recedente eloquentia. Augustine’s De doctrina christiana: Structure and Philosophical Method, Dalhousie University (Canada), 1996. 1 2 recognized long ago that such an approach to Augustine failed to appreciate the man himself and the variety, growth, and depth of his thought.2 Did Augustine write this book half way, then do something else for thirty years, and then return to the book to finish it the same as he had intended it in his thirties? This and other questions I will try to answer below. But however one answers this question, we are confronted by a book that seems relatively even in tone, with an underlying plan that is carried out in its essentials from beginning to end. Modern studies of the text do not often focus on issues like this.3 Many dwell in detail on certain distinctions he makes in Book I, between use and enjoyment mainly, and between things and signs, and others dwell on his rhetorical theory in Book IV. Others have much to tell us about signs, a major topic of Books II and III, and still others plumb the depths of hermeneutical theory throughout the book.4 One scholar has divided the contemporary study of the De doctrina into three areas: first, Augustine's distinction between use and enjoyment in Book I, second, his sign theory in Books II and III, and third, the Rules of Tyconius in Book III.5 This indicates how specialized the study of different aspects of this text had become even then: for one thing, he does not mention how much work has been done on Augustine's conception of Christian rhetoric in Book IV, the study of which has crisscrossed a number of disciplines.6 2 Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Augustine, translated by E. M. Lynch (New York: Random House, 1960), 241-246. 3 Since I will shortly be reviewing much of this literature in detail, I present here only a summary for the purposes of my argument. 4 Having discussed what I take the major views on the De doctrina will be, I return later in this chapter to considering briefly how the study of the text has evolved. 5 H. R. Dobner, "Studying Augustine: An Overview of Recent Research", in Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, edited by R. Dodaro and G. Lawless (London: Routledge, 2000), 25. 6 The most useful starting point for this set of questions is The Rhetoric of St. Augustine of Hippo: De doctrina christiana and the search for a distinctly Christian rhetoric, edited by R. L. 3 In particular, I think attention should be paid to those questions that arise from the more or less agreed on facts of how Augustine composed the text, as well as from what we know about the text from other sources. Some of these are the same questions we must ask about any text. Often they are not interesting, but in this case they will turn out to be: 1. How can we tell that the De doctrina christiana is a single text? Augustine says it is, but should we take his word for it? A corollary of this is the more general question: what does it mean to say two texts are different texts? This is not an idle question, since I think we can put forward a tentative answer, one which also has interesting consequences for my study of the De doctrina.7 If the books on Christian learning can be considered one text, which I think they do, then what unifies them? 2. What is the audience of these books? What is the intended audience, which is to ask what audience did Augustine have in mind as he wrote the book, and what is the historical audience, which is to ask what audience actually ended up reading Augustine’s books on Christian learning? Were they the same or different? And, since we know Augustine changed both intellectually and as a social figure over those thirty years, did either of his audiences change? Some periods of history are marked by dramatic upheavals in certain quarters. Is the three decades from the 390s to the 420s one of them? If it is, then, not only the audience Augustine intended the books for and the audience that actually read them may have changed, likely for reasons related directly to Christian teaching and learning, but such audiences may well have changed in a way that tracks Enos and Roger Thompson (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008). Interest in these questions goes all the way back to Cayré and Auerbach, as well as the groundbreaking work of George Kennedy and James Murphy on ancient rhetoric generally. More on this later. 7 I think much good has come from the in-depth discussions of textuality of the last few decades, and I also think that many of the issues at hand have been addressed in very intriguing ways by Jorge Gracia’s careful logical and epistemological analysis of texts and their meaning. See Jorge Gracia’s A Theory of Textuality: The Logic and Epistemology (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995).
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