Stone's Fence

Augustine, Authors, and Theological Exegesis (revised a little, okay, quite a bit!)
©2005, Lawson G. Stone

Having looked at St. Augustine's concern about the "author's meaning" in Genesis 1, I decided it might be fun to track this issue in his most important work on biblical interpretation, On Christian Teaching. I use the recent Oxford Classics translation for my quotes and page numbers. I should stress that Augustine's vision of biblical interpretation is much broader than my specific concern here, involving a vision of Christian formation, a full-blown theory of language, and a specific model of communcation. But woven through the whole discussion are comments, often incidental, that reveal St. Augustine's very genuine concern to interpret the words of Scripture in ways that are harmonious with the meanings of the biblical authors. While Augustine might ultimately go beyond the authors' meanings, he certainly still takes them very seriously as persons inspired by the Holy Spirit. Augustine first notes that severing the tether to the author's meaning can actually be hazardous. Augustine writes of this danger:

It often happens that by thoughtlessly asserting something that the author did not mean an interpreter runs up against other things which cannot be reconciled with that original idea. If he agrees that these things are true and certain, his original interpretation could not possibly be true, and by cherishing his own idea he comes in some strange way to be more displeased with scripture than with himself. If he encourages this evil to spread it will be his downfall. 32 (emphasis added)

I think we know what he's talking about. We get an idea studying a passage, and we're taken with it. We start spinning it out, looking for other things in the passage to support it, and sure enough, there are some (there always are!). But soon we begin to encounter friction from the text, a kind of resistance, even a coercion, that pushes back against our pet idea. At this point we have a choice: surrender our pet idea and let the writer(s) teach us, or have our way with the text. This moment defines the moral identity of the interpreter. Augustine seemed to think that abandoning the authors' meanings in interpreting scripture can reflect an ego-centric approach to interpretation, in which the reader as a "maker of meanings" prizes his or her own view over that advanced by the biblical writers themselves.The avoidance of this hermeneutical autism includes a wholesome and submissive concern for the human authors' meanings in the biblical text. Indeed, if our concern is mainly theological, we will be all the more interested in the authors' meanings because of their direct divine inspiration. Thus Augustine observes, "The aim of [the Bible's] readers is simply to find out the thoughts and wishes of those by whom it was written down and, through them, the will of God, which we believe these men followed as they spoke." (p.32 emphasis added).

Not all missing of the author's meaning is morally hazardous, though. Here Augustine probably will not please those of us (like me) who want to make the author's meaning a much "harder" standard. Augustine identifies one kind of erroneous interpretation that is "wrong" but not dangerous. They are wrong, in that they miss the author's meaning, but they are not dangerous because they still inculcate faith, hope, and charity in the hearer and are not heretical. He writes:

Anyone with an interpretation of the scriptures that differs from that of the writer is misled, but not because the scriptures are lying. If, as I began by saying, he is misled by an idea of the kind that builds up love, which is the end of the commandment, he is misled in the same way as a walker who leaves his path by mistake but reaches the destination to which the path leads by going through a field. But he must be put right and shown how it is more useful not to leave the path, in case the habit of deviating should force him to go astray or even adrift. 28 (emphasis added)

I recall in seminary a professor commenting about one of my sermons that "it's the truth, but it's not the text." Perhaps that is what Augustine was saying. I think here he strikes an admirable poise. Missing the author's meaning is wrong--"he is misled." And yet, guided by a sound vision of Christian faith and life, the interpreter did present an interpretation that affirmed right thought and life, so he is not to be castigated as heretical or rejected as an incompetent interpreter. And yet, though not blameworthy, he still needs to learn his craft better, to be "shown how it is more useful not to leave the path" because in fact, hazards do await interpreters who liberate themselves from the inspired authors and become independent makers of meaning. I admire the way Augustine does not surrender the high epistemological ground, but at the same time, remains the pastor and teacher, not lashing out at every departure from the ideal practice, but identifying the problems nonetheless.

The problem of many translations turns exactly on the inability of the translator to separate the author's meaning from the translator's own ideas. A kind of eisegetical translation results, in which "Ambiguity in the original language often misleads a translator unfamiliar with the general sense of a passage, who may import a meaning which is quite unrelated to the writer's meaning." (p.39, emphasis added) The best cure for this problem is thorough language preparation, something Augustine lacked, but praised all the same:

An important antidote to the ignorance of literal signs is the knowledge of languages. Users of the Latin language—and it is these that I have now undertaken to instruct—need two others, Hebrew and Greek, for an understanding of the divine scriptures, so that recourse may be had to the original versions if any uncertainty arises from the infinite variety of Latin translators. p. 38

The original languages provide an important resource for testing a translation's fidelity, and the gold standard of fidelity is noted as "the author's meaning."

Because the exact meaning which the various translators are trying to express, each according to his own ability and judgement, is not clear without an examination of the language being translated, and because a translator, unless very expert, often strays away from the author's meaning, we should aim either to acquire a knowledge of the languages from which the Latin scripture derives or to use the versions of those who keep excessively close to the literal meaning. p.40

In a summary of the kind of spiritual and intellectual preparation needed, Augustine portrays the true reader of scripture:

Readers furnished with such an education will not be held back by unfamiliar signs. Gentle and lowly in heart, peacefully subject to Christ, laden with a light burden, founded and rooted and built up in love, and incapable ofbeing puffed up by knowledge, they should now proceed to consider and analyse the ambiguous signs in the scriptures… The student who fears God earnestly seeks his will in the holy scriptures. Holiness makes him gentle, so that he does not revel in controversy; a knowledge of languages protects him from uncertainty over unfamiliar words or phrases, and a knowledge of certain essential things protects him from ignorance of the significance and detail of what is used by way of imagery. Thus equipped, and with the assistance of reliable texts derived from the manuscripts with careful attention to the need for emendation, he should now approach the task of analysing and resolving the ambiguities of the scriptures p. 67-68

Would to God that we all were "furnished with such an education!"