What to say and what not to say

One apparent purpose of language is to inform others of some things. Augustine suggests something even stronger: maybe language has no other real purpose than informing, either others, when we teach them something, or ourselves, when we try to recall something. Apparent counterexamples, like asking, singing or praying, are really nothing of the kind, he assures us. When we ask, we inform someone what we want to know. When we sing merely for our pleasure, we are not enjoying the language, but the music. When we pray audibly, our words are meant to just recall what we desire or to teach others how one should pray - God surely knows already what we want to say.

Language is, Augustine says, made up of words, which are some sort of signs. Of some, it is easy to see what they signify, of others, such as the word “of”, it is not so simple. Indeed, trying to explain the latter kind of words seems quite difficult to do without any words. Still, Augustine notes, some words apparently can be explained without words: I can explain what a wall is, just by pointing at one. Of course, pointing is also a kind of sign. Yet, there seems to be words we can explain without any signs, like walking, which we can explain, if we happen to stand still, by starting to walk.

This consideration leads Augustine to divide words, and indeed, all signs, into two different groups. Firstly, there are words like “word”or “sign”, which refer to something in language or other types of signs. Secondly, there are words that refer to something outside language, like "wall'' or "human". True, Augustine admits, even these words can be used in referring to linguistic things, like when we say that wall has four letters. Still, this kind of a use of a word is not the primary one, Augustine insists, and we can easily decide from the context, whenever a word is used in this secondary manner.

Now Augustine reaches a somewhat paradoxical result that language, which was meant to be used for informing people, never really does that. First of all, Augustine notes, it is the knowledge of real things that we should value over knowledge of words and signs - even though words like filth and vice refer to bad things, it is better that we know what filth and vice are than just knowing what kind of words they are. We are not satisfied with knowing mere words and signs, because these are not the real things.

Problem is that when we use language, we are also offering mere words instead of the real things, Augustine notes. Signs at most point us to the things we want the other person to know also, just like a finger can point to a wall, but not be the wall. In the case of sensible things, we still need to sense things we are meant to be taught. In the case of things we cannot sense, Augustine insists, we still need some sort of inner conviction of what they are like.

Whether it is through senses or through inner conviction, we need to convince ourselves of the truth of something, before we are told what the truth is. In fact, Augustine argues, the supposed teacher can never really teach us anything, since it is we the supposed learners who have to first know and recognise whether what the teacher said is true. It is then what happens inside one’s self that is of importance, when it comes to acquiring knowledge. The only one who could really help in this process, Augustine concludes, is God.

Despite this somewhat sceptical position, Augustine still produced writings meant to inform others what the truth behind everything is. His particular concern is to show that other contenders for the status of true knowledge, whether they be philosophers or other religious groups, fall short of the goal, reached by the type of Christianity Augustine himself endorsed. Indeed, he thinks that these erroneous positions do the favour of highlighting the truth by showing in how many ways one can distance from it. These errors are created when humans replace truth with their own phantasies. Fortunately, Augustine says, God had surrounded us with reminders of our true origin.

This true origin, Augustine says, is simply God as the source of all existence and life. The closer to God things are, the more existent they are. Death and destruction are then not caused by God, but instead by losing this connection to God.

Now, Augustine insists, matter is something very far removed from God, as it requires something alive to animate it. Thus, turning away from God toward matter means essentially subjugating oneself to death, because one has replaced an immutable and endless source of life with something that will ultimately itself fall apart. Human being's final fate will be decided by whether they are able to wrench their attention from the material world back to their eternal source.

Humans have not turned away from God through some external cause, like a fever, but have done it all voluntarily. Thus, they have no one, but themselves to blame for their condition, Augustine says. One effect of this turning away is the frail condition of human bodies. Yet, Augustine insists, this is a sort of blessing, since it awakens us to our state and lets us practice indifference to material world.

Another help God provided for humans to see the unworthiness of the material world, Augustine continues, was to send divine Wisdom in a human form to aid them. Augustine emphasises so the role of Wisdom or Christ as an exemplar on how to live – Christ cared nothing for earthly riches or earthly power or even his human life. His resurrection, on the other hand, was meant to show that all life is ultimately dependent on nothing else but the connection to the divine.

Why were all these elaborate schemes required to connect humans with God? In other words, why did God create such fragile creatures that couldn't exist by themselves? Augustine's answer is that existence as such is a good thing given to us by God. Without this creation, there would be nothing at all beyond God, so creation has made things better.

Indeed, Augustine emphasises, being of things can never be bad, only the actions freely chosen. Thus, water or sun are not evil things, but if we foolishly jump into water and drown or look too closely to the sun and blind ourselves, it is we who are to be blamed. Thus, material and mutable things are not evil as such: they are more like a piece of music, the full beauty of which requires that one part of it has finished, before others begin. It is just the act of preferring such mutable goods over immutable ones, like the capacity to do music, that is deplorable.

In a perfected form, with an established connection to God, a human being can use their own intelligence to understand all this. But before they have reached this position, Augustine points out, intelligence by itself is usually not enough. Because of this, God has provided them with the authority of religion to guide them toward a phase when they are mature enough to use intelligence. At first, the true church was established through the use of miracles, but then the light of intelligence became strong enough to show the falsity of the prideful dissenters within the church. So, from the human race, ruled in youth by lust toward earthly matters and onset in old age by frailty of diminishing capacities, is born a new race, who little by little turns away from the earthly to a heavenly life.

What intelligence can do, Augustine points out, is to see how feeble is the beautiful order of material nature in comparison with the life organising material objects and how feeble is the mere sensuous life in comparison with intelligence evaluating what senses provide. Yet, intelligence can also recognise its own imperfection, due to not always being able to follow the standards of proper reasoning. These standards are the truly immutable, divine Wisdom.

It is this divine standard, Augustine explains, that gives the material world its beauty, by ordering and unifying it. Beauty and true pleasure are then consequences of unity. Indeed, he continues, all material things imitate the divine unity, but never really achieve proper unity, having been made of a plurality of parts. This proper unity we cannot perceive with senses, Augustine says, but only with heart. What prevents us from perceiving it is not senses, but sin, our own will turning away from God.

Augustine admits that some people might be able to reach Wisdom through their own intelligence. Yet, the majority of humankind is not capable of this and so requires the help of an authority in their first steps toward it. Thus, he instructs, even the most wise humans should show an example to others and approach Wisdom at first through belief, so that no one with less intelligence would be afraid to believe.

Indeed, he continues, a person who still lacks proper intelligence can do no better, but to find someone wise enough to guide them. The obvious problem is how they can recognise that someone is wise, when they are not yet wise enough to discern it. Augustine says that the only answer is to believe that there are such wise people to be found and to have faith in the Creator that such a wise person will be pointed to them. Furthermore, he adds, Christian church seems a very good candidate for such a fountain of wisdom, because people in it are praised for their virtuous ability to ignore snares of the material world in their rigorous ascetic exercises.

A particular opponent of Christian church Augustine wants to target is the Manichean religion, which he himself had adhered to in his youth. Manicheans thought that instead of one, there were two gods, one of which was the source for everything good, like physical light, while the other was the source of everything evil, like evil souls. Augustine, on the contrary, argues that a soul as a non-physical entity is always of higher nature than light, even when doing evil things. Furthermore, he states that souls do not turn to evil because of an evil god, but because of their own choice. Finally, souls can repent of their evil deeds and thus redeem themselves and again become as good as God intended them to.

Manicheaism is not the only enemy of Christianity in Augustine’s eyes. He repudiates those who believe that the Creator required some pre-given matter for forming the world. He also classifies as heretics all who think that the Creator is not distinct from the divine Wisdom or Word, but also those who consider the Word as created: instead, Augustine says, Word is naturally generated from the Creator, like an offspring from a parent. He also defends the idea that the Word embodied itself and lived a normal human life, being born from a woman and dying, but that after this the Word returned to a realm of bliss promised for good people and that the Word will return one day to judge the worth of humans. Furthermore, Augustine states that the Creator and the Word, together with a third distinct entity, called Holy Spirit, which might be a personification of the mutual love of the Creator and the Word, form a single God.

While heretics believe falsities about God, Augustine notes, schismatics hold a too high standard of living for their fellow human beings, although in this life we are unable to live as perfectly as we should. He is especially targeting the Donatist sect, who were unwilling to accept as priests people who had wavered in their conviction.

One standard of true faith lies for Augustine in the scriptures, but since the literal way of reading it is only one of many, it is no simple matter to decide what the Bible says. Thus, Augustine finds even the first sentence of God creating heaven and earth in the beginning problematic: is the writer of Genesis speaking only of the visible world and did God create angels before this beginning, and did God create only unformed matter or already the whole formed universe? After careful consideration he comes to the conclusion that what was created in the beginning was just unformed matter, while the light created next meant the angels.

Augustine also ponders the scriptural problem of what it means that humans were made to the likeness of God. Firstly, he notes that it doesn’t mean that humans would be like or exactly similar to God - this literal likeness or image of God is an aspect of God themselves, namely, the Wisdom or Word of God. Instead, humans become like God just by taking part of this Wisdom, that is, by becoming rational. Still, as likeness of the whole God, humans should not just imitate Wisdom, but the whole triune God. Thus, even the bodily side of humans should reflect God, and just like Plato, Augustine notices that it does so with its upright position that looks toward heavens.

The Bible offers Augustine not just information on the origin of the world and humans, but also guidance on how to live. He especially interprets the beginning of the so-called sermon on mount, and later the so-called Lord’s prayer, as describing steps toward a life in union with divinity. In the first stage, the human being should humbly submit to divine authority - indeed, one should hope that everyone will submit to it. As a sign of submission, one should meekly study the scripture, without disputing its meaning, hoping that one day God will speak to humans directly, not through writings. This study leads the human to mourn, when they understand that seeming goods of the world of perception block it from reaching the true good, where the divine will is fulfilled.

After mourning, Augustine continues, the human being will hunger for its true good - doing the just will of God as their daily bread. Acting merciful toward others and forgiving their bad actions, humans will themselves obtain mercy and forgiveness from God. This mercy is an inner vision of the divine, granted by purity of one’s heart, clear of all earthly temptations. This vision releases human being from all the remaining evil and creates a peace within one’s soul, leading to highest wisdom and life in connection with the divine.

The description of these stages, Augustine explains, takes up only a few lines of the sermon on the mount, while the rest of the text merely explicates this transformation process further. It particularly shows how this process removes a human being away from the pleasures of the ordinary human world, denizens of which will thus ridicule anyone attempting this transformation. Still, Augustine points out, one should not be disheartened by this ridicule, but instead try to inspire others to take the same path by one’s unwavering attitude, although one should not take the path just to impress others. This path, he continues his reading, is something far more arduous than what the Jewish law had prescribed - for instance, one is to suffer even an unsatisfying marriage and refrain from all hatred and revenge.

Augustine is especially interested in the Pauline letters, which show how futile in a Christian world are the rituals of Jewish law that only had a symbolic meaning, like circumcision. This does not mean, Augustine adds, that law as a whole would be futile, since its core of moral commands, like “Do not kill” is still to be followed. It is only that these commands should now be followed not because of a fear of retribution, but because one should respect and love all human beings.

Another important lesson Augustine learns from Paul is the relationship of spirit and flesh, the bodily side of a human being. Spirit ought to control flesh, that is, entice it away from bodily delights to delights of wisdom. Yet, Augustine notes against the Manichaeans, flesh is still created by God and the human spirit should live their life through flesh. Thus, following Paul, Augustine notes that a person need not repress their sexuality, if their spouse still desires intercourse, especially if they desire it for the sake of procreation.

Augustine also defends Paul from Jerome’s supposition that Paul would have feigned a dispute with Peter in order to make a lesson for his readers. Augustine is adamant that all forms of lie should be forbidden, especially if they are supposedly made to support Christianity, for instance, by gaining new followers, because Christian faith should be based on truth. Augustine notes that lies are not to be allowed even in the Ciceronian dilemma of someone asking for whereabouts of a person they are about to kill: one can always just refuse to answer, Augustine says. What then makes something a lie? Augustine notes that it is not so much the content of the assertion, but the intention behind it that defines a lie. Thus, saying a falsehood will not be a lie, even if the speaker knows that they are speaking falsehoods, if they are intending to just make jokes.