Augustine and Cultural Diversity

Augustine has a sense of cultural diversity and historical change usually associated with post-Renaissance western thought. In Book 3 of On Christian Teaching he warns against the mistake of taking a literal statement in Scripture as figurative, and offers this test to determine what is literal and what figure: “anything in the divine discourse that cannot be related either to good morals or to the true faith should be taken as figurative. Good morals have to do with our love of God and our neighbour, the true faith with our understanding of God and our neighbour.” He thus returns to his original distinction between useful and enjoyable things from Book 1 to explain a hermeneutical distinction between literal and figurative expressions.

This is not a satisfying explanation. What, for instance, if we think that Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac is morally bad? Should we take it as figurative? And what would figurative mean in this connection – that it never really happened? What if the reader lives in a culture where killing animals is forbidden – would that mean that the Levitical sacrificial ordinances are figures?

Augustine is aware of this problem, the problem of the cultural situatedness and diversity of readers: “since the human race is prone to judge sins not by the strength of actual lust, but rather by the standard of its own practices, people generally regard as culpable only such actions as men of their own time and place tend to blame and condemn, and regard as commendable and praiseworthy only such actions as are acceptable within the conventions of their own society. And so it happens that if scripture enjoins something at variance with the practices of its readers, or censures something that is not at variance with them, they consider the relevant expression to be figurative.” To this problem, Augustine says that Scripture commends love and condemns lust, and teaches the catholic faith. This hardly solves the problem, because we are still left with the question of whether a particular event recorded in Scripture manifests lust or love. But the fact that Augustine asked the question shows a notably modern (in the best sense) sensibility.