perception, Augustine discerned the inconsistency between pagan ethics, and the Christian thoughts of divine grace moving the humbly and lovingly acceptant soul.
The treatise on Christian Doctrine clearly expresses Augustine's views as to the value of knowledge. He starts, in his usual way, from a fundamental principle, which is here the distinction between the use of something for a purpose and the enjoyment of something in and for itself. "To enjoy is to cleave fast in the love of a thing for its own sake. But to use is to employ a thing in obtaining what one loves." For an illustration he draws upon that Christian sentiment which from the first had made the Christian feel as a sojourner on earth.[1]
"It is as if we were sojourners unable to live happily away from our own country, and we wished to use the means of journeying by land and sea to end our misery and return to our fatherland, which is to be enjoyed. But the charm of the journey or the very movement of the vehicle delighting us, we are taken by a froward sweetness and become careless of reaching our own country whose sweetness would make us happy. Now if, journeying through this world, away from God, we wish to return to our own land where we may be happy, this world must be used, not enjoyed; that the invisible things of God may be apprehended through those created things before our eyes, and we may gain the eternal and spiritual from the corporeal and temporal."
From this illustration Augustine leaps at once to his final inference that only the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is to be enjoyed.[2] It follows as a corollary that the important knowledge for man is that which will bring him to God surely and for eternity. Such is knowledge of Holy Writ and its teachings. Other knowledge is valuable as it aids us to this.
Proceeding from this point of view, Augustine speaks more specifically. To understand Scripture one needs to know the words and also the things referred to. Knowledge of the latter is useful, because it sheds light on their figurative significance. For example, to know the serpent's habit of presenting its whole body to the assailant, in order
- ↑ See Clement of Rome, Ep. to the Corinthians (A.D. cir. 92), opening passage, and notes in Lightfoot's edition.
- ↑ De doc. Chris. i. 4, 5.
