Confessions Language and Communication Quotes

Augustine seems to be pulling a nudge nudge-wink wink here and referring to himself when he says "those who are most gifted with speech." Conceited much? But wait a minute. So, it's difficult to both not say enough about God and to say anything about God? That's what we call a Catch-22. It's not just well-nigh impossible to find someone who can speak about God; speech itself seems to fall short of fulfilling its duty.

It's pretty hard to compete with one of the greatest orators of Western civilization, but that's not really Augustine's point here. He's saying that he judges language by its rhetorical complexity, and quite frankly, he finds the Bible clunky and uninspiring. Learning how to read between the lines of the Bible is an important lesson for Augustine; it's not until he meets Ambrose that he gets the brilliant idea of reading the Bible figuratively instead of literally. (We can't blame him, debates about this kind of thing still rage on today.) And it's not until the last three books that Augustine starts to think about the Bible's potential for multiple meanings.

It's probably a good thing to remind the viewers (er, readers) at home that more often than not, we care about how something is said, rather than what is said. Seriously, that's like Politics 101. Language—and the not-so-insignificant fact that it can be deceptive—is one of the big reasons why Augustine has such a hard time taking the Bible seriously. But what Augustine will eventually realize, in his perpetual search for the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth, is that the Truth transcends language.

Well, this is a bit of a switcheroo from the last quote, now isn't it? Ambrose is a good speaker, and so Augustine finds himself listening to Ambrose almost in spite of himself. But, in the spirit of Latin, nota bene: Augustine says that the difference between Ambrose and Faustus is that Ambrose is more learned, while Faustus is the more charismatic speaker (see V.13.2). So, it's Ambrose's intellectual proclivities—i.e., his interest in truth—that begin to pierce through Augustine's preconceptions of Christianity.

Transformative moment, here we come. Augustine says that he "cannot remember the words [he] used" (VIII.8.2) and that he "performed many bodily actions" (VIII.8.4), so it looks like language is failing him. All Augustine can do is groan and gesture. We imagine he looked something like this. But what exactly is it that ends this key moment? An innocent child's offhand remark to "take it and read it," and a sentence from Paul's Epistles. Make of that what you will.

"Deaf corpses" is a little redundant, don't you think? We mean, if they're dead, then isn't it already implied that they can't hear? Or if they're deaf to begin with, why do they also need to be dead? Our point is, this is a weird phrase, and we're going to talk about it. Here, Augustine is getting at the idea of deafness (in the sense of not wanting to listen) as something that will deaden the soul. So we're talking about a metaphoric death here, which is why he uses both "deaf" and "corpses" together. But let's not forget the other important motif in this sentence—fire (head on over to our Symbols, Imagery, Allegory section for lots more on fire)—which is what reinvigorates Augustine and puts life back into his corpse-soul-heart-thingie. The Psalms are able to put the fire back in him not because someone tries to explain them to Augustine in words, but because Augustine read them. Very closely and very carefully, as we here at Shmoop like to read things.

We've all been here, haven't we? The fact is, not all books are written equal. And that, dear readers, is why we have our handy Tough-o-meter. It's nice to know that even someone as literate and smart as Augustine has trouble with the Scriptures, and it sounds like he's trying to reassure his readership that the Scriptures can be pretty humbling. Even to the most learned mind. It's almost like the Scriptures are written in their own special language, and Augustine's Latinate, philosophical mind is coming up blank. Remember how earlier, he was complaining about how the Scriptures read like a Fun with Dick and Jane comic? Oh, how the tables have turned.

Augustine does some pretty complex maneuvers in order to account for God's immutability, including making his "speech" something that does not seem to resemble speech very much at all. His analysis of Genesis in Books XI-XIII is really wrapped up in the specific language of the Bible and the "language" used by God (the creation through a speech act, the idea of the Word, etc.). "Exegesis" is a good buzzword for these sections: it means "critical explanation or interpretation of a text or portion of a text, especially of the Bible."

As much as Augustine is frustrated by how he isn't able to "know" precisely what the Bible is talking about, his way of coping is to revel in how many "right answers" there are. Sorry for all the scare quotes, but Augustine is all about Truth, as in singular-Truth-with-a-capital-T, so this kind of plurality is new territory for him. We'd also like to point out that Augustine highlights Moses's brevity (Genesis is traditionally attributed to Moses), and then says that it is because of such bluntness and simplicity that the language can be read in so many ways. What do you make of this notion, in light of Augustine's earlier opinions about the Bible's simple language?

And here we come full circle. What began as a search for truth has become a desire for many truths. See, multiplicity is already inherent in language. That's why ten people can hear the same thing in ten different ways. Who we are when we read something is actually a big part of reading—Augustine reading Paul's Epistles in the garden is a perfect example—and the Scriptures have taught Augustine to favor this more personalized way of reading over declarative, eloquent, rigid language. Cool.