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Is it safe to open the windows and let the Truth shine in?

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St. Augustine understands and defines rhetoric as an eloquent system of language that God created to aid mankind in understanding His Truths. Rhetoric provides a vehicle in teaching and proving His Truth to others and presents Christian readers especially, with a blueprint for using rhetoric to draw themselves and others closer to God.  For St. Augustine, God is the provider of souls and the only source of Truth that offers the sort of protection that Socrates longed for. The source of Truth through rhetoric can only be found in the Bible, not in or around man as Plato went on to suggest, or that Aristotle tried to classify through a system of linguistic rules and categories. God’s word originated the levels of clarity and eloquence through the use of rhetoric with the pedestrian public Cicero later suggested most effective, and God is the perfect orator that Quintilian spent a lifetime searching for in vain. Rhetoric may also be used as a tool of the Devil in its falsehoods so easily accepted by many of those philosophers, thus St. Augustine’s caveat regarding rhetoric that includes the Christian need to be well versed in rhetoric in both its Biblical and secular forms. St. Augustine declared that “since through the art of rhetoric [in its secular form and teachings] both truth and falsehood are pleaded, who would be so bold as to say that against falsehood, truth as regards its own defenders out to stand unarmed?” (Bizzell & Herzberg, 2001. p. 456). Christians, therefore, must understand rhetoric in its Biblical and secular terms and usages.

St. Augustine also warns us “that a man who has merely an empty flow of eloquence, ought to be the more guarded against as he is the more pleasing to his audience in those matters which have no expedience, and as, since his audience has him speak with fluency, it judges that he likewise speaks with truth” (Bizzell & Hernzberg, 2001, p. 458) Because of this, St. Augustine suggests that man first turn to scripture to learn Truth “in their true understanding and the careful investigation of their meaning” (459). According to Augustine, those with a solid understanding of scripture can then look back at it as a model of rhetorical style and eloquence and use both rhetorics as a skill designed to create clarity and eloquence in one hand and the Truth in the other to teach God’s word to the ignorant and to protect them from the ill use of persuasion. To be wise is to know Truth, to be eloquent is to use Truth in defense of God’s Word. To do so effectively is to speak from the heart where God and His Truth live within each of us something that the classical philosophers, thanks to the tangible birth and death of Jesus Christ would not be unable to disprove.

Bonding rhetoric to Christianity forges a powerful shift in the consideration of the perfect orator. St. Augustine stated that God is the perfect orator but that he also speaks through even what may be considered the lowest of men. He states Biblical passages as an example. St. Augustine said, “All the merits and the beauties of eloquence...I could, if there were time, point out in the Sacred Writings of those whom Divine Providence has provided to instruct us, and to bring us from this corrupt world to the world of the blessed” (Bizzell & Herzberg, 2001. p. 460). Through this radical shift in the concept of the perfect orator, St. Augustine provides hope to many that God will work through them by providing them with convincing rhetorical skills that may be used with Biblical Truth to spread the word of God. Furthermore, with the opening of knowledge being equivalent to Truth instead of truth in whatever form man is able to find and classify it, anyone willing to dig deep into Biblical texts, grapple with the high eloquence of its format to forge understanding to the level of teaching others, and by the grace of God through prayer just may find himself as close to the perfect orator as any of us was intended to become.

While St. Augustine’s doctrine provides a purposeful use of rhetoric for the Christian student, it also adds a degree of pressure and certainly a high level of expectation that may make some as nervous as Quintilian’s expectations of his students did. While St. Augustine admits the rhetoric used in the Bible leads us to a deeper understanding of Truth and provides us with an arsenal of supports for our own arguments, he doesn’t dismiss how difficult it can be to understand. With the plethora of interpretations of the Bible, many Christians are left floundering in finding a version that stays as close as possible to the original text but is also comprehensible even to them as believers. Where does this leave the secular reader of St. Augustine’s doctrine? Though this is clearly a call to action for Christians, specifically, it doesn’t offer immediate advice other than “just do it” for the Christian student who doesn’t presume to immediately understand God’s Word, or know, really, who is using God’s rhetoric purely versus those who may use it towards more secular ends.

Furthermore, is this text more effective to a Christian audience who already accepts God’s truth and by result remains unconvincing to those who lack conviction? How effective would this be on a non-Christian audience regarding the Truth of God’s existence rather than the truth of the Bible being eloquently written and an excellent text for use when models of eloquence are needed? Are non-believers able to be swayed by this type of argument for eloquence? Or would they still view the Bible as a well written “story” and this argument only furthers that point? While St. Augustine has my utmost respect and gratitude for this shift in our focus of classical rhetoric, was it enough to change the conversation regarding the way classical rhetoric is viewed? Or is it left as an addition to signifying a shift and nothing more? For those who considered this text a breath of fresh air, is it safe now to open the windows and let the Truth shine in?

References:

St. Augustine (Book IV). In Bizzell, P. & Herzberg, B. (2001). The rhetorical tradition: readings from classical

                times to the present. (2nd ed., pp 456-466). Boston, MA:

Bedford/ St. Martin’s.

 

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