This paper explores Augustine’s hermeneutical approach to Genesis 1 in Confessions. It takes the more developed hermeneutic theory of On Christian Doctrine and seeks out parallel content (however seminal) in books XII and XIII of Confessions. Though the theoretical books of On Christian Doctrine (1-3 dated at 397) emerge at about the same time as Confessions (397-401), there is a measurable distance between the two hermeneutics.[1] Augustine tends toward inclusivism in Confessions. His method and theory intentionally license multiple ways of thinking and interpreting.[2] On Christian Doctrine¸ on the other hand, seeks to restrict which interpretations are permissible with the use of rules. Ultimately, this breaks down to the methodological difference between an autobiography and a philosophical treatise. Confessions is just that, a confession. In the first nine books, Augustine confesses his moral culpability: his lust, gluttony, pride, etc. In the latter four books, however, Augustine confesses his intellectual fallibility.[3] His licensing of and openness toward assorted interpretations in Confessions demonstrate his commitment to intellectual humility through contrition.
[1] “Non solum sibi ssed aliis etiam”: Neoplatonism and Rhetoric in Saint Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana, Martin Camargo, Source: Rhetorica: A Journal of the history of Rhetoric, Vol. 16. No. 4 (Autumn 1998), pp. 393-408
[2] For an example found earlier in Confessions one can turn to Augustine’s account of well ordered passions. Augustine combines Platonic, Stoic, and Peripatetic traditions in his account of weeping (among other passions), where weeping is permissible given certain provisos and sin given others. He borrows the Platonic conception of justice (or well-orderdness), and combines it to the putative Stoic doctrine of pathaiei, all the while operating from within Aristotelian virtue ethics. For more, see Sarah Byers, “Augustine and the Cognitive Cause of Stoic ‘Preliminary Passions (Propatheiai), (Journal of the History of Philosophy 2003).
[3] Book X focuses on a theory of memory, book XI on a theory of time, and books XII and XIII on a theory of interpretation. Another way of looking at the difference from books 1-9 to 10-13 is between the sins of Augustine’s past and the sins with which he struggles while writing Confessions, i.e. past and present sins (see Margaret Miles, Desire and Delight, (New York: Crossroads, 1991), 101).
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