The first book is great. I found it super instructive and encouraging and I think it would be encouraging for anyone. It focuses mainly on “things” and how they are to be loved (used) not for themselves but ultimately only as far as they point us to the eternal things which we should love, ultimately God.
Book 2 and 3 were long and kind of “sloggy”. I felt like a lot of it was somewhat self evident. There were some good sections here and there but I felt like I was just reading to read it.
Book 4 was pretty good. It’s mainly for teachers/pastors since it’s so heavily rhetoric based. It’s less applicable for every day life of non-teachers but still interesting/informative.

A definite read and reread for the Christian seriously interested in rhetoric. It was great to read Augustine's basic take of signs and thing signified—the implications for language are fascinating. Book IV gets into his more practical instruction on rhetorical delivery, and he utilizes (it seems) a modified faith, hope, love triad to explain the goal and function of rhetoric. The Christian teacher wants his listener to understand, delight in and obey the truth, and must utilize different modes of speech to attain this end since different audiences have different needs. Sometimes they need to be instructed out of ignorance; other times you need to smash hard hearts with hard words.

Nice: distinction between wickedness & wrongdoing. Good: analysis of language/signs. Yuk: dull religious moralizing.

Book two is a slog but otherwise it is fascinating, especially if read as a manual for preachers.

“There is a danger of forgetting what one has to say while working out a clever way to say it.”, p. 103

Imagine being one of the most prolific writers in Church history, and a second year seminary student gives your hermeneutic books a 4/5 stars on good reads nearly 1500 years later.

While that would be ironic for you, I am giving “On Christian Teaching” a 4/5 stars as a third year seminary student.

I wish I would have read this book earlier in my Christian life. It would have helped my Bible reading habits years ago. Albeit, this work in antiquated and some of Augustine’s convictions are not grounded in anything but his own thoughts.

I would like to see another theologian make a spiritual successor to this work.

In contrast to the unwieldy and meandering City of God, Augustine’s four books On Christian Doctrine are notably focused in comparison. Augustine seems to be at his best when he can let his rhetorical skills breathe. His arguments stay rooted in his fundamental belief in biblical truth, but at least here he engages in active interpretation. The entire last book is dedicated to honing skills to distinguish between literal and figurative biblical passages. He seeks for allegory in much of the Old Testament.

Interestingly, Augustine speaks little of morality in his books On Christian Doctrine. There is but one purpose in our being for God- “He does not enjoy us but uses us.” Bk. 1, XXXI. In return, “He has mercy on us that we may enjoy him, and we have mercy on our neighbor so that we may enjoy Him.” Bk. 1, XXX. Unlike the Greek and Roman thinkers of before who sought the ways of righteous living to obtain eudaimon (spiritual happiness), Augustine strives for perfecting obedience and charity. Interpretation and study of biblical teachings lead the studious past the obscurity brought by original sin and into a fuller understanding of God’s wishes. Advancements in thought by philosophers before are used, but selectively.

If those who are called philosophers, especially the Platonists, have said things which are indeed true and are well accommodated to our faith, they should not be feared; rather, what they have said should be taken from them as from unjust possessors and converted to our use. Bk. 2, XL.

Augustine’s life of humility and quest for “faith, love and charity” strikes a chord for all who pursue decency. However, all builds upon that faith in biblical authority. Where the philosophers of prior centuries had faith in the existence of some abstract value, or even just man’s ability to achieve eudaimon through critical thought, Augustine places his faith in a collection of writings serving as an encoded blueprint for human action and thought.

Really enjoyable. I hadn't known much about the book expect some general things that Augustine would cover. His exploration of how to rightly order one's loves in Book I was great, and I found it fascinating to see how he envisioned using different academic disciplines to understand and teach the Scriptures. The most in-depth exploration of this is in Book IV, where he works from Cicero's ideas about rhetoric: the speaker aims to teach in simple style, to guide his audience's pleasures and displeasures in a moderate style, and to persuade the audience in the grand style. Augustine adapts them to the goal of a teacher of Christian doctrine and gives examples of these rhetorical style in the Scriptures. I'd like to return to it again sometime.

A fascinating little book for all kinds of people: late antiquity buffs; philosophers; hermeneuts; and of course, Christians. Augie usually manages to find his way to a reasonable middle position: against biblical literalism, also against waiting for a direct experience of God.

Book one describes 'things' rather than signs, and we get some of Augie's less up to date opinions: you shouldn't love people for themselves, but for the sake of God, and the same thing goes for one's self. But these are backed by more liberal-friendly ideas. The neighbor who we are to love, for instance, is pretty much everyone.

We then move on to 'signs, ambiguities and difficulties of,' which is full of fairly sensible advice for anyone who wants to read anything. There are some things you have to know in order to interpret words: languages, for instance, institutions, general facts, logic, rhetoric. But we shouldn't take too much pleasure in these. It sometimes seems, unfortunately, that Augie really thinks you should only know things that are boring and will help you conform to society. I suspect that this claim needs to be put in some kind of historical context--in a solidly Christian culture, presumably, we would be more free to enjoy "human-made institutions," since, he goes on to say, there is much of value to be found even in pagan literature.

Having dealt with the difficulties, we move on to the division between literal and figurative understanding of signs. If sections of scripture are not related to moral behavior or to faith, they should be interpreted figuratively (which, though he doesn't say it, means pretty much all of it should be interpreted figuratively). He goes on to discuss morality at some length, making a nice distinction between the corruption of one's own mind and body (wickedness) and harm to another (wrongdoing). Augie, and almost every religious thinker after him, focuses too much on wickedness, and nowhere near enough on wrongdoing.

Interestingly, book three was started in the 390s, but abandoned, and only finished in the 420s; much of the later work is less interesting, though classicists might appreciate his description of Tyconius, who wrote his own system of interpretation.

Book four, also late, is a defense of the rhetorical beauty of the bible. Not riveting. Not at all.

But on the whole, a fascinating, quickish read.

Love Augustine. Yeah, he gets a little funky at times with his figurative interpretations, but I think today we have the opposite problem of insisting on literal readings. We don’t want to, as he says, “turn over and over in your mind what you read, until your interpretation is led right through to the kingdom of charity.” (III, 15, 23). We could use a bit more Augustine.

Book IV might be one of my favorite teachings on preaching. “It is the duty, therefore, of the eloquent churchman, when he is trying to persuade the people about something that has to be done, not only to teach, in order to instruct them; not only to delight, in order to hold them; but also to sway, in order to conquer and win them.” (IV, 13, 29).

St Augustine of Hippo here gives advice on preaching. 3/4 of said advice is a discussion of how to read Scripture so that one understands it and is this able to preach. I read this in preparation for my own homiletics course this coming semester, and even though St Augustine doesn't give as much practical preaching advice as one might desire, his run down of scriptural analysis is I think must read for anyone who plans to preach the Gospel, especially in light of our modern urge to separate Scripture into little microcosms.

This is a phenomenal work on education. As an inspiration for James Smith, his work on ordered loves emphasizes the goal of education not as simply the formation of the mind, but the formation of the loves, the heart. Augustine takes as his guiding principle for Christian education: What skills do students need to read and communicate God's word effectively? The answer: language and grammar (especially w.r.t. ancient languages), literature (understanding genre, poetry, etc.), history, geography, formal logic (for making sound theological inferences from various Scriptures), rhetoric, a study of pagan literature, and he even includes an understanding of the natural world and mathematics (Augustine loves all the numbers in the Bible!) - essentially a classical liberal arts education. Brilliant. And Book IV on rhetoric is filled with sensible and practical wisdom for preaching. It is amazing how principles for communicating effectively transcend time and culture.

One negative: chapter and section headings from the editor would help greatly for following the logic of the book.