Introduction
Over the past few decades, numerous attempts have been made to bring Augustine into conversation with recent trends in postmodern thought.Footnote 1 Augustine appears to be particularly suited for this project because he seems to straddle the ancient and contemporary in a way unlike any other thinker. In particular, the obvious parallel between his preoccupation with human language and the ‘linguistic turn’ of the twentieth century has given rise to an ongoing conversation between Augustinian and postmodern hermeneutics.Footnote 2 Indeed, as Frances Young has observed, ‘Augustine's hermeneutics is both strange and familiar’ to today's reader.Footnote 3 However, despite the similarities between Augustinian and postmodern hermeneutics, Young rightly maintains, it must be remembered that Augustine's hermeneutics belongs most properly ‘to the world of ancient rhetorical criticism, not to postmodernism’.Footnote 4 Therefore, in contrast to those who treat Augustine as a precursor to postmodern thought, Young advocates for a historical approach, in which ‘Augustine's hermeneutics must first be seen as “other” and “strange”, and only then appropriated in a context that is both similar to, and different from, his world of understanding’.Footnote 5
In what follows, I suggest that, while it is important to guard against the anachronism of making Augustine ‘the first postmodern man’, it is also true that some of the emphases in postmodern hermeneutics can help to illuminate aspects of Augustine's interpretive practice.Footnote 6 In particular, I argue, the development of narrative hermeneutics in recent years serves as a helpful lens through which we can recognise the important role narrative also plays in Augustine's hermeneutics and, in particular, how it shapes his conception of meaning.Footnote 7 Appreciating the place of narrative in Augustine's thought allows us to move past the easy caricature of meaning in his hermeneutics as a static reality that lies completely beyond the text to find a more dynamic and personal account of meaning at work.Footnote 8
Narrative hermeneutics
Narrative hermeneutics is closely associated with what has often been described as the ‘narrative turn’ of the last century – an intellectual movement sparked by the development of structuralist theories of narrative in France during the mid to late 1960s. Thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Claude Bremond, Gérard Genette and A. J. Greimas were instrumental in what Tzvetan Todorov famously referred to as la narratologie.Footnote 9 As structuralism began to wane in popularity, these thinkers influenced an explosion of international interest in narrative, which has cut across virtually every academic discipline in recent years.Footnote 10
Within this movement, narrative has been particularly influential in the realm of hermeneutics. Drawing on thinkers such as Hans-George Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Charles Taylor and Jacques Derrida – each of whom built on Heidegger's notion of Weltverstehen (world-understanding) in one way or another – contemporary narrative hermeneutics applies narrative as a primary category to the conviction that human life is fundamentally hermeneutical.Footnote 11 In other words, narrative hermeneutics sees every event in human life as an encounter in which the human subject creates or recreates meaning based on particular psychological, sociocultural and historical circumstances, and it makes use of the elements of storytelling in order to do so.Footnote 12
Thus, narrative hermeneutics posits an ‘active’ and ‘interactive’ process of interpretation, in which the interpreter does not simply discern a pre-existent meaning in a text or event but participates in the process of ‘meaning-making’.Footnote 13 As a result, narrative hermeneutics, by and large, rejects any theory of language which assumes that there are non-linguistic things called ‘meanings’ or ‘facts’.Footnote 14 Similarly, it is not concerned with discerning a universal narrative, or with identifying common features of human nature or reality. As Rita Felski comments, rather than a ‘hapless and hopeless pursuit of ultimate meaning’, narrative hermeneutics sees interpretation as a process of ‘coproduction’ between the author and interpreter, a process that focuses on what a text or event ‘un-furls, calls forth, makes possible’.Footnote 15
Furthermore, key for narrative hermeneutics is the notion that ‘coproduction’, or, in the words of Gadamer, ‘productive activity’, is an individual affair.Footnote 16 Each person brings their story with them to every new interpretive experience. And, because every human experience grows out of a unique set of circumstances, no two interpretations of any event or text can be the same. In this understanding, meaning cannot reside in an external source, such as authorial intent or abstract forms, for it is individualised, shaped by cultural and historical circumstances, and ultimately constructed anew by each interpreter.
Narrative in antiquity
While narrative hermeneutics as it is known today is a fairly recent development, narrative as a category for communication and interpretation goes back to antiquity at least, becoming especially important within the Latin rhetorical tradition in which Augustine was schooled.Footnote 17 In that tradition, narrative (narratio) had two main senses. In the first, more technical sense, it referred to the second main part of a well-crafted oration, the part of the speech that would outline ‘the facts of the case’ to be discussed and so set the stage for the logical argument to follow.Footnote 18 In the Greek rhetorical manuals, this part of the speech was known as the diegesis (διήγησις), and, when those manuals were translated into Latin, the term narratio was used. But, over time, narratio also came to refer to a more general means of conveying meaning. Cicero, for example, explains that narratio should not be reduced to its technical sense, but that it can be used to refer to a number of different genres, including fabula and historia, and can even speak of an author's argumentum.Footnote 19 Quintilian goes so far as to say that narratio describes the proper mode of rhetorical thinking itself, and he maintains that formal logic is ‘trivial’ (minimis) in comparison.Footnote 20 This increased attention to the importance of narratio for the author in the Latin tradition is further evidenced by the fact that Cicero's De oratore and Quintilian's Institutio oratoria each devote over forty pages to discussing narratio, while Aristotle's Rhetoric only contains roughly four pages dedicated to diegesis.Footnote 21
Therefore, in contrast to the exclusive application of narrative theory to hermeneutics in recent work, narrative in late antiquity was primarily, though not exclusively, centred on its value for the author.Footnote 22 This is because it was recognised that a well-constructed narratio could uphold the rhetorical ideal in a way that other parts of speech could not. Quintilian tells us that rhetoric, in its broadest sense, is defined as ars bene dicendi, or as bene decendi scientia.Footnote 23 It has been noted that there is a ‘double-meaning’ of bene at work in these definitions.Footnote 24 That is to say, they point to the fact that rhetorical works were judged on two related grounds: on a technical level, they were judged on the strength of the composition; but on the moral level, they were judged based on the goodness of the author.Footnote 25 In a real sense, the author's moral character was thought to be transferred to the work through composition, such that the work ought to be a faithful representation of the author.Footnote 26 Both the moral goodness of the author and an artful composition were required for a rhetorical work to realise its highest form.
Yet, there was a common distinction made in classical rhetoric between knowing the authorial intent (intentio or voluntas) and knowing the objective reality of which the author speaks (res).Footnote 27 When treating difficult subjects, this distinction became problematic. If the author were tasked with speaking or writing on a philosophical topic to an audience ignorant of philosophy, for example, Cicero recommends that the author accommodate the message to the level of the audience.Footnote 28 When speaking of justice, one should refrain from including reflections on a perfectly ordered soul or a just way of life; even though these themes are, ideally speaking, the most proper elements of justice, they would likely be far beyond the understanding of the audience. In this case, Cicero advises the author to treat justice in the popular sense instead.Footnote 29 Therefore, when addressing an audience on such occasions, the author would face a dilemma in which he could either communicate beyond the grasp of the audience and remain faithful to the topic, or he could speak in terms he knew were not entirely accurate but be understood by his audience.
Narratio allowed the author to overcome this dilemma. When constructing a narratio, the author has the opportunity to communicate on different levels at the same time.Footnote 30 This is because the skilled author is able to draw on a variety of techniques, such as metaphor, repetition and word association in order to make connections between characters, events and terms and so communicate something beyond what appears on the surface.Footnote 31 Through the arrangement of these connections, one could communicate authorial intent (voluntas) that was at once also attached to objective reality (res) and thereby convey the author's own character in a more complete way than was commonly found in other departments of rhetoric. Because of how the elements within a narrative were arranged, an audience could then be taken into the narratio and discern the author's voluntas indirectly in accordance with their capacity, and, for the perceptive audience member, the res would always be accessible.Footnote 32 To the extent that an author took advantage of this unique quality, a narratio could serve as the truest reflection of its author and, therefore, the most complete preservation of the rhetorical ideal.
Narrative in Augustine
When we turn to Augustine, we find that he stands in many ways between the more recent hermeneutical emphasis on narrative hermeneutics and the Latin rhetorical tradition's emphasis on narrative as an important tool for the author. The importance of narrative in Augustine's hermeneutics is, therefore, illuminated by the attention paid to narrative in postmodern hermeneutics. But, at the same time, he also provides an implicit critique of postmodern narrative hermeneutics by offering an alternative to the abandonment of authorial intent altogether. In this way, bringing Augustine into conversation with postmodern narrative hermeneutics both benefits our understanding of Augustine and contributes to current conversations around narrative hermeneutics.
While Augustine was shaped by the vision of the Latin rhetorical tradition, his own use of narrative differed from those who went before him in one very significant respect. In the Latin rhetorical tradition, narratio was author-centric, meaning that it was cast predominantly from an author's perspective. But, as Kenneth Burke and John O'Banion have both pointed out, Augustine pays very little attention to the importance of narratio for constructing rhetorical works. Rather, he treats narratio primarily as a hermeneutical category.Footnote 33 O'Banion explains that Augustine's use of narratio is marked by ‘an exclusive interest in texts’ which ignores authorial invention entirely:
He emphasized the significance of brevity, clarity, and plausibility – the chief characteristics of narratio, but the art of narration itself received no attention in the sense of establishing the significance of one's case (as in a sermon). Narratio served mainly a hermeneutic function, to assist in the elucidation of the Bible, which, it was believed, contained the only story Christians were to tell . . . [F]rom a rhetorical perspective, narratio became restricted to expositio, an outline of the Christ story.Footnote 34
Indeed, it is noteworthy that Augustine never discusses narratio in the context of creating an argument, even though, on a number of occasions, it would have been natural for him to do so. In De catechizandis rudibus, for example, Augustine writes to instruct Deogratias, a deacon in Carthage, how to construct the narratio of a catechetical oration.Footnote 35 While this would be an ideal place to discuss the importance of invention, Augustine remains entirely on the plain of exposition throughout the letter. In fact, as Ernst Fortin has observed, Augustine does not reference the notion of plausibility (probabilitas or credibiliter) once in the work – a very important component when creating a narratio.Footnote 36 Or again, in book 4 of De doctrina christiana, Augustine discusses the art of preaching. This would seem to be another natural place to discuss the role of narrative in the preacher's construction of a sermon, yet he makes no mention of narratio whatsoever.
While his exclusive application of narratio to the task of interpretation does provide a parallel with more recent trends in narrative hermeneutics, it is vital to note that Augustine nevertheless remained indebted to the core characteristics of narratio as he knew it from the Latin rhetorical tradition – namely, narratio’s unique ability to convey the true authorial intent. Therefore, the importance of narrative for the interpreter was the result of its importance for the author.
This is made clear in Augustine's hermeneutical handbook, De doctrina christiana, where he directly discusses narratio in two separate places.Footnote 37 The first occurs in book 2, where he considers how secular learning can aid the reader in the task of interpreting scripture. Augustine's goal is to distinguish for his readers the kinds of extra-biblical resources that are helpful for interpreting scripture from those that are misleading. He identifies three categories: first, there are those resources invented by humans, such as astrology or the worship of demons, which mislead and so are not useful; second, there are other human inventions which are useful within certain limits, such as the works of sculptors or painters; third, there are departments of knowledge that are not the result of human invention but of divine order, and these are most helpful of all.Footnote 38
Within this last category, Augustine identifies two sources of knowledge, which he refers to as a two species of narratio. The first source of knowledge he identifies is history because, when recorded faithfully, it reveals the divine arrangement within the natural order:
In the course of an historical narrative (narratione) where former institutions of men are narrated (narrantur), the history itself is not to be counted among human institutions, since things that are in the past and finished and cannot be undone are to be counted as belonging to the course of time, of which God is the author and administrator. For it is one thing to tell (narrare) what has been done, another to show what ought to be done. History narrates (narrat) what has been done, faithfully and with advantage; but the books of the haruspices, and all writings of the same kind, aim at teaching what ought to be done or observed, using the boldness of an adviser, not the fidelity of a narrator.Footnote 39
Historical records belong to the third category mentioned above because they are not products of the human author's invention, but rather of transmission. They make the divine arrangement within the created order – the actual narratio – accessible.
The second species of narratio Augustine identifies is natural science. The study of animal and plant life, as well as astronomy, Augustine maintains, yields a kind of narratio because it, too, reveals divine arrangement within the natural order.Footnote 40 Just as with history, interpreting elements of natural science requires that one consider how the different, divinely arranged parts fit together into a coherent whole. While Augustine admits that science most properly resembles description because it deals with the present (est etiam narratio demonstrationi similis), he is especially concerned to show that it also constitutes a kind of narration because it allows one to interpret the movement of and relationships between natural bodies as well.Footnote 41
It is noteworthy that Augustine makes a conscious effort to characterise divine revelation in terms of narrative. While it might seem somewhat obvious that history is characterised as narratio, Augustine makes clear that it is not due solely to history's chronological character. For him, history is narratio because it provides access to the divine author's masterful work, and it is that work which constitutes the true narratio. It is for this same reason that he is eager to show that natural science is a species of narratio as well. The common theme uniting them is the fact that, through both history and science, one has access to the narratio constructed by the divine author. That is why only these two departments are species of narratio; astrology, divination and superstitions are not instances of narratio for Augustine because they do not make the divine narratio – the true narratio – accessible.Footnote 42
In book 3, Augustine turns to addresses the importance of narratio within scripture itself. Near the end of the book, where he considers Tychonius’ rule of ‘recapitulation’, Augustine explains that scripture, just like history and natural science, should be thought of in terms of narratio.Footnote 43 However, he goes on to explain that this should not be taken to mean that scripture is merely a chronicle of past events. In fact, he says, there are a number of passages that defy chronological sequence altogether.Footnote 44 Genesis 2:8–9, for example, indicates that God caused plants to grow and produce fruit after he placed the first man in the Garden of Eden. But, Augustine points out, this is contrary to the order recorded earlier in Genesis, where we are told vegetation was created before Adam was created.Footnote 45 Similarly, Genesis 10:32 says that each of the sons of Noah had families who spoke the languages of their respective nations. However, immediately after stating this, scripture tells us that ‘the whole earth was of one language and of one speech’. Again, there is an inconsistency here: either there was a variety of languages or there was not.Footnote 46 Or again, Augustine points to Luke 17:29–32 as a more subtle example, in which readers are encouraged to heed the example of Lot's wife and not look back on their old lives when Christ returns. But, he asks, is it not true that Christians must not look back to their old lives even now?Footnote 47 In each of these cases, he suggests, a kind of recapitulation is at work in which the text does not follow a precise chronological sequence.Footnote 48 Nevertheless, he maintains, scripture is still properly understood as a narratio on the basis that it is divinely arranged and that it makes that arrangement accessible to the interpreter. Therefore, just as Augustine is concerned to characterise history and science as narratio because they reveal the narratio constructed by the divine author, so also scripture is characterised as narratio for this very same reason.
We can now see how narrative subtly emerges as a key category in Augustine's conception of divine revelation. For him, God is the ultimate author of history, science and, most importantly, scripture. His revelation is characterised as narratio because in it one is able to perceive how the divine author has arranged history, nature and scripture, and so discern the divine authorial intent (voluntas), which is always compatible with the res. It is because of its importance for the divine author, then, that narratio becomes an important category for the interpreter as well.
Narrative and meaning
With all this in in mind, I would like to turn to address more specifically how scripture's character as narratio shapes Augustine's understanding of interpretation and meaning. Throughout De doctrina christiana, Augustine is acutely aware that human language is paradoxical: on the one hand, it is powerless to convey meaning in itself; yet, on the other hand, we know from experience that it does convey meaning in some way. Books 2 and 3 are an attempt to explain this paradoxical character of language as it applies to scripture. For Augustine, language's ability to communicate indirectly – an especially valuable feature of narratio – is key. In his view, it is specifically by following the process of indirect communication in scripture that readers encounter the meaning of the text.Footnote 49 To trace how this takes place in Augustine's interpretive practice, it is important to pay particular attention to the relationship between sign and referent in his thought and especially to the narratival context in which he locates it.
Book 1 sets Augustine's whole discussion of the interpretation of scripture in the context of love for God. He begins by drawing a sharp distinction between things (res) and signs (signa). A thing, strictly speaking, is that which is an end in itself, while a sign is anything which points to a thing.Footnote 50 For example, the Latin word bos is a sign, while the physical ox to which it points is a thing. Here, while laying the foundation for his more detailed discussion of signs in book 2, Augustine adds a crucial innovative twist by bringing caritas to bear on his theory of signification: ‘Of all, then, that has been said since we entered upon the discussion about things, this is the sum: that we should clearly understand that the fulfillment and the end of the Law, and of all Holy Scripture, is the love of an object which is to be enjoyed, and the love of an object which can enjoy that other in fellowship with ourselves.’Footnote 51 By holding that only God is to be loved for his own sake, Augustine makes the conceptual connection between use (uti) and signs (signa) on the one hand, and enjoyment (frui) and thing (res) on the other. All signs ultimately point to God and are, therefore, to be used as a means of enjoying, or loving, him. Properly speaking, only God – as Father, Son and Spirit – is an end in himself, and therefore only he is properly called a ‘thing’; everything else functions as a sign in some capacity, for everything else points to him.Footnote 52 From the outset, then, what is especially important for Augustine is the relationship between reader and text. If the interpreter traces the significatory relationships properly, they will ultimately be led into a contemplation of the life of the divine Trinity.
In book 2, Augustine discusses his theory of signification in greater detail. He begins by distinguishing between two basic classes of signs. Some signs, he says, are ‘natural signs’ (signa naturalia), based on a natural cause and effect relationship. Smoke as a sign of fire or footprints as a sign of an animal's presence are examples of natural signs.Footnote 53 Other signs, he tells us, are ‘conventional signs’ (signa data), the result of an agreed upon meaning. There are many examples of conventional signs, but Augustine is most interested in words which make up language.Footnote 54 For example, the word bos is a conventional sign which points beyond the arrangement of letters to a physical ox. It is the result of an agreed upon convention that this particular arrangement of letters will be the standard means of signifying an ox. It is at this point that Augustine introduces the problem that will inform much of what he has to say in the remainder of book 2. The relationship between a particular word and the thing which it signifies appears to be set up by Augustine as an arbitrary relationship. There is nothing inherent in the letters b-o-s which requires them to signify an ox when placed together in that order; because they are established solely by agreement, there is no necessary connection between conventional signs and their referents. This arbitrary relationship, as Augustine recognises, increases the potential for misinterpretation.Footnote 55 There is no obvious, inherent connection between the sign and its referent which the interpreter can rely on. To interpret it properly, one must simply learn the convention.
Furthermore, the word bos signifying an ox is an example of what Augustine calls a ‘proper’ (propria) conventional sign, a sign which has a simple relationship with its res. This sort of simple relationship between signum and res is found in many things. Examples include pictures and sculptures, where the likeness between them and their referent is obvious.Footnote 56 Other signs, such as those made by actors upon a stage, could be difficult to understand, for the likeness between the signs and those things which they signify is not as easy to discern. Often an interpreter is required for one to understand them.Footnote 57 Similarly, the customs of dress and conduct in a particular place signify something beyond themselves, though a foreigner might not be able to ascertain what that is.Footnote 58 Still, these are all examples of ‘proper’ conventional signs, where the sign has a simple relationship with its referent. In cases where the ‘thing’ to which the sign points is not immediately obvious, knowledge of the signs themselves will often help to overcome this problem.
However, while conventional signs, when functioning as proper signs, connote a simple relationship between signum and res, Augustine maintains that conventional signs can also function figuratively. Here the process of signification becomes more complex. For example, bos refers to a physical ox, but that ox might in turn signify something else – a preacher of the gospel – when it functions figuratively.Footnote 59 The physical ox, which initially appears to be the ‘thing’ to which the word bos points, turns out to be a sign itself. Thus bos in this context has come to communicate indirectly, or figuratively, a preacher. What was a simple sign–referent relationship has become more complex by taking on a figurative meaning. In order to properly interpret figurative signs, knowledge of the signs themselves is not enough; one must also have knowledge of the thing to which the sign points.Footnote 60 In this case, one must not merely know that bos means ‘ox’, but also that an ox is known for its value as a strong labourer, just as a preacher labours for the gospel. In a similar way, when Augustine considers the command in the gospel to be wise like serpentes in Matthew 10:16, he notes that this passage is meant to lead interpreters into the figurative signification process.Footnote 61 He observes that it is a well-known fact that the serpent will protect its head at all bodily cost when it is attacked, and so he draws the figurative implication that ‘for the sake of our head, which is Christ, we should willingly offer our body to the persecutors’.Footnote 62 Such a figurative reading requires that one not only know that the word ‘serpent’ refers to a physical snake in its proper sense, but also that one know something about the serpent so that one is able to see what the image of a serpent figuratively points to. Based on a certain likeness, or similitudo, between the image and the figurative referent, one is able to follow the figurative process of signification, from the words ox (bos) and serpents (serpentes) to the respective animals themselves and, by observing the similarity of certain characteristics with the character of a preacher and a Christian, one can follow the figurative process on to its figurative meaning.
But this seems to open up endless figurative possibilities. How can one know when to interpret a sign figuratively and when to interpret it in accordance with is ‘proper’ sign–referent relationship? Here the importance of narratio becomes evident as the means by which the divine author's strategy of signification is communicated and, therefore, also becomes the key to being able to read the signs of scripture properly.Footnote 63 Signs that are normally ‘proper signs’ only become figurative when they are brought into scripture's ‘narrative orbit’, to use Rowan Williams’ phrase.Footnote 64 In one's day-to-day life, bos ordinarily serves as a proper sign, pointing to a physical ox; it is only within the context of scripture's narratio that it takes on a figurative dimension. Augustine hints at this early on in book 1 when he introduces the distinction between signum and res. Augustine uses wood, stone and cattle as examples of ‘things’. However, he adds a caveat, in which he makes a special exception for the wood which Moses cast into the bitter water at Mara (Exod 15:25), the stone which Jacob used as a pillow (Gen 28:11) and the ram which Abraham offered instead of Isaac (Gen 12:13). They are excluded from being ‘things’ in the proper sense because, though they are ‘things’, they are also signs within the biblical narratio.Footnote 65 Ordinarily, physical wood, stones and cattle are ‘things’ signified by words; however, because of the conventional quality of language, these things can bear particular figurative meanings within the narratio of scripture. Because of the significant role wood plays at pivotal points within the narrative (as the means of salvation during the flood and at Christ's crucifixion, for example), it takes on a figurative function, in which it is closely associated with God's salvific work throughout the rest of the narrative as well. Similarly, because scripture explicitly makes the connection between an ox and a preacher (1 Tim 5:18), all other scriptural references to an ox naturally conjure up associations with a preacher. These terms have been metaphorasised by the divine arrangement found in the narratio of scripture. In this way, the narratio functions as an integral part of Augustine's theory of signification, providing both the possibilities and limits of the figuration process.
However, by placing such strong emphasis on narratio as the condition for interpreting the signs of scripture, Augustine seems to create another problem. It appears as though the system he has set up makes scripture completely self-referential, infinitely bound within itself and, therefore, cut off from any objective ‘meaning’. It would seem as if Augustine's vision of scripture very closely resembles Roland Barthes’ vision of the death of the author, in which ‘the book itself is only a tissue of signs, an imitation [of life] that is lost, infinitely deferred’.Footnote 66 It would seem that Augustine has become a ‘postmodern man’. But this is only the case if one plucks Augustine's sign theory out of the particular kind of narratival context which conditions it. It is important to remember that, in Augustine's understanding of narratio, the author embeds his will and very character into the text itself. Whenever one engages the text, one encounters the author. It is a downward, or incarnational, movement at work in his conception of meaning, in which the divine author embeds his character into the narratio of scripture. There is, then, no need to go beyond the narrative to find meaning, regardless of whether that meaning is cast in terms of res or voluntas. Rather, by following the significatory process as it is conditioned by the arrangement of scripture's narrative, the reader encounters the very character of the author as the voluntas and res. After following the argument of Augustine's sign theory, one is able to look back and realise that his reliance on narrative produces a personal account of meaning. That is to say, for Augustine, the meaning of scripture is a person, and the process of interpretation constitutes an ongoing encounter between the interpreter and the divine author.Footnote 67
Conclusion
I began this essay by suggesting that the recent rise of narrative hermeneutics serves as a lens through which we can more fully appreciate the place of narrative in Augustine's hermeneutics and the dynamic conception of meaning it produces. Throughout my argument, I have been mindful that Augustine's use of narrative must be set squarely in its late antique context, in which the primacy of authorial intent and the existence of objective meaning are both taken for granted. These are the most obvious two points on which Augustine's hermeneutics stands in contrast to contemporary narrative hermeneutics. Nevertheless, I have maintained that these differences should not deter us from appreciating the important place of narrative in Augustine's thought, specifically its role in producing a personal account of meaning. As Augustine himself makes clear at the beginning of De doctrina christiana, his theory of interpretation should not be construed as a rigid system in which the interpreter seeks to apprehend a static meaning that lies completely beyond the text; rather, he states that God, as the author, is the end to which all signs lead.Footnote 68 A careful reading of Augustine's interpretive theory reveals how this plays out in actual practice: he casts divine revelation in general, and scripture in particular, as a narrative in which the divine author's character is embedded. Then, through the process of interpretation, the interpreter encounters the character of the divine author as the meaning.
