Speak More Persuasively: Redeeming Rhetoric with Augustine of Hippo

Recently, I attended a training meeting for those involved in leading the church up front through the various elements of a Sunday morning gathering. In the course of giving feedback, one of my pastors made this comment about reading Scripture publicly: “We’re not trying to put on a show, but we are trying to serve people.” Why would a church give so much time to considering what and how someone speaks in the five minutes between worship songs and a Sunday sermon? Simple: words matter. Such careful attention to speaking words publicly is not a contemporary concern alone but also concerned one of Christianity’s earliest and foremost thinkers: Augustine of Hippo.

Some Christians today are suspicious of rhetoric. Some might assume that the apostle Paul’s avoidance of “eloquent wisdom” in 1 Corinthians 1:17 is a blanket dismissal of all forms of rhetoric. More likely, in a church context that gravitated towards Christian celebrities (1 Cor. 1:11–13), Paul is combatting a type of rhetoric that draws attention away from the cross of Christ and more to the individual preacher.^[1] Similarly, others may assume that Paul’s injunction about “speaking the truth in love” in Ephesians 4:15 should take priority over speaking with beautiful persuasion. However, Paul’s command here doesn’t prohibit eloquence so much as place guardrails on it. Contrary to both of these suspicions, and as Augustine will show, Paul himself demonstrates an effective use of rhetorical eloquence.^[2]

Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD), whose thinking would become the foundation of much of Western theology, wrote about the public ministry of the Word in his short treatise De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Teaching) at the end of the fourth century.^[3] On Christian Teaching is composed of four books: the first three books discuss “the mode of ascertaining the proper meaning” of Scripture (hermeneutics), and the fourth book focuses on “the mode of making known the meaning” (rhetoric).^[4] “Rhetoric” (rhetorica)—the study of effective and persuasive speaking—was a particular skill in Augustine’s world. Ars rhetorica (the art of rhetoric) was the pinnacle of Roman education and a central component to Roman political life.^[5] Augustine himself was trained in these rhetoric schools, and, for a time, was even a rhetoric teacher.^[6] Thus, when Augustine’s takes up “the mode of making known the meaning,” he naturally does so in terms of the art of rhetoric.

Augustine , however, warns his readers that his work is not a book about “the rules of rhetoric.”^[7] Despite this warning, Augustine is no opponent of rhetoric. On Christian Teaching provides an extended consideration of how rhetoric is well-suited to be used by the Christian teacher. In this article, I hope to encourage Christians towards intentional, eloquent, and persuasive speaking by examining how Augustine views rhetoric as it relates to the Christian teacher.

The Goodness of Rhetoric

Augustine’s understanding of rhetoric begins by noting that “the faculty of eloquence,” which embodies the practice of rhetoric, is a common good. It is a good that Christian teachers should avail themselves of.^[8] Since Christians and non-Christians alike have this skill available to them, Augustine ponders, “why do not good men study to engage it on the side of truth, when bad men use it to obtain the triumph of the wicked and worthless causes, and to further injustice and error?”^[9] In other words, to borrow from C.S. Lewis, we might say that “good rhetoric must exist for no other reason than bad rhetoric must be answered.”^[10]

Scripture, too, Augustine shows, is no opponent of eloquence. Scripture is the most eloquent of texts, weaving together both wisdom and eloquence.^[11] Its eloquence, though, is not of pagan origin, as Augustine’s readers are likely used to, but “peculiarly their own.”^[12] Augustine looks to Paul in 2 Corinthians 11, when he addresses the Corinthians regarding those who may consider him a fool, and to the prophet Amos, when he speaks against “those who are at ease in Zion” (Amos 6:1).^[13] The rhetorical eloquence possessed by the biblical authors is an eloquence that accompanies wisdom, like a servant to his master or a handmaiden to her mistress.^[14]

While a common resource and one that is masterfully employed by the biblical authors, eloquence has a proper place: “if wisdom were walking out of its house, that is, the breast of the wise man, and eloquence, like an inseparable attendant, followed it without being called for.”^[15] Eloquence must never be employed or preferred apart from wisdom and truth. In fact, Augustine will later insist that a teacher who has wise speech but is unable to speak eloquently “should speak wisely without eloquence.”^[16] Why? Because to love is to speak about the truth. Thus, men should refrain from speaking eloquently when they lack truth and wisdom. He warns that “we must beware of the man who abounds in eloquent nonsense, and so much the more if the hearer is pleased with what is not worth listening to, and thinks that because the speaker is eloquent what he says must be true.”^[17] Thus, eloquence is an attendant to wisdom––a beneficial, even necessary, companion—but something that should be set aside for the sake of prioritizing truth.

A Teacher’s Duty

This priority for true and wise speech before eloquent speech, however, does not keep Augustine from insisting on the important role of rhetorical eloquence. Eloquence, for Augustine, is ideally suited to help the Christian teacher fulfill his duty. This primary duty is to “teach what is right and to refute what is wrong.”^[18] He considers clarity to be the primary virtue of Christian teaching.^[19] He writes, “For teaching, of course, true eloquence consists, not in making people like what they disliked, nor in making them do what they shrank from, but in making clear what was obscure.”^[20] Thus, the primary aim of teaching is to be understood by those who are being taught.

It would be easy enough for Augustine to leave the matter here and simply say that “to be understood” is a sufficient mark of a good teacher. However, he pushes the Christian teacher even further by exhorting them to “strive about words.”^[21] Borrowing from Cicero, the great Roman orator, he considers how the goal of rhetoric is “to teach, to delight, and to persuade.”^[22] The goal of the Christian teacher is easily seen in the first: a teacher must teach what is true.^[23] Augustine quips, “He, then, who speaks with the purpose of teaching should not suppose that he has said what he has to say as long as he is not understood.”^[24] This is to say, mere understanding in one’s audience is not the only goal; the teacher’s task is much more: “The eloquent divine, then, when he is urging a practical truth, must not only teach so as to give instruction, and please so as to keep up the attention, but he must also sway the mind so as to subdue the will.”^[25] Pleasure and persuasion are other necessities for the Christian teacher.

Thus, Christian teachers should “strive about words.”^[26] By this, Augustine means that the Christian teacher has a burden for using certain words over others—not simply to say something but to speak with intentionality.^[27] He writes, “To speak eloquently, then, and wisely as well, is just to express truths which it is expedient to teach in fit and proper words.”^[28] Augustine reviews the various modes that a speaker can use for different effects and different audiences—the temperate mode, the moderate mode, and the majestic (i.e., compelling) mode—all of which can be found modeled in Scripture and the doctors of the church. These different modes are required by the nature of the Christian teacher’s office, because audiences will all have different needs: sometimes they need to be instructed and other times to be moved to action. These varying situations require the teacher to alter his style to accomplish these goals. ^[29] Thus, rhetorical eloquence should be pursued so that the Christian teacher might more effectively carry out his task.

How Then Shall We Speak Well?

Having seen how Augustine considers rhetorical skill invaluable to the Christian teacher’s task, we must infer from Augustine that the pursuit of rhetorical eloquence in service to Christian teaching is important. Furthermore, Augustine notes how the subject of Christian teachers far surpasses those of political rhetoricians: “But we are treating of the manner of speech of the man who is to be a teacher of the truths which deliver us from eternal misery and bring us to eternal happiness.”^[30]

30. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, IV.18.37.

Is this pursuit of rhetorical eloquence just for Christian teachers? Not at all! Rhetorical eloquence should be pursued by all Christians. He writes,

wherever these truths are spoken of, whether in public or private, whether to one or many, whether to friends or enemies, whether in continuous discourse or in conversation, whether in tracts, or in books, or in letters long or short, they are of great importance. Unless indeed we are prepared to say that, because a cup of cold water is a very trifling and common thing, the saying of our lord, that he who gives a cup of cold water to one of his disciples shall in no wise lose his reward, is very trivial and unimportant.^[31]

31. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, IV.18.37.

Indeed, have you found yourself in situations where you have needed to instruct, delight, or move a brother or sister in Christ? This is a central component to Christian living (Col. 3:16; Heb. 3:13), which makes the pursuit of rhetorical eloquence in service to Christ’s people a worthwhile one.

Conclusion

So, how should we pursue rhetorical eloquence? Augustine has a simple charge: “as infants cannot learn to speak except by learning words and phrases from those who do speak, why should not men become eloquent without being taught any art of speech, simply by reading and learning the speeches of eloquent men, and by imitating them as far as they can?”^[32] Augustine gives good news to the everyday Christian: you do not have to go to the schools of rhetoric to learn how to speak skillfully. All you must do is take in good words: read and listen to words well spoken. In the course of his work, Augustine holds up the Scriptures and early doctors of the Church as models. Now more than a millennium since Augustine, we might add so many more examples of wordsmiths who are worthy of imitation.^[33] May we take up this great task of refining our speech that we might not just put on a show, but serve people.