Episode notes
A translator can turn “swift” into “sharp” and never notice he has left the writer behind. Augustine says that is not an obscure reading. It is a false one—and false texts are to be corrected, not interpreted. Greek and Hebrew, or a tighter Latin, exist so the sense can be recovered; a solecism that still tells the truth may be endured, but an idiom that makes God’s folly sound wiser as men must be rewritten. The Confessions then measures Deus Creator omnium. The short syllable is gone before the long one begins. What remains to be measured is not the sounds. It is what memory still holds. Aquinas takes the same problem into the church’s speech. Tongues give the languages. The grace of the word makes the utterance do its work. Knowing a thing, saying a thing, and getting that thing into another mind are not one gift.
Today’s Readings:
Augustine of Hippo — On Christian Doctrine, Book 2, Chapters 12–13 (Sections 18–20)
Augustine of Hippo — The Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 27 (Section 35)
Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 2–2, Questions 176–177 (The Gift of Tongues; The Grace of the Word)
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