tarmo toom: “Was Augustine an Intentionalist? Authorial Intention in Augustine’s Hermeneutics”

“Was Augustine an Intentionalist? Authorial Intention in Augustine’s Hermeneutics”

Due to his education and profession, Augustine was deeply embedded into the ancient rhetorical tradition, which employed a loosely organized set of rules for interpretatio scripti (Cicero, Inv. 2.40.116-2.51.154). Among the standard topics discussed was the possible discrepancy between the written words and writer’s intention (scriptum versus voluntas). Hence his interest in authorial intention.

In modern (biblical) hermeneutics, there are those for whom the meaning of a text is isomorphic with (the human) authorial intention, and those for whom the meaning of a text is completely independent from authorial intention. Augustine seems to hold a middle ground. He has both hermeneutical and theological reasons for disagreeing with either extreme position.

Augustine defends the importance of human authorial intention as an undeniable factor not only in the existence of the signa data (i.e., words/sentences as intentional/conventional signs), but partially also in the establishment of their meaning (doc. Chr. 2.13.19, 3.27.38). However, this paper investigates the qualifications that Augustine postulates for the acknowledged hermeneutical role of authorial intention in giving verbal signs. I will argue that, for Augustine, there were primarily three reasons for defending a limited role of authorial intention in interpretation of the Scriptures.

1. The Scriptures as a double-authored text (i.e., God and humans) prevent the human authorial intention from being the ultimate hermeneutical criterion.
2. To equate the human authorial intention with the meaning of a text would tie the meaning of the canonical texts to the past history and may eliminate the Christological interpretation of the Old Testament.
3. Truth is a larger category than the true meanings that the human authors of the Scriptures intend.