The Importance of Personal Interpretation in the Works of Augustine

Augustine and his contemporaries could brazenly insist that the Bible meant absolutely anything that they wanted it to with scarcely a trace of self-consciousness. Augustine is utterly shameless about forcing biblical verses that contradict him to lie still and say what he wants them to say. When we start interpreting texts in ways that serve our ideological agendas, then texts become trampolines, useful only insofar as they enable our partisan gymnastics.