In the second book of Saint Augustine, he delves deeper into the nature of logic and symbolism in relation to the text of Scripture. After leaving the relatively abstract thinking of the first book, he begins to practically break down the steps to interpret and understand Christian teaching. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay To begin his discussion, Saint Augustine talks about the nature of signs, then begins a discussion about when signs cause ambiguity useless (Augustine 32). Augustine's decision to open his analysis of practical Christian teaching on this subject is, in my opinion, brilliant. It gets to the root of most problems of interpretation, even today. We see many teachers and instructors of Scripture and Christian teaching misapplying Scripture because they are “casual readers,” rather than investing the necessary time and energy (Augustine 32). . St. Augustine is then able to wrestle with the intricacies of correct interpretation, and we understand exactly what he is wrestling with. From this opening section, St. Augustine moves on to what I find to be the most powerful section of the book. He discusses the steps by which Solomon can affirm that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Augustine 37). For much of high school and early college, the Bible really scared me. I would open it to read about the love of God, and I would instead be overwhelmed by the fear of God. So I would go through the Bible, trying to find relief, and often quickly give up. I kept coming across scary words from God, and I couldn't stand them. However, Saint Augustine masterfully shows how seven steps allow us to transform this fear of God into wisdom. From fear to holiness, knowledge, strength, compassion, purification, and wisdom, the process makes sense and serves to explain why God allows us to experience his fear (Augustine 33-35). This fear truly leads us to wisdom and peace. Having established the importance of studying and investing in Christian teaching, St. Augustine devotes much of the remainder of the book to breaking down logic and the process of correct interpretation. He describes the canon, discusses symbolism in figures, and works on the biblical application of the syllogism. While his emphasis was on logic, I was surprised to find so many Platonic and Greek references in the text. He mentions “fallacies” (Augustine 58), uses a highly Platonic understanding of perceptions of truth (Augustine 63), and uses a Greek understanding of logic (Augustine 60). I was able to follow Augustine's argument until he went so far as to claim that Plato derived his argument and writings from Jewish writings and the biblical canon (Augustine 55). This theory has never come up in my past readings and I find it highly improbable. If that were the case, wouldn't we see more emphasis on logic and truth in Jeremiah's works? It seems to me that the idea that Plato wrote inspired by Jeremiah goes very far. I can imagine that this influence could have happened, but I doubt that this influence explains much of Plato's writing style. Certainly, it seems that the Platonic emphasis used by Saint Augustine in this book is largely unfounded in biblical teaching. Although this is an interesting perspective, it can hardly be argued that it is a direct result of the biblical canon. On the contrary, the 47).