Abstract
This article offers an interpretation of Augustine’s De doctrina christiana I-II.5.6, which brings contemporary semiotic theory into dialogue with Augustinian theology in order to flesh out Augustine’s incipient semiotic theological anthropology. The argument focuses on the interrelation between Augustine’s two seminal distinctions, between signum and res, and between uti and frui, reading the first (semiotic) distinction in the light of the second (theological) distinction, and vice versa. The principal claim is that human beings are signs of God; but this is qualified in the course of the argument, resulting in the revised claim that the difference between God and creation becomes manifest in the transformation of human semiotic relations. Specifically, I argue, God’s redemptive transformation of human beings consists in their liberation from mutually reductive (dyadic) interpretation, freeing them for new signification in new contexts. The article ends with the bold conjecture that a genuinely triadic semiotics implies and requires a doctrine of creation.
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