In dominico eloquio—it is an arresting phrase. For the Christian reader Isaiah is a demanding and difficult book once one strays beyond the familiar passages cited in the New Testament or commonly read in Christian worship (Isaiah 9 at Christmas, Isaiah 53 during Holy Week). To the uninitiated, the first chapter is particularly daunting with its arcane oracles against Judah and Jerusalem: “Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who deal corruptly. They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel.”
For someone like Augustine, formed by the poetry of Virgil and the philosophy of Plotinus, the opening verses must have seemed embarrassingly parochial, taken up as they are with the fortunes of the ancient Israelites centuries earlier. Words such as “sinful nation,” “holy one of Israel,” “daughter of Zion,” “new moon and Sabbath” would have sounded alien, and anthropomorphisms like “I will vent my wrath on my enemies” or “turn my hand against you” would have offended his cultivated spiritual sensibility.
Yet Augustine called Isaiah’s language “the Lord’s style of language,” and he recognized that if he were to enter the Church he would have to learn this new tongue, hear it spoken, grow accustomed to its sounds, read the books that use it, learn its idioms, and finally speak it himself. He had to embark on a journey to acquaint himself with the mores of a new country. Becoming a Christian meant entering a strange and often alien world.