Church Fathers is a designation given to men such as Cyprian, Ambrose, and Jerome (and eventually Augustine himself), who were important theologians and leaders in the early history of the Catholic Church. As the term suggests, these men were deemed “fathers” because of their authority and wide-ranging impact upon the development of Catholicism in both doctrinal and ecclesiastical terms. When Augustine references the works of such men in On Christian Doctrine, he does so both to lend more authority to his own work and to help establish a historical lineage for the still relatively new Christian faith.

Figurative language is language that uses metaphors, similes, allegories, and other literary devices to give words a significance beyond their literal meaning. As Augustine writes in On Christian Doctrine, language is figurative when “the proper names [of things] are used to signify something else” (119). Figurative language and how best to interpret it are recurring themes throughout the work, as Augustine knows that obscure passages in the scriptures can lead to misinterpretation or even heresy amongst untrained readers. One of the main aims of On Christian Doctrine is to address such issues by providing guidance to Christian readers, so that they may learn how to recognize figurative language and interpret it accordingly.