Augustine, for all intents and purposes, is the Cicero for Christians. He, essentially, took rhetoric and put a Christian (or "ethical") spin on it. He outlined the different "offices" of rhetoric, which were: instructing, pleasing, and persuading. These were the same as Cicero's styles (plain, middle, grand). Interestingly, he believed that it was better for rhetoric to argue a good point badly, than a bad point well.
This has obvious connections with the previous rhetorical figure Quintillian. However, I will not focus this blog on this subject (yet again). Instead, I have decided to connect what Augustine's offices were to Aristotle's components.
Instructing is essentially Aristotle's ethos. In an argument, you need to teach or tell your audience about your subject. You need credibility to properly do this. Instruction is essential for forming background information and setting up an argument, like ethos sets up logic.
Pleasing is essentially Aristotle's pathos. In rhetoric, pleasing emotions are very, very important. The audience responds well to positive emotions. Psychologically, if you try to scare people into doing something, they need to see a solution or they won't change. Simply saying "the world is on a crash course for destruction because of reckless human manipulation" won't get them to change unless you say "reduce your impact on the world," after. They've done studies on it. Emotions and pleasing go hand-in-hand.
Lastly, persuading is essentially Aristotle's logos. Logic and persuasion must go together. Although Aristotle would say that persuasion is the sum of ethos, pathos, and logos, you can definitely see that logos plays a huge role. Even Aristotle thought that logic should be the primary basis for the art of persuasion (or rhetoric). Logic has more credibility than emotions. Emotions are sometimes not even logical!
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