 Augustine’s philosophy of language is both indebted to the Stoic-influenced Hellenistic and Roman theories of grammar and highly innovative (Rist 1994: 23–40; King 2014b). He follows the Stoics in distinguishing between the sound of a word, its meaning and the thing it signifies (De dialectica 5; De quantitate animae 66; cf. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos 8.11–12 = 33B Long-Sedley), but he seems to have been the first to interpret language as such as a system of signs and to integrate it into a general semiotics (Fuhrer 2018a: 1696; Cary 2008b; Mayer 1969 and 1974). In his handbook of biblical exegesis and Christian rhetoric, De doctrina christiana (1.2; 2.1–4), Augustine divides the world into “things” and “signs” (i.e., things that, apart from being what they are, signify other things) and furthermore distinguishes between “natural” or involuntary signs (e.g., smoke signifying fire) and voluntary or “given” signs (a distinction akin, but not equivalent, to the older discussion about nature or convention as the origin of language). Language is defined as a system of given signs by means of which the speaker signifies either things or her thoughts and emotions (Enchiridion 22). In the exegetical framework of De doctrina christiana, the “thing” signified by the verbal signs of Scripture is God, the Supreme Being. Augustine therefore begins with a sketch of his theology and ethics centered around the notions of love of God and neighbor before he sets out his biblical hermeneutics which, again, posits love as the criterion of exegetical adequacy (Pollmann 1996; Williams 2001). The words of the Bible are external signs designed to prompt us to the more inward phenomenon of love and, ultimately, to God who is beyond all language and thought. This may be generalized to the principle that external—verbal and non-verbal—signs operate on a lower ontological level than the inward and intelligible truth they attempt to signify and that they are superseded in true knowledge which is knowledge not of signs but of things. This holds not only for words, even the words of Scripture, but also for the sacraments and for the Incarnation of Christ (Contra epistulam fundamenti 36.41). Augustine’s most sustained discussion of language, the early dialogue De magistro, asks how we learn things from words and relates linguistic signification to the epistemology of illumination (Nawar 2015). After a long discussion of how verbal signs signify things or states of mind and how they relate to other signs, it turns out, rather surprisingly, that we do not learn things from signs at all because in order to understand the meaning of a sign we already have to be acquainted with the thing signified. This is ultimately a version of Meno’s paradox, and Augustine solves it by introducing the metaphors of the inner teacher and of illumination, i.e., by means of an internalist theory of learning recognizable as a Neoplatonic interpretation of Platonic anamnesis (De magistro 38–40).  This does not mean that words are useless. They inform us about things that are inaccessible to direct acquaintance and thus generate true belief; most importantly, they admonish us to “consult” the inner teacher and to understand things by ourselves (this, according to Augustine, is the whole point of the Socratic dialogue). This goes even for the acquisition of language itself: We understand the sign “bird-catching”, not simply by being shown a person engaged in that activity and being told that he is signified by that name, but by observing him and figuring out for ourselves what “bird-catching” means (ib. 32; on this and Wittgenstein’s criticism of what he took to be Augustine’s view of language acquisition, see Matthews 2005: 23–33). In the later books of De trinitate and in the sermons on the Trinity, Augustine frequently refers to a phenomenon called “inner word”, which he uses to explain the relation of the inner-Trinitarian Word or Logos from the Prologue of John (John 1:1) to Christ incarnate. Just as the spoken word signifies a concept that we have formed within our mind and communicates it to others, so Christ incarnate signifies the divine Logos and admonishes and assists us to turn to it (cf. De trinitate 15.20; De doctrina christiana 1.12; Sermon 119.7; 187.3). In De trinitate Augustine expands this to a theory about how the inner word or concept is formed (14.10; 15.25; cf. 15.43). The inner word is generated when we actualize some latent or implicit knowledge that is stored in our memory. It is not a sign, nor of linguistic nature (Augustine insists that it is neither Latin nor Greek nor Hebrew), but rather seems to be a kind of a-temporal intellectual insight that transcends language (cf. De catechizandis rudibus 3). Properly speaking, then, the theory of the inner word is not a linguistic theory at all.