St Augustine uses ‘wrappers’ – involucra – figuratively in his sermons. Augustine uses it far more than just about anyone else up to that point: six or seven times in his Sermones ad populum and about nine times in the Enarrationes in Psalmos, as well as single appearances in eight of his other works. Involucrum appears to be just what it says – cloth or a cloak or a veil or some other covering. But Augustine significantly uses involucrum to describe figurative language – sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly – as a kind of metaphor for metaphor, in which figurative language is a wrapper that must be opened to discover the truth inside: a signum hiding a res. In the Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, it appears in Ezekiel 27:24: “These were your traffickers in choice wares, in wrappings of blue and embroidered work, and in chests of rich clothing, bound with cords and made of cedar, among your merchandise.” Involucra can be interpreted as ‘deceit’, and primarily the deception of words hiding a very different truth. Ambrose has an apparent fondness for involucrum, which appears twenty two times in his extant works. This frequency rivals Augustine’s, and together the two bishops account for the vast majority of occurrences in patristic literature.
The most common use of the metaphor for Ambrose is for the body as a wrapper for the soul or mind. In Conf. VI 7, Augustine describes Alypius as being wrapped up with the Manichaean superstition. Likewise, he refers to Donatism as a fog of heretical error that has wrapped. In Genesis, Augustine refers to the involucris primordialibus present from the days of Creation. God “created all things at the same time” in the “invisible days’ of the first day, and he also did other visible works ‘in which he is working daily at whatever is being, so to speak, unwrapped in time from those primordial wrappings.” In providing a figurative interpretation, Augustine tells his congregation that he has “shaken everything out… I’ve unfolded my wrapping.” The prophets “arranged for us something like a package all wrapped up,” they “spoke in enigmas, they covered over the meaning with figures of speech, just like the wrappings of mysterious things.” Augustine said, “Why do they ridicule, unless it is because they see the worthless little rag surrounding the outside, and they do not see the treasure hidden inside? He sees the flesh, sees a man, sees the cross, sees death: these things he despises.” This wrapper is not one to be thrown away.
While it is clear that in Augustine’s theory of signs Christ holds a unique position. The truths of Scripture he was explicating for them “are indeed great matters, like wrappings around the mysteries of God.” Luther wrote centuries after: “When God reveals Himself to us, it is necessary for Him to do so through some such veil or wrapper and to say: ‘Look! Under this wrapper you will be sure to take hold of Me.’ When we embrace this wrapper, adoring, praying, and sacrificing to God there, we are said to be praying to God and sacrificing to Him properly.” We are in a sea of names and symbols. If knowledge is social construction, can we get out of wrapping and get to the reality as such? Knowledge itself is a web of interrelated names and symbols where there is no way to get out of the web. The desire to say something ultimate and absolute can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. The quest for an ultimate reason, as well as the definition of the highest aims in human life, are almost impossible. Ethics can neither be an ultimate source of reason, nor a guarantee for epistemological truth. All questions of human life and ethical values are effectively separated from the sphere of scientific research. It can be argued that everything that is a matter of human concern—whether ethics, aesthetics, religion or even philosophy itself—fall into the category of the mystical. We are in a world where all that matters is covered up in glittering and golden covering, and an ethical and spiritual perspective is a must for life. Otherwise we are in the market of deception.