During our most recent class on Friday, we talked a lot about interpretations and meaning. I imagine these ideas were important and controversial during Augustine's time and they are still predominant in today's society.  Most people interpret ideas and concepts differently and the inferences made by different people are never the same.  According to Augustine, there are multiple meanings of scripture, and all of these meanings are valid so long as they don't go against basic christian values, such as "worship God."  There is also note of literal and metaphorical interpretations.  According to Augustine, any ideas that offend morals should be taken as metaphorical instead of literal.  

Say there are two people, for instance, who disagree about some religion because some of that religion's follower's killed some people for land.  One of the two people might say that this religion is evil and immoral because they killed many people, while the other might say that we must investigate the intention and cause before drawing conclusions about those people and the religion.  Augustine would agree with the second person and say that no person has the right to judge an entire religion because of the acts of a few of there followers.  All religions have different interpretations.  Some are positive and some are negative but we can't place a judgement on a religion based on one or a few peoples actions.

To refer that to modern times, we know that the members of Al-Qaeda follow the muslim religion.  There are some citizens in the United States think that muslims are now associated with terrorists, but Augustine and most people would argue that we can't pin that judgement on muslims just because a few of their followers think that terrorism is an acceptable way of life.  Another thing about terrorists is that there are few people who interpret their behavior as just.  This population is slim but this only stresses the fact that there are people who interpret things differently than the majority of humans.