Augustine and Plagiarism

As noted in the Bizzell text, in Book IV of On Christian Doctrine, Augustine encourages those who could not find anything to say to use others' speeches because his logic was that truth belonged to God, not the speaker. Of course this is a deviation from his predecessors, mainly the Sophists. For them, truth was created by words. I can say that I don't necessarily disagree with Augustine, considering his religious principles, but I do not agree with the way some went about conveying the truth. If one should buy into the idea that truth belongs to God and that associating truth with the rhetor could place the emphasis on the rhetor and not God, one could see how Augustine wholeheartedly believed what he believed. However, I do not see the harm in citing the person from which the articulation of the ideas originated as long as the emphasis is on the idea that the message is God's. This way, one can give credit to the rhetor for arranging the argument and to God for divinely inspiring the rhetor to do so. The message would still belong to God. In considering that Jesus was a teacher who employed rhetoric, he is credited today in the things that he taught, but the message is still credited to God. Now, I do understand that using Jesus as an example presents a dash of trickiness when one refers to the Trinity. However, we still credit the writers of the many gospels from the Bible with the explication of the things they taught in spreading the Word of God. The message or the Word is still credited to God, but when refering to the Gospel of Paul, we say: "Paul said..." So, maybe Augustine had the right idea, I just think that he thought things through completely, or maybe he was too weary of the confusion that may be created in attempting to cite authors in the study of religion. Either way, it is possible to cite authorship and still convey the origin of the Truth.