As the book of Exodus tells it, when the People of God was formed out of liberated slaves from Egypt (a kind of early Liberia), Aaron and his sons were made the first priests of the new community. Like all the peoples around them the Hebrews took it for granted that a real established society needed a priesthood, just as we take it for granted that a society needs some kind of civil service or some kind of school system. Aaron was the first high priest of the children of Israel, he had a job, an important job, within that community. The priest’s job was to arrange the transactions with the gods of the community, to ensure that the gods did not become hostile, for this could be disastrous for the people. The priest had to find out what the gods wanted and arrange for the people to give it to them. So he stood as mediator, on the frontier, looking both ways, to the gods and to the people; communicating to the people the messages of the gods, communicating to the gods the offerings of the people.

But, of course, the Children of Israel were no ordinary society, they were something unique in human history; they made a gradual but huge revolution from which all subsequent humankind has benefited and (as with all revolutions) suffered too. For by the time the Book of Exodus was put together it was becoming clear that their God was not one (or more) of the gods, and this was going to make a difference to what such things as priesthood meant.

Disquiet in ethics, or moral philosophy, has its main sources (a) in an irreducibly subjective or personal element contained in moral judgement, (b) in a tension between virtue and happiness, and (c) in the nature of moral disagreement. It will be useful to consider each of these in turn.

(a) It is evident that people worry more often about the objectivity of morals than about the objectivity of fact. A statement about, say, the conditions on a certain planet, even if it cannot be verified, seems to them objective in the issues it raises, because although the human mind is involved in making the statement, it is not involved in what makes it true or false. Thus, what makes it true that there are mountains on the moon would hold even if the human species had never existed. Moreover, the same point applies to factual statements much greater in their complexity. For example, one cannot verify the theory of evolution as one can a simple statement in astronomy; nevertheless, everyone believes that what makes it true or false is independent of human views about it.

The term ‘objective’, no doubt, has many uses; but none is more fundamental than the one discerned above. My view is objectively true, when in holding it I am in contact with reality, when I am forced into believing it by reality itself. So long as I believe that of my view, I shall never be shaken free of it. It is of secondary importance whether I can get others to agree with me or whether I have reasons for my view. For many of my beliefs about the past, for example, I have no evidence at all.

My aim is to make some observations on the recent Instruction from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (summarised in The Tablet of 30 June, pp. 838—841) in an attempt to clarify certain issues and assist the debate which has been initiated, of which this journal has revealed ample evidence. These are observations bom of the awareness that the language of this document finds interesting echoes within my own tradition and consciousness as a Reformed theologian.

The very notion of a vocation of theology is an interesting reflection of the sense that theology is a church-related activity. As terminology employed to specify a certain view of ecclesiastical polity it is in fact reminiscent of Calvin’s Institutes and so—naturally—this view of theology and the theologian has been one of the main features of 20th Century Protestant theology, with its rediscovery of Classical Reform. Part of that lovely sense of theology as a church-related and indeed church-based activity has been the realisation that theology is of necessity an ecumenical task. When this is ignored its practice is less than its profession and its efficacy is at once frustrated. Hence my title; for it is neither as an onlooker judging somebody else’s concerns nor as an outsider with no interest or involvement in the issue that I would make these comments. Rather, this is the deliberate attempt to bring what assistance one part of the Church can offer to another—and this on the basis of the unity of our common faith and the singleness of theological purpose.

We may speak casually of ‘salvation history’ and look for patterns in the Bible which bear out a claim that the sacred writers saw a movement toward a particular goal, the fullness of revelation in Christ Jesus (cf. Heb 1:1—2). Such a view can influence how we interpret both the Old Testament itself and its relationship to the New Testament. These interpretations may range from a searching out of phrases and themes which may then be applied to the New Testament—giving the impression that the New Testament author created a patchwork of sources—to a searching for patterns of God’s grand design which is manifested in the sweep of the Bible, irrespective of the time, place, or particular interest of the biblical author. What is proposed here is an examination of a mode of relating the past to the present which can be found throughout the Old Testament and to see how this relationship in a cultic context has far-reaching implications for the understanding of both the Christian Eucharist and the Jewish Passover in relation to one another and to the memory of God’s saving acting.

A frequent pattern in the Bible is the recapitulation of origins to explain new beginnings. This is reflected in various ways.

One is to use the imagery of creation to describe a new creation. For example, the author of Gen 6—9 describes the punishment of the human race in terms of a return to chaos and a re-emergence of dry land from the waters as in Gen 1. One finds other references back to the days of creation throughout the Old Testament literature, where both the imagery of Gen 1—2 as well as extra-biblical myths (some unknown) are used.

When he painted his numerous alterpieces on the theme of Madonna and Child Enthroned, Fra Angelico accepted a traditional image and used it again and again, with variations. The archetypal scene of Our Lady sitting in state, holding her Son and surrounded by the trappings of a royal court, was inherited from the Eastern Church, where the underlying notion seems to have been that since the Byzantine Empress was presented in court finery, the Mother of God should be presented in no less splendour; and the idea had an immediate and wide appeal. For centuries, Our Lady was portrayed in painting and sculpture as a reigning monarch, not precisely as Queen of Heaven, but as a queen of men and women on earth, surrounded by angelic and saintly courtiers. So the image was part of Angelico’s mental furniture. It was not, of course, the only image of Our Lady then in vogue.

The impact of Masaccio’s Madonna and Child, now in the National Gallery, London, is hard to exaggerate, and its influence is more evident in an altar panel which Angelico did for the nuns of St Peter Martyr Convent, Florence, than anywhere else. Angelico follows Masaccio in so positioning the figure of Our Lady as to bring the right shoulder slightly forward, presenting an almost straight line from the elbow to the top of the head. The resulting bulkiness of figure suggests maternal protectiveness and an air of mystery. Documentary evidence points to 1428 as the likely date of Angelico’s painting, which is interesting in the light of Orlandi’s surmise that Angelico was ordained in 1429; he must have been still a student of theology when he painted the work.