The following pages were prompted by what would appear to be a theologically faulty but none the less common line of reasoning. I have heard clergy and laity alike justifying a wide variety of theories by appealing to the example of Christ: Christ did or did not do so-and-so, and it is therefore incumbent on us to do or not do likewise. For example, we hear that because Christ the High Priest was a man, all the Church's ministers must be male, or that because Christ the High Priest was celibate, all priests today must be celibate. Now it may well be, for solid and unimpeachable theological reasons, that priests should be both male and celibate—that is not in discussion here. But what is perfectly clear (or I hope will be) is that imitation of Christ cannot, without further theological qualification, be adduced as a reason. Again, a particular concept of prayer as a personal and intimate dialogue with an unseen but ever-present God is sometimes justified by the statement that it is verified in Christ's own life of prayer. There are, however, serious difficulties in the way of this argument, not usually adverted to. Again, the concept of ‘Nazareth’ as used by religious families stemming from Charles de Foucauld is not always applied with obvious theological clarity. It is used to justify a spectrum of virtues said to be appropriate to the Christian who wishes to imitate Christ particularly closely, from adoration of the exposed Blessed Sacrament and retreat silence in seclusion from the world to ‘humble manual work’ and ‘quiet acceptance of ill-treatment’.

Much of the recent debate about religion has concerned itself either with the bare existence of God or with the fact of Jesus Christ, and has not directly brought into the discussion the question of providence and the allied topic of prayer. It is as if the whole area were so problematic that thought has tended to polarise around these two points, God in heaven and Jesus of Nazareth in history, and as a result has virtually by-passed this subject, although one would have thought that it lay very close to the living core of religion. Yet this neglect is not without precedent in the past. It is worth recalling that Immanuel Kant, although he was profoundly critical of the traditional ways in which the existence of God had been proved and the foundation of religion laid, none the less believed himself that there is a legitimate foundation for religious belief in man's consciousness of value, in his awareness of what Kant called the categorical imperative; and this more practical, this less severely theoretical approach to the reality of religion, may well be regarded as an important pointer towards the truth. None the less the fact remains that Kant himself held that ‘the purpose of prayer can only be to induce in us a moral disposition. … To wish to converse with God is absurd: we cannot talk to one we cannot intuit; and as we cannot intuit God, but can only believe in him, we cannot converse with him.’

‘A Twentieth-Century reader encountering the word righteousness in Semitic texts must always be careful to adjust his thought and not to place this term in the categories to which our word righteousness has accustomed us.’ These cautionary words may well be given for any study of Old Testament terms but they are especially appropriate for the study of righteousness. We are accustomed to associate righteousness with some kind of impartial and impersonal dispensing of reward and blame by which the moral rectitude of society is maintained. Righteousness in the Old Testament does have something of our modern concept of justice but it cannot be restricted to that for we will find to our surprise that other concepts have important significance in our understanding of righteousness. As we shall see, righteousness shines forth in a spectrum of meaning that cannot be reduced to one line of thought. It behooves the student of the Old Testament, to free himself from any kind of bondage, whether it be an adherence to prevailing scholastic categories of thought or a reaction against them.

All intellectual activity implies some presuppositions. Thoughts can only be formulated in words and these words have been formed by the previous thought of the community whose language they are. Even the most radical scepticism can only be formulated in terms of presuppositions which are-for the moment—unquestioned. (See Michael Polanyi: Personal Knowledge, chap. 9, ‘The Critique of Doubt’, pp. 269–98.)