A Dominican who is at the same time an exegete tends to suffer from a lingering bad conscience which on days like this can become quite acutely painful. As a Dominican he should follow and esteem the teaching of St Thomas, but in actual fact his memories of the illustrious friar are of a friendly voice which he listened to once upon a time in his youth. Now other voices speak to him in the rough violent language of the Canaan he has entered, which make, I'm afraid, extensive demands on his thinking.

In order to relieve my conscience I will start off, at least, in the direction of Thomism and, true to the scholastic way of doing things, begin with the status quaestionis. We begin then by trying to clarify the sentence we have taken as our theme.