Morality today is clearly in a mess. The word ‘moral’ has lost almost all its bearings: it simply flies about loose in the machinery of our discourse. For example, in my own college, philosophy students are always asked the following question:

Students almost invariably agree that Smith now owes Jones the money, but when it comes to the question whether he ought to pay him, they begin to wobble. This is a ‘moral’ question, they say, as if this makes the answer uncertain. Given that we are in this kind of muddle about morality, perhaps it would be better to get rid of the word ‘moral’ altogether, as Elizabeth Anscombe said in her memorable paper ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’.

Professor Michael Dummett, in the October New Blackfriars, quotes an article by Thomas Sheehan which asserts that there is ‘a liberal consensus’ among Catholic Biblical scholars as to the historical basis of our faith. This consensus includes such views as that Jesus did not think that he was divine, that Mary was not a virgin and that Joseph was the natural father of Jesus, that Jesus did not refer to himself when he talked of the Son of Man but rather to some future apocalyptic figure, and that the remains of his corpse are still in a tomb in Palestine. Professor Dummett maintains that these views are a denial of the solemn teachings of the Church, and in his subsequent article (the one which appeared in December) he argues that if they are accepted then ‘that teaching is reduced to a demand for the acceptance of certain forms of words, which may be taken as expressing anything one chooses’ (566). I would agree with Professor Dummett, but I would question the existence of such a consensus. In fact, in a letter published in The Tablet of 5 March, commenting on Hie Tablet’s report of the debate between Professor Dummett and Professor Lash, Father Raymond Brown (who is Auburn Distinguished Professor of Biblical Studies at Union Theological Seminary, New York) writes:

Not the least of the things that are interesting about the vigorous dispute between Professor Michael Dummett and Professor Nicholas Lash in the October and December 1987 issues of New Blackfriars is that it provides an excellent opportunity for testing the practical relevance of Bernard Lonergan’s much-discussed method for theology. The dispute is at heart a dispute about the appropriate way of doing theology, at least within the Roman Catholic church, and here is a chance for seeing how Lonergan helps us to discern the flaws (and the strong points too). But first of all quite a lot must be said about that method of Lonergan’s, and this will fill two-thirds of this article. Lonergan may well be the theologian who will best assist us in delivering Christian theology safely into the twenty- first century, and beyond. His thinking bears the stamp of the Catholic trust in the compatibility of reason and faith, of science and religion, of the God of philosophy and the God of revelation, while at the same time the foundational role he allocates to conversion accords with one of Protestantism’s basic religious insights. And, in a world in which religious fundamentalism holds such sway, he also insists on the indispensability for theological inquiry and doctrinal enrichment of objective research and scientific rigour. Nevertheless, in Lonergan’s writings it is at times difficult to see the wood for the trees. So here is an impressionistic account of the wood.

The two narratives in Exodus 18, in which Jethro joins the Israelites in a sacrifice (w. 1—12) and counsels Moses on how to organize the Israelites (w. 13—27), appear to some highly esteemed commentators to have ‘no substantive relation to each other’ (Noth, 1972:136) except for the prominent role played in both by Moses’ Midianite father-in-law. I hope to show, however, that the two episodes go well together. I hope too that the reader will agree that, as so often is the case with OT material, Ex 18 has light to shed, if only obliquely, on an issue that preoccupies us still; in this case, that of authority.

The two accounts are doubtless very ancient; are, indeed, in substance probably historical, for the nation would scarcely without historical warrant have credited a foreigner with the important role given to Jethro in Ex 18 (Welch, 1932:192). It looks, however, as though a redactor has made a conscious choice to insert the story at a different point from that at which it was found in the tradition as it came down to him.

The picture of Moses declaring God’s ‘statutes and laws’ (18.16) and using them to resolve judicial disputes implies that the Sinai-revelation has already taken place (cf. Dt 1.9—18), and indeed at 18.5 the location for the episode is specifically stated to be ‘the mountain of God’; yet the redactor has elected to tell the story before the arrival at Sinai (19.2).