W ARE fortunate today to live a period which theological activity is livelier than it has been many a day. There is a new ferment speculative theology: witness the essays of Karl Rahner and the stimulating study, Insight, by Bernard Lonergan. Such branches of positive theology as patristics, the theology of the Early Middle Ages and nineteenth-century theology, to name but a few, have seen the publication of competent monographs. Yet perhaps no department of theology has recently undergone such sharp changes as the study of Sacred Scripture. Awareness of this fact has now inevitably penetrated beyond the narrow circle of those engaged research. It has reached the members of the clergy and, indeed, the Church at large. As always, news of change has called forth varied feelings among those whose own lifework precluded participation this particular enterprise. The word has gone around that the Bible must be read in a new way, and, above all else, that it is not as easy to discover the meaning of the Gospels as earlier and more ingenuous generations had believed. Some of these reports are enthusiastic exaggerations, due at times to the imprudence of one or two professors. Now and then they can be laid at the door of students who are more naive than they themselves would consider possible. But beneath the exaggerations there remains a substratum of sober fact which needs to be faced. This is all the more necessary because these reports have shaken the confidence of some priests their ability to perform an essential part of their ministry, the preaching of the word. These men, most of whom received their theological training before 1943, seriously wonder if what they think they find Scripture and particularly the Gospels is really there. Is the method which they were taught to apply to these writings seriously at fault? And if so, what steps can they take, granted the obligations of their present life, to remedy the situation? A state of affairs which evokes questions such as these merits the most serious 1 The Encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu was promulgated on Sept. 30,1943.