June 7, Trinity Sunday (Genesis 1:1–2:4a; Psalm 8; Matthew 28:16–20)
When we read scripture backward
Theology, someone must have said, works backward. When something good happens to us, we experience gratitude—so we look back and imagine the hand of God. After a loved one dies, we gather and reinterpret the events of their lives.
So too with biblical interpretation. Early Christians practiced what Richard B. Hays calls “reading backwards.” They turned to the Jewish scriptures, the only scriptures they had, and read Jesus back into them. And so too with the Trinity. Biblical authors may not have articulated such a doctrine in full, but by reading backward, we Christians resource and refine our own trinitarian understandings.
What might it look like to read some of our Trinity Sunday lessons backward?
