Theology Today - Vol 49, No.1 - April 1992 - EDITORIAL

Reading Backwards
By Hugh T. Kerr

In the first few issues of THEOLOGY TODAY, now nearly fifty years ago, we ran what was called a "second editorial." It was a sort of analytical preview of articles yet to come, a practice still followed by many journals, such as Interpretation, Theological Studies, and others. We abandoned the device shortly after trying it out when we discovered that valued readers, like H. Richard Niebuhr, who was on our initial Editorial Council, said that he read the book reviews first and then randomly selected articles, and finally the editorial. Though perverse in some ways, this "reading backwards" has always intrigued me as an editor, and I've come to sense several implications for theology itself.

Keeping alert about what's going on in theology these days, an editor must look at dozens of journals and at least read around and about in hundreds of books. It is quite impossible to survey this widespread territory without some sort of scanning process. Mortimer Adler advocates a method of "X-raying" a book to disclose its skeleton. But how do you do this?

My own method, for what it's worth, grows out of the assumption that most authors have one single basic idea. The bulk of the article or of the chapters of a book are padding, so it is essential to find that one single basic idea. But how? Well, I begin with the index to see what subjects and what names are cited. If all the endnotes are printed together, I glance at these. Then, I page through the last chapter or conclusion (sometimes the introduction or first chapter). That usually gives me enough information about what the author wants to say and why. This is a "reading backwards" technique, but its wider implications are perhaps more important than this "X-raying."

What would it mean, for example, to read the Bible this way? Instead of beginning with Genesis, why not begin with a vision of the apocalyptic future, certainly a haunting and perplexing topic for many in today's self-destructive world? Instead of moving from the infancy narratives about Jesus to the cross, why not try to get the Jesus story by beginning with Easter and then going backwards? Isn't that how the evangelists themselves put the Gospels together?

Perhaps we can venture the same procedure for studying church history as well as doctrinal theology. "History" usually implies beginning

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at the beginning and moving on into today. But Protestants, for example, could just as well begin with the Reformation and move backwards into the early apostolic church. This was how Luther and Calvin operated in order to show that they were legitimate offspring of the apostles and not a new or novel way of interpreting the Christian faith. Catholics are experiencing something of the same "reading backwards" as many understand Vatican II, now in the annals of history, to be a rediscovery of early Christianity.

We can also make an effort in theology itself of "reading backwards," so that in any trinitarian system, it is the Spirit that makes real the redemptive work of God in Jesus Christ. So, it would surely make sense to begin with the third person of the Trinity and then to move backwards. It is quite clear from the Gospels themselves that the historic Jesus of Galilee is no longer here on earth since the resurrection. The absent, risen Christ is made present through the Spirit, but Christian theology continues, almost without exception, to operate on Christocentric assumptions, giving only nodding recognition to the person and work of the Spirit.

There is still another implication of "reading backwards" that is of special urgency these days. Many of the popular theologians today whose books are being read by hundreds of thousands agree that to understand ourselves, so as to go beyond our present problems, means recapturing our youth and even returning in imagination to infancy. We are thinking of people like Scott Peck, John Bradshaw, Alice Miller, Harold Kushner, and Melody Beattie, all of whom talk about reclaiming the child within, but in a different sense from the popular TV evangelists.

We are seeing in our day that to be "born again" is akin to but distinct from the invitation to accept Jesus Christ as personal savior. Happy are those who remember a happy childhood and a close-knit family. But there are many today who either come from a dysfunctional family or tend to perpetuate the pattern. Those suffering from codependency, emotional depression, physical abuse, and substance addiction, as well as those who are underachievers, just plain lonely, and sufferers of nameless pain, are almost always in need of a lesson in reading backwards."

We are what we are, beginning at the beginning, because we were loved and wanted or because we never heard anyone say "I love you just as you are." If we retreat to a time when we felt rejected and unloved, we need to face that factor in our life's record, and we need to pass along to our own children and to the lost and homeless children of our times some loving care, personal warmth, and assurance of protection.

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III

Was Jesus giving Nicodemus a lesson in "reading backwards" when, somewhat sarcastically, he asked: "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand?" It is as if Jesus is saying, "Go back within your own tradition; what I've been talking about is all there." In the same way, the transfiguration is also a lesson in "reading backwards." The disciples, Peter and John, see that Jesus is flanked by Moses and Elijah, and the evangelist is saying, in effect, that this Jesus is simply the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. If you want to know who he is, go back and read Moses and Elijah.

With reference to reclaiming our childhood, was Jesus giving the people a lesson in "reading backwards" when he said: "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it"? This is not to think of childhood as all innocence and humility but to go back to a sense of dependence and the instinctive readiness to receive.

John Masefield, poet laureate in 1967, wrote these lines in his well-known poem, The Everlasting Mercy:

He who gives a child a treat
   Makes joy-bells ring in Heaven's street,
And he who gives a child a home
   Builds palaces in Kingdom come,
And she who gives a baby birth
   Brings Savior Christ again to earth.

Can the "reading backwards" technique also be applied to writing a sermon, a term paper, or an article? Well, with some modification that happens to be my own method. I begin with a blank piece of paper and a working title which most likely will change a couple of times in the writing. I try to formulate a single, basic idea, and I put this at the bottom of the page where it will eventually be worked into some sort of conclusion.

Moving backwards, but without much attention to sequence or development, I jot down through a process of free association several things that come to mind, including quotations from the Bible and elsewhere, illustrations, and bits and pieces of this and that. I try to fill the page with such references, more or less in random fashion, and knowing that half of everything will be excluded from the final draft.

This "writing backwards" process is worth mentioning because many students, seminarians, and preachers think they should begin at the beginning and develop a theme in successive, linear stages. This conventional writing forwards almost always results in a dull, prosaic style, boring for the reader with any intelligence or imagination.

What we are suggesting, that is, "writing backwards," is largely the work of the right-side brain, whereas putting everything together is the proper work of the left-brain. I've been following this process for years without knowing that it has scientific basis in brain research. Gabriele Lusser Rico, in her delightful book, Writing the Natural Way (1983),

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spells out this "cluster" method in considerable detail with drawings, illustrations, and quotations from well-known writers. Those who are dominantly left-brain tend to think in straight-line, cause and effect ways, while those in the right-brain category feel more at home with analogic and imagistic thinking. But we can learn, read, and write, using both sides of the brain, and it's great fun for a left-brain person (me, for example) to learn a very different way of processing reality. The more two-way traffic between the two hemispheres, the better.

It's not a very new idea, after all, The Hebrew "Shema," as revised in the Gospels, reminds us that "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matt. 22:39; cf. Deut. 6:4). That says it all, whether backwards or forwards.