This article offers a brief engagement with Richard B. Hays's 2014 book Reading Backwards, with occasional reference to its 2016 successor, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels. Beginning with a genealogy of Hays's notion of figural exegesis, the article calls attention to the bold theological claims that cash out his understanding of figural exegesis. It then proceeds to a critical dialogue that questions Hays' identification of his understanding of figural exegesis with that of the church fathers. Irenaeus and John David Dawson are drawn upon to argue for a significant difference between ancient practice and the post-critical hermeneutics evinced throughout Reading Backwards. The two approaches are by no means as easily drawn together as Hays seems to suggest, and the difference has significant implications for understanding the role God might play in how we relate the Old Testament to the New.

This article starts from the position that Quakerism has yet to be properly located within the firmament of Christian theology. A new starting point is proposed in the relation to the historical environment of Calvinism, the effect of which is to place Quakerism within the ancient stand-off between Augustine and Pelagius. In the article's first part, four theological propositions taken from the Journal of George Fox are first contrasted with propositions from John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion and then correlated with those of James Arminius to confirm the Pelagian nature of the theology. The second part of the article departs from particular doctrinal elements and attempts to grasp the contrasting characters of Quakerism and Calvinism.