Shadows of the Triune God

The Hermeneutics of Old Testament Revelation in Lombard, Aquinas, and their Interlocutors

Abstract

The question of whether the Trinity is revealed in the Old Testament represents a decisive fault line between pre-modern dogmatics and modern historical criticism. This article investigates this hermeneutical tension through the lens of Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, arguing that the transition from the former to the latter represents a movement from exegetical collection to epistemological refinement. The study begins by analyzing Lombard’s thesis of continuity, where grammatical anomalies (such as the plural Elohim) and prosopological texts are classified as “explicit documents” of the triune nature. It traces the systematization of this consensus in Albert the Great and Bonaventure, who developed rigorous semiotic modes to explain divine insinuation. Central to the argument is Aquinas’s intervention: while maintaining the objective presence of the mystery in ancient theophanies, Aquinas introduces a mystagogical distinction grounded in the divine economy. He argues that the Trinity was explicitly believed by the maiores (prophets) while remaining a veiled object of implicit faith for the minores. The article then confronts the challenge of modern historical criticism, which tends towards positing a “hermeneutic of rupture” based on Israel’s strict monotheism. Finally, it surveys a diverse range of contemporary theological retrievals—ranging from the dogmatic distinctions of Jean-Hervé Nicolas to the hermeneutical defenses of Brad East, Kevin Zuber, and Katherine Sonderegger. By distinguishing between personification and personalization and recovering the ontology of the biblical text as a vestigium Trinitatis, the article concludes that the medieval intuition is vindicated: reading the Trinity in the Old Testament is not anachronistic, but indispensable for maintaining the theological unity of the Christian canon.