YouSaid · the spoken record

Marilynne Robinson

lines on the record: 53
first: 2024-03-20
most recent: 2024-03-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Well, I think it's becoming used to the fact that it takes me a long time to get to the place where I can work on something. Know that all this sort of frustration and depression that precedes my writing anything is part of the process of writing.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, nothing comes to mind immediately, but then, as I said, I don't watch films very much. I love the ending of The Tempest, you know, which is not a movie, or it's a movie”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no. I like serializations of 19th century novels. I suppose that's what I would say if I were to. Be perfectly honest. What other movies have I liked? I'm drawing a blank”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't know. I mean, there's a great deal of secrecy, shall we say, that surrounds these things. I know that France built most of its reactors a very long time ago when Giscaid de Stan was in power. Reactors don't have a very long... Life, you know, 30 years, 40 years they're past that. It would be incredibly expensive to replace them or to demolish them, whatever, decommission them. I don't think we're going to know. I mean, the prestige of any country, for example, Russia, depends on the kind of information that we have about it. And frankly, you don't have to look far in many cases, for example. to find that things are extremely problematic and that they are problematic as a consequence of nuclear power. The idea that somehow or other there's something that can be done with these materials that were never meant to exist on Earth.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was my second book. Well, I was in England, and frankly, I pick up a newspaper and read about, you know, ingesting plutonium is considered to be harmful to children. It was just very, very remarkable, the kind of information that was in the atmosphere about what was happening, particularly at this one reprocessing plant on the coast of the Irish Sea. You know, there are Americans all over England all the time, and they can read a newspaper as well as I can. And they don't see things. They see violets and, you know. Geraniums and not the fact that things are very different there. Many conceptions of what is appropriate are economically and so on are very different. I could see what was happening. I could find information about it in all sorts of places. Why should I not write about it?”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no, no. I'm just sneaking past, you know. I feel very fortunate that my lifespan did not incorporate these things so that they became things that I had to actually be adequate with.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So much, you know, you know, I mean, in general, well, you know, I can't really generalize because we do get a diverse student body. And some of them are working with a great deal less than others in terms of, you know, educational background and so on. But that doesn't make them less interesting. That's one of the great equalizing things about writing as an art. If you do it well, you can make anything into an appropriate subject. You can make anything sort of blossom, you know, into meaning.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very hard for me to say because it's the only program that I've taught in of that kind, but people, it's a culture, you know. One of the things that I think is a definite benefit is that they learn how to be helpful to one another, the people that are students there. They're very good critics of each other. That's one of the important things that they seem to learn. The status of the place, everybody's success kind of feels like everyone else's success, you know, because of the reputation of it as a community. And as far as a faculty are concerned, we were very autonomous. We simply taught as we felt was appropriate in whatever setting, absolute minimum of meetings or anything like that. And I think that that's part of the Spirit of it also that we are trusted and not regulated.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think not because Iowa is just, I mean, most of my students were from New York City or from California or, you know, people come to Iowa not to be Iowans, but to study at the workshop, you know, whereas the Southern writers identify as Southern. They want to be expressing that particular culture. So that's a very great, great difference”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I must be 80 years ago by now. There was a lot of. Experiment, you know, at the university at that time, they were giving advanced degrees for physical, for sculpture and for theater and so on, which was very either unusual or unprecedented at the time. There were already groups of people in that city who met to discuss things that they wrote. The university just sort of embraced them at a certain point and that became the writer's workshop. And many, many very distinguished writers have come through there.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, I went to college in Rhode Island and lived in Massachusetts and so on. I was quite a distance from Idaho in terms of, you know, my experience by the time I was invited to come teach in the writers workshop at the University in Iowa, which is such a classic phenomenon in American literature, you know, that I was very happy to go there and be part of it”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, I would say it depends on circumstance. I would say that when people feel that impulse, it's probably because the world is in a bad way, you know. They were actually withdrawing from problems that could be addressed theory in case. I think we're responsible for each other. And my particular salvation is not as important as my honoring the sacredness of human beings and the world.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No. I mean having lived among American Protestants for 80 years, I would not necessarily say that that is a phenomenon that is in any way especially peculiar to us insofar as any social movement Wishes to alleviate, you know, injustice, unhappiness, pointless cruelty, the way so. Insofar as the point is to reduce that kind of criminal misery, really, I'm perfectly happy to adopt it as a Protestant and say, yes, we did that, but I think, in fact, it just, the generous evolution of a democratic society.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd want to know what you mean by the word wokism. Lots of things in this country have roots in 17th century Protestantism.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think that one of the things that has been a resource in this country for many years is religious cultures that are derived from the place of origin, you know. In other words, the multiplicity of religious institutions, I mean, sustained religion as a phenomenon. I think that you would say without Fear of contradiction that if you're going to find religious people now you would go to immigrant communities because they sustain many things for people who might otherwise feel that they are adrift.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, we're talking about something that has happened over a brief period of time. You know, I mean, during basically during the governorship of this Kim Reynolds, you know. I think that Trumpism is a kind of a fad, you know, that people, you know, suddenly everybody's doing the same thing using the same language and so on. I'm very grieved by the change in the political climate in Iowa because I admired its generosity and civility and so on And I hope that this is some weird temporary fluctuation, you know? Because the kind of basic decency and enlightenment of Iowa was so well established over such a long time, it's hard to believe that this is a permanent conversion.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, again, that's the kind of thing I can't really tell. I mean, I spend a lot of time on the East Coast, which is where I am now. And I suppose that is to all appearances. secular than most parts of the country but at the same time you know there's a flourishing church here of my denomination and so on that we don't know what we're comparing it against for one thing you know and that also there's just the fact that People can feel. That they are sufficiently religious without affiliation with the church. I mean, many people feel that way.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I don't think we can really tell. The thing about it is that unfortunately, religion has become associated with inhumane values, inhumane. Episodes among the governing class and so on that makes people Their religion or their thoughts that are of a religious character. I mean, when somebody calls you whom you would always have taken to be secular and said, will you pray for me? Because I'm in some kind of trouble. You know, you know how secular is that? You know, I mean, people are private about religion, but I don't think that that means that they're as secular as they probably, as they seem to appear.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that it's probably fair to say that that's true. There's been a loss of certain kind of confidence, no question. One thing we did is disaffiliate ourselves from our own educational institutions. I mean, Harvard, Yale, all these were Protestant schools founded by congregationalists, Princeton by Presbyterians and so on, when they became major national institutions they stopped being self-identified as Protestant institutions. And I think that the loss of dedicated intellectual institutions has been a sad thing for us, maybe a good thing for the culture at large.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know it's interesting with the Netherlands. I don't know. I mean, because I have talked with extremely Erudite, devout people in the Netherlands, you know, people are so attracted by the sensational that we know that things happen in the Netherlands that are surprising. But on the other hand, that's gloss. You know, there's a lot of seriousness anywhere. a human tendency.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, the Dutch Calvinism I'm aware of tends to be from in the Middle West, and it is not at all like contemporary Netherlands. You know what I mean?”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, that extreme inequalities are something that people seem sadly inclined toward, you know. I mean, that's what a decaying society always sinks into that in one form or another. But Calvin never says that you can judge whether anyone is saved or damned. Never because he believes that as we appear to God, you know, like David in his transgressions and so on, we cannot say that those are acts that have a certain value in terms of their impact on the fate of our souls his cultures, the Dutch culture, the Protestant English language cultures, the America and the colonial period and so on are not marked by hierarchy, by the standards of the period. If you were to say that there was an egalitarian energy in that period, It would have been Calvinism.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, one thing that Calvinists, perhaps not hyper Calvinists, have done is produce thousands of volumes of sermons. Obviously, I mean, it was a very, very literary, you know, printing press oriented sort of culture. You can talk about people who have invented some theory that finds no confirmation in Calvin's own work. He preached several times every week, you know, and did a great deal toward what he considered to be the education of people in the scriptures itself, started schools and so on. If somebody takes an idea and runs off with it and calls themself a hyper this or hyper that has nothing to do with your source material”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then he says, if you want to understand yourself to contemplate God. So he creates with this sense of the possibility for very direct encounter between a human being and God, a whole sort of metaphysics of what God is and what humankind are, which is again very beautiful because it's a celebration of the brilliance of human beings. All this he does in the first couple of chapters. He can talk about human beings for a long time without ever mentioning sin or any of the things that are normally associated with him because he's of this sort of renaissance humanism of his celebration.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I say this as someone who wants to read Kelvin carefully. You have to read him very carefully because for some reason or other, kind of the familiarity of theological language, if you're interested in theology, so much of that language comes from him, but it's very easy to read. Superficially, you know, at the beginning of the institutes, he says the only true knowledge of God. Born of obedience, which is a very important situation of the psyche, the mind in Calvinist terms. He says, if you want to encounter God, descend into yourself.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which no one does. And the reason no one does is because they think they know what they find, you know. So it's very self-perpetuating from that point of view when a negative reputation is established. There's one person who is associated with a physical martyrdom on religious grounds, Michael Servetus, one person, and then look at any other king in Europe at that time or any bishop in Europe at that time and so on. And you'll see that as sad as it is to have murdered one man, it's a very minor event by the standards of the period.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, he was associated with virtually every early revolution. In Europe, you know Cromwell, the French wars of religion and so on, the Dutch Revolution against Spain. So, I mean, he became so important in that sense that, of course, he was the object of polemic. He was, you know, I mean, the American Revolution could be seen as another Calvinist revolution, and so could the American Civil War if you want to look at it from the point of view of the Great Awakenings and so on. teachings introduced a great deal of volatility into the existing order anywhere. People defend themselves against that by speaking of him very harshly and also completely reversing the implications and the consequences of his theology. The cure, of course, is to read Calvin.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Calvinism. It was made to evolve. Calvin is making suggestions. He's not doctrinal in the way that people seem to think but he was making really valuable suggestions. And one of them was certainly that any encounter with another human being is an encounter with God. And that it is always a question, and the question is always what would God want from this encounter, you know, in his boss and the institutes on who is my neighbor, as I recall. But in any case, I think that's very beautiful. And I think that That sense in Shakespeare of these enormously beautiful encounters where people recognize each other, people pardon each other, people embrace each other. I think that that could certainly be something that he explored as a suggestion taken from Calvin.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think he's imagining it. Yes. I mean, you know, where else do you go? But it's very like Othello in that regard. I think that these women are to be understood as actually, you know, honest, virtuous people.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if I understand it. I love the late plays. I love the problem. You know, I love he becomes very, very fascinated with grace and reconciliation in his late place. In the winter's tale, of course, it's the reconciliation between the king and his statuish wife. The play makes you realize what has been lost, what has been harmed, what has been, you know, at the same time that it is also a reconciliation, an embrace, you know, an undoing, a forgiving. The same thing happens in Cymbaline, you know, same thing happens in, you know, the play with Prospero in it. I'm getting sure. You have tempest.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't go into detail like that. The question of being Catholic or Protestant in Shakespeare's time was more a political question than a theological one, I think, you know? The denomination, inappropriate word, but the church, as it were, that somebody in Shakespeare's period would be reacting against would have been the Anglican Church, not the Catholic Church, because the Catholic Church had been effectively expelled from England for a long time, you know, I mean, since Henry VIII. on the scale between having the king as the head of the church, the Anglican model, and the kind of Protestantisms that were flourishing and that were publishing and that were preaching and all the rest of it, popular religion of the period, I think that's where Shakespeare would be found.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jealous. And I think that they are carried over because they sound biblical, you know. People have been saying them since they were appropriate translations, but they aren't anymore. And if anything's going to be changed, that kind of thing should be changed.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like the revised standard version, but that seems to be a little bit difficult to acquire at the moment. I don't know why. It's just the classic, you know, American Protestant Bible, you know, in its latest form. I have problems with the later Bible simply in the sense that they preserve words like jealousy and so on that reflect very badly as they are understood in modern English on God, you know, the Jewish Publication Society doesn't use the word jealousy. They use the word passionate, you know, which sounds to me like a vastly less injurious term. I mean, I think that likewise vengeance is a very bad translation of what meant judgment, implying that one could be vindicated as well as condemned. I haven't seen these terms criticized except with the one exception of the word.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That I had more to say than the 20 minutes of approved preaching could accommodate. And also, perhaps, that people in churches have a kind of internal 20 minute timer and begin to notice when you're talking longer than they would have expected.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was a time when the minister was often called away and I would preach, and this must have happened three or four times. And my whole reputation as a preacher have come from those three or four times. I'm actually very anxious about being in a pulpit. I feel like it imposter. And so I don't seek out that opportunity.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that there's a spontaneous generosity in younger people. You know, they admire Jesus. I think this is actually a more widespread feeling than actual adherence to Christianity or acknowledged adherence to it. The impulse toward generosity, I think, insofar as it's celebrated in the Bible is the thing that attracts them.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, that's an interesting question. Sometimes if you ask the right question, you find out that there are people in that room that know a lot more about the Bible than you would ever expect them to. A lot of people tend to be rather private about their upbringing, perhaps, you know. And then, you know, often it turns out that they were brought up in a religious context. Many, many people are, you know, there's really a sad phenomenon of Christianity having become identified with what are seen as very ungenerous positions and values. And so people are very reluctant to be identified with religion because they're afraid that they're also then identified with a kind of politics that they have no respect for.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, I tend to think there's the Antichrist is probably an array of bad human actors and behaviors rather than being a single figure, as some people think that it is. It seems to me that, for example, in the book of Revelations, what you have is this kind of cyclical pattern of history in which these antichrist figures appear and kind of work themselves through an epic of history. And then it goes on to another epic of history. I mean, it seems to me as if you don't have to look far to see things that are very, very much opposed to Christ very directly, whether they acknowledge this or not. Typically, they do not acknowledge it. So I don't think that Antichrist is necessarily an unusable term. Well, I think that it is a term that should require scrutiny on the part of people who use it, certainly.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I find ourselves very puzzling, frankly. I mean, I don't think that we have, I think that what has happened in our civilization as opposed to civilizations that have come before is that we have the appearance of a relative absence of violence by historical standards. And then in reserve, in potential, we have a fantastic capacity for violence that would exceed anything that the world has ever seen before. Maybe if we had some way of releasing this by little rather than making more missiles and more bombs maybe would be healthier for us ultimately.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, in the books of Moses, he has adapted ritual sacrifice so that it's clearly a feast. I mean, it's a sacrificial animal of a kind that they eat customarily, you know. And whenever these sacrifices are called for as ritual, they invite the widow, the orphan, the Levite, etc. These people who are assumed to be without resources, you know, I think that this is true also in Homer that they give bones to the gods and eat the meat as a community. This is probably a huge public health measure, for one thing, simply making sure that everyone within a group is nourished, you know, every once in a while. The idea of sacrificing the animal, I don't know. I think it always depends on whether or not the animal becomes, you know, the Thanksgiving turkey or not. I think that”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not still in place. I mean, we've been given other means by which to, you know, create identity. Moses was doing something distinctive in a certain period of the evolution of Israel as a people. He didn't want them to be Egyptians. He didn't want them to subscribe to the prevailing culture, which was idolatrous. And he's doing kind of like Plato in the Republic. He's saying, this is how we develop the idea of a community and this is what having said that then there are certain other things like thou shalt not kill or whatever that become characterizing laws. Jesus very often says, you know, when someone says to him, how can I be saved? He says, you know the commandments, you know, I mean, it's not as if God is an alien figure. Point of view of Christ when we take to be his son.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And by making arbitrary distinctions between people so that you're not simply replicating notions of what is available or feasible or whatever, but actually asking them to adopt prohibitions of food, that's a very common kind of distinguishing thing in Herodotus and in contemporary life. So the arbitrariness of the laws is not a fault. It is a way of establishing identification of one group as separate from other groups.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that when you read like Herodotus, you know, where he describes these little civilizations that are scattered over his world, you know, he describes them as in terms of what they eat or prohibit or, you know, they paint themselves red or they shave half their head or they, you know, there are all these kinds of very, very arbitrary distinctions that people make in order to identify with one clan over against another, you know. At the point of Leviticus, which of course is an accumulation of many texts over a very long time, no doubt, but nevertheless, to think of it as being Moses, he is trying to create a defined distinctive human community.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Simply that. I mean, the ability to assert to the extent that one can control over another person is a suspect act in itself, you know, the way that we have been human despite transgressions and all the rest of it, the way that God has loved human beings in their humanity in order to allow this to happen, we have to assume that God did not assert himself in a way that disallowed our nature”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, that's, I mean, read Calvin. You know, I mean, these people that call themselves Calvinists, there's no great likelihood that they will have read the institutes or anything else that he wrote. The need of interpretation taking into account what appears to be the overriding meaning of the text is what Calvin did. His whole career was an explication of the Bible by his lights using his Latin and his Hebrew and so on. He says, you know, we've read this wrong for a thousand years and it will take us a thousand years to get it anywhere near right, you know? So he does not believe in an absolutely straightforward reading of the text. He believes very much in an interpretation that reconciles the text to the best understanding we feel we have about the nature of God.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bible to be the most complex document on the planet. The fact that its difficulties are not resolvable by me in every case or in a case perhaps I don't think is a criticism of the Bible.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, that certainly is a problem. I mean, the Bible very directly confronts the horrible aspects of human history and human behavior. That's true. It would be meaningless if it didn't, because those things are so enormously important in human life and history. The fact that it doesn't give us an easy way to understand these things does not mean that they're not germane to its subject, you know, which is the nature of human being and the nature of God. The picking and choosing is certainly, certainly characteristic of the response that people have made to Genesis into the Bible altogether. I think that if I could simply change emphasis and show that there are other ways in which things are to be understood and that there are words like vengeance and jealousy and so on that are bad translations and distort the reading of the text. I mean, I consider them.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think it has actually influenced Western literature, English language literature, to a point where it's very difficult to say where the influence begins. You know, I think that there's nothing in ancient literature that approaches it in terms of characterization. And there's very little in modern literature that also would approach it from that point of view. These people who are rather obscure figures in the human world and overlapping generations of herdsmen, you know, they're incredibly strongly differentiated and characterized. And I think that that's something that has been an influence on all Western literature.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And Moses says, you know, I'm really not the person who should be doing this, you know. God says, well, you know, your brother will be your mouth, et cetera. He does not allow The absence of what appeared to be a heroic qualities in Moses to be disqualifying of Moses.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Homeric character, well, they tend to be demigods for one thing. Their nature is complicated by the influence of a divine parent. And so they're kind of, you know, superhuman in a sense. In the Bible, there is no intention to make anyone exceed his humanity, that God is always working through people that are recognizably fallible, limited human beings, that part of the reason I think that we have so often God choosing almost at random among people is to make the point he's acting through them rather than they're acting out of their some singular quality of their own person.”
2024-03-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source