{"id":1781,"date":"2020-12-15T21:45:59","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T21:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=1781"},"modified":"2020-12-15T21:46:03","modified_gmt":"2020-12-15T21:46:03","slug":"the-wonderment-of-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/15\/the-wonderment-of-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wonderment of Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Uncertainty and the Wonderment of Grace<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Marilynne Robinson\u2019s quiet force in the contemporary literary world stems from exquisite prose revering the universe, the mind, and the Christian faith.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By William Boyce<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A narrow understanding of faith very readily turns to bitterness and coerciveness. There is something about certainty that makes Christianity un-Christian\u2026 Therefore, because I would be a good Christian, I have cultivated uncertainty, which I consider a form of reverence.<\/p>

-Marilynne Robinson, \u201cCredo,\u201d 2008\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

In every sense, Marilynne Robinson is an act of God.<\/p>

First of all, she belongs to that rare confederacy of authors who loom large in the moral imagination of their own day. Laurelled as the \u201cworld\u2019s best writer of prose\u201d by The Sunday Times<\/em> in 2008, Robinson has published three novels, two collections of essays, and two extended works of non-fiction in a literary career spanning four decades. Robinson\u2019s first work, Housekeeping<\/em>, was included in the one hundred greatest novels of all time by the UK Guardian Observer. <\/em>Twenty-three years later, her second novel Gilead<\/em> received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. Her books are frequently reviewed with words like exquisite, luminous, haunting, lucid, and elegant.<\/p>

Second of all, Robinson\u2019s writing is entwined with Christian splendor. Religious themes, Christian engagements, and theological sensitivities saturate every ounce of both her fiction and non-fiction. In fact, the explicit preoccupation with religion in Marilynne Robinson\u2019s mythopoeia has quite nearly produced a cottage industry. \u201cRobinson\u2019s stories and characters not only delight and instruct but also deeply move us on matters of Christian faith,\u201d says R. Scott LaMascus. As Michael Dirda noted in his review of Gilead <\/em>for The Washington Post<\/em>, it is \u201cso serenely beautiful, and written in a prose so greatly measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it\u2026 one regularly pauses to reread sentences, sometimes for their beauty, sometimes for their truth.\u201d<\/p>

But most of all, Robinson seems to be clearing a space for mystery in our (post)modern world. Although it is lost to many in this age of tweet and taint, Robinson appears enraptured by the precariousness of a sacramental vision. Indeed, a prophetic gift lingers prayerfully at the center of her works. Nothing in our present age of whirl and woe escapes her redemptive gaze. She imprints a symbol of anointing on every issue she addresses. By shining a glorious light of praise on the cosmos, the mind, and the faith, she hallows the gift of sanctified wonderment. Like a humble votive, Robinson reveals how a wonderment of grace in a world so loved by God can arise from faithfulness, reverence, and assurance without ever calcifying as obduration, intransigence, or certitude.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Science, like theology and culture, is a strategy of narration. \u201cEvery grand venture at understanding is hypothesis, not so different from metaphysics.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Universe.<\/em><\/strong> All of the cosmos, time, and existence drips with the lushness of profound and ineluctable mystery, according to Robinson. These realities warrant perennial attention. They persist as live and momentous quandaries in the modern mind no less than the ancient one. The sheer existence of the natural order, which has never needed to \u201chear the word, \u2018Eureka,\u2019 or, for that matter, even the word \u2018nature,\u2019\u201d is astounding.<\/p>

Nevertheless, to Robinson\u2019s chagrin, the mere fact of the universe has come to explain itself away in our time. In the cautionary words of Ruth, the protagonist of Housekeeping<\/em>, \u201cAll this is fact. Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, it is fact that requires explanation.\u201d What does it mean, then, that a star, a cloud, a river, a flower, a skyscraper, and a baby exist? For starters, \u201cwe have no way of knowing the true nature of the reality in which we are immersed\u201d; thus, Robinson writes, \u201cIf we do not know the character of being itself\u2014I have never seen anyone suggest that we do know it\u2014then there is an inevitable superficiality in any claim to an exhaustive description of anything that participates in being.\u201d<\/p>

The lack of absolute comprehension, or omniscience, encourages humility. Robinson, following the theological genius of Jonathan Edwards, underscores the ineffable beauty of being-in-general<\/em>. In short, being<\/em> is the start of perception and wonder. As Reverend John Ames, in Gilead<\/em>, proclaims, \u201cWherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don\u2019t have to bring a thing to it except a willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?\u201d Per Robinson, science cannot pretend to offer the<\/em> solution or resolution to this mystery, but only a variety of detailed articulations of it. The question of the good or the true or the beautiful \u201chas by no means gone into abeyance since we learned to make penicillin or to split the atom.\u201d Science, like theology and culture, is a strategy of narration. \u201cEvery grand venture at understanding is hypothesis, not so different from metaphysics.\u201d<\/p>

The Mind<\/em>.<\/strong> The vastness of the wonders of being<\/em>, for Robinson, substantiates the subjective mind. The locus of apperception is, consequently, interwoven with external grandeur. Yet, the \u201cpresence of human consciousness is a radical, qualitative change in the natural order.\u201d Therefore, the self, the spirit, the soul, the mind\u2019s eye, this sanctuary constitutes a point of dynamic convergence.<\/p>

\u201cIt may have been perverse of destiny to array perception across billions of subjectivities, but the fact is central to human life and language and culture, and no philosophy or cognitive science should be allowed to evade it.\u201d Interpenetrative mystery of this order invigorates human exceptionalism; on the other hand, it forewarns of presumptuous egoism. \u201cBy this kind of reckoning we are either immeasurably insignificant or we are incalculably precious and interesting. I tend toward the second view.\u201d Far from being debilitating, the exigencies of wonderment in the universe and in the subjective mind stimulate awe.<\/p>

Only from a posture of modesty before the complexity and mystery of depth crying out to depth can Christian uncertainty blossom. Robinson seems to view her writing as an apologia<\/em> for this sort of exalted or unfathomable meekness. From another angle, her works are an apologia contra <\/em>cynicism. In the postmodern era, \u201cwe feel increasingly sunk in a world of mere things, in a hard-edged Reality that disallows imagination except to exact tribute from it.\u201d Gracious truth and dignity counteract the uncharitable programs of critique and suspicion. The former are costly; the latter are cheap. The former, as miraculous gifts, present a \u201cway of maintaining an appropriate humility in the face of what we think we know.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Faith is uncertain precisely when it relies on the goodness and providence of God. It refuses to seek its own justification, but waits patiently on the Lord.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Faith<\/em>.<\/strong> In Robinson\u2019s oeuvre, courage, especially of the prevenient sort, characterizes faith. Faith is wrapped in the vortex of limitation and desire, fallenness and miraculousness, fear and hope. In other words, faith is active, bold, and dramatic. Robinson, adopting John Calvin\u2019s memorable phrase, places faith at the very center of the stage in the theatre of God. Indeed, there is \u201cdrama in the thought that ultimate things are at stake in these moments of perception and decision.\u201d Faith enlivens, rather than ossifies. It sheds prismatic light on every corner of creation. \u201cIt is a language of orientation that presents itself as a series of questions,\u201d wrote Sarah Fay in the Paris Review<\/em>. To put it another way, Robinson told New Humanist<\/em>, \u201cGood faith, like good science, is active wonder. Reverence for life.\u201d<\/p>

Faith is uncertain precisely when it relies on the goodness and providence of God. It refuses to seek its own justification, but waits patiently on the Lord. Robinson \u201cexperience[s] religious dread whenever I find myself thinking that I know the limits of God\u2019s grace\u2026 God does, after all, so love the world.\u201d Christian uncertainty faithfully bears witness to the Spirit hovering above the watery chaos. It does not demand proofs, which are so much claptrap relative to faith. Against the headwinds of doubt, Reverend Ames of Gilead<\/em> stresses the assurance of faith to his congregation: \u201cthey want me to defend religion, and they want me to give them \u2018proofs.\u2019 I just won\u2019t do it. It only confirms them in their skepticism. Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.\u201d Faith is not inimical to truth; rather, faith\u2019s uncertainty is precisely the ark of its faithfulness. \u201cFaith is called faith for a reason.\u201d<\/p>

Faith is a great mystery and a greater story. \u201cGod is of a kind to love the world extravagantly, wondrously, and the world is of a kind to be worth, which is not to say worthy of, this pained and rapturous love. This is the essence of the story that forever eludes telling.\u201d Moreover, that indescribable Gospel story \u201clives in the world not as myth or history but as a saturating light, a light so brilliant that it hides its sources.\u201d Faith as Christian uncertainty becomes an antidote to cynicism, by Robinson\u2019s lights. In our contemporary world, \u201cwe have enshrined the iconoclast\u201d; \u201cDebunking exhausts its subject\u2026 since the Bible does have a certain aura of sanctity about it yet, it offers the hope that there is discrediting still to be done.\u201d Dignified wonderment, humility before mystery, and gratitude for providential grace point to an alternative vision of faith and being.<\/p>

Marilynne Robinson is one of the great authors of the present moment. That she leans so heavily on everlasting arms to illuminate reality distinguishes her corpus<\/em>; it also has endeared her to many religious devotees, which complicates her reception as much as multiplies it. Her ambition genuflects to the legacy of Calvin, and her own readers witness her palpation of grace like sacraments placed on the communicant\u2019s tongue. Robinson weaves her fiction and non-fiction into a grand tapestry flecked with largesse, capaciousness, modesty, and reverence. Contra the arrogant and ubiquitous cynicism of our time, Robinson celebrates and consecrates the mysterium tremendum<\/em> of the world, the mind, and faith; in short, \u201cCertainty is a relic, an atavism, a husk we ought to have outgrown. Mystery is openness to possibility.\u201d<\/p>

Christian uncertainty, or reverential humility, modeled on Christ as he pondered death or listened to Pilate\u2019s verdict, is the path Robinson cultivates and follows on her pilgrimage toward wonderment and glory.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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William Boyce<\/strong> graduated from Florida State University in 2011, with an Honors B.A. in English, History, and Religious Studies. After completing a Master of Letters at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, he enrolled at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he is presently discovering the tragically beautiful life and mind of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marilynne Robinson\u2019s quiet force in the contemporary literary world stems from exquisite prose revering the universe, the mind, and the Christian 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