Balm in Gilead: A Theological Dialogue with Marilynne Robinson

by Timothy Larsen (Editor), Keith L. Johnson (Editor), Han-luen Kantzer Komline (Contribution by), Timothy George (Contribution by), Lauren F. Winner (Contribution by)

Overview

Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Marilynne Robinson is one of the most eminent public intellectuals in America today. In addition to literary elegance, her trilogy of novels (Gilead, Home, and Lila) and her collections of essays offer probing meditations on the Christian faith. Many of these reflections are grounded in her belief that the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformer John Calvin still deserves a hearing in the twenty-first century. This volume, based on the 2018 Wheaton Theology Conference, brings together the thoughts of leading theologians, historians, literary scholars, and church leaders who engaged in theological dialogue with Robinson's published work—and with the author herself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780830853182
Publisher:	InterVarsity Press
Publication date:	04/02/2019
Series:	Wheaton Theology Conference Series
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Timothy Larsen is McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, an Honorary Fellow in the School of Divinity at Edinburgh University, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has written eight books, including A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians, and edited a dozen volumes, including most recently The Oxford Handbook of Christmas.

Keith L. Johnson (PhD, Princeton Theological Seminary) is assistant professor of theology at Wheaton College. He is the author of Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis.

Timothy George is the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, and senior adviser at Christianity Today. He is the general editor of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture series from InterVarsity Press.

Marilynne Robinson is the author of the bestselling novels Lila, Home (winner of the Orange Prize), Gilead (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and Housekeeping (winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award). She has also written four books of nonfiction, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind, Mother Country, and The Death of Adam. She teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Robinson has been given honorary degrees from Brown University, the University of the South, Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Amherst, Skidmore, and Oxford University. She was also elected a fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction (Timothy Larsen and Keith L. Johnson)
1. The Theological World of the Reverend John Ames (Timothy Larsen)
2. Heart Conditions: Gilead and Augustinian Theology (Han-luen Kantzer Komline)
3. Marilynne Robinson and John Calvin (Timothy George)
4. The Metaphysics of Marilynne Robinson (Keith L. Johnson)
5. Thinking About Preaching with Marilynne Robinson (Lauren F. Winner)
6. Marilynne Robinson and the African American Experience (Patricia Andujo)
7. Space/Time/Doctrine: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead Novels (Tiffany Eberle Kriner)
8. Heaven and Earth: Reading Gilead Through the Landscape of the Fox River (Joel Sheesley)
9. Beyond Goodness: Gilead and the Discovery of the Connections of Grace (Rowan Williams)
10. The Protestant Conscience (Marilynne Robinson)
11. A Conversation Between Marilynne Robinson and Rowan Williams (Moderated by Vincent Bacote and Christina Bieber Lake)
12. An Interview with Marilynne Robinson (Philip Ryken)
Contributors
Name and Subject Index
Scripture Index

What People are Saying About This

Jeremy Begbie

"Marilynne Robinson's work is saturated in theology—not only in that it is pervaded by engagement with Christian belief in general but in that it is shaped by years of deep engagement with the texts of the Protestant (especially Calvinist) tradition. We have waited a long time for a collection like this. It is certain to be a rich source of interest and delight."

W. David O. Taylor

"If the test of a good story is the kind of person it shapes, then we can only hope that Marilynne Robinson continues to write her stories. Reading her stories makes one want to be more truly alive. They also, as it happens, make one curious to read her nonfiction. In reading both novels and essays, we are introduced to a theologically dynamic vision of the world. This marvelous collection of essays is a welcomed engagement by theologians with an author who demands careful—and repeated!—reading."

Alan Jacobs

"Marilynne Robinson is perhaps the most vital of living American novelists. This collection contains essay after thoughtful essay exploring various facets of her complex and beautiful body of work. After reading them you feel that you have watched the assembling of a delightful portrait of this most theologically resonant of our writers."

David Heim

"The religious themes and insights in Marilynne Robinson's novels and essays—especially her striking fondness for Calvin—have won her a devoted Christian following. Until now, however, there has been little explicit engagement with her work by theologians. In this volume, an impressive range of thinkers opens up a conversation with the novelist about the Christian life, the Reformed tradition, and the American experience."

Kevin J. Vanhoozer

"Doing theology and reading fiction figure among my best-loved pastimes. Reading theology about fiction ranks almost as high. Yet Balm in Gilead is something better: an interdisciplinary conversation about the theological presuppositions and implications of one of America's most important living novelists. Entertaining does not come close to doing justice to Marilynne Robinson's Gilead series, though they are that. Robinson raises profound questions about the shape of Christian ministry and community and, in so doing, exposes and seeks to transform America's secular social imaginary. In similar fashion, Balm in Gilead raises profound questions about Robinson's work and theology, putting her in conversation with theologians past (Augustine, John Calvin) and present (Rowan Williams)."

Michael Bruner

"This collection of thoughtful and erudite essays is a welcome addition to the growing interest in (and admiration of) one of the church's—and culture's—preeminent voices of the last thirty years. For readers who are familiar with Robinson's writing, this collection will provide much-welcomed insight into the theological depth of her essays and novels. For those unfamiliar with her work, this volume provides a lively and accessible theological introduction to one of the major creative thinkers of our time. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the conversations and currents happening at the deepest levels between the church and culture today."

Editorial Reviews

"Marilynne Robinson is perhaps the most vital of living American novelists. This collection contains essay after thoughtful essay exploring various facets of her complex and beautiful body of work. After reading them you feel that you have watched the assembling of a delightful portrait of this most theologically resonant of our writers."

Alan Jacobs

"If the test of a good story is the kind of person it shapes, then we can only hope that Marilynne Robinson continues to write her stories. Reading her stories makes one want to be more truly alive. They also, as it happens, make one curious to read her nonfiction. In reading both novels and essays, we are introduced to a theologically dynamic vision of the world. This marvelous collection of essays is a welcomed engagement by theologians with an author who demands careful—and repeated!—reading."

W. David O. Taylor

"When I read page 128, part of the 'Space/Time/Doctrine' essay by Tiffany Eberle Kriner, I said to myself that this page was worth the price of the book. But then an essay by Rowan Williams, who I think is one of the best readers of Robinson, still lay ahead, as did the beautiful plates and accompanying essay by artist Joel Sheesley, an essay by Robinson on 'The Protestant Conscience,' and not one but two interviews, the first by Wheaton professors Vincent Bacote (theology) and Christina Bieber Lake (English) of Robinson and Williams together, and the second by Wheaton president Philip Ryken of Robinson by herself. . . . As a whole, this collection makes a strong argument for the ways that literature should enter debate about public life."

Michael Vander Weele in Christian Scholar's Review 49:1 (Fall 2019)

"The religious themes and insights in Marilynne Robinson's novels and essays—especially her striking fondness for Calvin—have won her a devoted Christian following. Until now, however, there has been little explicit engagement with her work by theologians. In this volume, an impressive range of thinkers opens up a conversation with the novelist about the Christian life, the Reformed tradition, and the American experience."

David Heim

"This collection of thoughtful and erudite essays is a welcome addition to the growing interest in (and admiration of) one of the church's—and culture's—preeminent voices of the last thirty years. For readers who are familiar with Robinson's writing, this collection will provide much-welcomed insight into the theological depth of her essays and novels. For those unfamiliar with her work, this volume provides a lively and accessible theological introduction to one of the major creative thinkers of our time. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the conversations and currents happening at the deepest levels between the church and culture today."

Michael Bruner

"Doing theology and reading fiction figure among my best-loved pastimes. Reading theology about fiction ranks almost as high. Yet Balm in Gilead is something better: an interdisciplinary conversation about the theological presuppositions and implications of one of America's most important living novelists. Entertaining does not come close to doing justice to Marilynne Robinson's Gilead series, though they are that. Robinson raises profound questions about the shape of Christian ministry and community and, in so doing, exposes and seeks to transform America's secular social imaginary. In similar fashion, Balm in Gilead raises profound questions about Robinson's work and theology, putting her in conversation with theologians past (Augustine, John Calvin) and present (Rowan Williams)."

Kevin J. Vanhoozer

"Marilynne Robinson's work is saturated in theology—not only in that it is pervaded by engagement with Christian belief in general but in that it is shaped by years of deep engagement with the texts of the Protestant (especially Calvinist) tradition. We have waited a long time for a collection like this. It is certain to be a rich source of interest and delight."

Jeremy Begbie

"When I read page 128, part of the 'Space/Time/Doctrine' essay by Tiffany Eberle Kriner, I said to myself that this page was worth the price of the book. But then an essay by Rowan Williams, who I think is one of the best readers of Robinson, still lay ahead, as did the beautiful plates and accompanying essay by artist Joel Sheesley, an essay by Robinson on 'The Protestant Conscience, ' and not one but two interviews, the first by Wheaton professors Vincent Bacote (theology) and Christina Bieber Lake (English) of Robinson and Williams together, and the second by Wheaton president Philip Ryken of Robinson by herself. . . . As a whole, this collection makes a strong argument for the ways that literature should enter debate about public life."

--Michael Vander Weele in Christian Scholar's Review 49:1 (Fall 2019)

"Doing theology and reading fiction figure among my best-loved pastimes. Reading theology about fiction ranks almost as high. Yet Balm in Gilead is something better: an interdisciplinary conversation about the theological presuppositions and implications of one of America's most important living novelists. Entertaining does not come close to doing justice to Marilynne Robinson's Gilead series, though they are that. Robinson raises profound questions about the shape of Christian ministry and community and, in so doing, exposes and seeks to transform America's secular social imaginary. In similar fashion, Balm in Gilead raises profound questions about Robinson's work and theology, putting her in conversation with theologians past (Augustine, John Calvin) and present (Rowan Williams)."

--Kevin J. Vanhoozer, research professor of systematic theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

"If the test of a good story is the kind of person it shapes, then we can only hope that Marilynne Robinson continues to write her stories. Reading her stories makes one want to be more truly alive. They also, as it happens, make one curious to read her nonfiction. In reading both novels and essays, we are introduced to a theologically dynamic vision of the world. This marvelous collection of essays is a welcomed engagement by theologians with an author who demands careful--and repeated!--reading."

--W. David O. Taylor, assistant professor of theology and culture, Fuller Theological Seminary

From the Publisher