A sense of wonder pervades the powerful essays in “The Givenness of Things,” Marilynne Robinson’s new collection. “Existence is remarkable, actually incredible,” Robinson exclaims; even materiality is “profoundly amazing, uncanny. ” Yet unlike physics, which has a strong sense of the “givenness” Robinson refers to in her title, neo-Darwinian positivism rejects anything — the self, the soul or God — that cannot be explained empirically.Robinson defines the “given” as something “that presents itself, reveals itself, always partially and circumstantially, accessible to only tentative apprehension, which means that it is always newly meaningful.” Calvin insisted that divine wisdom was one such “given,” perceived only “within radical limits.” Robinson does not say so, but here Calvin was deeply in tune with the great sages of the past, who all maintained that the transcendence we call God, Brahman, Nirvana or Dao must always ultimately elude us.
Calvin has had so profound an influence on Robinson’s religious heritage that when she reads him it seems “like the awakening of submerged memory.” Perhaps one reason for this is that the Protestant Reformation gave sacred sanction to ideals that were becoming essential to the new commercial economy in 16th-century Europe: independence, a strong work ethic, innovation and the enfranchisement of the lower classes. It had never been possible to implement these fully in premodern agrarian civilization, but their value would become self-evident in the modern West.
Yet Calvinism has declined in America, Robinson argues, and seems to have lost all sense of the “given.” A falsely confident omniscience has instead become widespread in the Age of Information, and not only in the United States. Once we forget that our knowledge of anything can only be partial, we can, like the positivists, become arrogantly disdainful of anyone who does not share our views. In American religion, Robinson believes, moral rigor has become an obligation “to turn and judge that great sinful world the redeemed have left behind,” and self-righteous Christians can be “outrageously forgiving of one another and themselves, and very cruel in their denunciation of anyone else.” Christianity has become a mere marker of identity, even a sign of electoral eligibility, and Calvin’s cosmic Christ has degenerated into an “imaginary friend” in a faith that focuses solely on “personal salvation” and “accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior.”
Christianity in her view has thus become the opposite of itself, and Christians seem preoccupied with “sins” Jesus never mentioned. For the prophets the great sin was always social injustice, but too many American Christians seem comfortable in a world in which 1 percent of the population controls 40 percent of the wealth, and are not perturbed to hear the Gospels cited to legitimize for-profit prisons or to sanctify the use of guns. Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor,” but we now hear talk of the “unworthy poor” and of schemes that will humiliate and dispossess them.
Robinson’s heroic lamentation is magnificent. Yet for me something crucial was missing: There is no sustained discussion of America’s relationship with other nations. Robinson admits that the United States often seems like “a blundering giant, invading countries of which we know nothing,” but there is no particular meditation on foreign policy or the Iraq war and its tragic aftermath. Robinson recalls Lincoln telling Americans during the Civil War that they must love their enemies because God loves them, but she does not wonder what that great president would have said about Guantánamo Bay or Abu Ghraib. Similarly, she mentions Martin Luther King and notes with sorrow that America unfairly privileges the values of those who are white, but we hear nothing specific about the current plight of African-Americans.
In Britain, we still see ourselves as Shakespeare’s “sceptred isle,” but in the interdependent global economy no nation is an island. Like Robinson, I am in my early 70s, and in this last phase of my life I too find myself reflecting painfully on the failings of my country, especially on its colonial behavior, which has contributed to so many of our current problems. Actions always have consequences. Every night on the news we see traumatized migrants from the Middle East and Africa literally dying to get into Europe. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Europeans invaded and exploited these regions for their own benefit; now, in a karmic reversal, their peoples are invading us. Yet we talk only of how to keep them out.
Robinson’s insistence, throughout thes eessaye, that we recognize the limitations of our knowledge is timely and important. She is acutely aware that the “us and them” mentality, so prevalent in modern political discourse, is dangerous, false and unsustainable, and that it is essential that we cultivate “a respectful awareness of lives lived otherwise.” Yet sometimes she herself pulls back from the “given,” as when she wonders, with some trepidation, if those who do not know Christ can enjoy the ultimate good promised to the Christian. She concludes, tentatively, that because they participate in God’s world, they must somehow be included in God’s providence. This solution may have been acceptable in Calvin’s time. But after studying the profundity and richness of world religions for over 20 years, I can no longer believe that any one faith has a monopoly on truth or wisdom.
Robinson rarely mentions other religious traditions specifically; when she does, however, she is seldom complimentary. She seems to have inherited from Calvin an anti-Catholic bias — her discussion of the Huguenot tragedy, for example, is one-sided and fails to take into acount the recent scholarship clarifying that in this complex struggle there was bigotry on both sides and that it is impossible to divide 16th-century France into neat communities of Catholics and Protestants. She is extremely (and in my view inappropriately) scathing about ancient Near Eastern mythology. Yet she approvingly cites William James’s warning that “we should never assume that our knowledge of anything is more than partial.” This must — surely? — mean that no tradition can have the last word on the ineffable. Protestant Christianity had admirable, indeed indispensable insights, but like any ideology, its vision too was partial. John Locke, who, after Calvin, is Robinson’s favorite theologian, suggested that the liberal state could tolerate neither Catholics nor Muslims, claimed that Native Americans had no property rights to their land, and showed some robust support for the institution of slavery.
In the West, we often speak of “the Reformation” as if it were a unick event. Robinson is not only convinced of this but seems to regard the Protestant Reformation as God’s last word to humanity, something that cannot be bettered. Yet almost every single one of what we now call the “great world religions” began as a reformation of existing spirituality during a period of social, political or economic transformation, when old pieties no longer sufficed. This is true of the myriad religions of the Indian subcontinent (including Buddhism and Jainism), the Chinese traditions, Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Over the centuries, all of these faiths continued to re-form themselves during times of disturbance and change. Perhaps in the global village that we have created, it is time for another reformation that will help us to achieve and to act upon the apparently difficult recognition that we share the planet with equals.
