The Revelations of Marilynne Robinson

The Revelations of Marilynne Robinson - NYTimes.com



What the human mind does is, as it happens, what Robinson is most interested in and most galled to see unappreciated or gotten wrong. Her current project is devoted to Christological essays, essays that reconsider Jesus, just as in earlier work she has reconsidered Moses. “If you could create a phenomenology of consciousness, some part of it would be the systematic falsification of the foundations of our culture,” she said. “We remember Moses saying, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ But he also said, ‘Love the stranger as thyself.’ This is not unimportant. And so I feel the humanity of Moses. Like John Ames. He’s a character I put together in my mind, sure. But when people do things that are honorable and fine, it is terrible to see them slandered. And it doesn’t matter if they did them 3,000 years ago, you know?”