Marilynne Robinson: belief

Transcript context

…Reading Shakespeare as a Calvinist, what do you feel that directs your attention to that, say, contemporary secular readers might not see? Calvinism 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. 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? It’s in his gloss in the Institutes on “Who is my neighbor?” as I recall. In any case, I think that’s very beautiful. 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 could certainly be something that he explored as a suggestion taken from Calvin. Why do you think Calvin himself has lost so much popularity as a thinker? Of course, feel free to challenge that premise, but he has a reputation of being a nasty guy, not so thoughtful, very intolerant. The word is almost used as an insult in some circles. What’s your view on that, the evolution of Calvin’s reputation?…

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