2024-03-20
49 分钟Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems.
Learn more@mercatus.org dot for a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com.
hello, everyone, and welcome back to conversations with Tyler.
Today I'm talking with Marilyn Robinson, one of America's best and best known writers.
She is also a nonfiction essayist.
And now she has a new book out called reading Genesis by Marilyn Robinson, which I recommend highly.
Marilyn, welcome.
Thank you very much.
Why is betraying a brother such a prominent theme in the Hebrew Bible?
Well, I think it's sort of a small model of the offenses against ourselves as human beings that happen at every scale.
And it seems in the Hebrew Bible the older brother typically does worse or is somehow dethroned or put down.
Why is that?
What is that telling us?
I think that there's no necessity, no causality in the way that things work among human beings, that God is free to choose the younger brother.
The conventions of human society, primogeniture and so on are not salient in terms of God's intentions.
So in your calvinist view, is it elevating predestination over human institutions and human choices?
I don't think.
I mean, poor old Calvin always comes up, but I don't think that there's any theologian who ever walked the earth who didn't say that David was chosen over his brothers because it was the intention of God.
I mean, a great deal of determinist.
The language is poor, but God's choices are reflected continuously in the Bible.