REVIEW: The Death of Adam and of Modernity

Second Quarter 1999

Marilynne Robinson may be known to you as the author of the novel, Housekeeping. Or perhaps, like me, you had not heard of her before now. Her latest book is a collection of remarkable essays, titled The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).

Robinson ranges widely over many subjects. Her relevance for us arises from her discussions of economics, politics, and the modernist worldview, which she identifies as an errant faith. "The modern fable is that science exposed religion as a delusion and more or less supplanted it. But science cannot serve in the place of religion because it cannot generate an ethics or a morality. It can give us no reason to prefer a child to a dog, or to choose honorable poverty over fraudulent wealth. It can give us no grounds for preferring what is excellent to what is sensationalistic. And this is more or less where we are now."

That quotation comes from a thought provoking essay in which Robinson dissects Darwinism's uncritical faith, illogical reasoning, and demeaning view of humanity. Among Darwinism's worst features, Robinson, explains, is its connection with classical economics. "Darwinism is harsh and crude in its practical consequences, in a degree that sets it apart from all other respectable scientific hypotheses; not coincidentally, it had its origins in polemics against the poor, and against the irksome burden of extending charity to them-—a burden laid on the back of Europe by Christianity. The Judeo-Christian ethic of charity derives from the assertion that human beings are made in the image of God, that is, that reverence is owed to human beings simply as such, and also that their misery or neglect or destruction is not, for God, a matter of indifference, or of merely compassionate interest, but is something in the nature of sacrilege."

Although she treasures theology and the Bible, Robinson makes no claim of Christian faith. "I began as a pagan and have ended as one, though only in the sense that I have never felt secure in the possession of the ideas and loyalties that are dearest to me." What power the church might have today if, like Robinson, more of its members felt less secure about their possession of Christianity but considered their dearest possessions to be biblical ideas and loyalties.

Modern myths and fables are leading us away from our true humanity, she writes. One response to this degradation should be the reexamination of history in order to uncover the truths modernity has discarded or ignored. One of the most important sources that needs recovering is the French Reformer Jean Cauvin, whom we know as John Calvin.

Calvin is "a figure of the greatest historical consequence, especially for our culture, who is more or less entirely unread. Learned-looking books on subjects to which he is entirely germane typically do not include a single work of his immense corpus in their bibliographies, nor indicate in their allusions to him a better knowledge than folklore can provide of what he thought and said. I have encountered an odd sort of social pressure as often as I have mentioned him. One does not read Calvin. One does not think of reading him. The prohibition is more absolute than it ever was against Marx, who always had the glamour of the subversive or the forbidden about him. Calvin seems to be neglected on principle. This is interesting. It is such a good example of the oddness of our approach to history, and to knowledge more generally, that it bears looking into. Everything always bears looking into, astonishing as that fact is."

According to Robinson, we Americans are deeply indebted to Calvin for "relatively popular government, the relatively high status of women, the separation of church and state, what remains of universal schooling, and, while it lasted, liberal higher education, education in 'the humanities.' All this, for our purposes, emanated from Geneva—in imperfect form, of course, but tending then toward improvement as it is now tending toward decline."

Among other things, Robinson finds in Calvin and the Bible the high standards of neighborly care and justice as guides to economic productivity. Another theology is at work in the West today. In the same way that Communists developed a theology and a "church militant," many free-market believers have "theologized our economic system." Robinson confronts "these self-declared moralists and traditionalists" with the Bible. In it she finds that "the sin most insistently called abhorrent to God is the failure of generosity, the neglect of widow and orphan, the oppression of strangers and the poor, the defrauding of the laborer." Since many who are so enthusiastic about the theology of economic competition "are eager to call themselves Christians," she writes, "I would draw their attention to the New Testament, passim."

Robinson's often ironic, artfully constructed, deeply insightful essays are a breath of fresh air in America's culture wars. Besides essays on Darwinism and Calvin, The Death of Adam, contains essays on the family, McGuffey's readers, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Marguerite de Navarre, and more.

—The Editor