Balm in Gilead - (Wheaton Theology Conference) by Timothy Larsen & Keith L Johnson (Paperback)

About the Book

Based on the 2018 Wheaton Theology Conference, this volume brings together the thoughts of leading theologians, historians, literary scholars, and church leaders who engaged in theological dialogue with Marilynne Robinson and her work.

Book Synopsis

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson is one of the most eminent public intellectuals in America today, and her writing offers probing meditations on the Christian faith. Based on the 2018 Wheaton Theology Conference, this volume brings together the thoughts of leading theologians, historians, literary scholars, and church leaders who engaged in theological dialogue with Robinson's work-and with the author herself.

Review Quotes

"Doing theology and reading fiction figure among my best-loved pastimes. Reading theology about fiction ranks almost as high. Yet Balm in Gilead is something better: an interdisciplinary conversation about the theological presuppositions and implications of one of America's most important living novelists. Entertaining does not come close to doing justice to Marilynne Robinson's Gilead series, though they are that. Robinson raises profound questions about the shape of Christian ministry and community and, in so doing, exposes and seeks to transform America's secular social imaginary. In similar fashion, Balm in Gilead raises profound questions about Robinson's work and theology, putting her in conversation with theologians past (Augustine, John Calvin) and present (Rowan Williams)."

"If the test of a good story is the kind of person it shapes, then we can only hope that Marilynne Robinson continues to write her stories. Reading her stories makes one want to be more truly alive. They also, as it happens, make one curious to read her nonfiction. In reading both novels and essays, we are introduced to a theologically dynamic vision of the world. This marvelous collection of essays is a welcomed engagement by theologians with an author who demands careful-and repeated!-reading."

"Marilynne Robinson is perhaps the most vital of living American novelists. This collection contains essay after thoughtful essay exploring various facets of her complex and beautiful body of work. After reading them you feel that you have watched the assembling of a delightful portrait of this most theologically resonant of our writers."

"Marilynne Robinson's work is saturated in theology-not only in that it is pervaded by engagement with Christian belief in general but in that it is shaped by years of deep engagement with the texts of the Protestant (especially Calvinist) tradition. We have waited a long time for a collection like this. It is certain to be a rich source of interest and delight."

"The religious themes and insights in Marilynne Robinson's novels and essays-especially her striking fondness for Calvin-have won her a devoted Christian following. Until now, however, there has been little explicit engagement with her work by theologians. In this volume, an impressive range of thinkers opens up a conversation with the novelist about the Christian life, the Reformed tradition, and the American experience."

"When I read page 128, part of the 'Space/Time/Doctrine' essay by Tiffany Eberle Kriner, I said to myself that this page was worth the price of the book. But then an essay by Rowan Williams, who I think is one of the best readers of Robinson, still lay ahead, as did the beautiful plates and accompanying essay by artist Joel Sheesley, an essay by Robinson on 'The Protestant Conscience, ' and not one but two interviews, the first by Wheaton professors Vincent Bacote (theology) and Christina Bieber Lake (English) of Robinson and Williams together, and the second by Wheaton president Philip Ryken of Robinson by herself. . . . As a whole, this collection makes a strong argument for the ways that literature should enter debate about public life."

"This collection of thoughtful and erudite essays is a welcome addition to the growing interest in (and admiration of) one of the church's-and culture's-preeminent voices of the last thirty years. For readers who are familiar with Robinson's writing, this collection will provide much-welcomed insight into the theological depth of her essays and novels. For those unfamiliar with her work, this volume provides a lively and accessible theological introduction to one of the major creative thinkers of our time. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the conversations and currents happening at the deepest levels between the church and culture today."

About the Author

Marilynne Robinson is the author of the bestselling novels Lila, Home (winner of the Orange Prize), Gilead (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and Housekeeping (winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award). She has also written four books of nonfiction, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind, Mother Country, and The Death of Adam. She teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Robinson has been given honorary degrees from Brown University, the University of the South, Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Amherst, Skidmore, and Oxford University. She was also elected a fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford University.

Timothy Larsen (PhD, University of Stirling) is McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and an honorary fellow in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, and he has been a visiting fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and All Souls College, Oxford. He is the author of several books, including George MacDonald in the Age of Miracles, John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life, The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith, A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians, and Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England.

Keith L. Johnson (PhD, Princeton Theological Seminary) is associate professor of theology at Wheaton College. He is author of Theology as Discipleship and Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis, and he is the coeditor of Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture.

Timothy George is the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, and serves as an executive editor at Christianity Today. He is a member of the Southern Baptist-Roman Catholic Conversation Team and has participated in the Evangelicals and Catholics Together initiative. He is the series editor for the Reformation Commentary on Scripture.