Russell Moore is joined by Marilynne Robinson for a conversation on reading Genesis as a story of grace.
This article is an excerpt of a conversation on CT’s podcast The Russell Moore Show. Listen to the full conversation here.
Russell Moore: I’ll tell you what was surprising to me about Reading Genesis: I expected certain themes to be there—such as the mystery of human beings and the fact that we’re not reducible to causes and effects. But one of the things I was surprised by is that this is a book about grace and forgiveness. The Cain and Abel narrative shows up repeatedly in ways I hadn’t considered—from Lamech all the way on to Joseph and his brothers.
There is a sense of moral shock in the fact that God would protect Cain after killing his brother. And it struck me that, as with so many other things in the Bible, the familiarity that we have with it reduces that sense of shock that that is intended.
Marilynne Robinson: It was a question that came up in a class, but it shocked me too. And I think that was the beginning of my reappraisal of these stories, because the obvious importance of Cain and Abel is a master narrative of so much else. The mark of Cain, which we know protected him, was something that stigmatized him.
RM: I’ve kind of unconsciously seen the story as primarily about Cain and Abel’s rivalry, Abel’s subsequent murder, sacrifice, and so forth, and only secondarily about God’s response to Cain. But now, after reading your book, I’m rethinking that because it seems that the most startling thing here is not just a brother’s blood cries from the ground, but that God doesn’t execute the murderer—he protects him. And that’s something that you demonstrate repeatedly through Reading Genesis.
MR: It’s such a strongly recurring …