The course as a whole is intended to draw attention to the fact that the Scriptures are, whatever else, a very great literature. Considering their importance to Western Civilization, it is remarkable how vulnerable they are now to misuse and ridicule. This seminar will look at themes and images that grow in richness through the very long history of their development. Over centuries writers returned to these texts, confident of finding a high order of meaning in them, as great writers have done for centuries after the canon was closed. This is far too extraordinary a phenomenon to be left to cynical use or to neglect.
WEEK 1: LUKE
This session will look at the art of truth, the character of narrative meant to compel assent to a vision of transcendent meaning in a life that could have sunk into obscurity in the absence of this devoted form of witness.
WEEK 2: ACTS
Believed to be by the author of Luke, this is an account of the earliest days of what became the Christian movement.
WEEK 3: FIRST CORINTHIANS
This beautiful and highly important letter by St. Paul to the newly formed church at Corinth offers a vision of the teaching and way of life of nascent Christianity as well as the metaphysics they imply. Paul is highly learned in the heritage of Hebrew Scriptures.
WEEK 4: JOHN
The Gospel of John differs from the other gospels in many ways, first of all in that it conveys a sense of the transforming wonder of the Incarnation, of Deity dwelling among us, bringing that primal Light into the world, that primal Word, holding time to the measure of eternity—John compels with the language of ecstatic belief.
Four one-hour sessions: May 6, 13, 20, and 27. All sessions will start at 7pm ET. Full members and auditors will have access to recordings of each session that may be viewed after the live sessions conclude.
About Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home (2008), winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Lila (2014), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Jack (2020), a New York Times bestseller. Her first novel, Housekeeping (1980), won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Robinson’s nonfiction books include The Givenness of Things (2015), When I Was a Child I Read Books (2012), Absence of Mind(2010), The Death of Adam (1998), and Mother Country (1989). She is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing,” and the inaugural Lewis H. Lapham Award for Literary Excellence from Harper’s Magazine (2025).
