While in prison and awaiting execution in the sixth century, Boethius wrote a book titled The Consolation of Philosophy. In it he describes Lady Philosophy visiting him in his cell. She could not change his circumstances, but she could offer some comfort. Boethius is distressed about his condition and the condition of the world, both of which seem unjust. Philosophy recognizes that “In your present state of mind, while this great tumult of emotions has fallen upon you and you are torn this way and that by alternating fits of grief, wrath and anguish, it is hardly time for the more powerful remedies. I will use gentler medicines” (18). Philosophy talks Boethius through the fickleness of fortune, discusses true happiness, addresses providence and fate, and consistently points him to God, who “mightily and sweetly orders all things” (81).
Consolation is “the practice of offering words of comfort to those afflicted by grief.” A term which once circulated often in religious and philosophical circles, it has been somewhat neglected of late. In Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis reminds us that sinful humans do not deserve God’s consolation. In the dialogue between the disciple and Jesus, the disciple asks “Lord, what have I done for You to give me consolation from heaven? I don’t remember doing anything good, I who am at all times inclined to evil and most remiss in reforming my life” (159).
“I don’t remember doing anything good.” Kempis’ line could well be the summary of human activity in Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis. While some have argued that Robinson fails to fully account for human depravity and God’s anger with sin in the book, it is hard to see how she sidesteps them, writing poignantly about Cain’s murder of Abel, Noah’s cursing of his grandson, the relationship between Jacob and Esau, and all the other human misdeeds in Genesis. The very first sentence of Reading Genesis is this: “The Bible is a theodicy, a meditation on the problem of evil” (3). The evil in Reading Genesis is ours.
From beginning to end of Reading Genesis, we are reminded of our evil. Robinson argues that one of the significant contrasts between Genesis and the Babylonian epics is “human culpability” (19). We are almost absurdly bad. Cain kills Abel and asks for help to avoid being murdered himself. Noah, rescued from the flood with his family, almost immediately “brings transgression into the restored world” with his drunken generational cursing (38). Sarah wants Hagar sent out into the desert to die. So many passages in Genesis present “another situation in which the judgment of God might be looked for” (88). As we see the human tendency to error and correctly identify it in ourselves, we may experience a sense of desolation and despair. Our wrongness can provoke “fits of wrath, grief, and anguish,” like Boethius in his cell.
What Reading Genesis offers us is a word of consolation. Robinson marvels at the extent to which God stays his hand. The Bible is honest about our guilt and the flaws of our forebears, but, even when God punishes, it is always less than we deserve. Wherever we are, there is sin. Wherever God is, there is mercy. Robinson writes: “As always in Genesis where revenge or punishment is an issue, the demands of justice in the human sense are not satisfied. God might have killed Cain, Esau might have killed Jacob, Judah might have condemned Tamar to death, and Joseph might have made his brothers feel his anger and his power by letting them and their families starve. It must be true that sacred history would have found its way to its end even if these lives had been cut short, though the story is told in a way that makes every one of these lives seem absolutely consequential” (226-227).
God continues to work with us, despite our misdeeds and persistence in wrong directions. One example is the institution of kingship in Israel. As Robinson writes, “The narrative of the origins of kingship in Israel is not a rousing endorsement of the institution. In choosing to have a king, the Lord tells the prophet in 1 Samuel, ‘They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.’ Yet the history of Israel, still sacred history, is very largely a tale of kings, some of them very great, all of them very flawed, as this understanding of kingship allows the text and tradition to acknowledge” (193).
The Bible presents circumstances reminiscent of “ordinary household conflict and misery” with Abram, Sarai, and Hagar, but it “puts before our eyes the two tiers of being that are interacting when the immortal God works His will among mortals. He is bestowing blessings that will shape the history of humankind. He is giving universal meaning to obscure lives that might not feel much changed in being made bearers of divine intention, of promises that will work themselves out over millennia” (88). For those who know the depths of their sin and the insignificance of their worldly status, this is a great consolation.
Consolation is the pair, not the opposite of conviction. It is comfort for those who feel the grief of their sin. In The Spiritual Exercises St. Ignatius writes “I call consolation every increase of faith, hope, and love, and all interior joy that invites and attracts to what is heavenly and to the salvation of one’s soul by filling it with peace and quiet in its Creator and Lord” (116). The consolation we find in Genesis—or Reading Genesis or Imitation of Christ or anywhere—is not that we are better than we believed or that we deserve less punishment than we thought, it is that God is more merciful than we realize. Ignatius tells us “He who enjoys consolation should take care to humble himself and lower himself as much as possible” (117).
It is a shame that the term “consolation” has fallen out of favor, because it has a place in our lives and our vocabularies. Reflecting on Genesis as a whole, Robinson writes, “I have dwelt on this sequence of stories, one after another, exploring the ways in which the faithfulness of God is manifest in the world of fallen humankind” (196). We consistently turn to wrong, but God turns the story right. As Lady Philosophy reminded Boethius—despite what we know ourselves and the world to be—God “mightily and sweetly orders all things.” This is a great consolation to sinners.
