Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis can be read as a twenty-first-century defense of metaphysics that powerfully shapes our notions of law and liberty. If the world is just matter in motion and its only laws are physical in nature, then freedom is a mere illusion, with no sound footing in the nature of things. But if the very origin of the world is shot through with divine significance—if it was made to be good and beautiful—then law and liberty find a much firmer foothold, and ethical discernment takes on a deeper, perhaps even sacred significance. 

In some respects, we live in a world all but shorn of metaphysics. Many seem to take for granted, for example, that matter is the only thing that really exists, and that the only kinds of causation operating in our world are what Aristotle refers to as material and efficient causes. Things happen, quite simply, because material objects bump into one another like billiard balls. Even living things are fundamentally little more than matter in motion, carried along by a long and unbroken chain of physical causation, and our most precious thoughts and feelings are but molecular processes unfolding in our brains. 

Robinson, best known as a novelist, has set herself the task of re-enchanting the world, or at least opening minds and hearts to the wonder that has been there all along, so richly evoked by Genesis. Not so much a commentary or a work of scholarship, she has composed a long essay that insists that human life is shaped more by stories than by collisions of material objects. The text means to teach us something about what we are and how we fit into the larger scheme of things. For example, the creator affirms the goodness of creation and expects human beings, who bear a special divine imprint, to take responsibility for sustaining and nurturing it.

To those who seek to drain all traces of divine inspiration from scripture by locating and connecting it to its historical antecedents, Robinson counters that it represents something radically new. Other ancient sources may contain creation and flood narratives, but they describe the birth of the gods themselves, treat human beings as created for their use, and deny that godliness and goodness are necessarily connected. By contrast, Genesis makes it abundantly clear that creation’s goodness and beauty precede its utility, that there is but one God who wills the flourishing of his creation, and that without freedom we could not choose to align ourselves with it.

This approach has vast implications for law and liberty. For one thing, human law is only necessary because human beings are free. If we could do only good, there would be no need for law. But because we are free to choose between good and evil, we need a compass by which to navigate both a complex world and our own wayward natures. Law, at least the divinely inspired kind, should be regarded not as a constraint but a guide to liberation, the capacity to lead our fullest lives in accord with divine intention.

Robinson invites us to ponder what it means to be free. Freedom is not a total absence of self-control, nor is it liberty to do whatever we want, damn the consequences. Instead, true flourishing is possible only when we exercise our freedom to align ourselves with the larger order of creation, as established by divine intent. Of course, our incomplete view of the good sometimes leads us into malalignment, a condition in which the patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—frequently find themselves. Yet when this happens, the characteristic divine response is not vengeance but steadfast mercy and love.

No sooner have human siblings appeared in the world in the persons of Cain and Abel than one has murdered the other. The ever-present possibility of fratricide persists through the text of Genesis, through the stories of Jacob and Esau and Joseph and his brothers. Even the patriarchs behave in questionable ways at times, and Genesis resoundingly affirms that man is fallen, and that human efforts for that reason will frequently go awry. Yet the God of vengeance familiar to so many casual readers of the Bible, the putative source of lex talionis, repeatedly reveals himself as the lord of forgiveness. Instead of cursing Cain, he curses the ground, marking Cain in a way that prevents others from doing him harm. 

Loving creation, including our fellow creatures, opens up opportunities for stewardship and service. We are not just aggregations of particles being buffeted about by other physical forces. We are also moral actors on the stage of a creation that, despite the fall, remains essentially good. Despite the many errors and transgression of the patriarchs, the God of Genesis abides and remains loyal to them. So, too, the text calls us to forbearance and dedication, looking first not to condemn and punish those who seem to have done us wrong, but to see in them our brothers and sisters, fellow offspring of the one God.

We are free not merely to do the good, but also to enjoy it, in some faint reflection of the joy God must take in creation. Writes Robinson, “The world is imbued with reminders that there is a beautiful intention and assurance expressed in every perception we have of the loveliness of the natural world.” We have been placed in a beautiful world and gifted with a divinely inspired capacity to appreciate its beauty, which Robinson describes as “a sharing of His mind with us in this important particular.” On this account, we have the potential to be not slaves to God but his “companions.”

Our existence in the world signifies something akin to divine trust and hope—the trust that we can live up to our divine imprint, the hope that we can choose the good. On this metaphysics, we are so free that we act, at least in some small way, as God’s co-creators, influencing the path of our little patch of creation as it unfolds in the future. Sometimes we choose well, other times poorly, because we fail to perceive the larger stories of which we are a part. Yet, Robinson holds, we are so central to creation that the fact that it is changed by us, “albeit for better or worse, is whatever else, a kind of tribute to what we are.” From a God’s-eye point of view, the world is a more interesting place because we are in it.

The fact that it is up to us to keep or break the law represents an exhilarating expression of our place in the natural order, a profound metaphysical statement. Again and again, the divine response to human evil is not to amputate the capacity for choice, but to provide law as a “crystallizer” of human moral decision. Like Adam, we are free to follow it or set it aside, but the fact remains that after even the greatest human betrayals of divine purpose, our autonomy persists. Apparently, the God of Genesis is genuinely curious to see what we make of the world and willing to love us even when we make a mess of things.

Consider parents. They want what is best for their children and do what they can to protect them from harm, including self-harm. Yet parents also recognize that their offspring must, at some point in development, assume responsibility for their own lives, beginning to make their own choices. If parents never relinquished control, their children could never grow up and parent children of their own. This is why the parent-child metaphor is so pervasive throughout the Bible. The creator and sustainer of all hopes that we will act righteously, but the choice and the consequences must always remain our own.

Reading Genesis teaches us about the Bible’s first book, revealing a rich and beautiful metaphysics, but it also gives voice to some of the most profound mysteries in human life. If freedom introduces the possibility of evil, why make us free? If we have sinned, should we not be punished? If the world is already good, what can human beings add? Robinson reminds us that God can both grieve and rejoice at his human creation, so “disastrously erring and rebellious,” yet also “irreducibly sacred.”