If you read Calvin, for example, he says, How do we know that we are godlike, in the image of God? Well, look at how brilliant we are. Look how we can solve problems even dreaming, which I think is true, which I've done myself. So instead of having an externalized model of reality with an objective structure, it has a model of reality that is basically continuously renegotiated in human perception. I think that view of things is pretty pervasively influential in Protestant thought.
Marilynne Robinsonpity and charity may be at root an attempt to propitiate the dark powers that have not touched us yet.
Marilynne RobinsonShe conceived of life as a road down which one traveled, an easy enough road through a broad country, and that one's destination was there from the very beginning, a measured distance away, standing in the ordinary light like some plain house where one went in and was greeted by respectable people and was shown to a room where everything one had ever lost or put aside was gathered together, waiting.
Marilynne RobinsonI have always liked the phrase "nursing a grudge " because many people are tender of their resentments as of the thing nearest their hearts.
Marilynne Robinson