God and the Polemic:
an evaluation of N. T. Wright’s recent publication,
God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath
I have read several books by N. T. Wright over the years with joy and pleasure. It is a sadness to read such poorly constructed thoughts from a great writer, and it is with no sense of gladness or triumph that I must sincerely critique his doubtless heartfelt work. But I cannot remain silent about what I see as the profoundly discouraging trends and directions of his arguments, not to mention the outright errors and false conclusions he arrives at, and the way those militate against Christian joy.
The book begins with a consideration of Greek philosophical models: Stoic, Epicurean, and Platonic. These are strawmen. No serious person believes those positions.
To assume, as the writer states at the very beginning, that we in the West did not care when the virus was in China or later in Italy, is simply false. Until the virus came here, there was considerable concern for those affected. It was only when the press whipped the population into a frenzy of fear that concerns began to focus on individual survival.
The writer’s quotation of Pastor Niemöller and the attempt to equate the two situations undermines the writer’s argument: one situation was a matter of conscience and morals while the other is a virus that infects irrespective of virtue. This argument is a red herring. (As always in debate, the first one to bring up the Nazis loses.)
P. 2 re: Greek response models
There is a response that is neither Stoic nor Platonist nor Epicurean, and that is to do something, which has always been Americans’ response: quarantine, treat, and develop a vaccine. This comes from the dominant force in American culture, Christianity. The introduction of these Greek models is an irrelevance. One disturbing use of them is what he calls the “Platonic” view about “going to heaven”. While some would cringe at putting the matter that starkly, there is plenty of Biblical collateral for the dual destinations of heaven and hell (see Paul, 1 Cor. 5:1-8, Phil. 1:21-23). I see no benefit and much harm in characterizing that view as Platonist and heaping contempt on it as he does.
(By the way, there is one classical Greek response the writer neglected: Orestean defiance—the determination to resist what the gods have ordained. In view of the writer’s general argument, it is somewhat ironic that he has skipped this.)
P. 3 re: What can we do?
I think that the compassionate response has been overwhelming. Few people are huddled in their homes, apart from the most vulnerable. Even among those, there are many generous givers.
P. 5 re: Katrina vs. COVID-19
“The political and social timbers have already been rotting away.” I have no idea what he is talking about. Many in our (Lutheran) church hosted Katrina refugees; there is nothing rotten about that. Why is the Katrina response relevant to anything?
P. 6 re: Repentance
There are plenty of Scriptural examples of God sending disaster precisely to call His people to repentance. The writer even selects one from Amos. Then the writer heaps contempt on the use of such an explanation for the current crisis. Why? It might not be so in this case, but how is one to rule it out? The writer gives us no help at all, but merely points out that some people will adapt the idea to fit their prejudices. I suspect he is right about that, but surely that is not the case with everyone who thinks as Amos does. So, what is going on here? Is the writer saying that Amos is wrong? I would be loath to believe it of N. T. Wright, but he is not helping me here.
To heal, the surgeon must first wound. See Eliot, Four Quartets, II. East Coker, IV.
P. 12-13 re: Job
That God is not using affliction to call His people to repentance is not refuted by Job. Perhaps this was not the case with Job, as the writer claims (though in Job 42:6, Job says that he repents), but why might it not be so now? God has different approaches at different times with different people.
The general track of the text from pp. 10-12 is to cite these very depressing psalms and laments, as though the fact that they are in the Bible demonstrates that they present us with appropriate thoughts in times of affliction. Of course, there is nothing wrong with lamenting under trial; we do this without being told. Because we are flesh, perhaps we must start there, but it is not a good place, and we must not end there.
Of course, the real objection to this passage on Job is the writer’s conclusion that Job is unresolved. I know that a lot of theologians hold that fashionable position, but I think it is willful blindness: the resolution is abundantly clear. Job has misunderstood the relative positions of himself and God, and God corrects that error definitively. Furthermore, Job himself understands the test of faith (Job 19:25-27). This is clearly the subject for a much longer discussion.
But the writer cannot have it both ways. He cannot claim that affliction is not God’s call to repentance on the basis of the Job narrative and simultaneously claim that Job is unresolved, that is, that there is no answer in Job as to the purpose of suffering. If the writer denies that affliction’s purpose is repentance on the basis of Job, then he must have a replacement thesis based on Job. The writer may have an excellent idea here, but he has kept it to himself.
The so-called problem of theodicy is only a problem for unbelievers. Believers know that all events, all trials however dire, tend towards the perfection of His church, the bride of Christ. If sometimes we cannot trace a connection between that aim and a current disaster, it is simply ignorance of the details, not an insoluble dilemma.
P. 14 re: To lament
Perhaps the most inexplicable statement in the whole book is, “We are simply to know that when we are caught up in awful circumstances… accused of wicked things of which we are innocent … we are to lament.” I cannot find anything in Scripture, OT or NT, that even remotely suggests this, let alone commands it. The writer has not made any case for this. The Scriptures suggest many alternatives. Despair is not one of our options. In extremity, we cast ourselves on God’s mercy and provision, but we do so in hope!
P. 18 re: End times
These are the last days, especially in the sense that we are to keep expectant watch for the Lord’s return. I don’t think that mocking the foolish things that some have asserted about the End Times fundamentally changes the eschatological component of Christianity. It is in the Nicene Creed. So, to be aware of the progressively deteriorating condition of the world, as each new crisis is added, and to suspect that only Jesus’ prompt return can set things right, as He promised, is not so far-fetched that no serious Christian can entertain it. One might be mistaken, but I can see nothing heretical about it. Certainly, one cannot rule it out. Personally, I believe that Jesus’ return will be an event that is utterly unmistakable in character, but this does not mean that it could not be preceded by other noteworthy and suggestive events. One particularly disturbing event, identified by Jesus, is that the love of some will grow cold. While that should not, perhaps, be seen as a sign, it should certainly be seen as a warning. It is well worth bringing up in a time of crisis when there is so much fear about.
P. 18 re: less alarmist teaching
Ordinarily, a strawman is not reusable. Enough of grinding the Hal Lindsay axe.
P.18 re: Call to repent
When has God not been calling everyone to repent? C. S. Lewis calls pain “God’s megaphone”. The metaphor can easily be extended to any disturbance, catastrophe, or disaster, especially when it strikes near home. It is true that God’s call to repentance is no less in peaceful times. But may we not hope that catastrophe will, by the sheer force of personal impact, move some, or even many, to repent who had not considered it before? May we not pray for revival, as in Ps. 85? What is wrong with supposing that God intends to use the magnitude of the pandemic (or any other disaster) to awaken faith in the complacent? The writer’s objections to this are silly. The real objection, only very slight, is that God’s call to repentance is always present, always compulsory: a disaster does not make it more so. What a disaster does is simply to amplify that call for those who have theretofore been deaf to it. As this is a common and perfectly understandable phenomenon, it is hard to see what can possibly be wrong with it. It is not the whole story, but I suggest that it is impossible to exclude on Biblical grounds. Indeed, when Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was at hand, He was suggesting urgency.
P. 19 re: Things to repent of
Of course, we should repent of trespasses against one another. But the other things mentioned, our political system, nature, and our food chain? I am not aware that I have anything to repent of with respect to the political system with which I have little contact (I vote) and essentially no control over. One does not sin in matters over which one has no responsibility. I vote for the candidate most likely to end the holocaust of abortion. I must vote from among a limited set of candidates. That done, I have no further control over politics. As to trespasses against nature, first, there is no such entity as “nature”. To suggest that there is, and that one could sin against it, is to propose a kind of demi-god, a being that finds no place in Scripture. I search the Commandments in vain for anything corresponding to, or even faintly suggesting, the existence of a trespass against nature. There is the physical world, over which God gave man dominion. Secondly, in the course of His creation activity, He created viruses. I sincerely hope and pray that people will find a way to eradicate some species of viruses that afflict mankind. Is that a trespass against nature? I have no idea what is meant by trespasses against the food chain. Is NTW a vegetarian?
It sounds very much as though the writer is suggesting some kind of collective responsibility for environmental and political sins, and perhaps others as well. We should utterly reject this. Jesus very clearly states that we are judged individually for what we individually do. While we may regret what others have done (even in our name), we are not responsible to God for matters in which we took no part.
While listing trespasses of dubious significance, the writer entirely skips the great sins of which we must continually repent: pride and self-reliance. I am glad the writer mentioned forgiveness, for we must constantly be alert for lack of forgiveness towards those who have trespassed against us.
P. 19 re: Praying the Lord’s Prayer
Far be it from me to say anything bad about the Lord’s Prayer. Saying it (and meaning it) is unquestionably one of the gateways to following Jesus. But it is far from being the only such gateway, or even the most important one. If we attempt to lay the entire Gospel on this one brief prayer, we will find the weight far too great for it to bear. (For those who insist on a rigorously Christocentric approach, I note that Christ is not mentioned in the Lord’s Prayer.) So, even putting the most generous interpretation on the writer’s claim, to wit, that saying the Lord’s Prayer implies meaning what it says and living what it means, I can see no “sense [in which] learning to follow Jesus is simply learning to pray the Lord’s Prayer.” If the writer’s claim were true, then Jesus need never have said or taught anything further; but He did. Jesus went on to say many other things about following Him, like bearing crosses and casting one’s life away, things not even remotely included in the Lord’s Prayer. Though I like the writer’s enthusiasm, I take his remark as rhetorical hyperbole, which I would prefer to see replaced by clear, measured, sound exegesis on so profound a subject as following Jesus.
P. 19 re: kingdom will come with sudden signs
Jesus did not say that the end would come without signs; He said that wars, rumors, etc., were not necessarily signs of the end. No one doubts the once-for-all character of Jesus’ life, teaching, death, and resurrection. And of course, Jesus’ signs were authentication of His message and mission on an entirely different level from those of His predecessors. And naturally, the time of repentance is always now. But the notion that these truths preclude further prophetic utterance, miracles, and disturbing indicators (signs, if one insists) is to take dispensational thought too far. The Pentecost event by itself, not counting the various signs wrought by the Apostles, refutes the thesis.
In particular, the writer omitted OT prophecies predicting the very signs that he claims are of a different kind for Jesus, positive, forward-looking signs, namely, Isa. 61 & Ps. 146, among others. Jesus explicitly claims Isa. 61:1-2 for Himself in Luke 4:16ff. Apart from signs intended to achieve an immediate effect in the circumstances, such as Moses’ signs, the entire OT story is pre-eminently one long sign of God’s provision for His people, including the atonement.
Moreover, this part of the writer’s argument is pointless, because of the following objection.
P. 19 re: Jesus the “last” prophet
The writer has asked Hebrews 1:1 to say what it manifestly does not say. The passage asserts the superiority of Jesus’ prophetic message over that of earlier prophets. It does not say that Jesus is the last prophet and that there will be no more prophets after Him. In Scripture, there is Agabus, the daughters of Phillip, Paul’s instruction to seek the gift of prophecy (1 Cor. 14:1), and Paul himself, plus numerous others not named. I am aware of the view, some would even say doctrine, that the spectacular gifts, healing, raising the dead, prophecy, tongues, and so on, ceased in the church age after the Apostles died. But there is not one iota of Scripture in support of that view. (I am aware of the arguments, and I find them unconvincing.) While I have not, so far as I know, witnessed an instance of the exercise of such gifts, I will not be so arrogant as to suppose, let alone teach, that the Spirit may no longer inspire and use those gifts to His glory. So, for the writer to rule out the possibility of prophets and prophecy after Jesus, goes way beyond (at least) the bounds of Scripture.
P. 20 re: Jesus redefining…
It is a quibble, perhaps, but I resist the notion that Jesus redefined anything: He fulfilled the Law and the Prophets in His Person. True, some of the prophecies in the OT are vague, and He gave them more focus. Many, perhaps most, prophecies could only be seen as fulfilled in Jesus in retrospect. But to say that Jesus redefined OT principles and prophecies is to suggest that they were originally about something else and Jesus adapted them to His case. On the contrary, the Law and the Prophets, from Gen. 3:15 on, are principally about Jesus, specifically and personally, and only secondarily about other matters. (They even include His birthplace!)
The bottom line on this entire argument is that the writer has tried to establish a Christocentric view of the Kingdom teachings by unnecessarily reducing everything else to subChristian status. The ‘sign’ of Jonah speaks not as completely but as truly of God’s provision and the atonement as the actual crucifixion and resurrection. A better approach is to recognize that everything from Gen. 3:15 through the Revelation of John points to Jesus. He did not change the plans, He did not correct any Scripture, and He did not, by His life or teaching, deviate from the plan God had from the foundation of the world. That plan places Jesus as King at the center of all things, always has, always will. All of history is suffused with the specific direction and participation of God at every stage, preparing and then employing all events towards the glory of Christ.
P. 20-21 re: sovereignty
The writer’s characterization of sovereignty in the acts of Jesus is interesting and enlightening. But this does not cancel a larger understanding of God’s sovereignty. Has one of God’s people died in the pandemic that God has not specifically called home? Has one of God’s people who have survived the infection not been specifically healed by God? God’s authority and purposes saturate the entire cosmos. And yes, that authority has been given to Jesus. As to God’s sovereignty in the events in the life of Jesus, I never doubted it. I also hold Jesus to be sovereign over the pandemic and everything else that happens in our world. This does not entail an over-interpretation of worldly events.
I want to suggest a different reading of the daily newspaper, one that lines up better with the worldview that Jesus taught. When we see reports of criminals, rioters, looters, terrorists, and tyrants, we are in fact seeing the reports of people, often very specific people, who need Jesus. It is no accident that these reports have reached us. The very minimum we should do is pray for them, particularly as they may often be regarded as enemies. I believe this to be a very neglected subject in Christian teaching (though not necessarily in practice; I know several believers who take this approach regularly).
P. 21 re: ultimate call to penitence
There has only ever been one call to repentance, repeated many times, no doubt. How many ways can it be said? True repentance and saving grace are not available to the unspiritual man, but only through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:7-9). So, however pressing the writer’s argument is, it is vacuous: those whom the Spirit brings to repentance are always and only those who will see Jesus as King.
P. 21 re: when the ‘second coming’ will occur
Once again, the writer, for reasons that escape me, has rebuked a tiny, almost vanishingly small, minority for the factitious knowledge of the date of Christ’s return. Surely Mark 13:32 is the mere pons asinorum of the subject; no serious student of the Scripture can reasonably hold such a belief. But that there will be a second coming is without doubt. We affirm it in the Nicene Creed. Jesus described with clarity the manner of His return (Matt. 24:27-31 and elsewhere). So, why are the words, second coming, in quote marks? Is the writer trying to suggest that the second coming is an ideal or (God forbid) a fiction, or that the popular idea of the second coming is profoundly different from the form that the writer sees? I am genuinely puzzled.
P. 23 re: the Platonic dream
Once more, it is not Platonic, and it is not a dream. By Jesus’ testimony, Heaven is real. It is more real than anything we know. The Father is in Heaven (Matt. 6:9). Jesus descended from and ascended to Heaven. On the cross, Jesus said, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” Paul wrote about being “with the Lord,” that is, departing this life to reside with Jesus where Jesus is. Perhaps there is much more to the matter, and perhaps the celestial mechanics are problematic, but it is not ridiculous or, as the writer terms it, escapist.
If the writer’s intent is to deny the view that what happens in this world is irrelevant to one’s destiny in the next, let him say that and back it up: I will agree with him. But for some people in extremity, the only lawful thought they can entertain is being released from this life and “going to heaven.” That is not Platonism. May God forbid that either the writer or I be reduced to life circumstances so dire, but let us refrain from condemning what has been for some the last grip on faith they possess.
I have not read N. T. Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope, and so I cannot judge the case he claims to make. Let me be clear: I completely agree with the writer that Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom here, that the Kingdom is coming and has come here, that the Kingdom is all about Jesus’ reign here, and that we, the Church, are part of and within the Kingdom here and everywhere, now and always. Our destiny is complete satisfaction and perfection in and with Christ, constantly experiencing and rejoicing in His glory, no matter where this happens. My concern in this critique is not with these points but with the irrelevant issues the writer brings into the discourse and the questionable arguments he brings to bear on it.
The Apostles wrote in several places about hope, the subject of which is always a future condition different from the present, as Paul argues (Romans 8:24-25, 1 Cor. 15:19). For those early believers in crummy situations, hope had a very definite meaning. Aspects of our hope lie beyond physical death, which St. Peter instructs us to be ready to explain respectfully to anyone who asks (1 Peter 3:15ff). This is not Platonism. Hope is one of the three theological virtues. It is the antidote to despair. Our hope is in Christ, for salvation and an inheritance as sons and daughters of God. We do not presently see it, but we hope for it.
P. 25 re: God’s sovereignty
By asking us to rethink “God being ‘in charge’ of the world, or being ‘in control’, or being ‘sovereign’”, what is he really asking for? Is it an admission that the pandemic is contrary to God’s will? Is the world just a battlefield between two more-or-less equally powerful enemies? Were the submission, death, and resurrection of Jesus a kind of cosmic sleight of hand that God snuck in when no one was looking?
Jesus is King, now and forever. He constantly permits all circumstances to arise so that we might increase in our faith and trust in Him. This is true not only concerning some distant, ultimate outcome, but true of now, all nows. Our role in the tumult of the world is to be ‘little Christs’. He did not redefine power: power was widely misunderstood; true power has always been servanthood.
Jesus ventured to trust God more than any man before or since. God vindicated Jesus by raising Him. Now Jesus has been given all authority. Does anything else need to be said about God’s sovereignty?
P. 28 re: authority born of that mixture of tears and trust
I agree with the writer’s analysis of the Lazarus episode. Jesus has “known sorrows and is acquainted with grief.”
P. 28 re: separating God’s provision from the Atonement
Who does this, in the West or anywhere else? It may be a testimony to my ignorance or naïveté, but I have never heard of such a thing. Even granting that somewhere there are some theologians who separate God’s provision from the Atonement, how has this caused western Christianity to go astray? The writer’s idea comes out of the blue, with no evidence and no preparation. Unless I am mistaken, this is the hollowest strawman of all. Is the writer so prejudiced against what some would term “crude salvationism” that he must invent a theology that condemns it?
Throughout this section, the writer has repeatedly done what he condemns here: he has separated repentance and faith, specifically trust in God’s forgiveness. No doubt this is suggested by the transactional character of the liturgy of confession: we confess and repent, and then we are assured of pardon, as though (wrongly) pardon were dependent upon repentance. But that is not so. The elect are forgiven before repenting, indeed, from all eternity (1 John 4:19).
Repentance is therefore our response to forgiveness and thus requires faith. Those who see in calamity an opportunity to call people to repentance in a way that would not otherwise have been heeded are doing precisely the work of evangelism, that is, attempting to awaken faith by relating present circumstances to God’s cosmic purposes.
P. 29 re: God can and does use all kinds of events
The writer begins to give up his case by admitting that God uses events to direct and instruct His people. While our minds and understanding of our context is limited, there is no reason to suppose that those who read significance into events do so while oblivious to Christ or the Kingdom. They might do so, and that would be a mistake, but it is not a foregone conclusion.
P. 40 re: Just to be clear once more
The writer’s development in chapter 4 is quite sound and helpful until he breaks the argument once more to condemn the idea of “going to heaven”. While we certainly acknowledge the renewed creation as part of our inheritance from God, why must it exclude heaven? Jesus speaks of heaven in definite terms: He says that He is the one sent from heaven, and that one should accumulate treasures in heaven, and to the thief on the cross, today you shall be with me in paradise (heaven), and so on. When we die, we definitely depart from this world. Why not suppose we go to heaven? This whole antithesis to “going to heaven” smacks of a futile argument.
P. 41 re: God can do whatever God wants
Here, the writer basically gives up his case by (a) admitting that a God is free to do as He pleases, and (b) asserting that God can use certain events towards certain purposes as He pleases. Why is this not continually the case? A god who winds up his toy and lets it run autonomously except for certain occasional interventions is too unthinkable a thing. By invoking, over and over again, the example of the blind man healed by Jesus, as a way of denying that the cause of adversity is always sin, the author would seem to favor Jesus’ explanation for the blind man’s adversity, to wit, that the glory of God might be revealed. But the writer has not embraced this alternative, for reasons that escape me.
Pounding on the idea that calamity is not necessarily caused by sin has not improved his argument. In general, I believe it, all the more so because Jesus proclaimed it. But after rejecting one explanation, why are we not embracing the other? I believe it is this: the author is afraid even to appear to admit that God has sent the pandemic by suggesting that the pandemic might find its purpose in God’s glory. Why? God created all the components, us and the virus, together with the rules that govern our respective behavior. Is it because thousands have died who would not have otherwise (one supposes)? The OT records numerous times when God actively and intentionally brought about the deaths of large groups of people, ascribed the calamity to sin, and said so. Are we to believe that God is now unable to intervene to prevent the pandemic or that the pandemic was somehow unintentional on His part? Did the pandemic catch Him by surprise? This is too fantastic an explanation to be entertained.
I believe that these ideas are unpalatable to the writer because of his intellectual commitment to humanism. This is the problem we have been stumbling over from the beginning of the book. I can well understand it. The alternative to the humanist outlook implies that suffering is ultimately a good and necessary thing, and no one wants to hear that message. But, Christians celebrate this truth by calling it Good Friday.
P. 42 re: people of prayer at the place where the world is in pain
I am in awe of Romans 8, and I am intrigued by the spin the writer places on some passages of the chapter. But I am completely flummoxed by his apparent conclusion from it, that we are to be “people of prayer”—well, of course, God’s people should pray. Who thinks otherwise? They should preach, too, and proclaim, and do works of Christlike compassion, and live out Kingdom values in the midst of the world’s pain. And, after all, when and where is the world not in pain? Our fallen natures, together with the oppression of the evil one, impose pain on everyone, if we will but see it. It doesn’t take a pandemic to reveal this.
But the right response to this oppression is the Gospel. The writer’s response is to condemn those who see the oppression and want to answer it with the only real solution that exists: belief in Jesus and reliance in faith on God’s grace (middle of p. 43). (And of course, the writer summons his favorite strawmen once again: the End Times fans, the folks who blame it all on sin, and the evangelizers. We have been through all of that above. It is off point and gets a little tiresome.)
P. 43ff re: Discussion of Romans 8:22-27
The writer’s partial explanation of this passage is interesting and enlightening. But how is his conclusion, that we should subsist in prayer, both individually and corporately, different from “We live by faith, not by sight?”
P. 46ff Discussion of Romans 8:28
I am not fit to critique the details of the writer’s arguments concerning how one should understand the Greek of Romans 8:28. But it seems to me very speculative, and his argument turns the verse into pretzel, so that it says something that the plain reading does not say. We could have been spared all this scholarship, which almost no one understands, if the writer had simply referenced the alternate translation in the RSV, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him…” or the NASB, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God…”, he could have achieved a good part of his purpose.
If the point to the transformation and re-reading of verse 28 is that God acts through His people, I never doubted the fact. The writer could have achieved the same conclusion through use of Paul’s analogy of the body of Christ, in 1 Cor. 12:12ff, without resorting to the twistings and turnings of his argument on Romans 8:28. But if the writer is asserting that God acts exclusively through His people, as he seems to be suggesting, I deny it. No such claim can be found anywhere in Scripture, and there is much Scripture to refute it. The glorious claim at the top of p. 42, about our future, is great and true, but we are not there yet. We must first be resurrected.
Finally, the literal sense of verse 28 is a powerful statement about the nature of the cosmos, supported by the whole of Scripture, beginning at Gen. 1:1. We know this is so, because we are being made into stones fit for the building of God’s temple (1 Peter 2). We, the church, are espoused to Christ (2 Cor. 11), being purified and prepared for that role. Both these illustrations, together with numerous lesser ones, point to a definite, over-arching purpose behind all things—the preparation of the church to be united with Christ, as a husband is with a wife. Of course, this eschatological understanding seems mysterious and remote, that we see as “through a glass, darkly”. But at least it relieves us of having to feel ashamed when we feel that some tragedy is “all for the best”. Whatever it is, however hard it is to understand or endure, it is for the best, the very best, for His people, for whom He laid down His life. Even tragedy that has resulted from identifiable sin, even gross sin, may be understood in this way, since He is the Redeemer from sin. We should look for this, despite seldom finding it. Some believers may never come to see it in this life, so overwhelmed are they by grief and the depth of their tragedy. Indeed, we may often fail to see any earthly way in which it is “all for the best”, but that does not make it false.
P. 57ff re: Evil is an intruder
The material leading up to this point is mostly a rehash of views from the prior chapters. But the writer begins a new argument here that leads to a shocking (to me) conclusion.
The writer asserts that evil is an intruder into God’s good cosmos. One must be very careful here concerning what precisely is meant by “evil”. Is it misfortune or sin or both? Sin is definitely an intrusion, but misfortune is a consequence of the curse the earth bears because of Adam’s sin; a misfortune need not involve sin directly at all. When evil is taken to mean sin and its direct consequences, then clearly it is an intrusion. But evil, taken to mean misfortune, was enabled by the curse God placed on the earth to limit the capacity of sin to do harm, thus not an intrusion at all.
Clearly, then, the writer means sin and its direct consequences, not misfortune, when he states that evil has no appropriate place in God’s order. I am not completely sure what he means by this, and the fact that we cannot imagine something does not prove that it is not so. The writer should agree with this, since he has already named certain things to be paradoxes, i.e., conditions simultaneously true that appear inescapably to contradict each other.
Whatever the case, the writer goes on to assert that the divine cosmology has no place for sin. (Following this, he indulges in some foolish geopolitical analogies that I will pass over.) The writer then recalls another strawman from an earlier section, the “rational analyst”. This person justifies God permitting terrible, sinful events on the grounds of the good that may come out of them—the holocaust, for instance, that was the occasion for heroism and self-sacrifice and the founding of the state of Israel, he suggests. Well, of course, God redeems. Who knows how much God restrained this evil from being even worse—he has even sent men to stop it. But I agree; no, God did not cause the Holocaust. But then the writer selects a different kind of evil—the pandemic—and claims that God could not have caused that—just look at all the death that has resulted! The writer has conflated the two kinds of evil. This alone invalidates his entire argument.
The writer then concludes that right-thinking people will reject a God Who would release a virus on the world that kills millions of people for any reason. But right-thinking people have already rejected the justification of morality from results, which is what the writer’s arguments amount to. The cold facts are these: my life and my death are in God’s hands; everyone who died in the pandemic was already destined to die sometime; that God should ordain that some die in the pandemic rather than later is utterly up to Him. Why should the objections of philosophers have any influence on God’s plan?
More to the point, the condemnation and execution of Jesus was sin, prompted by sin, and carried out by men who were committing sin. Jesus acknowledged the sin by asking that they be forgiven, while he was on the cross. Yet the Scriptures are clear that these events were completely conformal to God’s will. But this same God cannot righteously allow a pandemic? What shall we do with Isaiah 45:6-7, where God claims to originate “evil” (NASB renders this word “calamity”)? The comparison is ridiculous.
The writer’s reservations amount to humanism, and we cannot allow this mode of thought to contradict or obscure the clear claims of Scripture. Over and over, God sent multitudes of Israelites to their deaths while preserving a remnant, until the sole remnant was Jesus. So, whom do we believe, Rousseau and Locke or God?
Proceeding under the above grotesque misunderstanding, the writer concludes with the assertion that God has delegated authority to His people for the management of some aspects of His world. So, whom are we to trust, God or our fellow man?
It is ironic that when the writer turns to history for examples of how Christians behaved in the midst of plagues, he chooses a long quotation from Luther concerning plague that begins with a firm assertion of what the writer has been at pains to deny: Luther writes, “With God’s permission the Enemy has sent poison and deadly dung among us…” (p. 63)
P. 75 re: We urgently need...
The above remarks conclude the analytical portion of NTWright’s book. The balance is devoted to a number of practical questions related to society, the church, and the pandemic. So much has changed over the months since he wrote the book, that it would be unfair to hold his readings of society’s dilemmas in the pandemic to an exacting standard based on current understanding. But there is one puzzling moment here at the end, where the writer asserts the urgent need for “prayerful Christian leaders” to take their places alongside other leaders in the effort to recover from the pandemic, in hope of seeing new ideas and new systems proposed for the benefit of all. But, a few lines later, the writer declares that “it isn’t for me to tell Church leaders… how they ought to be planning…” Why not? He is a bishop and one of the most respected clergymen in the world! Amazing.
Final remarks:
I am frankly shocked that the one direct, specific instruction that we have in the New Testament concerning what to do in affliction is entirely missing, James 1:2-3, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.” (NIV) If the coronavirus pandemic is not a trial, I do not know what is. Lamentation and “groaning” are what we do in such circumstances without being told, and there is certainly nothing wrong with it--unless we do not move on from that. Rejoicing is the true response of the Spirit resident in us.
True, we mourn with those who mourn, but we mourn for the living, not for the dead. In fact, the deaths of God’s people are not a disaster. In the pandemic, thousands of His people have been safely gathered to Him and His care. Mercifully, we will soon join them. We are sojourners, and our true home is with Him. To assert any less is to turn the Gospel into a subChristian humanism.
The Kingdom, Jesus asserts, is here, within us. The Kingdom is present wherever anyone is following Jesus as King. It goes wherever we go. The only true disaster is to live and die outside the Kingdom.
