As we move, hopefully, to the end of the first phase of our encounter with the coronavirus, it is worth reflecting on the issues it has raised for evangelism and apologetics.
Numerous good books and podcasts have been released offering a Christian response to any suggestion that the existence of Covid-19 undermines faith in a benevolent God. One top pick is John Lennox’s Where is God in a Coronavirus World? which shows the power of the Christian world view to make sense of suffering. Other thoughtful books include N. T. Wright’s God and the Pandemic, and Walter Brueggemann’s Virus as a Summons to Faith.
Nothing new
Some of this literature was quick to be released, and that partly reflects the fact that there is nothing new under the sun. Whether we are challenged by cancer, pneumonia, earthquake or asteroid we face the same underlying question: how can a good God allow such apparently random suffering? It is clearly a different issue than that raised by murder or war – people are clearly responsible for those. Many Christians would resort to something like the free will defence regarding those challenges. God has created us with responsibility for our actions – to create human beings is to permit the possibility of evil.
Comedy, free speech and warnings from the past
Hannah Arendt was a Jewish philosopher who grew up in Nazi Germany. Eventually she had to flee to France and, …