Miroslav Volf interviews N.T. Wright about his latest book, God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath. They discuss: Jesus, the God who weeps; the problem with focusing on rational responses to the problem of evil rather than empathic presence and action; the proper translation of Romans 8:28 (hint, it’s not “All things work together for good to those who love God"); waiting for God through the crises of human life; the patience of unknowing; lament as a way of hoping in the dark; Friedrich Nietzsche on our tendency to misinterpret the pain and secret sorrows of others; and finally, the resurrection of Jesus as the center for conquering suffering even in the midst of suffering. This episode also includes a brief remembrance of Congressman John Lewis (1940-2020).
Show Notes
- How do we flourish when we are in the dark wood, no clearing in sight?
- John Lewis’s legacy
- N.T. Wright, Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews and Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, God in the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and its Aftermath
- Is God also in a lockdown?
- Elie Wiesel’s Night
- John 11, Jesus weeps at Lazarus’s tomb.
- Jesus’s weeping is a sign that he is indeed God with us, Emmanuel.
- A world with an explicable place for evil is a world with a dark corner, which is not what was created in Genesis 1.
- Theodicy
- The innocent sufferer
- synergei, God working with us.
- The church’s attempt to gain more power then needing to give it away.
- Facing the wait
- God’s patience is woven into the life and prayer and sacraments of the church.
- The sorrow of God in the Old Testament.
- Making room for the garden of Gethsemane
- The resurrection of Jesus is the launching of new creation.
- T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets