GOD AND THE PANDEMIC

A CHRISTIAN REFLECTION on the CORONAVIRUS and its aftermath

N. T. WRIGHT

ZONDERVAN REFLECTIVE

God and the Pandemic

Copyright © 2020 by Tom Wright

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Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

First published in Great Britain in 2020

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www.spck.org.uk

ISBN 978-0-310-12080-3 (softcover)

ISBN 978-0-310-12082-7 (audio)

ISBN 978-0-310-12081-0 (ebook)

Old Testament quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved. New Testament quotations are from the author’s own translation: The New Testament for Everyone (SPCK, 2011, 2019).

Extract from ‘East Coker’ by T. S. Eliot, in Four Quartets. London: Faber & Faber, 2001 [1979]; Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1943. Copyright © UK, Faber & Faber; USA, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Reprinted with permission from Faber & Faber and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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Cover Design: Micah Kandros

In memory of Simon Barrington-Ward KCMG

A wise and gentle saint

Bishop of Coventry 1985–1997

Died of Covid-19, Holy Saturday, April 11, 2020

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements

1 Where Do We Start?

2 Reading the Old Testament

3 Jesus and the Gospels

4 Reading the New Testament

5 Where Do We Go from Here?

Preface and Acknowledgements

This little book would not have been written had it not been for the invitation from TIME Magazine to write a short piece, early on in the COVID-19 pandemic. My thanks to Belinda Luscombe for commissioning and editing that piece, and to the many who wrote to me afterwards, mostly to thank me, some to rebuke me. The present discussion is a further attempt to tease out what may wisely and biblically be said at such a time as this. As the weeks of lockdown have gone on, I, like I suppose most people, have gone through a range of emotions about it all; but it seems to me important to keep our reactions within a biblical limit, and this is what I’m trying to do here.

The aim of this book, then, is not to offer ‘solutions’ to the questions raised by the pandemic, to give any sort of complete analysis of what we might learn from it, or what we ought now to do. My main argument is precisely that we need to resist the knee-jerk ...