N.T. Wright on Weeping, Waiting, and Working with God in the Pandemic / Miroslav Volf and N.T. Wright

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).

• N.T. Wright, God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath
• John Lewis speaking at the March on Washington, D.C. (1965): Video
• Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu
• Miroslav Volf Twitter

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