Is God Responsible for the Coronavirus?

The advent of the coronavirus pandemic in recent months has hurled us all into an era of mass disruption in almost all areas of life. Disruptions of this magnitude can be very frightening, and often lead us to focus on the really important issues of life. When faced with the serious threat of death and the real possibility that life in the foreseeable future may not return to the kind of normalcy we are used to, it is natural that we begin to raise questions about God, the world, the meaning of life, purpose, and destiny, etc. Insecurities and uncertainties about life and the future are penetrating experiences that have a way of summoning us to account for the way we live our lives, to wonder about who or what is ultimately responsible for the world as it is, and to consider what the ultimate outcome of everything will look like?

In these moments, all of life and the world tend to gather themselves together in front of us for review—and all in a moment, it seems. For a great deal of people, this is precisely what has been happening in the present coronavirus crisis. And I suspect that as the virus continues to spread, as the death toll continues to rise, and as the chance of a cure for the virus seems further and further away in the distance, our questions will become more acute, and our angst and frustration will rise.

One of the main questions that usually surfaces in a crisis like this has to do with the cause or source of the problem. That is, who is responsible for the virus. Is it of human engineering? And if so, what is the source? Or is it a rogue virus of nature? Or is it a divine intervention—a judgment from God? And if so, should we consider the virus good or evil? One may even consider the possibility that it in some way involves both God and nature, so that God allows nature to turn against man. In a recent Christianity Today’s editorial, entitled “Is the Coronavirus Evil?”[1] Daniel Harrell tries to answer this question of God’s involvement. The subtitle of the article, “Or is this part of life in the world God made?” suggests that the answer to the question of God’s involvement is a positive one. Indeed, he argues that the coronavirus is not evil, because it is part of life in the good world God made.

As Harrell further explains, science requires that bacteria and viruses are all part of God’s plan from the start, since “Death itself is required for organic life to exist.” So, he concludes, it is “Better to view creation not as something perfect gone awry, but as something begun as very good only not yet finished.” There is  more to Harrel’s argument, as for example, his argument that nature, like humans, is endowed with a kind of freewill, so that “The microscopic organism that serves life can [also] threaten to take it away.”

Thus, for Harrell, the coronavirus can hardly be regarded as evil, since it is part of the pool of microscopic organisms God created for good, but nonetheless has the capability like humans to choose to do other than what it was intended to do. All of this means for Harrell that, when God pronounced the creation to be “good” [1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 24], and the entirety of it to be “very good,” [Gen 1:31], bacteria and viruses [and the diseases that they may cause] were included in this package and not to be regarded as the result of the Fall. In his own words again, “bacteria and viruses are not bitter fruits of the fall, but among the first fruits of good creation itself.”

My main quarrel with Harrell will not be over the logic of a virus having freewill-like traits and why it cannot be regarded as evil for going rogue. I do not think it requires much to see how logic breaks down here. For if God’s good gift of a freewill led man to become sinful and evil, one could argue that at least the potential for evil was part of God’s good creation, and this makes God ultimately responsible. But even more poignant for our purpose here is that this logic requires us to wonder why the ability of a virus to go rogue and inflict pain, suffering and death is not as equally morally culpable, just as man’s freewill is. In other words, when man sinned by misusing his freewill, he came under swift divine judgment. Yet we do not see a single suggestion in the Bible for a virus being held morally culpable. But I will leave this more philosophical concern for now.

My main concern here is more basic, namely, whether bacteria and viruses in God’s good original creation were capable of becoming villainous and even lethal. First, while it seems obvious that organic life before the Fall requires bacteria and viruses in order to survive, it is not so clear to me that science is capable of demonstrating that these original microbes were capable of going rogue, or were part of a plant “life-death cycle” in the original creation. The truth is, we have no way of knowing what organic life looked like before the Fall. Who knows exactly how the Fall has affected biological/organic life? For this reason, it seems best to assume that the curse has resulted in a good creation gone bad, and this includes all bacterial and viral associations with the survival of organic life.

Second, to speak of the expiration of plant life as death before the Fall severely lacks biblical support. The Bible is very clear that death was not part of God’s original good creation. This is not to suggest that plants were not reaped and consumed as food. Rather, it is to say that such acts of the reaping of crops for consumption is not regarded as death in the Bible. It is interesting that the technical language of “death” in the Old Testament [Heb, mût] is never used of plants, and in the creation account, death only appears as a threat to man for disobedience [see Gen 2:17]. From the very beginning, then, death is a category applicable primarily to humans, and only rarely to animals—but never to plants. It is also interesting to note that the Hebrew nepeš [“life”], the absence or “departure of which is equivalent to death,” applies particularly to humans, rarely to animals, but never to plants.[2] We never read in the Bible of nepeš departing from plants.

From the Old Testament’s perspective, then, it is very clear that death was never a part of the fabric of God’s good creation, with the further implication that the category of death does not apply to plants. What was only a threat in the account of the original creation [Gen 2:17] became a sentence of judgment only after the Fall [Gen 3:19], and a reality implied by God’s use of animal skin for the covering of Adam and Even [3:22]. In the Bible, then, the experience of death is related to the concrete reality of sin, the direct result of the first sin.

The Apostle Paul puts it well when he tells us that death is “the payment for sin” [Rom 6:23], whose entrance into the world was through Adam. For “just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin. . .so death spread to all people because all sinned” [Rom 5:12]. “Death is related to human sin. . .and sin belongs essentially to the human sphere [Gen 2:17; Num. 27:3; Deut. 24:16; Ezek. 3:18; Jer. 31:30]. And even though the whole creation came under the curse of God’s judgment, it was not because the whole of creation was itself culpable. The creation was subject to judgment because of human sin, and it will be released from the bondage of the Fall when man is himself set free from the curse [see Rom 8:18-25].

So, when God pronounced his creation to be “good” [Gen 1:31] and “complete” [2:2], He did not mean to say it was “something begun as very good only not yet finished,” as Harrell believes. God did not mean to say that his good creation included bacteria and viruses capable of wreaking havoc on human life, or that they were “among the first fruits of good creation itself.” His creation was complete and perfect, and in this regard declared “good.” Therefore, death was not included as part of this goodness, for in the Bible death is never regarded as good. Death is the malicious enemy of life.

In this regard, then, the coronavirus cannot be considered good—as though it originated as part of God’s good creation—since it is opposed to and threatens life. Likewise, it cannot be said that God is responsible for the coronavirus since this would make him culpable for inflicting evil on us. The most we can say is that: in a fallen world like ours, God may choose to allow a virus to go rogue for reasons known only to Himself. In this sense, it can be said that God is responsible for the coronavirus since he could have prevented it if he wished.

In conclusion, it is interesting to note that the first and last references to death in the Bible have to do with human sin and human destiny [Gen 217; Rev 21:3, 4]. All of this points to the fact that sin is the cause of death. The great hope of the Bible is that in God’s new creation, “death will no longer exist” [Rev 21:4]. What was true of the original creation will be true of the new creation—and even more. The biblical view of creation indicates that death is an intrusion into God’s good creation, “an absurdity to be feared and rejected.”[3] Therefore, in the wake of the threat of the coronavirus, death is a diabolical prospect we may have to face in a fallen world like ours.

However, we will do well to remember that neither the coronavirus, nor death itself, has the final word. Death has been defeated, along with the one who holds the power of death, through the death of Jesus on the cross [Heb 2:14; Col 2:14-15]. Jesus is now alive and “holds the keys of death and hell” [Rev 1:18], and for those united to him, “nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” [Rom 8:37-39]. What is most important now is not who is to blame, or how we can escape the ravages of the coronavirus, but our relationship with Jesus Christ. Only in him are we safe from all the consequences of sin. God has promised that neither sin, or disease, or death will have the final word—”But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells [2 Pet 3:13].