Virus as a Summons to Faith Biblical Reflections in a Time of Loss, Grief, and Uncertainty

Why bother with the interpretive categories of biblical faith when in fact our energy and interest are focused on more immediate matters? The answer is simple and obvious. We linger because, in the midst of our immediate preoccupation with our felt jeopardy and our hope for relief, our imagination does indeed range beyond the immediate to larger, deeper wonderments. Our free-ranging imagination is not finally or fully contained in the immediacy of our stress, anxiety, and jeopardy. Beyond these demanding immediacies, we have a deep sense that our life is not fully contained in the cause-and-effect reasoning of the Enlightenment that seeks to explain and control. There is more than that and other than that to our life in God's world!

"In Virus as a Summons to Faith, the summons that Professor Brueggemann hears in the devastation caused by the Covid-19 virus is the same summons that all prophets hear in the midst of calamity: the call into right relationship with Living Presence, a call into deeper, more caring, and mutually beneficial relationship with all that is. In the biblical language that has long been at the core of Brueggemann's thinking, the devastating effects of the virus summon us to renew our covenantal relationship with God and to renew our responsibilities within that relationship."

--Nahum Ward-Lev, from the Foreword