This is a response to “Did God punish us with the coronavirus pandemic? Was the vaccine a divine miracle?,” an editorial by Rabbi Ralph Mecklenburger, published on December 29th, 2020, in the Fort Worth Star Telegram. This editorial was based on Mecklenburger’s book Why Call It God: Theology for the Age of Science (Wipf&Stock, 2020). This response is limited to the editorial.
I wanted to write about ten pages worth of response but ended up condensing it to 150 words since that is the limit the Fort Worth Star Telegram gives for its letter to the editors. I’m not sure if they’ll publish my response or not. To make sure my time wasn’t totally wasted, I’m publishing it here:
Rabbi Mecklenburger’s assurances about pandemics fail to reassure. By reducing God to nothing more than the forces of order in nature, he asks us to accept all pandemics and other human catastrophes as purely natural, normal, and morally neutral events. Evil? Miracles? Illusions! Meanwhile, that amazing order in nature is left begging for an even more amazing Orderer. This vacuum would best be filled by a much bigger God who remains above, beyond, and distinct from the natural order while still interacting miraculously in that order. Arguing inductively from a few plagues as God’s punishments to the conclusion that all pandemics are always punishments would build an unwarranted strawman. Our creation of successful vaccines bolsters the Mosaic view that we humans were created in God’s image and given lordship over the earth. The classic, theistic, Mosaic view of God, miracles, man, and nature is then vindicated—and more reassuring.
Now let me expand upon that a bit here. I may expand a bit now and then may or may not revisit this later and expand upon it further as I have time.
The biggest problem that I have here is that Mecklenburger’s view, as I see it in this editorial, clearly denigrates classical theism (where God existed before the universe and created the universe out of nothing) and promotes in its place a type of panentheism (where God is located either entirely inside of or partially inside of the world). I have written a critique of panentheism elsewhere. You can see my 11-page version here or my 68-page expansion is here. [Also note this resource on panentheism by Norm Geisler, my main mentor on worldviews too. I fundamentally agree with Norm on every main point but depart from him on a few very minor points.]
The reduction of God from the God of Moses (classic theism) to a “God” who is nothing more than the amazing and mysterious forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force, the strong force) and the laws that govern seemingly every thing in our amazing universe, is settling for a God that is way too small. As far as we can tell, our awe-inspiring universe and the amazing forces and laws that govern, are all effects of some greater cause. They all had a beginning, and therefore a Beginner. A start, therefore a Starter. If you believe in the hot big bang model, a theory that I think is pretty strong and I myself lean towards presently, the world needs an even bigger Banger. All that created stuff had fine-tuning before the dense “singularity” started to expand rapidly into the cosmos we are part of today. If fine-tuning, therefore a Fine-Tuner. It has design, it must have had an intelligent and purposeful Designer who figured out and implemented all that design. If it all is an amazing work of art, which I believe is obvious and self-evident, it must have had an even more amazing Artist to create that art. To get a glimpse of the fine-tuning I’m talking about see this good introductory video here and perhaps check out the beginnings of a very incomplete catalog here.
The God that Moses introduced us to, and which the 39 books of the Older Testament and the 27 books of the Newer Testament explain more of, is an unfathomably and infinitely big God. And the best God to explain all that is. Sure, we need to provide some answers to the problems of natural and moral evils. But that can be done and has been done many times in many places. Making God way smaller doesn’t solve any problems. It just introduces several more.
I have about twenty other points I’d like to make but I’ve got other priorities to attend to at the moment. Feel free to leave comments and questions! I’ll try to respond to them.
