Believe in Corona times: grace does not cancel nature

When the new federal government recently put together a corona expert council, the choice fell on natural scientists.

Social science expertise that would have made fields of action such as family or education visible was not in demand.

There was evidently no thought of representatives of religious communities either.

But what advice could theologians or bishops have advised politics on dealing with the virus and coping with the pandemic?

In fact, the constituted churches are no more and no less affected by the corona waves, which have now lasted for almost two years, than any other organization.

Church hospitals, nursing homes and schools are subject to the same rules as all other comparable institutions.

For church services, other religious gatherings or cultural events, there are no other hygiene concepts and restrictions on participants than for Christmas markets or sporting events.

Syphilis, cholera, AIDS

Establishing this is anything but trivial. Churches do not form a special world that would be relieved of the state impositions of fighting pandemics. Rather, their constitutionally protected self-determination finds its limit where public goods such as public health are so endangered that the state can restrict the fundamental freedoms of its citizens. Being Christian does not add anything to this status, but it also takes nothing away from it. The question that should be asked, however, is whether, after two years of pandemic, the churches are still among those institutions in which creativity is not required, but spiritual indolence predominates.

What distinguishes this pandemic from previous epidemics, however, is the fact that the churches, as community-guaranteeing resonance spaces and collective interpretive bodies, fail.

Prayer prayers, expiatory pilgrimages or plague crosses, in which religion productively provided rituals and symbols for coping with crisis experiences, have had their day.

It is true to this day to banish the evil forces of a nature that is hostile to man or that he himself unleashed, just think of global climate change or the flood disaster in Germany.

God does not need it either in the singular or in the plural.

If there are still signs of salvation (“sacraments”), then it is technology and science that set them up, be it wind turbines on a large scale or inoculation molecules on a small scale.

So there is no longer any need to resort to myths or other cultural stocks of knowledge in order to banish evil, at least verbally.

When a highly contagious venereal disease spread in Europe around 1500, its name was still found in the figure of the ancient shepherd Syphilus, who incurred the wrath of the sun god.

Science appeared on the scene as early as the 19th century: In order to name a new gastrointestinal disease that often turns fatal within days, the Greek name for bile was used.

Cholé became cholera.

Sober acronyms such as HIV / AIDS or Sars-CoV-2 are used to designate the youngest viruses from which mankind suffers.

So has that time finally dawned, of which Karl Marx dreamed, that it was only about the truth of this world, when the beyond of truth has disappeared?

Religious certainty cannot, with a clear conscience, take the place of scientific causalities and insights into the dangers of a virus.

When a society deals with existential threats, things are somewhat different.

Grace does not abolish nature, according to an axiom of theology, but presupposes it and completes it.

Faith, hope and love do not come into play on the level of knowledge.

But they can guide the view of the tense, unreconciled reality.

Prophetic, powerful words

The prophet Isaiah once clothed his longing for redemption in the expectation of the appearance of God in a Son of man: “He does not break the reed, and he does not extinguish the smoldering wick;

yes, he really does justice ”- powerful images that are heard every Christmas.

But can you give consolation in the face of 100,000 corona deaths in Germany alone and the plight of many fellow citizens who will be marked by the infection with the virus for a long time?

Can you take away the fear of being infected with a new variant, even bring peace in a world in which the guns do not want to be silent?

Let the counter-question be allowed: What if we were no longer allowed to wish each other a blessed Christmas at the manger, the place of longing for a new beginning of God with people?