Wright – as perhaps one of the most popular New Testament expositors today – does something rather unexpected in this book. For a scholar who has concentrated so much on the NT, he provides us with a properly biblically holistic response to the pandemic. This booklet is an expanded form of an article on this topic for TIME magazine. And as such, it is a pleasure to read, for it it is clear, it is focused. The leading tone is that of lament – that the response of God’s people to tragedy in both Testaments is a lament, a cry from the heart to God, and this is an entirely reasonable response for us today.

He provides a critique of the prevailing opinions in society, both Christian and secular, to disaster, calling us away from the tempting options of modern day Stoicism and Epicureanism. Wright reminds us that easy answers to tragedy have never been available, nor should we be those who try to offer them. The pandemic should not provide Christians ‘with a megaphone with which to say more loudly what they were wanting to say anyway.’

Wright turns to the Exile – that 8th-century disaster which aside from the Fall, and the Exodus, is perhaps the most significant event of the Old Testament – what does it mean to be the people of God who endure disaster, a question for the 8th century, and every century.

Wright reminds us that God, the Bible, and the world are not such a simple place that ‘bad behaviour’ leads to bad fortune, no matter how tempting or pleasing this idea might be to some. For this he turns to the Psalms and the Book of Job, neither of which present any easy answer to the difficulties of the human condition, but they do emphasise that the human condition before God is difficult! The psalms ‘leave us with a puzzled shrug of the shoulders’, and Job ‘rattles the cages of our easy-going piety’ with its lack of resolution. Job and the Psalter are at the heart of Wright’s response to the pandemic: “We are simply to know that when we are caught up in awful circumstances…terrible plagues…when we are innocent, suffering…at those times we are to lament, we are to complain.’

Being a NT scholar then he takes us across the centuries to Jesus, who was preaching to a people who were not unfamiliar with disaster and discontent, and to them, he says ‘stay calm, trust in me,’ trust in God. For Wright points out that the message of Jesus conveys a different message about ‘sovereignty’ (how/if God rules creation) than is perhaps ordinarily assumed.

The coming of the pandemic therefore is not a sign from God or his judgement upon the world, for unsurprisingly - all that has already been done in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. For it is in the Cross that we are brought face to face with ‘the horror of death – the fact that it sneers in the face of all that is lovely and beautiful.’ And yet it is within this, that Jesus shows us what God ‘s sovereignty might truly look like.
Wright then takes us on a rather long trek through the response of the early church to a plague, which I shall be honest after almost 20 years of reading the Bible, I probably hadn’t really noticed, in Philippians. Wright suggests that the example of the early Christians should be ours – their response was ‘what can we do in response to this tragedy, and what can God do through us.’

This response has continued throughout the tragedies of the centuries, God acts through those he has created, for ‘followers of Jesus are called to be people of prayer at the place where the world is in pain.’
Wright – as an NT scholar – spends much time on particular verses of the NT, in particular, Romans 8, where the Spirit intercedes with groans to deep for words, and spends a good amount of pages expounding it – ‘this is our vocation, to be in prayer, perhaps wordless prayer, at the point where the world is in pain.’


This is a tiny booklet, and Wright suggests many things about our culture which could be expanded on (and he probably has considering his massive backlog of books). Still, the recurring theme in this booklet is fear – what does Christianity have to say to a fearful world, fearful people, a fearful church? And to this, he goes back to the Exile. That we are all at ‘the waters of Babylon, confused and grieving.’ His response ends on what the vocation of God’s people is and has been for millennia, #glimpsing what ought to be, then struggling with the way things actually are.’

This was a joy to read. It was short and direct, and I remember being impressed with the original article in TIME. Much of it felt very ‘familiar’ in the sense that Wright has been writing for decades, and dedicated readers will find few surprises perhaps. However, I might be imagining it, but this volume feels more reflective than the ones of past decades, as Wright has now settled into retirement.

Curiously, for an NT scholar like Wright, I enjoyed reading the OT sections of the book far more than the NT pieces, the exegesis of which seemed to distract me from the ongoing line of thought. It might be worth comparing this with a similar booklet on the pandemic by Walter Bruggeman, the doyen of Old Testament scholarship in the USA.

I heartily commend this book..

This short book seeks to provide a Christian response to the COVID-19 crisis, answering the big questions “Why did God allow this pandemic to happen?” and “Where is God in all this?”. It is a book designed to provide help & encouragement and to do this, Tom Wright takes us back to biblical principles and looks at God’s purpose & response throughout history. He demonstrates how Christians have stepped up as “do-ers” throughout difficult times and reinforces that by looking at what we should be doing, rather than why this is happening, we are more fully able to serve God in the midst of this crisis.
He reminds us that the earliest followers of Jesus had 3 questions to every "crisis": Who is going to be most at risk when this happens? What can we do to help? Who shall we send?

The author reminds us that “God has in fact delegated the running of many aspects of his world to human beings” and reminds us that God suffers when we suffer “In doing so, he has run the risk that they will grieve him to his heart” and “Dare we say then that God the creator, facing his world in melt-down, is himself in tears, even though he remains the God of ultimate Providence?”
In answer to the question of “Where is God in all this?”, Wright reminds us that He is there on the front line, alongside the nurses & doctors & care workers but is also delivering food to the housebound, keeping the transport systems running, milking the cows, delivering the mail and making decisions about the “lockdown”.
Overall, I liked the way that Tom Wright didn’t tell you what to think, he presents evidence from both the bible and from history to allow you to draw your own conclusions. Ultimately he challenges us to stop asking "Why did God allow this pandemic to happen?" but rather "How can we respond to this pandemic?"

Disclosure: I received an advance reader copy of this book free from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

It's good to see a well-thought out Christian response to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Tom Wright encourages the reader to avoid trite sound-bites and instead to take a careful look at God's purposes throughout history. By looking at what we should be doing, rather than why this is happening, we are more fully able to serve God in the midst of this crisis. Wright offers helpful suggestions as to how Christians should respond, whilst acknowledging that some particular issues have no straightforward resolution. I found this book to be a helpful reframing of my questions around the pandemic.

A sincere thank you to the publisher, author and Netgalley for providing me with an ebook copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I had high hopes for this book however it was parts of the bible dotted around. Very disappointed!

The best response to the covid-19 crisis I have read; wise and theologically grounded, written with Tom Wright's unmistakeable style.

Amongst the hyperbole and hysterics of ‘commentators’ at the moment it can be difficult to discern a voice of reason. Tom Wright is always measured in his tone and considered in his statements and this book is no exception. This short book is exactly what every Christian needs to hear right now: it is certainly not simply a book of ‘it’ll be alright in the end’ platitudes. This is a real book tackling an urgent, difficult and frequently frightening subject with consideration and biblical basis.

To quote Professor Wright, this is “not a matter of simple answers or solutions, there is not a trite statement of it will all be alright in the end but that ‘God-lovers’ are shaped according to the pattern of the Son: in the cruciform pattern in which God’s justice and mercy, his faithfulness to the covenant and to creation, are displayed before the world in tears and toil, lament and labour.”

Having said that, Professor Wright does provide us with encouragement and shares the hope found in scripture, allowing us to consider our position in this crisis and suggesting how we might best mentally and spiritually deal with this.

Finally, this book is written to provide help and encouragement in a time of trouble and anxiety and is indeed very timely. It is certainly not a cash-in title – there will be enough of those – indeed all proceeds from this book will go to Covid-19 charities.

This was a really insightful read bringing up opinions from all walks of life, not just Christianity. It used passages and verses to demonstrate different perceptions and understandings of not just Coronavirus but many other 'World Disasters' that have happened in the past.

It really made me think that instead of looking for and dwelling on the reasons WHY something has happened that instead we should look at HOW we can move forward. What we can do as a community to help others. In this strange time of life it's forced us all to slow down and evaluate our lives and I think this draws on that. Relating to the words of the scripture to increase this.

You are not forced to any conclusion or a specific way of thinking which I really like as the book lets you make your own conclusion from a number of different gospels.

This short book (88 pages) is Tom Wright's attempt to answer the question of where is God in the coronavirus Pandemic? It packs alot into a small package and covers much ground. In a nutshell the answer given by Wright is that the question we should ask isn't "Why is God allowing this pandemic?" but rather "How can we respond as Christians to this pandemic?"

His answer is summed up here in his own words: "...when the world is going through great convulsions, the followers of Jesus are called to be people of prayer at the place where the world stands is in pain."

"We expect God to be, as we might say, 'in charge': taking control, sorting things out, getting things done. But the God we see in Jesus is the God who wept at the tomb of his friend. The God we see in Jesus is the God-the-Spirit who groans without words. The God we seen in Jesus is the one who, to demonstrate what his kind of 'being in charge' would look like, did the job of a slave and washed hi disciples feet." In other words...Christians should respond by weeping with the mourners and serving and helping those in need. This is how God is seen to those who ask where he is.

Later however Wright treads on ground where he himself seems unsure and to my mind paints an unnecessarily impotent view of God:

"...God himself, God the Spirit, apparently unable to manage words, but only groans!"

"Here is the mystery. God the Father knows the Spirit's mind; but the mind that the Father thereby knows is the mind that doesn't know what to say."

Wright does acknowledge the mystery present here: "Dare we say then that God the creator, facing his world in melt-down, is himself in tears, even though he remains the God of ultimate Providence?"

Perhaps because of this question of the Spirit's seeming inability to find actual words, Wright proposes: "Providence is Jesus-shaped: it isn't an iron grip, relentlessly 'controlling' everything."

Wright seems to go further than the text regarding God when he says: "Many things, after all, actually bring grief to God. They shock him." He doesn't adequately explain what he means by "shock".

"...some things apparently shock God....God's response is to say, I didn't command this, nor did it come into my mind (Jeremiah 7.31; repeated in 32.5). Actually, the Hebrew text again says 'heart' both times. God neither intended it nor even dreamed of it."

Later Wright circles back and repeats this 'shock of God' claim: "...God has in fact delegated the running of many aspects of his world to human beings. In doing so, he has run the risk that they will grieve him to his heart or shock him out of his mind. But when this happens, he will hold people responsible." The picture of God being shocked "out of his mind" is not one that matches the Biblical view of his omniscient knowledge and wisdom and God's own stability.

Most of this book is helpful and there is more than enough to aid Christians in answering questions of what God is doing and where God can be seen. Yet, perhaps because of the demands of getting a book on the pandemic out so quickly, some thoughts which would be better given more space to be fleshed out and revised are left hanging rather ominously. I get the impression (rightly or wrongly) that Wright is at times thinking out loud but doesn't have the time or space to revise or at least further pursue his thoughts so reaches sometimes speculative conclusions which, in my view, would benefit from greater clarify. In a longer book he might have provided that clarity.

Wright then concedes the paradoxical nature of God's providential guidance of events citing Peter's sermon in Acts 2.23, that Jesus' death was "...what God had intended and planned - but that the people who arrested, tried and killed him were wicked to do so. There is no way round this paradox, nor should we look for one. We are not given a nice, comprehensible, mechanistic analysis."

Wright rightly points out that Christians have a long historical track record of helping and ministering to others in times of crisis in a whole variety of ways.

"Part of the answer to the question, 'Where is God in the pandemic?' must be, 'Out there on the front line, suffering and dying to bring healing and hope.'

He also expresses sympathy with both sides in the debate over whether churches should be open or closed in the pandemic although at times he politicises his theology and I'm not sure if that's wise here.

He expresses concern at the way much of the Church seems to have followed the lead of the secular world rather than leading the way. In fact his rallying cry near the end of the book is, ' Someone needs to stand up and read - perhaps not the riot act, but Psalm 72. This is the list of priorities that the Church should be articulating, not just in speech but in political proposals to go at the top of the agenda..."

"What we need right now is someone to do in this challenging moment what Joseph did at Pharaoh's court, analysing the situation and sketching a vision for how to address it. We urgently need statesmanlike, wise leadership, with prayerful Christian leaders taking a place alongside others, to think with both vision and realism through challenges that we shall face in the coming months."

Even in such a short book it feels like it's taken a long pathway to get to this final near prophetic call for the Church to lead. The book is generally a good attempt to 'find God in the pandemic'. I'm not sure Wright's initial dismissal of the question of why God would allow the pandemic (that's for God to know and not us), in favour of proposing how the Church should respond, is entirely helpful. While Wright expresses the historical role of the Church in serving others in time of crisis., it feels like he is sidestepping the question of why God would allow the pandemic in the first place. A bit like a politician answering the question he wanted to be asked.

All in all well worth a read with some insightful exposition but with the caveats indicated above.


Thanks to NetGalley and SPCK for ARC.

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

This is an insightful book focusing on the current worldwide pandemic we are facing and relates it to God and Jesus and what Jesus taught us and wants us to see and understand about ourselves and our world.

This book has been well researched and a lot of work has obviously been done by the author to put it all together.