Transition, Contingency, and the Revelation of God

 

Just as we are successfully re-opening our church building for services, respecting social distancing and cleaning regulations, comes the possibility that we may have to close down again. The government scheme of Tier 2 and Tier 3 rules will not mean places of worship shutting again, as happened during the lockdown. But it appears that they are considering a short-term ‘circuit breaker’ for a couple of weeks; and if this follows the example of the Welsh government, it could involve prohibiting services in church buildings again.

Reflecting on this, one of my church leaders commented that we are “in transition”. But, what this period shows us, is that we are always in transition. In the spring, closing down, then re-opening in the autumn, and now facing the possibility of a fresh closure in the winter. It’s not definite, but this uncertainty reveals something, which is always the case, but which we usually ignore – the unpredictability of life.

James criticises those business owners, who say confidently that they will do such-and-such next year (Jas. 4.13-16), when really none of us is fully in possession of such assurance. Instead, we should regard ourselves as a transitory “mist”. This Biblical evaluation of human life, as “smoke” (Ps. 102.3), “breath” (Job 7.7), would require more humility of us. This viewpoint, actually common between Western and Eastern philosophies, reflects what Carl Trueman, tongue-in-cheek, termed “Zen Calvinism”. Perhaps this is what the pandemic has to teach us? The “form of this world is passing away” (1 Co. 7.31). Our culture’s institutions, achievements, and lifestyles are temporary, passing fancies. Nothing lasts. While, at some time, Covid will also pass, however, its consequences will last longer, and perhaps permanently shape our society.

Coronavirus has exposed our existence in all its contingency. ‘Contingency’ means that something might not have existed or occurred. It could have been otherwise. But is there any realm of lasting reality? In Buddhism, even the gods belong to the plane of constant change, the sphere of maya illusion.  For Plato, the location of unchanging reality lay with the “forms”, which were the ideal existences residing behind the fleeting appearances of our world. This, he identified with God, albeit not the Hebrew Divinity. Yet, this contrast, the very fact of our world’s contingency, has often been used as a proof of God’s existence.

David Bentley Hart gives a magisterial rendition of this philosophical argument. According to him, the flux of contingency implies the existence of something on which it is dependent, because nothing contains the ground of its own being. So, contingent being cannot give rise to itself. There must be something, a ‘necessary being’, which is self-existent, which cannot not-exist, on which our unstable, contingent, universe rests. Only a transcendent God can fulfil this function; based not on causality, but ontology. In his self-revelation, in Scripture, God declares this about himself: “I the Lord do not change” (Mal. 3.6).

Perhaps Covid represents God sovereignly, mercifully, presenting us with another opportunity to seek him (Acs. 17.27)?