I HAVE been trying to figure out what makes the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) worth all the sacrifice we have had to let the nation bear: an economy well on the way to recession, lockdowns and restrictions on movement, the unparalleled labors of first responders, etc.

When statistics tell us that Covid kills far less than other diseases do. One report kept the number of deaths because of Covid daily in the Philippines at .79 percent. I hesitate to use the modifier only because every death is painful; almost unbearable for the members of the bereaved family. But, statistically, it seems that we should be more worried about the other causes of death with higher mortality rates than we should about Covid-19.

My theory is that the disease pushes the panic button because unlike pneumonia, hypertension, diabetes and other national killers, the chances of mortality for one who gets infected are really high, frighteningly high. We have lost dedicated health workers to Covid and the nation is impoverished by their demise. Only recently, Archbishop Oscar Cruz, beloved by the people who knew him well, died because of Covid, although he had long been ill.

How does one believe? What is there to believe in? Where is God in all of this? It certainly seems insulting to intelligence to insist on God as a filler of gaps because there is a gaping hole in humanity now that needs to be filled and no filler seems to be forthcoming. But loaded questions have to be disambiguated and the question where is God in this pandemic? supposes that if God were around, if there were God, then he would stop the pandemic. Perhaps, the pandemic would have never even occurred in the first place. Taken to its ultimate conclusion, if there were God, there would never be any pain, disappointment, hurt, evil or death.

But that would be Paradise, would it not be, not the world in which tremendous discoveries are made, profound insights are reached and persons exhibit truly inspiring, edifying acts of charity, compassion and care. I remember having written in my masters thesis on pessimism: This world was not made as some gilded cage for Gods favored pets. It is, as the very persuasive John Hick puts it, a vale of soul-making.

The trouble is everything that has traditionally been peddled about Gods power. It is, for Hartshorne, the fallacy of omnipotence. By omnipotence, we have traditionally understood the Divine power to do anything he pleases, which quite expectedly,triggered silly questions like whether he can cause his own annihilation or create a square hole. Sometime at the beginning of the modern period, we were offered an alternate way of thinking about God. Baruch Spinoza did us this service. But like any pioneer, his lot was by no means felicitous. He was expelled from the synagogue to which he belonged, and fellow Jews were warned against associating with him either in this life or in the next (!) lest they be contaminated by his heresy. But if we apologize to Spinoza for our rashness and take one more hard look at his proposal, he might have something to say to us in this period of Covid, although we might have to tweak his thoughts here and there.

The trouble with thinking that God can stop Covid in its tracks if he wanted to is the postulation of two realities the reality of our world (our universe, that sphere of reality of which we are part), and the reality of God. Put that way, of course, the problem has always been to prove convincingly that such an other reality does exist. And in an epoch that is enamored of what is palpable and experienceable,postulating another dimension that is beyond ordinary verification is not an attractive proposition. It is a different story when with Spinoza you insist on the singularity of substance, which we might translate today as the singularity of reality. The denial of reality is of course self-contradictory, and therefore the traditional problems adjunct to the affirmation of an other reality do not arise at all.

But God, being part of our reality, is that still talking about the same God to which theists render homage and pay tribute? Of course it can be, as long as one is willing to tear himself apart from concepts of God that have proven more troublesome than helpful. For Spinoza, God is a being absolutely infinite, a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence. And if, by substance, he means what is in itself and is conceived through itself (which, by the way, were sufficiently acceptable Scholastic definitions except perhaps the understanding of attribute), then the conclusion was inevitable that God was everything, and that whatever existed, did so in God. In with one label pantheism philosophy and theology forever banished him from decent conversation! Spinozas notion of the singularity of reality was certainly perspicacious, and if we borrow Anselms that greater than which none can be thought, then certainly Reality, taken as all that exists, is that greater than which none can be thought and must, by force of logic, include us and God.

Given this, it will be more helpful to think of God as part of reality not in the same sense that we are, but in a superior, eminent, directive sense, without however diminishing the fact that God, being part of Reality, must content with Reality and work with and in it. This means that without God, reality would not be what it is. In fact, it would not be reality at all. Without Reality, God would not be, considering that he is part of reality. If we accept these premises, then we must be ready to accept that there is a certain indeterminateness that on higher levels of existence we call freedom to reality that is not completely determined by God. God is he who envisages all possibility of newness. God is he who orders possibilities so that the fertilization of human sperm and human egg brings forth a baby, not a bunny. But God cannot control and direct the multiplication and development of cells because these have a reality of their own, which is why congenital defects and cancer can develop. In our case, God offers us the possibility of excellence, nobility, compassion and human-heartedness, and he leads us to these values. But we retain our freedom and turn into the brutes and savages we sometimes are.

Not then God is the problem but our concept of God, and if traditional theists think that this God is not good enough because he is not omnipotent, then it must be asked what you need an Omnipotent God for, if we already have a God who, at work in the universe, with tender compassion and patience, leads all of reality to the full realization of value, without trampling the basic indeterminateness or freedom that underlies the ongoing activity of the universe?

So, where is God in the midst of this pandemic and of frightened humanity? At work in the world, sharing in our fright, sharing in our aspirations, sharing in our disappointments, sharing in our hope. It is he who attracts scientists with the possibility of a cure. It is because there is a Divine element in the universe that we think of ways of alleviating the hardship of the hard-pressed, despite the mishandling of ayuda and the malfeasance at PhilHealth. It is he because of whom we can devise ways of carrying on with life despite Covid. But he will not determine things for us. He will offer us the possibilities, open the vast array of values to us, and leave us to be human, to choose and to decide. He cannot stop the virus, because he does not control the minutiae of the universe, but he can open to us a horizon beyond Covid if we allow ourselves to be drawn by his lure!

In so many ways, Spinoza was right. St. Spinoza, pray for us.

rannie_aquino@csu.edu.phrannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.phrannie_aquino@outlook.com

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Belief in the time of Covid The Manila Times - The Manila Times