Jan Dochhorn
Coronakrise und Gottvertrauen
Section: Contributions to the Discussion
Volume 86 (2021) /
Issue 3,
pp. 297-310
(14)
Published 25.01.2022
Published in German.
- article PDF
- available
- 10.1628/thr-2021-0015
Summary
Authors/Editors
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Summary
Nothing substantially changed with Corona concerning trust in God. Before Corona, both Non-Christians and Christians have rather trusted in the seemingly limitless power of society than in God, and they still do so – with no good reasons: Society is all but trustworthy, nowadays even less than ever not least since the culture of societal debate has become highly authoritarian and irrational over the last decade. With regard to God himself, our knowledge should not have changed either: Christianity principally knows – not least from its Biblical heritage – that God can harm creation and humanity either in order to punish or simply without such a reason. Life is subdued to death, life is vanity, encompasses enduring senseless hardships. We have the remedy of salvation by justification of the unrighteous through the death of Christ, and we can experience this in what this article labels Gewissens-Existenz: living every day and night with the judgment of God present in the inner room of »ourselves« (the Christians). God does not want his Christians to follow wrong ways; therefore he educates and punishes them over the course of their lives, and this has its counterpart in the courtroom of consciousness. Knowing this is real comfort; there does not really exist such a thing as society.