COVID-19: PHILOSOPHICAL INPUT(ONE)

COVID-19:  PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE I

SOCIAL DISTANCING & MYOPIC ECCLESSIOLOGY

A. THE BACKGROUND

Ladies and gentlemen, following the footsteps of my learned friend Proff Olabo Olabo, may I also present my thoughts on COVID 19 from a philosophical perspective. I am a baptised and confirmed Christian. The Christian family is a home for over 6billion humans, not counting those who have gone before us for the last 2019 years. We have different brands of Christianity, but we also have different theologies governing different Christian groups. Some of these theologies (especially the earlier theologies) were established through blood and fire,. We also have theologies that are relatively young and somehow miss some deep philosophical foundations. Theology simply put is " Fides quaerens intellectum'" that is, Faith seeking reason. Without Reason Faith confines itself to superstition.  The God who is the author of Faith is also the author of reason. He is the one who during COVID 19 tells us, "my people stay at home to avoid infection". He is the same God who says indirectly to us, Wash your hands.  But since concepts such as 'sanitize', 'hand wash', 'quarantine', 'Covid', 'fumigate'....are not directly citable from the bible, some Christians feel that they must congregate because theirs is sola scriptura (only scripture) kind of Christianity. There are some Christians who believe that by governments not allowing them to congregate, their freedom of worship is being curtailed. We also have the Apocalipsists who believe that the world is ending and so the best place for them to end the world is inside a church building.

B. THE METHOD

Prescriptive method

C. THE QUESTIONS

1. Are the Covid-19 Christians rooted in spirituality?

2. Can Covid-19 Christians be said to have ecclesiastical history to help the cope today?

D. THE DISCUSSION

a.. Ecclesiology without Spirituality

When believers hold the view that the church is a building and forget that it's beyond what we see they subject themselves to cultism, to a partisan and non-holistic ecclesiastical epistemology and to religious 'irrationalism'. By doing this they are guilty of the sin of omission. The truth of the matter is that the church is spiritual and physical, empirical and rational. If the church is spiritual then its anthropological manifestation is also transcendental and mystic. As such worship can be done anywhere and anytime. I do not need to go my cathedral if situations like COVID 19 impede me. I can still worship in my closet. Doesn't Jesus say that when you pray, go into your private room? Well one might say, ' but he also says....where two or more are gathered in my name, I am in their midst'. The gathering here can also be a gathering between a believer and angels or saints. It doesn't have to be physical humans. While the church is communal, it is also eremitic. I look up to contemplative monks and nuns in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches as a symbol of the spiritual life style. These are men and women without going to the world reach out to the world through contemplative prayers. You don't see them in your parish but in absolute silence they fall day and night before God in worship and intercession. The question is, 'Why are some Christians so addicted to the building they call church? My answer is, narrow ecclesiology.

Note that am not saying that we should we stop going to church. I am indicating that where going to church poses a health risk or any other risk to our lives it's our moral obligation to THINK. And thinking is not hated by God.

b. Ecclesiology without history

When a church group has not read enough history of the church it tends to act by whatever it comes across. But remember that Christianity is not a religion of idiocy. It has enough historical records that we can use to solve our current covid19 quagmire. The early Christians used to worship in caves during the persecutions , the Christians in Rome during the persecutions of Emperor Nero Caesar(666) were ready to die for their faith but they took prudent  measures like secret worship, use of symbols to communicate and occasionally 'lying' to protect themselves.  The question of Pandemics is also not new to the church; COVID 19 is not the first Pandemic to ravage the church. Europe experienced worse plagues like the bubonic plagues, Spanish flue, Justinian plague, etc. The usual practice was always quarantine. Why would a church that started in 2018 expose its members to covid-19 in the name of faith? Because the faith it preaches lacks some basic history.

E. THE CONCLUSION

Covid-19 Christians need to embrace contemplative spirituality, refer back to history and stay home, because God has opened the new churches in the privacy of their homes.