IF there is a creator God, he is by definition ultimately responsible for the existence of viruses.
The science shows us that most viruses are beneficial and some are essential to life. But why do there have to be pathogens that wreak havoc?
The key question for theists is this: could God not have made a world without coronavirus?
We live in a world where things go wrong. Why is the world this way? Here is the Bible's answer.
When God created human beings to live in his "very good" creation, he endowed them with the marvellous gift of free will that made them into moral beings.
Because of that, there was an inevitable possibility of moral breakdown through misuse of that freedom.
And that is what happened - as the third chapter of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, so vividly depicts.
Genesis 3 says that human disobedience arose from a fundamental disagreement with God over the nature of life and the serious possibility of death.
God had explicitly warned the first humans, Adam and Eve, that if they ate fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which he had told them was off-limits - in other words, if they acted in downright disobedience to him and independence of him - then they would surely die (Genesis 2:17).
We need not discuss what the nature of the fruit of the tree was, or to wonder what quality it must have had so that eating it should produce the knowledge of good and evil.
To interpret it that way is to miss the point of the story. To eat from the tree is to have a frame of mind that asserts the creature's will against the Creator's; that pushes the Creator aside and makes central to everything the pursuit of one's own egotistical interests and interpretation of life. That is, in principle, what 'sin' is.
A rower in a boat who refuses to row the correct way will affect not only themselves but also all the others in the boat - and may even damage the boat itself
What happened in Genesis 3 was that the humans rejected God and sin entered the world. The consequences were huge. There was death - first in the spiritual sense of a rift in the relationship between humans and God, and, later, physical death.
Moreover, nature itself was fractured by that same event - and that takes us back at once to our main theme.
Genesis tells us that, upon their rebellion, though humans had to leave God's presence, they were not immediately ejected from their role of administrating the earth under God.
They were allowed to keep their job of developing earth's potential. At the same time, however, "creation was subjected [by God] to ineffectiveness, not through its own fault, but because of him who subjected it" (Romans 8:20).
In the original Greek, the word for "ineffectiveness" (mataiotes) carries the meaning that something is all "in vain": that is, it has not achieved the goal for which it was designed.
When this passage says that creation was subjected to ineffectiveness and frustration "not through its own fault", it is referring to the curse God put on the ground because of Adam's sin: "Cursed is the ground because of you [Adam]; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you" (Genesis 3:17-18).
That is, the fracturing of humanity's relationship with its Maker had consequences wider than humans themselves.
A rower in a boat who refuses to row the correct way will affect not only themselves but also all the others in the boat - and may even damage the boat itself.
Similarly, humanity's refusal to remain in the place assigned to them - made by God to know God and enjoy creation according to its Maker's laws - meant that God's very good creation became flawed and fractured.
We are all faced with the kind of mixed picture presented by a ruined cathedral - with all the beauty of the opening of a flower to the sun, and all the ugliness of a coronavirus destroying the human respiratory system
The result is that, although over the centuries there have been spectacular strides in the development of earth and its resources, the world is also fractured - full of both violent and immoral human behaviour and earthquakes, tsunamis, cancers and the coronavirus pandemic.
Now, we can debate for ever what a good, loving and all-powerful God should, could or might have done.
But experience shows that none of us has ever been satisfied with the outcome of that particular discussion.
The reason for this is that - no matter what we say - we are where we are and this is how the world is.
We are all faced with the kind of mixed picture presented by a ruined cathedral - with all the beauty of the opening of a flower to the sun, and all the ugliness of a coronavirus destroying the human respiratory system.
As a mathematician I am used to the fact that when we have tried, sometimes for many years, to solve a question without success, we begin to think that we might be better off looking at a different question.
And there is another question we can ask.
If we accept - as we must - that we are in a universe that presents us with a picture of both biological beauty and deadly pathogens, is there any evidence that there is a God whom we can trust with the implications, and with our lives and futures?
John Lennox, who is from Armagh, is an emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford and emeritus fellow in mathematics and the philosophy of science at Green Templeton College.
He is also an associate fellow of the Said Business School and an adjunct lecturer for The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.
He is particularly interested in the interface of science, philosophy and theology and has been part of numerous public debates defending the Christian faith against well known atheists including Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer and the late Christopher Hitchens.
He is the author of a number of books, including Can Science Explain Everything?
His latest book,
[ Where Is God in a Coronavirus World?Opens in new window ]
, is published by the Good Book Company (paperback £2.54, digital download £1.59).
In next week's Faith matters, Professor Lennox asks if the coronavirus can be reconciled with the existence of a loving God.
