Joshua Tan

“The Pharisaic, and rabbinic, view of the resurrection always involved two stages: an intermediate stage, in which the dead were in some way or other still alive, and a final stage in which they would be re-embodied. And, since in fact rather few Jews seem to have believed that disembodied immortality was really the final state, into which one passed immediately upon death, the main debate as far as the Pharisees were concerned was between their two-stage view and the Sadducees’ no-stage view, in which people ceased to exist altogether after death. What is more, everybody knew that what was normally meant by ‘resurrection’ had not happened yet. The question ‘What do you say about resurrection?’ was always a question about the future.”
― N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God

“But his goodness is not disconnected from his righteousness. It is not bestowed in a way that would deny his infinite value and beauty and greatness. This is why God’s righteousness involves final punishment as well as goodness. When God punishes the unrepentant in hell, he is not bestowing his goodness on them. But he does not cease to be good. His holiness and righteousness govern the bestowal of his goodness.”
― John Piper, Coronavirus and Christ

“The secret, I said, is knowing that the same sovereignty that could stop the coronavirus, yet doesn’t, is the very sovereignty that sustains the soul in it.”
― John Piper, Coronavirus and Christ

“God is giving the world in the coronavirus outbreak, as in all other calamities, a physical picture of the moral horror and spiritual ugliness of God-belittling sin... Here’s my suggestion: God put the physical world under a curse so that the physical horrors we see around us in diseases and calamities would become a vivid picture of how horrible sin is. In other words, physical evil is a parable, a drama, a signpost pointing to the moral outrage of rebellion against God... Calamities are God’s previews of what sin deserves and will one day receive in judgment a thousand times worse. They are warnings. They are wake-up calls to see the moral horror and spiritual ugliness of sin against God.”
― John Piper, Coronavirus and Christ