Meister Eckhart and the Haitian Earthquake of January 12, 2010

George S. Garwood

The Theology of Suffering (Theodicy)

This 13^th century German theologian and mystic said many remarkable, provocative, and even controversial things. For example, he says:

When it falls to some people to suffer or to do something, they say, ‘if only I knew it was God’s will, I would gladly endure it or do it!’ Dear God! That is a strange question for a sick man to ask, whether it is God’s will that he should be sick. He ought to realise that if he is sick, it must be God’s will. It is just the same with other things. And so a man should accept from God, purely and simply, whatever happens to him. (Sermon 55. Walshe:1979, pgs.76,77)

Such a view of Eckhart’s nowadays might seem fatalistic. If for no other reason than that we rely on medicine to find cures for our illnesses, and we expect, and rely on governments, or charity institutions, if we can’t afford it, to provide relief for us in our times of trouble. Also we promote, preach, and teach about the values and virtues of health and wealth. Likewise, Eckhart’s view about suffering might seem hopeless and unhelpful to modern minds, because of post-modernity, where the mind is now more secular, and far less preoccupied with theo-centricity than it used to be. Many people then might find this view of Eckhart’s as antiquated, and an irrelevant stoic cynicism.

However, before one dismisses Eckhart's idea of suffering as being outmoded, and as being some strange eastern metaphysical or nihilistic doctrine, one would do well to try and understood his meaning about God’s will and human suffering. In the first place, he sees God’s will, as our will, and our will, as God’s will, or ant anyrate, there should be no distinction between both wills. So if we choose to be sick, it’s our choice, and if we chose to be healthy, it is our choice. Well, to be more precise, it is not strictly a matter of choice or will, but more a recognition, and an acceptance that existence involves ‘suffering’. In effect, Eckhart is saying in a paradoxical way, that we hold our destiny in our own hands, or hold it in our minds, or better still; we, hold our destiny in our soul, and the souls are inseparable from God.

In his theological and mystical scheme, he is making the assumption that, when one believes in God – this he terms the birth of the Son in the soul - we are really at one in God. He calls it union. Then just as God does not dwell in time, but dwells out of time; then God is not affected by earthly and mundane concerns. So for God, suffering, pain, poverty, and other real human discomforts, trouble God only to the extent that humans are discomforted by these conditions. It therefore follows, that if we are in union with God, we too do not dwell in the finite; we do not dwell in the natural, but dwell in the infinite, and dwell in the supernatural. So to the extent that God feels pain, poverty, and all other human discomforts, we also feel those discomforts. But they do not overwhelm or destroy us because just as God cannot be destroyed or overwhelmed, we also, cannot be overwhelmed by hardships, sufferings or death. So the choice is one of our freedom, or freewill; and, just as God has freedom and freewill to accept or reject things; and just as God chooses freely and wisely; we also choose freely and wisely. So choosing freely and wisely is an act where a decision whether to accept pain or joy, wealth or poverty is all, and the same. That is, there is no difference between ease and hardship. Because to see joy or pain as diametrically opposed to each other, is to cling to what Eckhart calls, attachments. Attachments are our desires, ambitions and self-will that prevent us from achieving union and ecstasy with God. 

Eckhart here seeks to elevate humanity into the glorious presence of divinity, and with that transcendental leap, our present sufferings pale in significance to the glories that are immanent in God, and in the Godhead. Despite the trials and tribulations; the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that beset us, including the Haitian earthquake; and despite the fact, that the outer man (body) is wracked and wrecked by physical and mental pains: the inner man (soul) reposes itself serenely in God.

Might this Eckartian inner man serenity account for the stoic endurance of many of the Haitians whom the news media have portray as looking with apparent equanimity at the wreckage and rubble of their homes? Might the Eckhartian beatific vision account for the fact that despite the unbearable, unspeakable, and insurmountable suffering and loss of the Haitians, that many of them still display a great faith in God?

Where is God?

Because of the monumental tragedy caused by the earthquake in Haiti, many people have questioned, and will continue to question God's role, or lack of involvement in this tragedy. As a ‘theologian’ myself, the argument is a non-sequiter. That is, it does not follow. It’s illogical. That is, an argument which says, ‘a good God doesn’t allow bad things to happen to people, especially good people; that if bad things happen to people, then God is not good’. This is an absurd statement.

Of course, some people get around this idea of ‘goodness’, by saying that the Haitians aren’t good; that, many of them, at anyrate, practice Voodoo; and so the earthquake is a punishment for Voodoo, which some people claim, is devil worship.  Anyway, again, that line of argument is a non-sequiter; it is also immoral; for even the Scriptures say, that ‘no one is good except God’. So the Haitians are no better or worse, morally, as humans than the rest of us; we are in the same category as them. That is, none of us can claim goodness of ourselves. 

Furthermore, the argument  - that God punishes, the bad for their badness – is a non-sequiter; for ‘God sends the rain on the just and on the unjust’ in equal measures according to Holy Scriptures. God doesn’t discriminate, for presumably, good people as well as bad people suffered and died during the earthquake. So God is an equal opportunity administrator when it comes to meeting out badness or goodness on people. He believes in equal civil or human rights for all. So, such a God, by His own definition, doesn’t seek-out people for unequal, unfair or unjust treatment.

Now, one may say that if bad things happen to people (who are either good or bad) that such evil happenings, is not God’s doing, or not even God permitting badness to happen to people; that, the badness that befalls people, is because of people’s self-will, stupidity or rebelliousness. Again, there is a problem with this argument. For clearly, a benevolent God would not cause bad things (even if He allowed it to happen to bad people) to happen to good people. Why collectively punish? Why punish the innocent along with the guilty? Is this possible?  Perhaps, it is, if we assume that He is trying to achieve some greater good  - to get a message across to us. But that view is also troubling, for surely, He could bring about a greater good without such great suffering?

That’s the problem with trying to figure out what God is trying to do. It is that, we are forever trapped in spiralling and circuitous arguments of claims, counter-claims, until the discussions become a web of confusion, irresolvable, and may eventually lead to deceit and deception.

The simple fact of the matter is that we live on a planet called Earth. A planet that is affected by physical forces called laws, if you wish. These laws are what cause the world to exist in the first place, and which cause Earth to continue to exist; and which will cause Earth to stop existing (or exist in some other form) in some distant future. Laws of thermodynamics account for these physicalities.

The question then is: Where is God in all these physical or mechanistic forces? Where is God in all these existences? This is the 15 billion dollar or pound question. (I use this figure just as a variant on the idea that the cosmos started in the Big Bang explosion of 15 billion years ago. But of course, this chronology and cosmology must not be taken literally, but just as a point of reference. In as much a point of reference as the biblical Genesis account which says in, ‘The Beginning God Created …’. When is the beginning? Just as it says, ‘In the Beginning’ of course. Axiomatically, the beginning is the beginning!

The simple fact (or not so simple depending on one’s point of view) is that the Haitian earthquake of January 12, 2010 was caused by some tectonic plates shifting within the ‘Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault Zone’; a fissure in the earth’s rocks that runs from the Dominican Republic through Haiti, to St. Thomas in Jamaica. Over the centuries there have been slippages in this crustal fault which have resulted in major damages in that region, including Haiti; but no break or movement in the rocks have been so massive as that caused by the latest one; or at anyrate, there might have been other temblors as great, or even greater than this present earthquake, but they didn’t appear to be as disastrous as this one, for we didn’t know, see or experience them at the time of their occurrence. But this latest earthquake is of such Biblical proportions because populations, properties, and the media-attention have all converged all at once, in such a way as to concentrate our gaze disportinoatley on this apocalyptic spectacle.

God is here

So again the question has to be asked: Where is God in this Haitian tragedy or catastrophe? Well God is here, alive and well. That is Us. So we - collectively and individually as people - now have with the responsibilities of picking up the pieces, in repairing shattered lives, healing the sick, burying the dead, restoring and renewing hope and joy to those traumatised people. We have to make this our duty and our obligation to help the helpless and the needy; for our turn of destitution may one day come when in our hour of need, we will require the help of our fellow humans. So here then is the irony or paradox, or even the unwelcome, and brutal truth of the matter: the earthquake indeed demonstrates the ‘greater good’ theory of God. That is: It is us humanity that must now arise to divinity. That after all, is what God is all about. God is Humanity clothed in Divinity, and Divinity clothed in Humanity.

This is what Meister Eckhart had been trying to tell us all along, through strange allegories a long time ago. But we refused to heed his teachings, branding him as a heretic instead. However, now is the ‘Eternal Now’ that he spoke about; a time when contemplation and action, virginity (sterility) and wifedom (fruitfulness); time and eternity, man and God – these sets of equations - now converge into effective action. It is at this intersection of the Eternal Now, that God becomes Man, and Man becomes God – rather Man is God (homo-divinus), and recreates, remakes anew, despite and inspite of Haiti’s earthquake.

George S. Garwood

January 26, 2010

Research student

Dept. of Theology and Religion,

Birmingham University, Edgbaston, UK