Evil and the Mystics' God: Towards Mystical Theodicy

William Glassman is a psychology professor at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute in Toronto.

This complex book deals with an issue that is central to much of
religious doctrine and, all too frequently, ordinary human
experience—namely, the religious justification of evil (i.e.,
theodicy).

A basic concern is the definition of “mysticism.” Stoeber uses as
his primary source Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism—a book that, as he
acknowledges, deals primarily with Western forms of mysticism and has
“a strong Christian bias.” Consequently, forms of mysticism for
which issues of good and evil are illusory are ignored. Yet it is
precisely this view that makes many forms of mysticism meaningful. Even
Meister Eckhart, a medieval Christian mystic and one of the central
figures in Stoeber’s analysis, has said, “Evils . . . do not exist.
. . . What is evil for one man is good for another or for the universe;
and he who takes harm from it now and in the present instant will
benefit from it later in other circumstances.” This is not to say that
Stoeber is wrong, but simply that he is not interested in systems—like
Taoism or Sufism—that might not fit with his original framing of the
question. Denying evil, he notes, makes theodicy self-defeating, for
“it denies the terms of the problem with which it begins.”

As the introduction notes, the book is essentially a Ph.D. thesis from
the University of Toronto, where Stoeber matriculated at the Centre for
Religious Studies. As such, it is densely written and the tone is very
scholastic. Other authors, from William James to D.T. Suzuki, have dealt
with mysticism differently—and often more intuitively. One wonders
what Stoeber might make of another quote from Meister Eckhart:
“God’s presence in the soul by grace is instinct with more light
than any intellect can give.”

For readers with a serious interest in theodicy, Stoeber has written a
challenging analysis; readers primarily interested in mysticism will
likely find it limited.