Michael Stoeber

• Philosophy of religion and comparative spirituality (especially Christian and Hindu forms)
• Religious experience
• Comparative mysticism
• Evil and suffering
• Theodicy
• Afterlife beliefs
• Theological anthropology
• Intersections of spirituality and art

• “Sacred Groves or Profitable Commodities? Exploring Dispositions Toward Our Environment in Interreligious Dialogue,” in Connecting Ecologies: Integrating Responses to the Global Challenge, Patrick Riordan and Gavin Flood, eds. (Routledge: 2024).
• “Christianity and Yoga,” Oxford Bibliographies in Hinduism, LAST MODIFIED: 25 JULY 2023, DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195399318-0276.
• “Hindu-Christian Dialogue on the Afterlife: Swami Vivekananda, Modern Advaita Vedānta, and Roman Catholic Eschatology,” International Journal of Hindu Studies Vol. 27, No.1 (April 2023): 33-65.
• “Indigenous and Roman Catholic Canonizations of Nicholas Black Elk: Postcolonial Issues and Implications of Black Elk Speaks,” Theological Studies, Vol. 81 (3) (2020): 605-630.
• “Kuṇḍalinī Yoga in the Spirituality of Swami Vivekananda and in Modern Yoga Typologies,” Chapter 3, in Vivekanada: His Life, Legacy, and Liberative Ethics, Rita Sharma, ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield’s Lexington Press, 2021): 29-44.
• “Christianity: classical, modern and postmodern forms of contemplation,” with JaeGil Lee, in Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies, Karen O’Brien-Kop and Suzanne Newcombe, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2021): 241-254.
• “Indigenous and Roman Catholic Canonizations of Nicholas Black Elk: Postcolonial Issues and Implications of Black Elk Speaks,” Theological Studies, Vol. 81(3) (2020): 605-630.
• “Theopoetics as Response to Suffering: The Visual Art of Käthe Kollwitz in the Reformation of Practical Theodicy,” International Journal of Practical Theology, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2019): 24-38.
• “The Comparative Study of Mysticism,” The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015 [updated 2017]) 43pp. Also translated and published in the Russian periodical, Philosophy of Religion: Analytic Researches (Философия религии: аналитические исследования) (2018: 15-42).
• “Mystical Concepts, Artistic Contexts”, in the catalogue for the art exhibit Mystical Landscapes: Vincent van Gogh to Emily Carr, Katharine Lochnan, ed. (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario and DelMonico Books, Prestel, 2016), pp. 45-58.  Also, translated in the anthology: “Concepts mystiques, contextes artistiques”, in Au-delà des étoiles: Le Paysage Mystique, De Monet À Kandinsky, Guy Corgeval, Katharine Lochnan, Beatrice Avanzi, Isabelle Morin Loutrel, eds., (Paris: Musee d’Orsay, 2017), pp. 44-63.
• “Mysticism in The Brothers Karamazov,” Toronto Journal of Theology, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Fall 2015) pp. 249-271.
• “Art as a Medium of Theological Imagining and Spiritual Transformation,” with Christina Labriola,in Complex Identities in a Shifting World: One God, Many Stories, Pamela Couture and Robert Mager, eds. (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2015): 255-268.
• “Exploring Processes and Dynamics of Mystical Contemplative Meditation: Some Christian-Buddhist Parallels in Relation to Transpersonal Theory”, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Summer 2015): 35-57.
• “Tantra and Śāktism in the Spirituality of Aurobindo Ghose”, in Situating Aurobindo: A Reader, Peter Heehs, ed. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013): 253-286. Also in Studies in Religion, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2009): 293-321.
• “Inter-Religious Contexts and Comparative Theology in the Thought of Evelyn Underhill: Symbolic Narratives of Mysticism and the Songs of Kabīr”, Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 26 (2013): 91-106.
• “Re-Imagining Theosophy through Canadian Art: Theosophical Influences on the Painting and Writing of Lawren Harris”, in Michael Hawley and Pashaura Singh, eds., Re-Imagining South Asian Religions: Essays in Honour of Professors Harold G. Coward and Ronald  Also in Toronto Journal of Theology, Vol. 28, No.1 (2012): 81-103.
• “Mysticism in Ecumenical Dialogue: Questions on the Nature and Effects of Mystical Experience”, in Teaching Mysticism, William B. Parsons, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011): 224-245.

• Reclaiming Theodicy: Reflections on Suffering, Compassion, and Spiritual Transformation (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Website.

This book proposes a narrative of life within which one might understand suffering in relation to a personal God of ultimate power and love. It seeks to interpret suffering within a fundamentally compassionate and redemptive understanding of the Christian God. It explores various themes of theodicy — theology that defends God in the face of evil – creatively developing a distinction between transformative and destructive suffering. Some suffering has positive effects on people who struggle with it, but certain kinds of suffering are bitterly destructive. In response to such suffering, the book analyses the dynamics of human and divine compassion. It suggests basic principles toward developing a politics of compassion and illustrates how various spiritual experiences of God are healing and life-giving. Within a religious view that stresses compassion, healing, and spiritual growth, the book also explores the relevance of the ideas of heaven, hell, purgatory and rebirth in responding to suffering.

• Co-editor with Hugo Meynell, Critical Reflections on the Paranormal (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1996). Website.

The anthology is a collection of essays that discuss various aspects of paranormal phenomena, such as telepathy, psychokinesis, trance-mediumship, near death experiences, and past-life memories. In response to recent research and studies, both critical and supportive of the subject, they reflect on what is reasonable to believe about this phenomena, and why. Also, the essays suggest what changes might be demanded in our worldview, if these phenomena are accepted as genuine. The collection includes essays by Susan Armstrong, Heather Botting, Stephen Braude, Don Evans, David Ray Griffin, James Horne, Terence Penelhum, and the editors.

• Theo-Monistic Mysticism: A Hindu-Christian Comparison (London: Macmillan Press; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994). Website.

In response to contemporary accounts of mystic phenomena, this book proposes a creative interpretive framework for understanding mysticism.  It postulates and explores various kinds of mystical experience, illustrating how they might be related and integrated within a narrative of spiritual movement and transformation.  In this view, radically apophatic, monistic experiences of oneness or unity, are connected with “theo-monistic” realizations—experiences which include dynamic and personal elements that are creative and moral, and to which other kinds of mysticism might also be related.  This view of mysticism is illustrated through a comparative study of Rāmānuja, Aurobindo, Śankara, Ruusbroec, Eckhart, Boehme, and other Christian and Hindu mystics.

• Evil and the Mystics’ God: Towards A Mystical Theodicy (London: Macmillan Press; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992). Website

Theodicies are systems of philosophy that attempt to rationalize the existence of evil in a God-centered world. They do not normally take into account the responses to evil by mystics – people who speak of encountering divine reality in an immediate or direct fashion that transcends normal categories of experience. Evil and the Mystics’ God analyses the contribution that mystical thought makes towards establishing a reliable theodicy. Major subject figures include F. Dostoevsky, J. Hick, E. Underhill, J. Boehme, Eckhart, Shankara, and Aurobindo Ghose.

• Consultant for the art exhibit Mystical Landscapes: Masterpieces from Monet, van Gogh, and more, Art Gallery of Ontario, Oct 22, 2016 to Jan 29, 2017 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris, March 14-June 25, 2017).
• Co-organized, co-curated, and contributed to the art exhibit, “Homelessness, Migrants and Refuge”, with the APT Collective (artists of practical theology), Regis College, University of Toronto, April 2-May 25, 2016.
• Co-organized and contributed to the art exhibit “Complex Identities in a Shifting World: One God Many Stories”—visual responses to the theme of the 2013 Conference of the International Academy of Practical Theology, Victoria University in the University of Toronto.  Exhibit hosted by Regis College, April 2-15, 2013.