The catastrophic magnitude 7.7 earthquake that recently shattered Flores did more than tear apart buildings and roads; it fundamentally fractured our illusion of security, forcing us to ask where we stand when the very ground beneath us collapses.
Felix Baghi, SVD
Lecturer, IFTK Ledalero
The devastating earthquake that struck Flores invites us to interpret this natural phenomenon from multiple perspectives: scientific, philosophical, anthropological, and theological.
Yet one principle must remain clear: an earthquake must never be treated as scientific evidence of God, still less as evidence that God is punishing humanity. The earthquake must first be understood as a natural event. Only then can it become a subject of philosophical and theological reflection, without confusing these distinct domains or reducing God to an empirical cause, and without reducing faith to a secondary explanation of geophysical data.
The earthquake that struck Flores on 15 August 2026, recorded at magnitude 7.7 and followed by numerous aftershocks, has caused consequences extending far beyond physical destruction: loss of life, displacement, psychological trauma, damage to homes, schools, hospitals, places of worship, and formation houses. The earthquake has shaken not only bodies and buildings, but also the spaces of human life, our emotions, our consciousness, and the structures of meaning through which we understand ourselves.
An Earthquake Is Not a “Message from God” in a Causal Sense
From the perspective of the natural sciences, an earthquake is a geophysical phenomenon. It must be explained through plate tectonics, geological structures, active faults, hypocentral depth, magnitude, seismic-energy distribution, and local ground conditions.
We must therefore reject the claim: “The earthquake happened because God is punishing Flores.” Such a statement exceeds the limits of human knowledge and risks reducing theology to a superficial form of natural theology.
Yet we should also resist the claim that “an earthquake is nothing more than tectonic movement.” Scientifically, this may be true, but existentially it does not exhaust the human question. Between these two domains lies an open space for philosophy and faith.
Science asks: How does an earthquake happen? Philosophy asks: What does the experience of an earthquake reveal about human existence? Faith asks a deeper question: How are human beings to stand before God amid fragility, suffering, loss, death, and hope?
The earthquake, therefore, should not become an object of theological proof. Rather, it can become an existential event that discloses the ontological fragility of human beings before the Absolute.
The Earthquake Shakes Not Only the Ground but the “Ground” of Human Existence
Human beings normally live with the assumption that the ground beneath our feet is stable, that a house provides protection, that a church is a sacred space, that a seminary is a place of formation, that the family is a shared home, and that social institutions provide continuity and security.
Within seconds, all these assumptions can be shaken. This is where we encounter what philosophy calls contingency: the recognition that our existence is neither necessary nor completely under our control and is always exposed to the possibility of loss. The ground can move. The house can collapse. Our own bodies are not entirely within our control. Institutions we trust can prove fragile.
The earthquake exposes the illusion of terra firma and reveals terra vulnerabilis, a vulnerable earth, a fragile ground, an unstable world. Here we encounter what Martin Heidegger calls Geworfenheit, our “thrownness” into a world we did not choose and cannot fully control.
This experience resonates deeply with Paul Tillich’s understanding of God as the Ground of Being, not an object among other objects, but the deepest ground of all existence.
The existential question, therefore, is not: “Did God cause the earthquake?” but rather: “If everything I once regarded as the ground of my life can shake, where is the ultimate ground of my existence?”
God Is Not Found in the Epicenter
As people of faith, we should not search for God as an “object” within the earthquake. We cannot say, “This is where God is, in the fault line.” But neither should we conclude that because geology can explain an earthquake scientifically, God has become irrelevant.
Both approaches commit a category mistake.
God is not an alternative explanation for the mechanics of an earthquake. God does not replace geology, and geology does not replace the question of God. Faith enters a different but equally significant dimension: not causal explanation, but the way human beings stand before fragile reality, in obedience, prayer, and hope.
The Earthquake and the Problem of Suffering
A more difficult question remains: Why must innocent people suffer because of a natural event? Why must children lose their parents? Why must elderly people lose their homes? Why must priests, religious sisters, seminarians, and families experience trauma and death?
We cannot answer by simply saying that the earthquake was God’s punishment. Mature faith must have the courage to admit that we do not know the ultimate metaphysical reasons why particular suffering occurs. Such ignorance is not necessarily a failure of faith. It may instead be an expression of epistemic humility.
The Book of Job offers an important theological paradigm. Job’s suffering cannot be adequately explained through a simple logic of moral causality. His friends attempt to provide easy answers—there must be sin; there must be guilt. Yet the Book of Job challenges precisely this human tendency to explain too quickly the suffering of others.
In the context of Flores, therefore, we should resist saying, “The earthquake happened because of human sin.” A more responsible response is: “We do not know the deepest reason for this event. But we do know that, amid suffering, we are called to be present, to help, to care, to show empathy, to respect, to weep with those who mourn, and to rebuild life together.”
From Theodicy to Solidarity
This calls for an important paradigm shift. The classical question of theodicy, “How can a good God allow suffering?”, remains legitimate. But in the midst of disaster, faith must also move from the question “Why?” toward the question “What must we do?”
Not merely: “Why did God allow this?” but also: “What are we called to do in response to this suffering?” Here faith becomes praxis.
God is not encountered as the “cause” of the earthquake. Rather, faith is tested in the way we care for the earth and respond to those who suffer: Are we present? Do we share? Do we protect the vulnerable? Are the state, the Church, and society present? Are the poor and Indigenous communities genuinely heard? Is the natural world protected and cared for? Can reconstruction become more humane?
In the light of Christology, solidarity acquires an even deeper meaning. The God revealed in Christ does not remain distant from suffering but enters into it, even unto the cross. Therefore, the measure of faith is not our ability to provide metaphysical explanations for an earthquake, but our capacity to transform suffering into concrete and courageous solidarity.
The Earthquake as an Experience of Displacement
The earthquake makes people lose their home. Houses no longer feel safe. People sleep in yards and tents. Seminaries must reconsider their physical safety. Places of worship and religious activities move into open spaces.
This reveals something profound about human existence. Human beings need spaces in which to become human: homes, communities, places of worship, ancestral lands, schools, cemeteries, gardens, roads, and social spaces.
A disaster does not merely destroy physical objects. It damages the Lebenswelt—the human lifeworld.
What disappears is not only a wall, but a sense of belonging; not only a house, but the experience of “home”; not only a church building, but a symbolic space where a community experiences itself as being together.
The Earthquake and Ecological Consciousness
The earthquake reminds us that the earth is not a dead object entirely subject to human control. Modern paradigms often place nature in the position of an object and humanity in the position of the subject, measuring, drilling, exploiting, and managing the earth.
The earthquake reverses this perspective. Within seconds, we discover that we ourselves are part of the earth. The earth is not merely the place where we live. We belong to the earth.
Ecologically and theologically, the earthquake becomes an epistemological experience that challenges anthropocentrism. Human beings are not absolute masters of the earth but participants within a network of life and geological processes vastly greater than themselves. The earth has its own dynamics and calls for humility, respect, caution, and responsible stewardship.
The Earthquake and Geothermal Development: Do Not Confuse the Two
In the context of the debate over geothermal development in Flores, scientific precision is essential. We must not simply conclude: “The magnitude 7.7 earthquake proves that geothermal projects cause earthquakes.”
That is a causal claim requiring specific geophysical evidence. However, the earthquake provides strong grounds for asking serious questions about precaution and risk governance: What is the seismotectonic character of project areas? How are active faults mapped? How are seismic risks and induced seismicity assessed? Are there independent monitoring mechanisms? How do communities obtain information and exercise their right to say “no”? Who bears responsibility if damage occurs?
The stronger argument is therefore not that “the earthquake proves geothermal energy is dangerous,” but that: “The experience of a major earthquake demands far stronger standards of precaution, scientific transparency, cumulative-risk assessment, and meaningful community participation in every extractive or energy project located in vulnerable regions.”
This is an ethical demand arising from ecological and existential awareness of vulnerability, not from careless causal speculation.
From Terra Firma to Terra Vulnerabilis
Flores is not merely terra firma. It is terra vulnerabilis. The earthquake reveals that the ground beneath us exists within dynamic geological processes and is therefore also part of a wider field of vulnerability. The question for geothermal development in Flores should not be merely: “What can we build upon this land?” but: “How can we live responsibly within a vulnerable earth?”
Our paradigm must shift: from domination to coexistence, from exploitation to precaution, from economic growth alone to the resilience of life. Here, a theology of creation and stewardship meets a concrete ecological ethic.
From Fear to Hope
The deepest question raised by an earthquake is not simply: “Why does the earth shake?” but: “How can human beings continue to hope when the ground of life itself begins to shake?”
This is ultimately a question of faith. Faith is not a promise that believers will never experience earthquakes. It is not a guarantee that the houses of believers will never collapse. Nor is it a mechanism for protection against the laws of nature.
Faith is the possibility of continuing to say “yes” to life even in the face of fragility, death, destruction, and loss. For Christians, hope is rooted in the resurrection of Christ, which proclaims that death and destruction do not have the final word.
After the Flores earthquake, the faith of Flores’ predominantly Catholic communities is not primarily called to provide explanations for the past. It is called to open the future: to rebuild homes, care for victims, heal trauma, restore communities, challenge unjust development systems, build more safely, listen to vulnerable communities, and sustain the hope that destruction is not the final word in human history.
A Philosophical-Theological Conclusion
The Flores earthquake should not be interpreted as scientific evidence of divine action. It is a natural event that opens profound existential questions concerning fragility, contingency, human limitation, suffering, responsibility, and hope.
Precisely because science can explain the mechanisms of an earthquake without invoking God as its immediate cause, faith has an opportunity to move beyond the image of God as a “God of the gaps” and return to the deeper question of the ultimate ground of human existence.
The earthquake shakes the earth, but philosophically it also shakes our illusions of security, control, and absolute autonomy. In the face of unstable ground, human beings discover themselves as fragile, contingent, interdependent, and open to transcendence.
From a theological perspective, God need not be sought in the epicenter of the earthquake. God is encountered in the way human beings stand amid the shaking: in solidarity with victims, in courage before suffering, in responsibility for the earth, in resistance to technocratic arrogance, and above all in hope that life still has a future.
The earthquake in Flores may thus become a kind of “existential laboratory” where science, philosophy, and faith meet—not to replace one another, but to correct, challenge, and deepen one another’s understanding of reality.
And perhaps the deepest question after the earthquake is no longer: “What message is God sending us through this earthquake?” but rather: “When the ground beneath our feet begins to shake, upon what do we ultimately stand?”
That question leads us from geology to ontology, from ontology to anthropology, and from anthropology to faith and hope, a faith rooted in the God who remains faithful even when the earth beneath us continues to tremble.
