What About Divine Hiddenness?
The problem of divine hiddenness says:
If there is a God, God is perfectly loving.
If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable non-belief does not occur.
Reasonable non-belief does occur.
No perfectly loving God exists.
There is no God.
Driving this argument is the idea that a relationship with God is valuable -- in fact, the most valuable thing persons can have, if God exists -- but that relationship is either not possible or greatly hindered if God does not provide sufficient evidence for believing in him. Hence, Premise 2.
Response:
Divine hiddenness -- including reasonable non-belief (or non-resistant non-belief), if that occurs -- is an instance of mysterious evil, which I have argued is, upon final analysis, evidence for, rather than away, from the existence of God.
First, there may well be greater goods from God remaining hidden, including an ultimately more intimate relationship with God Himself. (The burden of proof is on the atheist to show there isn’t/couldn’t be.)
Perhaps God knows that even if you believed in Him you would disobey God and degrade morally. Mere belief in God, as we unfortunately know, does not guarantee moral improvement, which is God’s concern for humans. In other words, God might care that we develop an unforced, unintimidated altruism. Remaining hidden for a time may facilitate this.
The critics responds: But isn’t having a relationship with God more valuable than loving others? Not so fast. Because consider this: By loving others we are closer to God — or at least the God of classical theism — than we realize. After all, to love someone is to will the good of the other, and what does God will? God wills His own goodness and in virtue of that — i.e., as a non-necessary means to willing His own goodness — wills the good of the persons God has created; hence to will the good of God (= to love God) we must will what God wills (since God wills his own goodness, necessarily), which is the good of persons. To love God is to love the persons God has created. God loves us by setting the conditions for our moral growth; we love God by taking advantage of those conditions and pursuing holiness, either with explicit belief or not.
The false assumption is this. The advocate of divine hiddenness makes it seem like these are exclusive possibilities; that we miss out on the good of relationship with God by God maintaining epistemic distance to facilitate other goods, including unforced, unintimidated altruism. The classical theist sees no conflict: to relate to God just is to participate in the divine nature, which is goodness itself. In fact, participation in God is the most intimate relationship we can have with God. Thus, anyone who exudes holiness and charity is, by default, relating to God by becoming good (= participating in God’s nature), whether they exude specific belief or not. Whereas it is predictable that God would want us to grow in holiness; it is not predictable that God would require explicit belief in His existence to achieve this.
Scripture seems to support this idea directly, “The King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” (Matt 25:34-40).
The above is sufficient to allow a reasonable opting-out of premise 2, defusing the problem of divine hiddenness. We can still say more, however.
Because as Joshua Rasmussen argues, “The comprehension of God’s love has infinitely many layers of depth displayed in infinitely many forms. In view of God’s infinite depth, our discovery of the depths and forms of God -- of the ultimate Foundation -- may have no end.
(This) indicates that on some level, we are all necessarily skeptics of good things in God; no one can immediately see every treasure waiting for discovery. In that sense, every one of us is, by necessity of growth, a non-resistant, non-believer in the fullness of God’s love. There is always more depth to grasp.
Moreover, perhaps the most important things to know are indeed the most universally accessible. As far as I can tell, the cultures of the world are fine-tuned in ways that lead people into lessons of love. Perhaps these lessons what are most important for us, and perhaps they even prepare us for a greater comprehension of God’s love. (emphasis mine)
Again, we can separate sight from non-sight. What do we see? Do we see that God should push along more good truths to more people more quickly? That is not in view for me. It is not even prima facie surprising to me that many good things, including good things about good, would come into view across multiple episodes of life.” (Is God the Best Explanation of Things?)
Or consider, more specifically, why God does not explicitly reveal himself to every individual, and what goods may emerge from a communal approach. Dr. Stephen Napier says, “This method [believing through testimony] preserves the relationality of human beings better than the more direct, individualistic methods . . . and it is perhaps a better introduction into the realm of personal relationships that comprises our final destiny and that characterizes the inner life of God himself (according to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity). . . . A further benefit of this mode of transmission of the gospel message, for example, is that we must trust in the testimony of others in order to come to faith, and we are deeply indebted to those who brought us the message. . . .” “The idea here is that by ‘forcing’ us to rely on our fellow human beings and to trust their word, we are thereby linked with each other at a much deeper level than if God were to take an individualistic approach. The more trusting we are with others and the deeper ties we have to them—especially in order to trust them for such important issues—serves to cement the moral fabric God may be intending for the human community. Anecdotal evidence confirms this in that numerous persons convert due to a person or persons with whom she is familiar who displays incredible virtue and integrity. Trusting and becoming closer to such examples of holiness may likely be just what God intends. Is it unjust that God would disclose himself to a few, while letting others rely on those humans to bear virtuous testimony? Responding to this very objection Garcia notes, “There doesn’t seem to be a violation of justice involved, since as long as persons are not punished for involuntary unbelief, it’s hard to see that God wrongs anyone by failing to provide every person with the same evidential situation.” (Source.)
Given our rational, SOCIAL, and DEPENDENT nature, nothing about the above is surprising, and perhaps predictable because it facilitates our good given the sort of things that we are.
Final point. Might we challenge the assumption that non-resistant non-belief occurs? This is not the usual approach, and I don’t believe a successful defense against the hiddenness argument depends upon it. But as humans we are very psychologically complex. Is it thereby unreasonable to challenge the idea that anybody is so transparent to others or themselves to fairly evaluable — more especially to prove — that they, or anybody, are in no way non-resistant to belief in God? The notion seems profoundly suspect, given the myriad co-factors and co-commitments that come with belief in God. Hidden motives abound; motives often hidden even to ourselves. It is, after all, a well known aspect in psychology, related to various neurosis, that people often cling to their disorders because of non-admitted (sometimes hidden even to themselves) secondary gains. Do atheists experience secondary gains by resisting belief in God they are unwilling or unable to admit to? I cannot prove this is the case, but I can 1) say it is true in my experience as a prior religious skeptic (though I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time) and 2) probably impossible to disprove.
I finish with one final consideration from Napier, in which he picks out a plausible indicator of resistance, “Both the hiddenness argument and the contingency argument accept the principle of non-explicability. The existence of the universe is not explicable supposing that a necessary being has not created and sustained it. The existence of hiddenness is not explicable supposing that God does exist. If something is not-explicable on a supposition, then one may conclude the opposite of that supposition. But what this means is that to be consistent, Schellenberg would have to accept the key premise in the contingency argument and thereby accept the argument, at least, accept it as very plausible. Not to accept it would be arbitrary and inconsistent, two features of resistance. “
Further resources: