The Hiddenness of God

A related problem is that of divine hiddenness. Many people are perplexed and see as
problematic that, if God exists, God does not make his existence sufficiently clear and
available. The problem, concisely stated, can be put this way. If God exists as the perfect,
loving, omnibenevolent being that theists have generally taken God to be, then God
would desire the best for his creatures. The best for God’s creatures, at least in the
Christian religion and to some extent in all of the Abrahamic traditions, is to be in
relationship with God. However, many people, both non-theists and sometimes theists
themselves, claim to have no awareness of God. Why would God remain hidden and
elusive, especially when individuals would benefit from being aware of God?

John Schellenberg has argued that the hiddenness of God provides evidence that God
does not in fact exist. Using a child-parent analogy, an analogy which is often used in the
Abrahamic traditions themselves, Schellenberg notes that good parents are present to
their children, especially when they are in need. But God is nowhere to be found,
whether one is in need or not. So God, at least as traditionally understood, must not
exist.

Schellenberg offers several different forms of the argument. One version can be sketched
this way. If God does exist, then reasonable nonbelief would not occur, for surely a
perfectly loving God would desire that people believe in God. And if God desires that
people so believe, God would work it out so that persons would be in a reasonable
position to believe. However, reasonable nonbelief does occur. There are persons who
do not believe in God, and they are reasonable in doing so. Even after studying the
evidence, examining their motives of belief, praying and seeking God, they still do not
believe and see no good reason to believe. But a perfectly loving and good God, it seems,
would ensure belief in God by all such persons. God would make himself known to them
so that they would believe. Since there is reasonable nonbelief, then, we have solid
evidence that God, as a perfectly loving, caring being does, not exist. The argument can
be stated concisely this way:

1. If there is a God, he is perfectly loving.

2. If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable nonbelief does not occur.
3. Reasonable nonbelief occurs.
4. So no perfectly loving God exists (from 2 and 3).
Various replies can be made to this argument. While not a common move by theists, one
could deny the first premise. Dystheists maintain that God is less (maybe much less)
than omnibenevolent. This view of God is certainly not consistent with traditional
theism whereby, as Anselm put it, God is “that than which nothing greater can be
conceived.”

Another reply is to deny premise two, and several reasons might be offered in support of
its denial. First, it may be that those persons who do not believe are, for one reason or
another, not ready to believe that God exists, perhaps because of emotional or
psychological or other reasons. So God hides out of love and concern for the person.
Second, it could be that God’s revealing himself to some people would produce the
wrong kind of belief or knowledge of God or could cause one to believe for the wrong
reasons, perhaps out of fear or trepidation or an egoistic desire for success. In cases like
this, God’s hiding would, again, be due to God’s love and concern for those who are not
yet ready to believe.

A third reply is to deny the third premise. Some theists have, in fact, maintained that
any nonbelief of God is unreasonable—that every case of nonbelief is one in which the
person is epistemically and morally culpable for her nonbelief. That is, while such
persons do not believe that God exists, theyshould so believe. They have the requisite
evidence to warrant such belief, yet they deny or suppress it; they are intentionally
disbelieving.
For many philosophers of religion, these replies to the issue of divine hiddenness are
unsatisfactory. The elusiveness of God continues to be a problem for both theists and
non-theists.