Examining Schellenberg's Hiddenness

Argument Veronika Weidner

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://textbookfull.com/product/examining-schellenbergs-hiddenness-argument-vero
nika-weidner/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Neurological Aspects of Spinal Cord Injury 1st Edition

Norbert Weidner

https://textbookfull.com/product/neurological-aspects-of-spinal-
cord-injury-1st-edition-norbert-weidner/

The unity of perception : content, consciousness,

evidence 1st Edition Schellenberg

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-unity-of-perception-content-
consciousness-evidence-1st-edition-schellenberg/

Angle Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy of

Delafossite Metals Veronika Sunko

https://textbookfull.com/product/angle-resolved-photoemission-
spectroscopy-of-delafossite-metals-veronika-sunko/

The Aesthetics of Argument Martin Warner

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-aesthetics-of-argument-
martin-warner/
The Structure of Argument Annette T. Rottenberg

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-structure-of-argument-
annette-t-rottenberg/

Shakespeare beyond doubt evidence argument controversy

Edmondson

https://textbookfull.com/product/shakespeare-beyond-doubt-
evidence-argument-controversy-edmondson/

Evaluating the Language of Argument Martin Hinton

https://textbookfull.com/product/evaluating-the-language-of-
argument-martin-hinton/

The School Counselor s Desk Reference and Credentialing

Examination Study Guide 2nd Edition Schellenberg

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-school-counselor-s-desk-
reference-and-credentialing-examination-study-guide-2nd-edition-
schellenberg/

Argument licensing and agreement 1st Edition Claire

Halpert

https://textbookfull.com/product/argument-licensing-and-
agreement-1st-edition-claire-halpert/
PALGRAVE FRONTIERS IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Examining
Schellenberg’s
Hiddenness
Argument

Veronika Weidner
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion

Series Editors
Yujin Nagasawa
Department of Philosophy
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, UK

Erik J. Wielenberg
Department of Philosophy
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN, USA
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion is a long overdue series
which will provide a unique platform for the advancement of research in
this area. Each book in the series aims to progress a debate in the philos-
ophy of religion by (i) offering a novel argument to establish a strikingly
original thesis, or (ii) approaching an ongoing dispute from a radically
new point of view. Each title in the series contributes to this aim by uti-
lising recent developments in empirical sciences or cutting-edge research
in foundational areas of philosophy (such as metaphysics, epistemology
and ethics). The series does not publish books offering merely extensions
of or subtle improvements on existing arguments. Please contact Series
Editors (y.nagasawa@bham.ac.uk/ewielenberg@depauw.edu) to discuss
possible book projects for the series.

Editorial Board Members

Michael Almeida (University of Texas at San Antonio)
Lynne Rudder Baker (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Jonathan Kvanvig (Baylor University)
Robin Le Poidevin (University of Leeds)
Brian Leftow (University of Oxford)
Graham Oppy (Monash University)
Michael C. Rea (University of Notre Dame)
Edward Wierenga (University of Rochester)

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14700
 Veronika Weidner

Examining
Schellenberg’s
Hiddenness Argument
Veronika Weidner
Catholic Theological Faculty
Ludwig Maximilian University
of Munich
Munich, Germany

Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion

ISBN 978-3-319-97516-0 ISBN 978-3-319-97517-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97517-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950416

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover credit: © Blackred/Getty Images

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 In loving memory
of my grandparents
 Acknowledgements

First of all, I wish to express my grand gratitude and heart-felt thanks

for the extraordinary support of Prof. Armin Kreiner in the process
of writing this book. Staying calmly in the background, I knew that I
could always count on him being available immediately whenever I
sought advice. I thank the Catholic Theological Faculty at the Ludwig
Maximilian University of Munich, not least for deciding to honour
me with the Cardinal Wetter Award 2017 of the Catholic Academy in
Bavaria. From February until July 2016, I was offered the chance to
take special leave and enroll as a Recognised Student at the University
of Oxford. I sincerely appreciate the generous grants which I received
from the Catholic Theological Faculty, the LMUMentoring excellence
program for female junior scientists, and the international scholar-
ship program PROSALMU at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.
In Oxford, John L. Schellenberg developed his hiddenness argu-
ment while pursuing a D.Phil. under the supervision of Prof. Richard
Swinburne in the late 1980s, and I wrote large parts of my book there.
I owe thanks to Prof. Graham Ward for his welcoming hospitality at
the Faculty of Theology and Religion and to Prof. Brian Leftow as well
as to Prof. Richard Swinburne for conversation about the hiddenness
argument. Furthermore, I very much appreciate Prof. Daniel Howard-
Snyder’s making the latest version of his paper’s then-draft entitled
“The Skeptical Christian” available to me. I am particularly indebted
to Prof. Christoph Jäger, Prof. Thomas Schärtl-Trendel, Prof. John L.
Schellenberg, Prof. Charles Taliaferro, Prof. Holm Tetens, Prof. Martin

vii
viii    Acknowledgements

Thurner, and Dr. Leigh Vicens for their very helpful comments on earlier
drafts of my manuscript. My special thanks goes to Dr. Luke Teeninga
who made significant linguistic corrections on the manuscript’s penul-
timate version and also provided most valuable remarks on its content.
Last but not least, I feel deep gratitude for the more than precious
encouragement of my family and friends. From the bottom of my heart,
I would like to thank Alma, Anna, Bianca, Christin, Constanze, Judith,
Katharina, Lisa, Mari, Miriam, Silvia, and Veronica, my three brothers
Ferdinand, Philipp, and Vinzenz, and, above all, my parents Katharina
and Michael.
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

Part I Schellenberg’s Hiddenness Argument

2 Setting the Stage 13

2.1 Hiddenness in a Literal Sense 16
2.1.1 Missing His Presence—Hiddenness I 17
2.1.2 His Incomprehensible Essence—Hiddenness II 18
2.1.3 His Revelatory Works—Not That Hidden I 26
2.1.4 His Existence in Evidence—Not That Hidden II 43
2.2 Hiddenness Taken Non-Literally 51
2.2.1 The Occurrence of Nonresistant Nonbelief 51
2.2.2 Two Final Notes 53

3 Its Most Recent Statement 57

3.1 Preliminaria 58
3.1.1 Anti-Theistic 59
3.1.2 Deductive 64
3.1.3 Evidentialistic 65
3.1.4 Propositional and Experiential Hiddenness 73
3.1.5 Experiential and Propositional Evidence 77
3.1.6 The Hiddenness Argument and the Argument
from Evil 86
ix
x    Contents

3.2 The Argument Itself 91

3.2.1 Divine Love—Premises (1) and (2) 92
3.2.2 Conclusio (3) 110
3.2.3 No Nonresistant Nonbelief to Be Expected—
Premise (4) 111
3.2.4 Conclusio (5) 146
3.2.5 There Is at Least One Nonresistant Nonbeliever—
Premise (6) 146
3.2.6 Conclusio (7) 151

Part II Discussion of the Hiddenness Argument

4 Where to Go from Here? 155

4.1 Making Travel Arrangements 155
4.2 A Very Short Overview of Various Routes to Take 157
4.2.1 Avoiding Misunderstandings 158
4.2.2 Making Comparisons to the Argument from Evil 161
4.2.3 Challenging Schellenberg’s Premises 162
4.2.4 Introducing Further Propositions 167
4.2.5 Thinking a Step Ahead 175
4.3 My Way 177
4.3.1 Reading the Road Map 179
4.3.2 Tidying up and Packing a Bag 182
4.3.3 Ready for Take-Off 215

5 Conclusion 245

Bibliography 249

Index 265
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

That “atheism should be rated among the most serious characteristics

of this age, and thus be examined more carefully … [, and that] in the
awareness of the gravity of the questions raised by atheism, … these
questions should be considered seriously and more profoundly,”1 is
a remarkable point of view expressed in Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral
Constitution on the Church in the World, which was promulgated on
the final day of the Second Vatican Council on December 7, 1965. As
I see it, the argument against the existence of God which the Canadian
philosopher John L. Schellenberg presented about 28 years later merits
such a diligent examination.2
In a nutshell, his argument has the form of modus tollens3 and claims
that if the God of theism exists, then the following state of affairs does

1 Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et

morum, corr., ext., trans. and ed. Helmut Hoping and Peter Hünermann, 44th ed. (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 2014), 4319, 4321. (Below, citations of this compendium will have
the following form: ‘DH 0123.’ The two letters indicate the compedium’s two main editors,
Denzinger and Hünermann, whereas the numbers are not related to certain pages in the com-
pendium but allude to the compendium’s own counting of all the documents it contains.)
2 See J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Ithaca: Cornell

University Press, 1993).

ing holds: (1) p → q, (2) ¬q, and (3) ∴ ¬p. Hence, MT is also labelled as ‘denying the
3 According to this rule of inference, which I hereafter refer to as ‘MT,’ the follow-

consequent.’

© The Author(s) 2018 1

V. Weidner, Examining Schellenberg's Hiddenness Argument,
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97517-7_1
2 V. WEIDNER

not obtain in the actual world: that someone who, at some time t, is
not resistant toward a relationship with God lacks belief that God exists.
However, according to Schellenberg the consequent of this conditional
must be denied, since there is at least one individual who, at some time t,
is not resistant toward a relationship with God and yet does not believe
that God exists. Thus, it follows that we must also deny the antecedent
of the conditional and conclude that there is no God. As Schellenberg
rightly asserts, “it is a mistake to say that the hiddenness argument is a
very complicated argument. It is rather quite a simple argument which
requires complicated discussion.”4
Presumably, the hiddenness argument, as Schellenberg defends it,
has evolved and gained attention only recently, because we are living in
a time in which God’s existence is no longer taken for granted and in
which the explanatory power of the God-hypothesis seems to be dimin-
ishing.5 As a recent study issued by the General Social Survey of the
social science research organization NORC at the University of Chicago
suggests, worldwide “there is a modest, general shift away from belief in
God.”6 John Calvin’s view on the matter that “[c]ertainly, if there is any
quarter where it may be supposed that God is unknown, the most likely
for such an instance to exist is among the dullest tribes farthest removed
from civilization”7 seems, at least nowadays, to be quite outdated. Those
who lack belief that God exists might not have sufficient evidence for the
existence of God at hand. At least Bertrand Russell reportedly replied,

4 J. L. Schellenberg, The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy’s New Challenge to Belief in God

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 115; see, similarly, also p. 105. For ease of reading,
I omit the temporal tag ‘at some time t,’ but it should be understood as implicit. That is,
I will talk of a person who is, for example, not resistant toward relationship with God but
who lacks belief that God exists. But the present tense used here should not necessarily be
understood as relative to now, but relative to some t which may be now or a time in the past.
5 Accordingto Thomas Aquinas, the claim that all observable effects in the world are
explainable by natural or human-volitional causes without having to presuppose that there
is a God constitutes, in addition to the problem of evil, a likewise severe objection against
theism. According to that objection, the following holds: “Nulla igitur necessitas est
ponere Deum esse” (Thomas de Aquino, Summa Theologiae, ed. Petri Caramello, vol. 1
(Turin: Marietti, 1952), p. 1, q. 2, art. 3).
6 Tom W. Smith, “Beliefs About God Across Time and Countries,” in ISSP Data Report:

Religious Attitudes and Religious Change, eds. Insa Bechert and Markus Quandt (Cologne:
GESIS—Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, 2013), 25. I take it that Smith’s notion
of belief in God here designates belief that God exists.
7 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, newly trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 1

(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1863), 43.

 1 INTRODUCTION 3

upon being asked what he would say if he were to find himself after his
death to be standing, to his utter surprise, before the throne of God:
“‘Sir, why did you not give me better evidence?’.”8 Yet, this lack of suf-
ficient evidence that there is a God is, as Schellenberg sees it, neither a
state of affairs that theists should expect to obtain in the actual world
nor one which a perfectly loving God would allow to obtain. It is a com-
mon saying that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Yet,
Schellenberg does not agree with the view this saying expresses. Rather,
he claims that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. That is, in
Schellenberg’s view, the absence of a certain kind of evidence for the
existence of God is itself evidence that God does not exist.
However, by Schellenberg’s own admission, his reasoning is not
entirely without precedent nor is it entirely original.9

The idea that weak evidence for the existence of God or the presence of
nonbelief might count against the truth of theism does appear here and
there in the history of philosophy—though quite rarely. But it took until
1993 for it to be fully developed into an explicit argument against the
existence of God. And this argument is, I believe, original. (I’m not alone
in saying so: my critics in philosophy have done the same.)10

For example, Schellenberg mentions that he has found hints of sim-

ilar basic lines of thought in the writings of, inter alia, Joseph Butler,
Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ronald W. Hepburn.11
The short outline of the hiddenness argument I gave above may
have reminded an attentive reader of another prominent anti-theistic
8 Leo Rosten, “Bertrand Russell and God: A Memoir,” Saturday Review/World,

February 23, 1974, 26.

9 See, e.g., Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason, 1, fn. 1; J. L.

Schellenberg, “Divine Hiddenness,” in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, eds. Charles

Taliaferro, Paul Draper, and Philip L. Quinn, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010),
509; Schellenberg, The Hiddenness Argument, 24–28; or also J. L. Schellenberg, “Preface
to the Paperback Edition,” in J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason
with a new preface (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), vii.
10 Schellenberg, The Hiddenness Argument, 23.

11 Joseph Butler, for example, states this: “It has been thought by some persons that

if the evidence of revelation appears doubtful, this itself turns into a positive argument
against it because it cannot be supposed that, if it were true, it would be left to subsist
upon doubtful evidence.” Yet, Butler immediately adds that, in what follows, he eluci-
dates “the weakness of these opinions” (Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion: Natural
and Revealed, intro. Ronald Bayne, repr. 1927 (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1906),
181. See ibid. also pp. 181–198). Moreover, Schellenberg mentions this passage from
4 V. WEIDNER

argument that has constantly pressed on theists, namely the argument

from evil. The ancient argument from evil and Schellenberg’s more
novel hiddenness argument at least have in common that they consist of
premises which entail the conclusion that God does not exist.12 In other
words, both sorts of argument question the truth of the central theis-
tic claim that God exists and thus the truth of theism. As a result, these
arguments also question the reasonableness of those still holding an
affirmative doxastic attitude toward the claim that God exists or regard-
ing the truth of theism. Hence, providing suitable theistic responses is
the task of what in classical apologetics has been called a demonstratio

Nietzsche’s Daybreak, i.e., more precisely, aphorism nr. 91 entitled ‘God’s honesty.’ “A
god who is all-knowing and all-powerful and who does not even make sure that his crea-
tures understand his intention—could that be a god of goodness? Who allows countless
doubts and dubieties to persist, for thousands of years, as though the salvation of mankind
were unaffected by them, and who on the other hand holds out the prospect of frightful
consequences if any mistake is made as to the nature of the truth?” (Friedrich Nietzsche,
Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, eds. Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter,
trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 52). Finally,
Schellenberg names Ronald W. Hepburn whom he interprets as referring to an inconclu-
sive evidential situation here: “One might be tempted to see in that ambivalence a vindi-
cation of atheism. For how could such an ambiguous universe be the work of perfect love
and perfect power? Could this be a way to love and express love, to leave the loved one
in bewildering uncertainty over the very existence of the allegedly loving God? … That
is: if the situation is ambivalent, it is not ambivalent; since its ambivalence is a conclusive
argument against the existence of the Christian God” (Ronald W. Hepburn, “From World
to God,” Mind 72, no. 285 (1963): 50). Moreover, to see a link between Schellenberg’s
reasoning and the one of Ludwig Feuerbach and to see that the former may be a remake
of the latter, see Auernhammer, Franziska, and Thomas Schärtl, “Gottesbegriff und
Religionskritik: Alte Muster in neuen Konzepten,” Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und
Religionswissenschaft 98, no. 3–4 (2014): 207–214. I might add that implicit formulations
of anti-theistic hiddenness reasoning are critically discussed in the writings of Michael J.
Murray and Robert McKim, which were published shortly before Schellenberg’s first pres-
entation of the hiddenness argument appeared in public in his book Divine Hiddenness and
Human Reason of 1993. See Michael J. Murray, “Coercion and the Hiddenness of God,”
American Philosophical Quarterly 30, no. 1 (1993): 27–38 (APQ received this paper, as
stated at its end, on March 10, 1992) as well as Robert McKim, “The Hiddenness of
God,” Religious Studies 26, no. 1 (1990): 141–161.
12 In Subsection 3.1.6 of Chapter 3, “The Hiddenness Argument and the Argument from

Evil,” I introduce some further similarities and dissimilarities between these two arguments.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

religiosa.13 Furthermore, the hiddenness argument and the argument

from evil have the same logical form. Both arguments are based on the
aforementioned rule of inference labelled MT and claim that there is
a certain state of affairs obtaining in the actual world each of which is
not to be expected to obtain if God exists. More precisely, first, these
arguments postulate that the existence of God exhibiting certain divine
attributes, i.e., (i) perfect love or (ii) perfect omnipotence, goodness, and
omniscience, makes it expectable that a certain state of affairs obtains in
the actual world, i.e., ad (i), that there is no involuntary lack of belief
that God exists or, ad (ii), that there is no moral evil or natural evil.14
Then, they claim that this state of affairs does not obtain, but that, on
the contrary, the negation of this state of affairs is actually the case, i.e.,
ad (i), there is some involuntary lack of belief that God exists or, ad (ii),
there is some moral evil or natural evil. Hence, they conclude that God
exhibiting the aforementioned divine attributes does not exist. In other
words, according to Schellenberg we

must be open to the possibility that the world would be completely differ-
ent than it is if there were a God. For the properties we ascribe to God
have implications, and these place constraints on what the world could be
like if there were a being with those properties.15

As a matter of fact, alongside the argument from evil the hiddenness

argument “has become one of the most prominent arguments for athe-
ism in contemporary philosophy of religion.”16 Thus, I fear that Paul
K. Moser’s judgement that “divine hiddenness offers no real threat to

13 For an overall account of what a demonstratio religiosa deals with today, see

Armin Kreiner, “Demonstratio religiosa,” in Den Glauben denken: Neue Wege der
Fundamentaltheologie, eds. Heinrich Döring, Armin Kreiner, and Perry Schmidt-Leukel
(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1993), 9–48.
14 The occurrence of moral evil generally denotes a state of affairs obtaining due to mis-

deeds caused by human persons (malum morale). The occurrence of natural evil, on the
other hand, designates a state of affairs consisting of, e.g., natural disasters or fatal illnesses
(malum physicum).
15 J. L. Schellenberg, The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism (Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 2007), 198.

16 Travis Dumsday, “Divine Hiddenness as Deserved,” Faith and Philosophy 31, no. 3

(2014): 286.
6 V. WEIDNER

reasonable belief that the Jewish-Christian God actually exists and loves
us all”17 may probably be made too hasty. In what follows, I do not
enter the “much-traveled (one might say trampled) neighboring territory
of the problem of evil” but turn instead to “the much-neglected and
­little-explored territory … labeled the problem of Divine hiddenness.”18
In my book, the overall leading research question I started with and
which I have been constantly pondering about while undertaking the
investigation is this. Why, if there is a God, is God’s existence not evident
to everyone? Or rather, why is God’s existence epistemically hidden19 for
some? This constitutes the riddle or problem of divine hiddenness in my
eyes. Yet, I agree with Peter van Inwagen that as

is the case with the problem of evil, the problem of the hiddenness of God
is more often referred to than precisely stated. Theologians often refer to
this problem as if it were perfectly clear what it was, but their writings on
the subject do not always make it wholly clear what the problem is.20

I hope that this book helps making it more clear what the problem of divine
hiddenness is. In my attempt of doing so, I enter the field of religious epis-
temology. However, I am well aware that I am not an epistemologist by
training. And so I kindly ask those who are epistemologists by training to
give mercy to my mistakes and, if they wish, please correct them. I approach
the hiddenness argument in a systematic fashion, i.e., I am more concerned
with the content of some person’s argument and the claims made in sup-
port of it than I am with the details of the historic background of the argu-
ment and its claims. On this occasion, I wish to ask pardon from historians
of theology and philosophy for my abbreviated way of often only high-
lighting the tip of the iceberg. Furthermore, I pursue this project from a
theistic point of view. Yet, I join the common academic debate about

17 Paul K. Moser, “Reply to Schellenberg,” in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of

Religion, eds. Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon (Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2004), 58.
18 Schellenberg, The Wisdom to Doubt, 243. There, these two direct quotes appear in

reversed order.
19 Similarly, in correspondence Holm Tetens proposed to speak of God’s ‘cognitive

hiddenness.’
20 Peter van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University

of St. Andrews in 2003 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 136.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

the question of whether or not there is a God without presupposing

God’s existence as an unquestionable factum brutum in my reasoning. My
approach differs from, for example, Alvin Plantinga’s stance in this respect.
According to Plantinga, the “Christian philosopher quite properly starts
from the existence of God, and presupposes it in philosophical work,” so
that, as a result, “Christian philosophers need not and ought not to see
themselves as involved, for example, in a common effort to determine
whether there is such a person as God.”21 Rather, I agree with Richard
Swinburne that “for those of us for whom it is neither overwhelmingly
obvious that there is a God or overwhelmingly obvious that there is no
God, it is normally obligatory to investigate the issue.”22 Furthermore, my
investigation is classifiable as bearing a certain handwriting23 which may be
labelled as what is today called analytic as opposed to continental.24
As Michael C. Rea rightly points out, analytics might generally be charac-
terised as placing “a high premium on spelling out hidden assumptions, on
scrupulously trying to lay bare whatever evidence one has (or lacks) for the
claims that one is making.”25 Winfried Löffler agrees with Rea that analytic
philosophy of religion is not tantamount to a bunch of certain content-based
positions but rather to a specific style of philosophy. Moreover, theologians

21 Both quotes are found in Alvin Plantinga, “Advice to Christian Philosophers,” Faith

and Philosophy 1, no. 3 (1984): 261, 270.

22 Richard Swinburne, Faith and Reason, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press,

2005), 141.
23 For example, the reader may notice the author write from the first-person-perspective

and in direct speech which may be regarded as inapt in other academic settings.
24 No clear-cut line can be drawn between current analytic and continental philosophy

of religion or theology. Yet, there are mutual, more or less justified, prejudices between
those affiliated with one or the other academic group in the community. The former is eyed
with suspicion due to an alleged forgetfulness of history, entertaining a dubious anthro-
pomorphic concept of God, or favouring some cold-blooded reasoning entailing all too
often complicated maths which is accessible only for a fine circle of the chosen few. The
latter group of academics, on the other hand, is confronted with prejudices such as overes-
timating the role of historic knowledge in philosophical or theological discussions, writing
merely associative yet occasionally beautiful prose, or blurring the way of argumentation
under a mountain of stilted verbiage. Maybe, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Presumably, if opportunities for mutual exchange were more frequently utilised, then each
side could learn a lot from the other and be challenged to avoid one-sidedness.
25 Michael C. Rea, “Introduction,” in Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy

of Theology, eds. Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009), 5, fn. 6.
8 V. WEIDNER

and philosophers should neither be afraid of this style of reasoning nor

remain aloof from it and be reassured that it does not per se entail any guar-
antee of quality.26 Furthermore, I aim at accommodating this. “Where ques-
tions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim:
if you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself.”27 I think that
the following jest says a lot about how analytic philosophy works at best. “A
detective novel written by a good philosopher would begin: ‘In this novel I
shall show that the butler did it.’”28
In this spirit, I now give a sketch of the outline of my book and its
central claim. In Part 1 of this survey, Chapter 2 deals with the question
of what the notion of the hiddenness of God traditionally refers to and
means. I also specify two respects in which God has been claimed to be
not so hidden in tradition. As it turns out, Schellenberg’s use of the term
divine hiddenness differs significantly from the traditional one, thus it is
almost inevitable that Schellenberg’s argument would be frequently mis-
understood. In fact, the key purpose of this chapter is to clarify what is
not, at least prima facie, at issue in the hiddenness argument, against the
background of a general introduction into classical theological assertions
about the hiddenness and revelation of God.
Chapter 3 constitutes a fine-pored exposition of the hiddenness argu-
ment in its most recent version. In it, I elucidate in great detail why, on
Schellenberg’s account, it follows from the fact that God’s existence is not
evident to everybody that God does not exist. That chapter likewise evinces
an overall descriptive character and forms the main part of my book. By
painstakingly laying bare the specifics of the hiddenness argument, I endeav-
our primarily to prepare the ground for further reflection on the argument,
novel responses to it, and thus an even more in-depth debate about it.
Finally, Part 2 of this survey is dedicated to the discussion of
Schellenberg’s argument. The beginning of Chapter 4 briefly discusses

26 See Winfried Löffler, “Wer hat Angst vor analytischer Philosophie? Zu einem immer

noch getrübten Verhältnis,” Stimmen der Zeit 6 (2007), 375. As Armin Kreiner illumi-
nates, the significance of analytic philosophy for theologians, including not least its change-
ful history, consists in having drawn attention to two of the most central questions, i.e., the
one about the meaning and the one about the rationality of religious speech (see Armin
Kreiner, “Die theologische Relevanz Analytischer Philosophie,” Salzburger Theologische
Zeitschrift 9 (2005): 130).
27 John R. Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1983), x.

28 J. L. Schellenberg, Evolutionary Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

theistic replies to the hiddenness argument which, inter alia, question

some of its premises or offer a possible answer to the question of why
God’s existence might not be evident to everybody. Additionally, I give
a short outline of other accounts of anti-theistic hiddenness reasoning
which build upon Schellenberg’s reasoning. And so I draw a rough road
map sketching which roads have been taken in response to the hidden-
ness argument so far and which additional ways have been trod in the
wake of it in order to provide an orientation for those who are still unfa-
miliar with the debate.
Last but not least, in the main section of Chapter 4 I present my own
reply to the hiddenness argument. Contrary to my original plan, I do not
directly offer a particular defense29 but leave this task for a future occa-
sion. Instead, in this book I restrict myself to objecting to one particu-
lar subpremise of the hiddenness argument in some detail. To let the cat
out of the bag, I challenge Schellenberg’s view that, necessarily, someone
has to believe that God exists in order to be able to personally relate to
God. Instead, I argue that it is plausible that assuming that God exists
is sufficient to allow someone to be in a personal relationship with God.
In short, I propose that belief that God exists as well as assumption that
God exists are two possible instances of theistic faith that God exists.
Hence, I intend to show that, even though the hiddenness argument is
valid, it is not sound. That is, in my view the fact that there is some-
one who lacks belief that there is a God, even though she is not resistant
toward a personal relationship with God, does not, contra Schellenberg,
give us reason to reject the existence of a perfectly loving God.
The dispute over Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument arose in
English-speaking analytic philosophy of religion but is still hardly noticed
in English or non-English continental philosophy or theology30 and even
among German-speaking analytics. My book is written in English which
enjoys the status of being the international language of scholarship.

29 For what I here refer to and mean by the term ‘defense,’ see Subsection 4.2.4 of

Chapter 4, “Introducing Further Propositions”.

30 An exception might be a publication by Tomáš Halík which appears to be like a dis-

tant echo to the hiddenness debate by way of implicitly referring to it. In light of the reli-
gious ambivalence of the world in evidential terms, i.e., what he calls the hiddenness or
absence of God, Halík recommends that atheists and theists have more patience with God
(see Tomáš Halík, Geduld mit Gott: Die Geschichte von Zachäus heute, 4th rev. and impr. ed.
(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2011), esp. 9, 11, 15).
10 V. WEIDNER

For I want to make a modest contribution to the discussion in which

philosophers as well as theologians are already engaged. Additionally, I
aim at attracting the attention of as extensive a range of scholars as pos-
sible who have not yet joined the debate. In fact, I would like to support
Schellenberg’s own objective that his hiddenness argument “should be
construed by theists not as a cry of triumph but rather as a challenge, an
invitation.”31
Needless to say, the reader may search but will not find an all-
encompassing solution to the riddle of divine hiddenness in this book.
Rather, I wish to help making sure that the anti-theistic force of
Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument as well as the argument’s shortcom-
ings are taken as seriously as they should be. I also wish to provide an
insight into the first preliminary results of my reflection on it. As a mat-
ter of fact, my thinking about it has just begun.32

31 Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason, 13.

32 To conclude the introduction, let me make six technical comments regarding this sur-
vey. First, I use the conjunction ‘or’ in an inclusive sense, i.e., ‘This wine goes well with
game or fish’ may denote at least one of the following: ‘This wine goes well with game,’
‘This wine goes well with fish,’ ‘This wine goes well with game and fish.’ On the other
hand, when formulating ‘either … or’ I use ‘or’ in an exclusive sense, i.e., ‘This wine
goes well with either game or fish’ signifies only one but not both of the following: ‘This
wine goes well with game,’ ‘This wine goes well with fish.’ Second, in brackets like these
‘[ ],’ which may occasionally be found in a direct quote, I omitted a letter in the original
text and substituted it with the one in the brackets. Third, if a word is put in italics in
a direct quote, then this word appears in italics in the original. Fourth, unless otherwise
noted, all translations herein are my own. Fifth, biblical quotations are taken from the New
Revised Standard Version: The Go-Anywhere Thinline Bible Catholic Edition (New York:
HarperOne, 2011), except where otherwise specified. Sixth, citations and references are
based on the notes and bibliography system as outlined in the 16th edition of the Chicago
Manual of Style (see The Chicago Manual of Style Online, 16th ed., http://www.chicago-
manualofstyle.org/home.html).
 PART I

Schellenberg’s Hiddenness Argument

 CHAPTER 2

Setting the Stage

The fact that there is a person who is not resistant towards a ­relationship
with God and yet does not believe that God exists indicates that there
is only weak theistic evidence in the actual world available to that per-
son which again turns out to be strong evidence for atheism. Why?
A perfectly loving God would not allow for such a state of affairs
to obtain. In short, that is Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument.1

1 For a start, see the publications in which Schellenberg has been introducing, defend-
ing, or developing his argument. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason;
id., “What the Hiddenness of God Reveals: A Collaborative Discussion,” in Divine
Hiddenness: New Essays, eds. Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul K. Moser (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 33–61; id., “Divine Hiddenness Justifies Atheism,”
in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, eds. Michael L. Peterson and Raymond
J. VanArragon (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 30–41, and id., “Reply to Moser,” in
Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, eds. Michael L. Peterson and Raymond
J. VanArragon (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 54–56; id., The Wisdom to Doubt, 195–
242; id., “The hiddenness argument revisited (I),” Religious Studies 41, no. 2 (2005):
201–215, as well as “The hiddenness argument revisited (II),” Religious Studies 41, no.
3 (2005): 287–303; id., “Divine Hiddenness,” 510; id., “Divine hiddenness and human
philosophy,” in Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief: New Perspectives, eds. Adam Green
and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 13–32; id., “Divine
hiddenness: part 1 (recent work on the hiddenness argument),” Philosophy Compass 12, no.
4 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12355, as well as “Divine hiddenness: Part 2
(recent enlargements of the discussion),” Philosophy Compass 12, no. 4 (2017), https://
doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12413. See also his recent short presentation of this argument for
a more general audience in The Hiddenness Argument, esp. p. 103.

© The Author(s) 2018 13

V. Weidner, Examining Schellenberg’s Hiddenness Argument,
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97517-7_2
14 V. WEIDNER

Turning the tables he claims that talk of the hiddenness of God is fallacious
and evinces on closer inspection the nonexistence of God.
To the ears of many theists this reasoning might sound a bit strange.
These theists may be baffled by the lively debate in analytic philoso-
phy of religion which Schellenberg kicked off by initially presenting his
hiddenness argument about two decades ago. And they may be all the
more surprised to learn that it has found its way into encyclopedias2 and
textbooks3 meanwhile, thereby informing the education of a significant

2 See, for example, Daniel Howard-Snyder, “Hiddenness of God,” in Encyclopedia of

Philosophy, ed. Donald M. Borchert, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Thomson Gale and Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 352–357. For a special reference to it under the entry “Philosophy
of Religion,” see, e.g.,—in Section 5. “Problems of Evil and Suffering,” Subsection d. “The
Hiddenness of God”—Chad Meister, “Philosophy of Religion,” in The Internet Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, eds. James Fieser and Bradley Dowden, http://www.iep.utm.edu/religion.
And for a short mention of it under the same entry but in the context of introducing the
debate about the evidential weight of religious experience, see, e.g.,—in Section 4. “The
Concept of God,” Subsection 4.2. “God’s Existence,” Subsubsection 4.2.6. “Religious
Experience”—Charles Taliaferro, “Philosophy of Religion,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (first published March 12, 2007, substantively revised
September 11, 2013), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-religion. See also,
more recently, Trent Dougherty, and Ross Parker, “Hiddenness of God,” in Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online, ed. Tim Crane (2015), https://doi.org/10.4324/9780
415249126-k3574-1, as well as Daniel Howard-Snyder, and Adam Green, “Hiddenness of
God,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (first published April 23,
2016), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-hiddenness.
3 See, to begin with, Daniel Howard-Snyder, and Paul K. Moser, eds., Divine Hiddenness:

New Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Kevin Timpe, ed., “Evil and
Divine Hiddenness,” in Arguing About Religion (New York: Routledge, 2009), 201–308.
See also Schellenberg, “Divine Hiddenness,” 509–518. J. L. Schellenberg, “Would a
Loving God Hide from Anyone? Assembling and Assessing the Hiddenness Argument for
Atheism,” in Introducing Philosophy for Canadians: A Text With Integrated Readings, eds.
Robert C. Solomon and Douglas McDermid (Don Mills, Canada: Oxford University Press,
2011), 165–168. Again, see Schellenberg, “Divine Hiddenness Justifies Atheism,” 30–41,
and ibid.—in Part I “Attacks on Religious Belief,” Chapter 2 “Does Divine Hiddenness
Justify Atheism?”—also the aforementioned “Reply to Moser,” 54–56, as well as Paul
K. Moser, “Divine Hiddenness Does Not Justify Atheism,” in Contemporary Debates in
Philosophy of Religion, eds. Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon (Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 2004), 42–54, and Moser, “Reply to Schellenberg,” 56–58. Michael J.
Murray, and David E. Taylor, “Hiddenness,” in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy
of Religion, eds. Chad Meister and Paul Copan, 2nd ed. (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge,
2013), 368–377—to be found in Part IV “The theistic concept of God.” Richard E. Creel,
Philosophy of Religion: The Basics (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 145–147—‘the
Problem of Divine Hiddenness’ is Subchapter 11.4 of Chapter 11 “Arguments against
 2 SETTING THE STAGE 15

number of students. For is not the notion of the hiddenness of God at

the core of the Judeo-Christian and Muslim tradition itself?
“Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior”
(Is 45:15).4 Indeed, God is often described in such biblical texts as for
example in Deutero-Isaiah as being a hidden God.5 “Time and again, the
hidden God has been lamented over in prayer … and negotiated within

Belief in the Existence of God.” Louis P. Pojman, and Michael C. Rea, eds., “Evil and
the Hiddenness of God,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 7th ed. (Stamford, CT:
Cengage Learning, 2015), 228–392—to be found in Part III, where the problem of evil is
discussed alongside the problem of hiddenness. For contributions to an Internet debate, see
John Schellenberg, “What Divine Hiddenness Reveals, or How Weak Theistic Evidence is
Strong Atheistic Proof,” in God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence, ed. and
intro. Paul Draper, Section IV (2008), http://infidels.org/library/modern/john_schel-
lenberg/hidden.html, and John Schellenberg, “The Sounds of Silence Stilled: A Reply to
Jordan on Hiddenness,” in God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence, ed. and
intro. Paul Draper, Section IV (2008), http://infidels.org/library/modern/john_schellen-
berg/silence-stilled.html, as well as Jeff Jordan, “The Sounds of Silence: Why the Divine
Hiddenness Argument Fails,” in God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence,
ed. and intro. Paul Draper, Section IV (2008), http://infidels.org/library/modern/jef-
frey_jordan/silence.html, and Jeff Jordan, “On Joining the Ranks of the Faithful,” in God
or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence, ed. and intro. Paul Draper, Section IV
(2008), http://infidels.org/library/modern/jeffrey_jordan/faith.html.
4 The masoretic text printed in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia reads from right to

left: (see Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, eds. Karl

Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph, 5th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1997)). In
the Vulgata, the Latin wording goes like this: “vere tu es Deus absconditus Deus Israhel
salvator” (see Biblia Sacra Vulgata: Editio quinta, eds. Robert Weber and Roger Gryson
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007)). The verb abscondere of which the perfect
passive principle is used in this expression means among other things: to hide something,
to conceal something; to stash something, to cause something to become invisible; to cover
something, to lose sight of someone or something; to keep something secret (see “abs-
condo,” in Der neue Georges: Ausführliches Lateinisch-Deutsches Handwörterbuch, coll. and
prep. Karl-Ernst Georges, ed. Thomas Baier, and mod. Tobias Dänzer, vol. 1 (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2013), 23).
5 For profound research of some biblical scholars on the subject, see, for example, Samuel

Terrien, The Elusive Presence: Toward a New Biblical Theology (San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1978); Samuel E. Balentine, The Hidden God: The Hiding of the Face of God in the
Old Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); and Otto Kaiser, Vom offen-
baren und verborgenen Gott: Studien zur spätbiblischen Weisheit und Hermeneutik (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 2008). For a trial of summarising and systemising the biblical accounts
of divine hiddenness, see Insa Meyer, Aufgehobene Verborgenheit: Gotteslehre als Weg zum
Gottesdienst (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 11–77.
16 V. WEIDNER

thought,”6 Thomas Reinhuber puts it almost laconically. But one needs

to be very careful in the context of the current analytic debate not to
confuse two distinct modes in which the phrase ‘hiddenness of God,’ or
rather ‘divine hiddenness,’7 can be employed: literally or non-literally.8

2.1   Hiddenness in a Literal Sense

The phrase divine hiddenness in its literal sense originates in theistic dis-
course and implies the belief that God exists. That is, theists referring
to the hiddenness of God believe that God exists and is yet hidden in
some way. Thus, hiddenness understood in that sense is a divine attrib-
ute. However, the peculiar familiarity of this term should not lead to the
conclusion that it is always clear what exactly is meant by it.
Maybe it comes as no surprise that there is neither a basic concep-
tual definition of divine hiddenness in its literal sense which is gener-
ally agreed on nor a thorough systematic account of it. In fact, the term
tends to appear in the vicinity of other well-known, yet similar vague
notions as for example the mystery or mysteriousness, transcendence,
elusiveness, remoteness, depth, or also the otherness of the Divine.9
Therefore, I will begin by examining and clarifying what the theological
statements about the hiddenness of God may be referring to.
Sketching with fairly broad strokes, God is traditionally claimed to be
hidden with regard to (1) his presence or (2) his essence, whereas (3)

6 Thomas Reinhuber, “Deus absconditus/Deus revelatus,” in Religion in Geschichte und

Gegenwart: Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, eds. Hans Dieter

Betz, Don S. Browning, Bernd Janowski, and Eberhard Jüngel, 4th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 1999), 683.
7 Both notions are treated synonymously hereafter.

8 For Schellenberg’s own emphasis on this matter, see, e.g., his Divine Hiddenness and

Human Reason, 4–6, “The hiddenness argument revisited (I),” 204, or also “Divine
Hiddenness,” 509.
9 See on this point also Thomas Gerlach, Verborgener Gott – Dreieiniger Gott: Ein

Koordinationsproblem lutherischer Gotteslehre bei Werner Elert (Frankfurt am Main: Peter

Lang, 1998), 25–27. For an example of mentioning a colorful mixture of these phrases in
a short encyclopedic entry on the hiddenness of God, see Eva-Maria Faber, “Verborgenheit
Gottes,” in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Walter Kasper et al., vol. 10, 3rd ed.
(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2001), 607. Similarly, some of these terms are also named
under the headline of God’s invisibility (see Gerhard Ludwig Müller, “Unsichtbarkeit
Gottes,” in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Walter Kasper et al., vol. 10, 3rd ed.
(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2001), 431–432).
 2 SETTING THE STAGE 17

his energies and (4) his existence is taken to be not hidden but rather
evident. It is these four aspects which I deal with now one by one.

2.1.1   Missing His Presence—Hiddenness I

In the first case, the topic is the unexpected lack of experiencing God’s
being there in one’s life for a certain period of time. The occurrence
of this state of affairs may result in an existentially10 threatening worry
because it might imply the withdrawing of God’s life-giving blessings.
Under these circumstances it is not unusual for the believer to complain
to the apparently distant God about permitting or actually causing this
miserable state of affairs to prevail.11 “Hear my prayer, O LORD; let
my cry come to you. Do not hide your face from me in the day of my
distress” (Ps 102:1–2).12 The psalmist paradigmatically weeps over the
painfully felt apparent loss of God’s presence13 by addressing the Divine
whose mere existence per se he would never seriously cast into doubt.
If God’s withdrawn presence is preceded by an intense life of faith but
leads to a severe spiritual crisis with transformational effects, the idiom of
divine hiddenness alludes to a famous topos in mystical tradition, which

10 Palpably, no reference to the program of, e.g., the French existential philosophers such

as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, or Gabriel Marcel will be made here.
11 This is not to say that the believer claims to always be able to identify the reason why

God does not show his presence to her anymore. While, for example, in the Psalms, God’s
hiddenness is mainly lamented about as occurring without any conceivable divine reason,
the texts of the prophets often designate a reason for God’s withdrawal, namely the sinful
or rather culpable behaviour of the believer herself evoking divine hiddenness (see Meyer,
Aufgehobene Verborgenheit, 12, 13–39).
12 In this context, one might also think of Jesus Christ’s desperate cry on the cross: “‘Eli,

Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Mt 27:46).
13 In other words, the notion of the ‘face of God’ being either turned away or turned

toward a human being is usually interpreted by biblical scholars as referring to the presence
of God which is either withdrawn from or granted to the believer (see Meyer, Aufgehobene
Verborgenheit, 17). Whereas, as stated above, the hiding of God’s face, if it occurs, is mainly
conceived of as a rather life-threatening state of affairs, there is at least one biblical pas-
sage where this is not the case. In the book Exodus, Moses asks God to show him his
divine glory, yet God is reported to refuse to turn his face toward Moses not to seriously
challenge, but, on the contrary, to save Moses’ life: “‘I will make all my goodness pass
before you … But,’ he said, ‘you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live’” (Ex
33:19–20). In the gospel of John, a statement is made which may be viewed as a distant
echo to the passage in Exodus: “No one has ever seen God” (Jn 1:18; see also 1 Jn 4:12).
18 V. WEIDNER

in the wake of St. John of the Cross has been referred to as the dark
night of the soul.14 In light of the closeness to God the saint previously
enjoyed in his life, he unexpectedly undergoes a time of bitter loneliness
casting a vast shadow over him while being imprisoned in Toledo. He
processes the devestating situation in which God seems to be completely
absent by writing this long autobiographically influenced sonnet. In the
end, John of the Cross is reportedly blessed by a direct mystical encoun-
ter with God—the unio mystica, i.e., the loving union of man with God.
Looking at the lyrics of John of the Cross on a meta-level, they can
also be read as a spiritual guide for believers aiming at union with God.
Apparently, the longed for unio mystica needs to be preceded by this
tough process of transformation of the believer himself and his relation-
ship with the Divine which John of the Cross denotes as the dark night
of the soul. More precisely, the latter consists of three phases. It begins,
first of all, with what he calls the night of senses in which the affective
inner life of the believer is purified. Secondly, the night of spirit follows in
which the intellectual inner life of the believer is reformed. In these first
two nights, the believer apparently contributes actively to the transform-
ing power while, thirdly, a passive purification of the human soul takes
place which is caused by a divine cleansing fire owing to the grace of God.
And so talk about the hiddenness of God referring to the believer’s lack
of sensing God’s presence for a while depicts a sort of emotional, practical,
or existential problem.15 The problem of divine hiddenness in this sense is
best taken care of in consultation with spiritual directors and pastoral experts.

2.1.2   His Incomprehensible Essence—Hiddenness II

In the second case, however, the issue is that the essence or nature16
of the transcendent God is epistemically unrecognisable for his finite
creatures. Noticeably, this amounts to a more cognitive,17 theoretical,

14 For the following, see San Juan de la Cruz, “Noche oscura,” in Obras Completas, text

rev., introd. and comments José Vicente Rodríguez, instr. introd. and comments Federico
Ruiz Salvador, 5th crit. ed. (Madrid: Editorial de Espiritualidad, 1993), 431–487.
15 See, exemplarily, Howard-Snyder and Green, “Hiddenness of God.”

16 These two terms are used synonymously hereafter.

17 The distinction Howard-Snyder and Moser make between an existential versus a cog-

nitive concern from divine hiddenness, depending on whether the term hiddenness is taken
literally or non-literally, is a helpful one (see Daniel Howard-Snyder, and Paul K. Moser,
 2 SETTING THE STAGE 19

or intellectual challenge for philosophers of religion and systematic

theologians.18

2.1.2.1 A Standard Issue

Confessions to the incomprehensibilitatis Dei can be found from early on
in older magisterial documents such as, for example, in the resolutions
of the Latin version of the First Lateran Synod of 649 as well as in the
resolutions of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.19 The First Vatican
Council proclaimed God as being incomprehensibilis and “super omnia,
quae praeter ipsum sunt et concipi possunt, ineffabiliter excelsus.”20
Augustine of Hippo had already warned: “Si enim comprehendis, non est
Deus.”21 “His essence, indeed, is incomprehensible, utterly transcending
all human thought,”22 Calvin consented. And Karl Rahner noted that the
Divine’s “incomprehensibility is not one attribute of God among others,
but it is the attribute of his attributes.”23 According to Rahner, God’s
hiddenness in the sense of his incomprehensibility is never going to be
unveiled but is rather confirmed on Earth as in the heavenly visio beat-
ifica, which shows precisely that God remains a radical mystery for us.24

“Introduction: The Hiddenness of God,” in Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, eds. Daniel
Howard-Snyder and Paul K. Moser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),
1–3). Regarding the former, they mainly refer to the elusiveness of the presence of God,
whereas the latter, as will be seen later, points to Schellenberg’s argument. Yet, they as well
as Schellenberg (see, e.g., Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason, 5–6) seem
to miss the fact that the literal notion of the hiddenness-term can also point to a certain
kind of cognitive concern. In fact, it has been treated as such in the theological tradition, as
I illustrate in the next paragraphs.
18 Even though these problems (both the somewhat practical one and the more theoreti-

cal one) need to be sharply distinguished, both of them may plausibly occur simultaneously
in someone’s life, as Howard-Snyder and Moser rightly notice (see Howard-Snyder, and
Moser, “Introduction,” 5).
19 See DH 501, 800, 804.

20 DH 3001.

21 Augustinus, “Sermo CXVII,” in Opera Omnia: Post Lovaniensium Theologorum

Recensionem, ed. J.-P. Migne, vol. 5.1 (Paris, 1865), 663.

22 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 51.

23 Karl Rahner, “Die menschliche Sinnfrage vor dem absoluten Geheimnis Gottes,” in

Schriften zur Theologie, ed. Paul Imhof, vol. 13 (Zürich: Benziger Verlag Einsiedeln, 1978), 116.
24 See
Karl Rahner, “Über die Verborgenheit Gottes,” in Schriften zur Theologie, ed. Karl
H. Neufeld, vol. 12 (Zürich: Benziger Verlag Einsiedeln, 1975), 285–305, esp. 299, 305.
For Rahner’s most prominent theology of the mysteriousness of God, see, e.g., Karl Rahner,
20 V. WEIDNER

Roughly speaking, the hiddenness of God taken in the sense of his

epistemic incomprehensibility is commonly found in writings on the doc-
trine of God. This is particularly true in the case of German theological
texts written by Catholic theologians. In fact, some Catholics seem to
prefer the notion of God’s “incomprehensibility”25 in this context over
the more rarely used notion of God’s ‘hiddenness.’ Yet, they use both
terms mainly to refer to the notion that the nature of God is not utterly
knowable. In writings by Protestant theologians, on the other hand, the
expression of ‘the hiddenness of God’ occurs far more frequently featur-
ing a lot more diverse connotations,26 but also means, inter alia, that
God is not knowable.

“Über den Begriff des Geheimnisses in der katholischen Theologie,” in Schriften zur Theologie,
vol. 4, 2nd ed. (Zürich: Benziger Verlag Einsiedeln, 1961), 51–99, esp. 80–81. By now, the
phrase that ‘God is a mystery’ seems to be part of the active vocabulary of many theologians,
even though it is not always as obvious as it could be what exactly they mean when using it
(see, e.g., Wilhelm Breuning, “Gotteslehre,” in Glaubenszugänge: Lehrbuch der Katholischen
Dogmatik, ed. Wolfgang Beinert, vol. 1 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1995), 206).
25 See Rahner, “Über die Verborgenheit Gottes,” 286. Exemplarily, let me point to these few

dogmatic references on God’s incomprehensibility. Breuning, “Gotteslehre,” 242–243, 254–

255. Johannes Brinktrine, Die Lehre von Gott: Von der Erkennbarkeit, vom Wesen und von den
Vollkommenheiten Gottes, vol. 1 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1953), 39–42, 69. Gerhard
Ludwig Müller, Katholische Dogmatik: Für Studium und Praxis der Theologie (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 1995), 23, 27, 113. Joseph Pohle, Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, ed. Josef
Gummersbach, vol. 1, 10th ed. (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1952), 148–155, 174–176.
26 I agree with Rahner’s assessment on this point, see Rahner, “Über die Verborgenheit

Gottes,” 285–286. Regarding the notion of the knowability of God, see, e.g., Wilhelm
Trillhaas, Dogmatik, 4th ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 97–119, who in the first
section of the first main part of his dogmatics, entitled “The Mystery of God,” names his
seventh chapter “Hiddenness of God and Cognisance of God.” Karl Barth also deals with
it in this context in his Church Dogmatics. More precisely, chapter one of §27 “The Limits
of the Cognisance of God” is “The Hiddenness of God” in which he prominently argues
for the claim that God is only known by God alone (see Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik:
Die Lehre von Gott, vol. 2 (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1980), 200–229). On
the other hand, there are multifaceted treatments on divine hiddenness such as by Wilfried
Härle, Dogmatik, 4th ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 92–96, 284–286, who writes
on “The Hiddenness of God in Jesus Christ” and “The Hiddenness of the Reality of God”.
Regarding the hidden God in respect to “The Reality of the Wrath of God,” see Paul
Althaus, Grundriss der Dogmatik (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt Berlin, 1951), 31–33.
Werner Elert also alludes to it in very different settings; see Werner Elert, Der christliche
Glaube: Grundlinien der lutherischen Dogmatik, ed. Ernst Kinder, 3rd ed. (Hamburg:
Furche-Verlag, 1956), 77, 114, 147–150, 155, 231, 280, 284, 343. For an attempt at a
clarification of and a critical assessment on Elert’s thoughts, see Gerlach, Verborgener
Gott – Dreieiniger Gott. However, there are also publications by Catholics which deal
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 “A photograph?” Pauline said. “No; I don’t think I’ve seen a
photograph.”
“Ah, you wouldn’t have a photograph of me that’s not a good
many years’ old. It was a good deal before your time.”
With her head full of the possibilities of her husband’s past, for
she couldn’t tell that there mightn’t have been another, Pauline said,
with her brave distinctness:
“Are you, perhaps, the person who rang up 4,259 Mayfair? If
you are ...”
The stranger’s rather regal eyes opened slightly. She was
leaning one arm on the chimney-piece and looking over her
shoulder, but at that she turned and held out both her hands.
“Oh, my dear,” she said, “it’s perfectly true what he said. You’re
the bravest woman in the world, and I’m Katya Lascarides.”
With the light full upon her face, Pauline Leicester hardly stirred.
“You’ve heard all about me,” she said, with a touch of sadness in
her voice, “from Robert Grimshaw?”
“No, from Ellida,” Katya answered, “and I’ve seen your
photograph. She carries it about with her.”
Pauline Leicester said, “Ah!” very slowly. And then, “Yes; Ellida’s
very fond of me. She’s very good to me.”
“My dear,” Katya said, “Ellida’s everything in the matter. At any
rate, if I’m going to do you any good, it’s she that’s got me here. I
shouldn’t have done it for Robert Grimshaw.”
Pauline turned slightly pale.
“You haven’t quarrelled with Robert?” she said. “I should be so
sorry.”
“My dear,” Katya answered, “never mention his name to me
again. It’s only for you I’m here, because what Ellida told me has
made me like you;” and then she asked to see the patient.
 Dudley Leicester, got into evening dress as he was by Saunders
and Mr. Held every evening, sat, blond and healthy to all seeming,
sunk in the eternal arm-chair, his fingers beating an eternal tattoo,
his eyes fixed upon vacancy. His appearance was so exactly natural
that it was impossible to believe he was in any “condition” at all. It
was so impossible to believe it that when, with a precision that
seemed to add many years to her age, Katya Lascarides
approached, and, bending over him, touched with the tips of her
fingers little and definite points on his temples and brows, touching
them and retouching them as if she were fingering a rounded wind-
instrument, and that, when she asked: “Doesn’t that make your head
feel better?” it seemed merely normal that his right hand should
come up from the ceaseless drumming on the arm of the chair to
touch her wrist, and that plaintively his voice should say: “Much
better; oh, much better!”
And Pauline and Mr. Held said simultaneously: “He isn’t ...”
“Oh, he isn’t cured,” Katya said. “This is only a part of the
process. It’s to get him to like me, to make him have confidence in
me, so that I can get to know something about him. Now, go away. I
can’t give you any verdict till I’ve studied him.”
 PART V

IN the intervals of running from hotel to hotel—for Robert Grimshaw

had taken it for granted that Ellida was right, and that Katya had
gone either to the old hotel where she had stayed with Mrs. Van
Husum, and where they knew she had left the heavier part of her
belongings—Robert Grimshaw looked in to tell Pauline that he hadn’t
yet been able to fix things up with Katya Lascarides, but that he was
certainly going to do so, and would fetch her along that afternoon. In
himself he felt some doubt of how he was going to find Katya. At the
Norfolk Street hotel he had heard that she had called in for two or
three minutes the night before in order to change her clothes—he
remembered that she was wearing her light grey dress and a linen
sun-hat—and that then she had gone out, saying that she was going
to a patient’s, and might or might not come back.
“This afternoon,” he repeated, “I’ll bring her along.”
Pauline looked at his face attentively.
“Don’t you know where she is?” she said incredulously, and then
she added, as if with a sudden desolation: “Have you quarrelled as
much as all that?”
“How did you know I don’t know where she is?” Grimshaw
answered swiftly. “She hasn’t been attacking you?”
Her little hands fell slowly open at her sides; then she rested
one of them upon the white cloth that was just being laid for lunch.
The horn of an automobile sounded rather gently outside, and
the wheels of a butcher’s cart rattled past.
 “Oh, Robert,” she said suddenly, “it wasn’t about me you
quarrelled? Don’t you understand she’s here in the house now? That
was Sir William Wells who just left.”
“She hasn’t been attacking you?” Grimshaw persisted.
“Oh, she wouldn’t, you know,” Pauline answered. “She isn’t that
sort. It’s you she would attack if she attacked anybody.”
“Oh, well, yes,” Robert Grimshaw answered. “It was about you
we quarrelled—about you and Dudley, about the household: it
occupies too much of my attention. She wants me altogether.”
“Then what’s she here for?” Pauline said.
“I don’t know,” Grimshaw said. “Perhaps because she’s sorry for
you.”
“Sorry for me!” Pauline said, “because I care.... But then she ...
Oh, where do we stand?”
“What has she done?” Robert Grimshaw said. “What does she
say?”
“About you?” Pauline said.
“No, no—about the case?”
“Oh,” Pauline said, “she says that if we can only find out who it
was rang up that number it would be quite likely that we could cure
him.”
Grimshaw suddenly sat down.
“That means ...” he said, and then he stopped.
Pauline said: “What? I couldn’t bear to cause her any
unhappiness.”
“Oh,” Robert Grimshaw answered, “is that the way to talk in our
day and—and—and our class? We don’t take things like that.”
“Oh, my dear,” she said painfully, “how are we taking this?” Then
she added: “And in any case Katya isn’t of our day or our class.”
She came near, and stood over him, looking down.
 “Robert,” she said gravely, “who is of our day and our class? Are
you? Or am I? Why are your hands shaking like that, or why did I just
now call you ‘my dear’? We’ve got to face the fact that I called you
‘my dear.’ Then, don’t you see, you can’t be of our day and our class.
And as for me, wasn’t it really because Dudley wasn’t faithful to me
that I’ve let myself slide near you? I haven’t made a scandal or any
outcry about Dudley Leicester. That’s our day and that’s our class.
But look at all the difference it’s made in our personal relations! Look
at the misery of it all! That’s it. We can make a day and a class and
rules for them, but we can’t keep any of the rules except just the
gross ones like not making scandals.”
“Then, what Katya’s here for,” Robert Grimshaw said, “is to cure
Dudley. She’s a most wonderful sense, and she knows that the only
way to have me altogether is to cure him.”
“Oh, don’t put it as low down as that,” Pauline said. “Just a little
time ago you said that it was because she was sorry for me.”
“Yes, yes,” Grimshaw answered eagerly; “that’s it; that’s the
motive. But it doesn’t hinder the result from being that, when
Dudley’s cured, we all fly as far apart as the poles.”
“Ah,” she said slowly, and she looked at him with the straight,
remorseless glance and spoke with the little, cold expressionless
voice that made him think of her for the rest of his life as if she were
the unpitying angel that barred for our first parents the return into
Eden, “you see that at least! That is where we all are—flying as far
apart as the poles.”
Grimshaw suddenly extended both his hands in a gesture of
mute agony, but she drew back both her own.
“That again,” she said, “is our day and our class. And that’s the
best that’s to be said for us. We haven’t learned wisdom: we’ve only
learned how to behave. We cannot avoid tragedies.”
She paused and repeated with a deeper note of passion than he
had ever heard her allow herself:
“Tragedies! Yes, in our day and in our class we don’t allow
ourselves easy things like daggers and poison-bowls. It’s all more
difficult. It’s all more difficult because it goes on and goes on. We
think we’ve made it easier because we’ve slackened old ties. You’re
in and out of the house all day long, and I can go around with you
everywhere. But just because we’ve slackened the old ties, just
because marriage is a weaker thing than it used to be—in our day
and in our class”—she repeated the words with deep bitterness and
looked unflinchingly into his eyes—“we’ve strengthened so
immensely the other kind of ties. If you’d been married to Miss
Lascarides you’d probably not have been faithful to her. As it is, just
because your honour’s involved you find yourself tied to her as no
monk ever was by his vow.”
She looked down at her feet and then again at his eyes, and in
her glance there was a cold stream of accusation that appeared
incredible, coming from a creature so small, so fragile, and so
reserved. Grimshaw stood with his head hanging forward upon his
chest: the scene seemed to move with an intolerable slowness, and
to him her attitude of detachment was unspeakably sad. It was as if
she spoke from a great distance—as if she were a ghost fading
away into dimness. He could not again raise his hands towards her:
he could utter no endearments: her gesture of abnegation had been
too absolute and too determined. With her eyes full upon him she
said:
“You do not love Katya Lascarides: you are as cold to her as a
stone. You love me, and you have ruined all our lives. But it doesn’t
end, it goes on. We fly as far asunder as the poles, and it goes on for
good.”
She stopped as suddenly as she had begun to speak, and what
she had said was so true, and the sudden revelation of what burned
beneath the surface of a creature so small and apparently so cold—
the touch of fierce hunger in her voice, of pained resentment in her
eyes—these things so overwhelmed Robert Grimshaw that for a long
time, still he remained silent. Then suddenly he said:
“Yes; by God, it’s true what you say! I told Ellida long ago that
my business in life was to wait for Katya and to see that you had a
good time.” He paused, and then added quickly: “I’ve lived to see
you in hell, and I’ve waited for Katya till”—he moved one of his
hands in a gesture of despair—“till all the fire’s burned out,” he
added suddenly.
“So that now,” she retorted with a little bitter humour, “what
you’ve got to do is to give Katya a good time and go on waiting for
me.”
“Till when?” he said with a sudden hot eagerness.
“Oh,” she said, “till all the ships that ever sailed come home; till
all the wild-oats that were ever sown are reaped; till the sun sets in
the east and the ice on the poles is all melted away. If you were the
only man in all the world, my dear, I would never look at you again.”
Grimshaw looked at the ground and muttered aimlessly:
“What’s to be done? What’s to be done?”
He went on repeating this like a man stupified beyond the power
of speech and thought, until at last it was as if a minute change of
light passed across the figure of Pauline Leicester—as if the
softness faded out of her face, her colour and her voice, as if, having
for that short interval revealed the depths of her being, she had
closed in again, finally and irrevocably. So that it was with a sort of
ironic and business-like crispness that she said:
“All that’s to be done is the one thing that you’ve got to do.”
“And that?” Robert Grimshaw asked.
“That is to find the man who rang up that number. You’ve got to
do that because you know all about these things.”
“I?” Robert Grimshaw said desolately. “Oh yes, I know all about
these things.”
“You know,” Pauline continued, “she’s very forcible, your Katya.
You should have seen how she spoke to Sir William Wells, until at
last he positively roared with fury, and yet she hadn’t said a single
word except, in the most respectful manner in the world, ‘Wouldn’t it
have been best the very first to discover who the man on the
telephone was?”
 “How did she know about the man on the telephone?” Grimshaw
said. “You didn’t. Sir William told me not to tell you.”
“Oh, Sir William!” she said, with the first contempt that he had
ever heard in her voice. “He didn’t want anybody to know anything.
And when Katya told him that over there they always attempt to cure
a shock of that sort by a shock almost exactly similar, he simply
roared out: ‘Theories! theories! theories!’ That was his motor that
went just now.”
They were both silent for a long time, and then suddenly Robert
Grimshaw said:
“It was I that rang up 4,259 Mayfair.”
Pauline only answered: “Ah!”

And looking straight at the carpet in front of him, Robert

Grimshaw remembered the March night that had ever since weighed
so heavily on them all. He had dined alone at his club. He had sat
talking to three elderly men, and, following his custom, at a quarter
past eleven he had set out to walk up Piccadilly and round the acute
angle of Regent Street. Usually he walked down Oxford Street, down
Park Lane; and so, having taken his breath of air and
circumnavigated, as it were, the little island of wealth that those four
streets encompass, he would lay himself tranquilly in his white bed,
and with Peter on a chair beside his feet, he would fall asleep. But
on that night, whilst he walked slowly, his stick behind his back, he
had been almost thrown down by Etta Stackpole, who appeared to
fall right under his feet, and she was followed by the tall form of
Dudley Leicester, whose face Grimshaw recognized as he looked up
to pay the cabman. Having, as one does on the occasion of such
encounters, with a military precision and an extreme swiftness
turned on his heels—having turned indeed so swiftly that his stick,
which was behind his back, swung out centrifugally and lightly struck
Etta Stackpole’s skirt, he proceeded to walk home in a direction the
reverse of his ordinary one. And at first he thought absolutely nothing
at all. The night was cold and brilliant, and he peeped, as was his
wont, curiously and swiftly into the faces of the passers-by. Just
about abreast of Burlington House he ejaculated: “That sly cat!” as if
he were lost in surprised admiration for Dudley Leicester’s
enterprise. But opposite the Ritz he began to shiver. “I must have
taken a chill,” he said, but actually there had come into his mind the
thought—the thought that Etta Stackpole afterwards so furiously
upbraided him for—that Dudley Leicester must have been carrying
on a long intrigue with Etta Stackpole. “And I’ve married Pauline to
that scoundrel!” he muttered, for it seemed to him that Dudley
Leicester must have been a scoundrel, if he could so play fast and
loose, if he could do it so skilfully as to take in himself, whilst
appearing so open about it.
And then Grimshaw shrugged his shoulders: “Well, it’s no
business of mine,” he said.
He quickened his pace, and walked home to bed; but he was
utterly unable to sleep.
Lying in his white bed, the sheets up to his chin, his face dark in
the blaze of light, from above his head—the only dark object, indeed,
in a room that was all monastically white—his tongue was so dry that
he was unable to moisten his lips with it. He lay perfectly still, gazing
at Peter’s silver collar that, taken off for the night, hung from the
hook on the back of the white door. His lips muttered fragments of
words with which his mind had nothing to do. They bubbled up from
within him as if from the depths of his soul, and at that moment
Robert Grimshaw knew himself. He was revealed to himself for the
first time by words over which he had no control. In this agony and
this prickly sweat the traditions—traditions that are so infectious—of
his English public-school training, of his all-smooth and suppressed
contacts in English social life, all the easy amenities and all the facile
sense of honour that is adapted only to the life of no strain, of no
passions; all these habits Were gone at this touch of torture. And it
was of this intolerably long anguish that he had been thinking when
he had said to Etta Stackpole that in actual truth he was only a
Dago. For Robert Grimshaw, if he was a man of many knowledges,
was a man of no experiences at all, since his connection with Katya
Lascarides, her refusal of him, her shudderings at him, had been so
out of the ordinary nature of things that he couldn’t make any
generalizations from them at all. When he had practically forced
Dudley Leicester upon Pauline, he really had believed that you can
marry a woman you love to your best friend without enduring all the
tortures of jealousy. This sort of marriage of convenience that it was,
was, he knew, the sort of thing that in their sort of life was frequent
and successful enough, and having been trained in the English code
of manners never to express any emotion at all, he had forgotten
that he possessed emotions. Now he was up against it.
He was frightfully up against it. Till now, at least, he had been
able to imagine that Dudley Leicester had at least a devouring
passion for, a quenchless thirst to protect, his wife. It had been a
passion so great and commencing so early that Grimshaw could
claim really only half the credit of having made the match. Indeed,
his efforts had been limited to such influence as he had been able to
bring to bear upon Pauline’s mother, to rather long conversations in
which he had pointed out how precarious, Mrs. Lucas being dead,
would be Pauline’s lot in life. And he had told her at last that he
himself was irretrievably pledged, both by honour and by passion, to
Katya Lascarides. It was on the subsequent day that Pauline had
accepted her dogged adorer.
His passion for Katya Lascarides! He hadn’t till that moment had
any doubt about it. But by then he knew it was gone; it was dead,
and in place of a passion he felt only remorse. And his longing to be
perpetually with Pauline Leicester—as he had told Ellida Langham—
to watch her going through all her life with her perpetual tender
smile, dancing, as it were, a gentle and infantile measure; this, too,
he couldn’t doubt. Acute waves of emotion went through him at the
thought of her—waves of emotion so acute that they communicated
themselves to his physical being, so that it was as if the thought of
Katya Lascarides stabbed his heart, whilst the thought of Pauline
Leicester made his hands toss beneath the sheets. For, looking at
the matter formally, and, as he thought, dispassionately, it had
seemed to him that his plain duty was to wait for Katya Lascarides,
and to give Pauline as good a time as he could. That Pauline would
have this with Dudley Leicester he hadn’t had till the moment of the
meeting in Regent Street the ghost of a doubt, but now ...
 He said: “Good God!” for he was thinking that only the Deity—if
even He—could achieve the impossible, could undo what was done,
could let him watch over Pauline, which was the extent of the
possession of her that he thought he desired, and wait for Katya,
which also was, perhaps, all that he had ever desired to do. The
intolerable hours ticked on. The light shone down on him beside the
bed. At the foot Peter slept, coiled up and motionless. At the head
the telephone instrument, like a gleaming metal flower, with its nickel
corolla and black bell, shone with reflected light. He was accustomed
on mornings when he felt he needed a rest to talk to his friends from
time to time, and suddenly his whole body stirred in bed. The whites
of his eyes gleamed below the dark irises, his white teeth showed,
and as he clasped the instrument to him he appeared, as it were, a
Shylock who clutched to his breast his knife and demanded of the
universe his right to the peace of mind that knowledge at least was
to give him.
He must know; if he was to defend Pauline, to watch over her, to
brood over her, to protect her, he must know what was going on.
This passionate desire swept over him like a flood. There remained
nothing else in the world. He rang up the hotel which, tall, white, and
cold, rises close by where he had seen Etta Stackpole spring from
the cab. He rang up several houses known to him, and, finally, with a
sort of panic in his eyes he asked for Lady Hudson’s number. The
little dog, aroused by his motions and his voice, leapt on to the bed,
and pattering up, gazed wistfully at his face. He reached out his
tongue to afford what consolation he could to the master, whom he
knew to be perturbed, grieved, and in need of consolation, and just
before the tinny sound of a voice reached Grimshaw’s ears
Grimshaw said, his lips close to the mouthpiece, “Get down.” And
when, after he had uttered the words, “Isn’t that Dudley Leicester
speaking?” there was the click of the instrument being rung off,
Robert Grimshaw said to himself grimly, “At any rate, they’ll know
who it was that rung them up.”
But Dudley Leicester hadn’t known; he was too stupid, and the
tinny sound of the instrument had destroyed the resemblance of any
human voice.
 Thus, sitting before Pauline Leicester in her drawing-room, did
Robert Grimshaw review his impressions. And, looking back on the
whole affair, it seemed to present himself to him in those terms of
strong light, of the unreal sound of voices on the telephone, and of
pain, of unceasing pain that had never “let up” at any rate from the
moment when, having come up from the country with Katya’s kisses
still upon his lips, he had found Pauline in his dining-room, and had
heard that Dudley Leicester didn’t know.
He remained seated, staring, brooding at the carpet just before
Pauline’s feet, and suddenly she said: “Oh, Robert, what did you do
it for?”
He rose up suddenly and stood over her, and when he held both
her small hands between his own, “You’d better,” he said—“it’ll be
better for both you and me—put upon it the construction that shows
the deepest concern for you.”
And suddenly from behind their backs came the voice of Katya
Lascarides.
“Well,” she said, “Robert knows everything. Who is the man that
rang up 4,259 Mayfair?”
Robert Grimshaw hung his head for a moment, and then:
“I did,” he said.
Katya only answered, “Ah!” Then, very slowly, she came over
and put one hand on Pauline’s shoulder. “Oh, you poor dear,” she
exclaimed, and then to Robert: “Then you’d better come and tell him
so. I’ll stake my new hat to my professional reputation that it’ll put
him on to his legs at once.”
And with an air of taking him finally under her wing, she
conducted him down the passage to Dudley Leicester’s room.

In the dining-room Pauline stood for a long time looking down at

her fingers that rested upon the tablecloth. The air was full of little
noises—the clitter of milk-cans, the monotonous sound of water
pulsing continuously from the mains, the voices of two nurses as
they wheeled their charges home from the Park. The door-bell rang,
but no one disturbed her. With the light falling on her hair, absolutely
motionless, she looked down at her fingers on the white cloth and
smiled faintly.

II

IN the long, dark room where Dudley Leicester still sprawled in his
deep chair, Katya stopped Robert Grimshaw near the door.
“I’ll ask him to ask you his question,” she said, “and you’ll
answer it in as loud a voice as you can. That’ll cure him. You’ll see. I
don’t suppose you expected to see me here.”
“I didn’t expect it,” he answered, “but I know why you have
come.”
“Well,” she said, “if he isn’t cured, you’ll be hanging round him
for ever.”
“Yes, I suppose I shall be hanging round him for ever,” he
answered.
“And more than that, you’ll be worrying yourself to death over it.
I can’t bear you to worry, Toto,” she said. She paused for a long
minute and then she scrutinized him closely.
“So it was you who rang him up on the telephone?” she said. “I
thought it was, from the beginning.”
“Oh, don’t let’s talk about that any more,” Grimshaw said; “I’m
very tired; I’m very lonely. I’ve discovered that there are things one
can’t do—that I’m not the man I thought I was. It’s you who are
strong and get what you want, and I’m only a meddler who muddles
and spoils. That’s the moral of the whole thing. Take me on your own
terms and make what you can of me. I am too lonely to go on alone
any more. I’ve come to give myself up. I went down to Brighton to
give myself up to you on condition that you cured Dudley Leicester.
Now I just do it without any conditions whatever.”
 She looked at him a little ironically, a little tenderly.
“Oh, well, my dear,” she said, “we’ll talk about that when he’s
cured. Now come.”
She made him stand just before Leicester’s sprawled-out feet,
and going round behind the chair, resting her hands already on
Leicester’s hair in preparation for bending down to make, near his
ear, the suggestion that he should put his question, she looked up at
Robert Grimshaw.
“You consent,” she said, with hardly a touch of triumph in her
voice, “that I should live with you as my mother lived with my father?”
And at Robert Grimshaw’s minute gesture of assent: “Oh, well, my
dear,” she continued quite gently, “it’s obvious to me that you’re more
than touched by this little Pauline of ours. I don’t say that I resent it. I
don’t suggest that it makes you care for me any less than you should
or did, but I’m sure, perfectly sure, of the fact such as it is, and I’m
sure, still more sure, that she cares extremely for you. So that ...”
She had been looking down at Dudley Leicester’s forehead, but she
looked up again into Robert Grimshaw’s eyes. “I think, my dear,” she
said slowly, “as a precaution, I think you cannot have me on those
terms; I think you had better”—she paused for the fraction of a
minute—“marry me,” and her fingers began to work slowly upon
Dudley Leicester’s brows. There was the least flush upon her
cheeks, the least smile round the corners of her lips, she heaved the
ghost of a sigh.
“So that you get me both ways,” Robert Grimshaw said; and his
hands fell desolately open at his side.
“Every way and altogether,” she answered.
 EPISTOLARY EPILOGUE

“IT was a summer evening four years later when, upon the sands of
one of our most fashionable watering-places, a happy family group,
consisting of a buxom mother and several charming children, might
have been observed to disport itself. Who can this charming matron
be, and who these lovely children, designated respectively Robert,
Dudley, Katya, and Ellida?
“And who is this tall and robust gentleman who, wearing across
the chest of his white cricketing flannel the broad blue ribbon of His
Majesty’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, bearing in one hand
negligently the Times of the day before yesterday and in the other a
pastoral rake, approaches from the hayfields, and, with an indulgent
smile, surveys the happy group? Taking from his mouth his pipe—for
in the dolce far niente of his summer vacation, when not called upon
by his duties near the Sovereign at Windsor, he permits himself the
relaxation of the soothing weed—he remarks:
“‘The Opposition fellows have lost the by-election at Camber.’
“Oblivious of his pipe, the charming matron casts herself upon
his neck, whilst the children dance round him with cries of
congratulation, and the trim nurses stand holding buckets and
spades with expressions of respectful happiness upon their
countenances. Who can this be?
“And who, again, are these two approaching along the sands
with happy and contented faces—the gentleman erect, olive-
skinned, and, since his wife has persuaded him to go clean-shaven,
appearing ten years younger than when we last saw him; the lady
dark and tall, with the first signs of matronly plumpness just
appearing upon her svelte form? They approach and hold out their
hands to the happy Cabinet Minister with attitudes respectively of
manly and ladylike congratulation, whilst little Robert and little Katya,
uttering joyful cries of ‘Godmama’ and ‘Godpapa!’ dive into their
pockets for chocolates and the other presents that they are
accustomed to find there.
“Who can these be? Our friend the reader will have already
guessed. And so, with a moisture at the contemplation of so much
happiness bedewing our eyes, we lay down the pen, pack up the
marionettes into their box, ring down the curtain, and return to our
happy homes, where the wives of our bosoms await us. That we
may meet again, dear reader, is the humble and pious wish of your
attached friend, the writer of these pages.”

Thus, my dear ——, you would have me end this book, after I
have taken an infinite trouble to end it otherwise. No doubt, also, you
would have me record how Etta Hudson, as would be inevitably the
case with such a character, eventually became converted to Roman
Catholicism, and ended her days under the direction of a fanatical
confessor in the practice of acts of the most severe piety and
mortification, Jervis, the butler of Mr. Dudley Leicester, you would
like to be told, remained a humble and attached dependent in the
service of his master; whilst Saunders, Mr. Grimshaw’s man, thinking
himself unable to cope with the duties of the large establishment in
Berkeley Square which Mr. Grimshaw and Katya set up upon their
marriage, now keeps a rose-clad hostelry on the road to Brighton.
But we have forgotten Mr. Held! Under the gentle teaching of Pauline
Leicester he became an aspirant for Orders in the Church of
England, and is now, owing to the powerful influence of Mr. Dudley
Leicester, chaplain to the British Embassy at St. Petersburg.
But since, my dear ——, all these things appear to me to be
sufficiently indicated in the book as I have written it, I must confess
that these additions, inspired as they are by you—but how much
better they would have been had you actually written them! these
additions appear to me to be ugly, superfluous, and disagreeable.
The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, and you,
together with the great majority of British readers, insist upon having
a happy ending, or, if not a happy ending, at least some sort of an
ending. This is a desire, like the desire for gin-and-water or any other
comforting stimulant, against which I have nothing to say. You go to
books to be taken out of yourself, I to be shown where I stand. For
me, as for you, a book must have a beginning and an end. But
whereas for you the end is something arbitrarily final, such as the
ring of wedding-bells, a funeral service, or the taking of a public-
house, for me—since to me a novel is the history of an “affair”—
finality is only found at what seems to me to be the end of that
“affair.” There is in life nothing final. So that even “affairs” never really
have an end as far as the lives of the actors are concerned. Thus,
although Dudley Leicester was, as I have tried to indicate, cured
almost immediately by the methods of Katya Lascarides, it would be
absurd to imagine that the effects of his short breakdown would not
influence the whole of his after-life. These effects may have been to
make him more conscientious, more tender, more dogged, less self-
centred; may have been to accentuate him in a great number of
directions. For no force is ever lost, and the ripple raised by a stone,
striking upon the bank of a pool, goes on communicating its force for
ever and ever throughout space and throughout eternity. But for our
vision its particular “affair” ends when, striking the bank, it
disappears. So for me the “affair” of Dudley Leicester’s madness
ended at the moment when Katya Lascarides laid her hands upon
his temple. In the next moment he would be sane, the ripple of
madness would have disappeared from the pond of his life. To have
gone on farther would have been, not to have ended this book, but to
have begun another, which—the fates being good—I hope to write. I
shall profit, without doubt, by your companionship, instruction, and
great experience. You have called me again and again an
Impressionist, and this I have been called so often that I suppose it
must be the fact. Not that I know what an Impressionist is.
Personally, I use as few words as I may to get any given effect, to
render any given conversation. You, I presume, do the same. You
don’t, I mean, purposely put in more words than you need—more
words, that is to say, than seem to you to satisfy your desire for
expression. You would probably render a conversation thus:
“Extending her hand, which was enveloped in creamy tulle, Mrs.
Sincue exclaimed, ‘Have another cup of tea, dear?’ ‘Thanks—two
lumps,’ her visitor rejoined. ‘So I hear Colonel Hapgood has eloped
with his wife’s French maid!’”
I should probably set it down:
“After a little desultory conversation, Mrs. Sincue’s visitor,
dropping his dark eyes to the ground, uttered in a voice that betrayed
neither exultation nor grief, ‘Poor old Hapgood’s cut it with Nanette.
Don’t you remember Nanette, who wore an apron with lace all round
it and those pocket things, and curled hair?’”
This latter rendering, I suppose, is more vague in places, and in
other places more accentuated, but I don’t see how it is more
impressionist. It is perfectly true you complain of me that I have not
made it plain with whom Mr. Robert Grimshaw was really in love, or
that when he resigned himself to the clutches of Katya Lascarides,
whom personally I extremely dislike, an amiable but meddlesome
and inwardly conceited fool was, pathetically or even tragically,
reaping the harvest of his folly. I omitted to add these comments,
because I think that for a writer to intrude himself between his
characters and his reader is to destroy to that extent all the illusion of
his work. But when I found that yourself and all the moderately quick-
minded, moderately sane persons who had read the book in its
original form failed entirely to appreciate what to me has appeared
as plain as a pikestaff—namely, that Mr. Grimshaw was extremely in
love with Pauline Leicester, and that, in the first place, by marrying
her to Dudley Leicester, and, in the second place, by succumbing to
a disagreeable personality, he was committing the final folly of this
particular affair—when I realized that these things were not plain, I
hastened to add those passages of explicit conversation, those
droppings of the eyelids and tragic motions of the hands, that you
have since been good enough to say have made the book.
Heaven knows, one tries enormously hard to be simple, to be
even transparently simple, but one falls so lamentably between two
stools. Thus, another reader, whom I had believed to be a person of
some intellect, has insisted to me that in calling this story “A Call” I
must have had in my mind something mysterious, something
mystical; but what I meant was that Mr. Robert Grimshaw, putting the
ear-piece to his ear and the mouthpiece to his mouth, exclaimed,
after the decent interval that so late at night the gentleman in charge
of the exchange needs for awaking from slumber and grunting
something intelligible—Mr. Grimshaw exclaimed, “Give me 4259
Mayfair.” This might mean that Lady Hudson was a subscriber to the
Post Office telephone system, but it does not mean in the least that
Mr. Grimshaw felt religious stirrings within him or “A Call” to do
something heroic and chivalrous, such as aiding women to obtain
the vote.
So that between those two classes of readers—the one who
insist upon reading into two words the whole psychology of moral
revivalism, and the others who, without gaining even a glimpse of
meaning, will read or skip through fifty or sixty thousand words, each
one of which is carefully selected to help on a singularly plain tale—
between these two classes of readers your poor Impressionist falls
lamentably enough to the ground. He sought to point no moral. His
soul would have recoiled within him at the thought of adorning by
one single superfluous word his plain tale. His sole ambition was to
render a little episode—a small “affair” affecting a little circle of
people—exactly as it would have happened. He desired neither to
comment nor to explain. Yet here, commenting and explaining, he
takes his humble leave, having packed the marionettes into the
case, having pulled the curtain down, and wiping from his troubled
eyes the sensitive drops of emotion. This may appear to be an end,
but it isn’t. He is, still, your Impressionist, thinking what the devil—
what the very devil—he shall do to make his next story plain to the
most mediocre intelligence!

THE END
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CALL ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions

will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright
in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and without
paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General
Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and
distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if
you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the
trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the
Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such
as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and
printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in
the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright
law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially
commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE