One Kind of Response to Divine Hiddenness (and a list of others, too)

Comments due by 11:59pm Sunday (November 3, 2013).

We've been considering the matter of divine hiddenness in class. In particular, we have been considering Schellenberg's arguments from divine hiddenness to atheism.

There's a fairly large literature on the matter of divine hiddenness. But here's one theistic response to the issue. Christian philosopher Michael Murray offers a free will response to divine hiddenness. In short, he argues that God's existence must remain epistemically ambiguous in order for his creatures to remain significantly free with respect to entering into a relationship with God.

Here's Murray:

"My claim is that the hiddenness of God is required in order for free beings to be able to exercise their freedom in a morally significant manner given the strength of the threat [of eternal hell given disobedience to the divine will] implied by knowledge of the threat implicit in the traditional Christian story. If God revealed his existence in a more perspicuous fashion we would be in a situation very much like the one in the standard robbery case, i.e., strong threat strength and strong threat imminence such that the level of wantonness [i.e., a characteristic of the individual threatened to disregard personal well-being in the face of threats to his freedom] of most, if not all, individuals would not significantly diminish their feeling compelled to act in accordance with the demand of the threatener. However, if God desires that there be individuals with free will who can use it in morally significant ways, then He must decrease the threat imminence of eternal and temporal punishment and He, in fact, does so by making the existence of the threat epistemically ambiguous. It is this epistemic ambiguity that we call the problem of the hiddenness of God."

Consider the merits of Murray's response. (You may have to stew over it a while to understand it.) Is Murray on to something here? Is he right about this? Would Schellenberg have a plausible reply to Murray?

C.S. Lewis seems to offer the same sort of reply in his The Screwtape Letters. Here's how Lewis puts the point (from the mouth of a demon mentoring a subordinate demon). 

"You must have often wondered why the enemy [God] does not make more use of his power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree he chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the irresistible and the indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of his scheme forbids him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as his felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve.... Sooner or later he withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs--to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.... He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand.... Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

Perhaps Murray's (and Lewis') reply does not satisfy. There are other sorts of replies. The following list of responses come from Christian philosophers Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul Moser (from the Introduction to their edited book Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, Cambridge University Press (2002)).

God hides and thus permits reasonable nonbelief...

1. in order to enable people freely to love, trust, and obey Him; otherwise, we would be coerced in a manner incompatible with love. [This seems to be Murray's response.]

2. in order to prevent a human response based on improper motives (such as fear of punishment). [This seems to be a part of Murray's response, too.]

3. because, if He were not hidden, humans would relate to God and to their knowledge of God in presumptuous ways and the possibility of developing the inner attitudes essential to a proper relationship with Him would be ipso facto ruled out.

4. because this hiding prompts us to recognize the wretchedness of life on our own, without God, and thereby stimulates us to search for him contritely and humbly.

5. because if He made His existence clear enough to prevent [reasonable] nonbelief, then the sense of risk required for a passionate faith would be objectionably reduced.

6. because if He made His existence clear enough to prevent [reasonable] nonbelief, temptation to doubt His existence would not be possible, religious diversity would be objectionably reduced, and believers would not have as much opportunity to assist others in starting personal relationships with God.

7. and there's a good reason why God hides, but we don't know what that reason is, and we have no grounds for thinking that we would know what that reason is (since we are finite, cognitively limited people), so there's no basis for an objection to God's existence here.

Maybe one (or the conjunction of two or more) of these explanations succeeds in countering Schellenberg's arguments. Which of these explanations would you offer (if any)? Do you think one (or more) of them succeeds to counter Schellenberg's arguments? If so, which one(s), and what premise (in each argument--Analogy and Conceptual) is denied? If you have a different explanation for divine hiddenness, what is it?

Be sure to interact with each other. Again, take advantage of these opportunities to have these directed, focused conversations.