If there’s one thing atheists and theists can agree on, it’s God’s hiddenness. At one point or another we all have cried out, “Hey, God, where are you?” But atheists think this is a reason to reject belief in God, and theists don’t.
The problem of divine hiddenness can be formulated in two ways.
One: If an all-knowing and all-loving God existed and wanted a relationship with me, he would convince me that he exists, providing me with evidence that removes all doubt. God knows I would believe such evidence if he provided it; but since he hasn’t, it’s reasonable to conclude that he doesn’t exist.
Two: If God existed and desired a relationship with me, he would manifest himself to me in a way that leads me to love him. But since he hasn’t done this, it’s reasonable to conclude that he doesn’t exist. This second version demands God to manifest his essence, which would preclude the ability to reject him, since the will cannot do anything but love the ultimate good.
The hiddenness of God is a major obstacle for unbelievers. Here are four strategies for addressing this question. Strategies one, two, and three deal with the first formulation of the problem, and strategy four deals with the second formulation.
Strategy one
Explain how God is not bound to give absolute indubitable evidence but only intellectual indubitable evidence—evidence that excludes prudent doubt.
You can start by asking these questions:
“Isn’t it reasonable for a man to marry his fiancée even though he doesn’t have evidence that excludes all possible doubt of whether she loves him? How could he have such evidence, since anything she does could be meant to deceive him into thinking that she loves him?”
If absolute indubitable evidence were needed for a reasonable decision to marry, then everyone who chooses to marry would have to be considered irrational. But that’s absurd.
A man should not refrain from marriage just because his fiancée can’t provide evidence that excludes all possible doubt concerning her love for him. All he needs to make a reasonable decision is evidence that excludes prudent doubt.
Now, it’s true that the analogy falls short, since God could provide absolute indubitable evidence if he wanted to, whereas the fiancée could not. However, the analogy does show that absolute indubitable evidence for God’s existence is not needed for someone to reasonably direct his life toward God, but only evidence that excludes prudent doubt.
Even if, for argument’s sake, we concede your friend’s demand for absolute indubitable evidence that God exists, you can argue that God has given such evidence. Granted, God hasn’t immediately presented himself to your friend’s intellect, leaving nothing to be done on his part. However, you can argue that God has provided indubitable evidence on an objective level, and your atheist friend is simply failing to see the evidence, which makes the problem subjective (the atheist’s intellectual deficiency or ill will) and not objective (the evidence itself).
For example, St. Thomas Aquinas’s first-cause argument is a metaphysical demonstration, which means the conclusion is necessarily true because it follows from necessarily true premises. To deny the conclusion that God exists is to end in a contradiction—namely, the denial that things exist. Such a conclusion is as indubitable as a self-evident truth, such as the principle of non-contradiction. Trying to deny such a truth always ends in a contradiction.
The difference is the way in which these truths are arrived at. Self-evident truths are arrived at immediately. The truth is known when the terms are understood—for example, The whole is greater than its parts. Or, something cannot be and not be in the same respect at the same time. Demonstrative truths, on the other hand, are arrived at through what is called a middle term, such as the word man in the following syllogism: “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal.”
So, your friend’s failure to be convinced that God has provided evidence for his existence is not necessarily due to the evidence itself. It could be due to his own deficiencies, whether intellectual or moral.
At this point your friend may counter, “Okay, but couldn’t God make up for my deficiencies and enhance my intellectual capabilities to where I could see the truth of the evidence? Or maybe he could just present himself directly to my intellect and bypass the proofs altogether?”
The answer to both questions is yes, God could. But that raises the question, “Why doesn’t he?” Strategies two and three below give the answer.
Strategy two
Explain how rational inquiry belongs to man’s nature, and since God relates to man in accord with man’s nature, it befits God’s goodness to allow man to rationally inquire about God’s existence.
Travis Dumsday makes this argument in his article “A Thomistic Reponse to the Problem of Divine Hiddenness” (American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 87, no. 3 [2013], 365-377).
Question: “Do you think rational inquiry is a good thing?”
I think it’s safe to assume that your friend will answer yes, since he is inquiring about how to reconcile God’s existence with his lack of belief in God.
Explain to him that rational inquiry is a distinct mode of knowledge that God has bestowed upon human beings. It belongs to the nature of man to acquire knowledge through experience with material things and from that experience to abstract and engage in rational inference.
For example, we experience Socrates, and then we abstract from Socrates the nature or essence of man, which is a rational being that is a body-soul composite. From this we are able to conclude that such a being is subject to death, since what is composed of parts can break apart.
But we can also reason that man’s rational soul is not dependent on the body for its existence and thus can continue to exist after death. By going through such a process, we arrive at various truths about the nature of a human being: humans are both corporeal and incorporeal, subject to death yet immortal in spirit.
Although this mode of acquiring knowledge is inferior to that of receiving knowledge immediately, as the angels do, it is nevertheless a good mode and imitates in its own distinct way the infinite perfection of God.
Question: “Wouldn’t it belong to God’s goodness and wisdom to will that we discover truth—especially the truth about his existence—according to our mode of knowledge, which is rational inquiry?”
It’s reasonable to conclude that God would relate to us in accord with the nature that he gave us, allowing us to discover the truth about him instead of forcing it on us. It doesn’t seem reasonable that God would create us with this capacity and not allow us to use it to know him. The bottom line is that there is something human about the quest for truth.
Aquinas argued along these lines in response to the objection that angels should communicate to us through visible apparitions:
Such visible apparitions of the angels, which are above the course of nature, inspire a certain stupor, and in a certain way incite consent violently: in which perishes some good of man with regard to the condition of nature, which is rational inquiry. Whence such apparitions do not appear to all; but they were made to some for the confirmation of faith in the many, just as miracles were done (Commentary on the Sentences 2:11:1, ad. 6).
You could summarize the argument this way:
Premise one: God wills whatever is good for man.
Premise two: Rational inquiry is good for man.
Conclusion: Therefore, God wills rational inquiry.
Inasmuch as rational inquiry includes the possibility of falling short of the truth, it is no surprise that some people fall short of seeing the truth that God exists.
Strategy three
Explain how rational inquiry into God’s existence could be the condition for seeing the indubitableness of the evidence, making one’s knowledge of his existence more rewarding.
Your third strategy follows from the second in that it gives another reason why it befits God’s goodness to will that we arrive at knowledge of his existence through rational inquiry.
Start the conversation by getting your friend to recall his days in math class.
Question: “Why do you think your math teacher always said, ‘Show your work’? Wasn’t it because you learned better by going through the steps instead of just looking up the answer in the book?”
Your friend should see that working through a problem in order to arrive at the answer is better than merely looking it up. Working through the steps that lead to the answer shows the reasons why the answer is true, thus removing doubt. If the math answer were merely given, the student’s knowledge that it’s true would rely on the testimony of the teacher or the author of the book.
There’s nothing wrong with relying on the authority of the one who testifies, but it does leave room for doubt. By working through the steps, the student no longer has to believe that the answer is true. He can know for himself that it is. The rational process gives the student certain knowledge.
Explain to your friend that a similar line of reasoning can be applied to God’s choice not to make his existence known immediately to our intellect. Rational inquiry into God’s existence through philosophical investigation can lead to a firmer belief in it.
Furthermore, it’s possible that our knowledge of him would be more appreciated.
Question: “What is nobler and more rewarding, to be the number-one seed in a sports tournament because your team is the only one in the league or because your team is the best in the league?”
Your friend shouldn’t have a hard time seeing that the more rewarding experience lies in the latter scenario. Similarly, it’s possible that God allows the search so that when we do come to know that he exists, our knowledge of his existence will be a more rewarding experience. The effort contributes to the satisfaction of the reward.
Here your friend may ask, “But what if I never get to that point?”
You can reply that if your friend’s lack of assent to God’s existence is due to honest intellectual deficiencies, and he is seeking truth in the ways he knows how, God will not hold him accountable for his unbelief.
Question: “If God is perfectly just, then wouldn’t it be true that he could not unjustly punish you? And if he can’t unjustly punish you, then wouldn’t it also be true that he couldn’t condemn you for not believing in him if you were doing your best to pursue truth and if your lack of conviction were through no fault of your own?”
Explain to your friend that God will not punish someone for lack of explicit belief in him if that the person has an upright will, is honestly seeking the truth in ways that he knows how, and honestly does not see the arguments for God’s existence as convincing. The Second Vatican Council affirmed this:
Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or his Church yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do his will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. . . . Nor does divine providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with his grace strive to live a good life (Lumen Gentium 16).
Confirm for your friend that he has no reason to fear, and encourage him to continue sincerely seeking God in the quest for truth. If he can come to have this type of disposition, God’s hiddenness should no longer be an obstacle to belief in God.
Strategy four
Explain that there is good reason why God doesn’t initially ensure a relationship with him by manifesting his essence to us in the beatific vision.
Recall that the second version of the problem of divine hiddenness doesn’t demand that God merely make his existence known but that he manifest himself in a way that would ensure a relationship with him. This requires that God give us the beatific vision, which precludes the ability to reject him, since the will cannot do anything but love the ultimate good.
It’s true that God could manifest his essence to us, but there’s good reason why God doesn’t do this until we make it to heaven. If God always gave an extraordinary amount of grace to someone so that he couldn’t do anything but choose the good, that person wouldn’t have the great dignity of being a real cause (though secondary) of his own good moral character.
This line of reasoning is implicit in Aquinas’s treatment on the dignity of secondary causes:
There are certain intermediaries of God’s providence; for he governs things inferior by superior, not on account of any defect in his power, but by reason of the abundance of his goodness; so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures (ST I:22:3; emphasis added).
Elsewhere in the Summa, he writes:
It is not on account of any defect in God’s power that he works by means of second causes, but it is for the perfection of the order of the universe, and the more manifold outpouring of his goodness on things, through his bestowing on them not only the goodness which is proper to them but also the faculty of causing goodness in others (ST Suppl. 72:2, ad. 1; emphasis added).
For Aquinas, God’s providence consists of leading things to their ends, including human beings (see ST I:22:1). But he wills to do so through intermediaries, or second causes. For humans, this involves choosing good over evil, because such moral choices constitute our good moral character, which belongs to our perfection. As Aquinas says, the fact that God has bestowed on us the faculty to cause good in things, including ourselves, is a “more manifold outpouring of his goodness.”
If God were to fill us with the grace of the beatific vision so we could never have the opportunity to choose between good or evil, then we would never have the dignity of being a cause of our own perfection. God’s goodness would be less manifest, and we would lose the glory of meriting our eternal reward of heaven.
Question: “What constitutes a higher destiny: receiving a reward with or without effort?”
Surely it’s a higher destiny “to receive our final beatitude as the fruit of our labors and as the recompense of a hard-won victory . . . than to receive it without any effort on our part” (George Hayward Joyce, Principles of Natural Theology, ch. 17).
One might object, “What about the blessed in heaven? Having the grace of the beatific vision, they can’t choose evil. Does that mean they don’t have the dignity of being a real cause of their moral perfection?”
The answer is that they were able to be a real cause of their own perfection (in cooperation with God’s grace) because they made good moral choices while alive without the grace of the beatific vision.
God is not entirely hidden. But he does will that we seek him in a way that befits our nature as human beings. As Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “To men and women there falls the task of exploring truth with their reason, and in this their nobility consists” (Fides et Ratio 17). Moreover, God bestows upon us the great dignity of cooperating with his grace to be real causes of our good moral character.
By striving to live in accord with our rational nature, and empowered by God’s grace, we will achieve that union with God in heaven where we will no longer ask, “Hey, God, where are you?” but say, “Oh, here you are!”