Divine Hiddenness

If God were perfectly loving, reasonable people would not remain without belief; yet many do.

Tagged: Arguments against God Divine Hiddenness

Many people report that they have honestly sought God and found no clear answer, and many others live and die without ever forming a belief in God. If God were perfectly loving, the argument runs, God would want every person to know that God exists, and would make that knowledge available to anyone who is open to it. A loving God would not remain hidden from reasonable people who have not closed themselves off from belief.

Reasonable non-belief therefore appears to be evidence against a perfectly loving God, because such a God would be expected to remove the obstacles that keep sincere seekers from believing.

The Argument in Form

If a perfectly loving God exists, every person who is open to belief would be given sufficient evidence to believe.
Reasonable non-belief actually occurs: some people remain without belief despite being open to it.

Conclusion: Therefore, a perfectly loving God as described does not exist.

Proponents and History

J. L. Schellenberg developed the argument in the 1990s, beginning with Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. He argued that a perfectly loving God would be open to a personal relationship with every person, and that such openness would prevent reasonable non-belief. The argument has since been refined in response to critics, with distinctions between reasonable non-belief, culpable resistance, and the many ways people can fail to believe. It remains one of the most widely discussed evidential arguments against theism.

Standard Responses

Theists reply that hiddenness may itself serve goods that a relationship requires, such as freedom, moral growth, and the value of seeking rather than being compelled. They also argue that the claim of reasonable non-belief is overstated, since religious experience is widespread and many people do form beliefs on evidence they find sufficient. Finally, they note that the argument, at most, tells against a God who seeks explicit belief from everyone at all times, rather than against the existence of God as such. On this view, hiddenness is a real difficulty for theism, but not a decisive proof against it.

References

Divine Hiddenness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Free / open access
Divine Hiddenness (Oxford Bibliographies) Subscription

Related Across the Site

Argument from Non-Belief Argument — The sheer scale of unbelief in the world is said to fit naturalism better than theism.
Cosmological Disproof Argument — Modern cosmology is said to remove the need for a first cause of the universe.
Foreknowledge and Free Will Argument — If God already knows infallibly what each person will do, the future seems fixed and human freedom seems lost.
Omnipotence Paradox / Coherence of Theism Argument — The stone paradox asks whether a God who can do anything can make a stone too heavy for God to lift.
Omnipotence and Omniscience Incoherence Argument — The divine attributes themselves are said to conflict, so that no being could hold them all together.
Ontological Disproof Argument — The ontological argument is said to fail because existence is not a property that can be built into a definition.
Problem of Evil Argument — The suffering of the world is said to count against a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good.
Teleological Disproof Argument — Evolution and natural explanations of fine-tuning are said to remove the need for a designer.

Related Arguments

Problem of Evil — The suffering of the world is said to count against a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good.
Argument from Non-Belief — The sheer scale of unbelief in the world is said to fit naturalism better than theism.
Argument from Religious Experience — Widespread and persistent religious experiences are best explained by a transcendent reality that people genuinely encounter.