I've given little attention to the problem of divine hiddenness, but one treatment of the subject is by Peter van Inwagen. See his book, The Problem of Evil. I read the book some years ago and it covers the logical problem of evil in an interesting way, then discusses divine hiddenness toward the conclusion of the book. By LPE, I mean the supposedly contradictory set of propositions that 1) God is omnipotent; 2) God is omnibenevolent; 3) Evil exists.
Buut regarding the issue of hiddenness, I would say that God is hidden in one sense or Deus absconditus (Exodus 33:20; Isaiah 45:15; John 1:18; 1 John 4:20), but revealed in another sense (Deus revelatus). No one can see his face, yet he speaks face-to-face with Moses (Exodus 33:11). Merold Westphal says we are too ontologically inadequate to see God: having a glimpse of his brilliant doxa would overwhelm us, like looking directly at the sun (Ezekiel 43:2).
On the other hand, God's invisible qualities are clearly perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and divinity (Psalm 19:1-3; Romans 1:20). Paul said that God has not left himself without witness by the rains he provides and the crops that grow (Acts 14:17). Moreover, Jehovah directly communicated with some men, even supplying miraculous evidence that he exists. As someone pointed out earlier, critics might take issue with these accounts, but they illustrate the possibility that God is not completely hidden.
Besides, Peter van Inwagen rightly argues that God wants us to do more than believe in him: he wants humans to love and worship him. If Jehovah always provided visible evidence that he existed, it might conflict with the ultimate goal that he is trying to achieve. The inspired apostle likewise wrote that we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:8). One day, God will reveal himself in order that all may know he is Jehovah.
Friday, May 17, 2024
Divine Hiddenness?
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12 comments:
An important part of the divine revelation is that sin began in heaven. In the immediate presence of JEHOVAH, James Ch.2:19ESV"You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!" Mere belief is not enough.
aservantofJehovah, I agree with you 100%. However, for many people, belief is their 1st big step, but it's only the beginning. Paul also said that faith is not a possession if all people. It's probably not even a possession of most.
Our brother Paul places the fault with Man and not man's maker, willful incredulity is as irrational as willful credulity.
Again, I concur with you, but maybe you would agree that some are incredulous through no direct fault of their own. That does not mean their eyes cannot be opened (like Paul's eyes were) or that they won't have a chance to make matters right in the new earth, right? Jehovah ultimately will judge. Thanks.
My late mentor use to say that an important part of gaining self mastery is admitting to ourselves that our sins are not all Adam's/Satan's fault there is a personal contribution in there somewhere, but yes cultivating a love for truth while immersed in a culture that prefers flattering falsehoods is definitely a challenge.
Interesting subject would be his representatives - does that count as God revealing himself?
Anonymous, yes, God reveals himself in that way too.
I don't actually believe that divine hiddenness is the problem it's sometimes made out to be. For most of history the existence of God or something like God was obvious, you had the most-high God of various polytheists, a transcendent spirit of animists, concepts like the Brahman, the "One," etc. etc. That such a transcendent reality existed was obvious.
What changed, in my view, was things like the mechanistic philosophy, and scientism, where the scientific method became a metaphysic, and scientific models became ontology. Along with the rise of things like Capitalism that reduced all social life to atonomized market agents, all value to market value, and everything to commodities. You also had a kind of naive empiricism and the rise of Deism (i.e. God is a kind of mechanic that starts the world and puts it together like a machine and then just let's it run).
In my view these cultural shifts made atheism possible, along with the extreme versions of this kind of atomized ideologies such as the denial of consciousness and free will, and contemporary neoliberalism where plenorexia is normative. This is why people who say "why isn't God's existence obvious" should recognize that what is or is not obvious is HUGELY determined by one's culture, it's "obvious" now that slavery is wicked, it was considered natural for most of history, now it's "obvious" that land, human labor and creativity, and basically everything are commodities for the market, most ancient peoples would have considered that insane.
Also, the claim made by some atheists that ancient people were just ignorant and thus posited God's to explain natural forces in the same way scientific models explain natural phenomena is just historically naive, and frankly silly, and misunderstands ancient cultic systems, and ancient philosophical thought. Also modern science didn't "disprove" the existence of any gods, Christianity, and mostly protestantism got rod of them way before the scientific revolution. Science proper didn't touch theology at all, only when scientific materialism/naturalism became viewed as a kind of metaphysically complete system did theology get left out, although scientific materialism/naturalism is a completely incoherent system, as is now being more and more recognized.
But even so I think any honest person would find God's existence obvious for reasons already given in Romans 1:20 and Acts 17:28.
I also think Pannenberg is correct that revelation presupposes God's existence, since revelation is not the revelation of a small g god of some nation, but the revelation that this god is actually the infinite God of all creation and ground of all being, and what all the notions of the transcendent ultimately are aiming at. Revelation tells us what that God's purposes are, and how we can be in line with those purposes, and they are given so we can put faith in them.
This is why I think the Barthian rejection of natural theology is wrong, the revelation of God as God can only mean something if one already has a notion of God as the ultimate reality, so that when we say God has saved mankind through Christ, we can say THE God, the infinite creator has saved mankind through Christ.
What God reveals is his purposes, his existence is known by reason and nature, such that when he does reveal his purposes we know that this revelation is one of the God we can know through reason. It's entirely different than revelations of gods in Greek mythology or the such (even if Greek mythology records distant memories of religious experience), since these revelations are of finite beings, what Christians would call spirit creatures, not of The God.
I think this is also the logic of Paul's speech in Acts 17.
I just realized the two previous comments were made with my wife's google account :P, those were made by me: Roman .... sorry about that.
Thanks, Roman. I wondered who LMTMB was :-)
I realized I could have made my point easier by just saying that modern culture expelled formal and final causes from explanation (for methodological reasons) and this ended up removing formal and final causes from popular metaphysical imagination, which allowed for atheism.
I recommend "A Secular Age" by Charles Taylor, Atheist delusions by David Hart, and Enchantments of Mammon by Eugene Mccarraher for how our contemporary world became materialist.
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