The paper considers premises of the hiddenness argument with an emphasis on its usage of the concept of a personal God. The paper’s assumption is that a recent literature on second-person experiences could be useful for theists in their efforts to defend their position against Schellenberg’s argument. Stump’s analyses of a second-person knowledge indicate that what is required in order to establish an interpersonal relationship is a personal presence of the persons in question, and therefore they falsify the thesis that (...) a minimalist requirement for a relationship between a man and God has to be belief in his existence. Recent works by developmental psychologists not only verify a hypothesis that a second-person knowledge is not reducible to knowledge-that, but also suggest that one needs a shared form of life in order to establish an interpersonal relationship. These two insights allow the author to formulate his own response to the hiddenness argument: only when God’s presence is non-explicit—for example, when God is hidden in a human nature—can a finite person enter into a personal relationship with him. It is the fulfilment of the requirement of being personally present that is the justifying reason for God to permit non-resistant non-belief. (shrink)

In Western religious traditions, God is conventionally conceived as a humanlike creator, lawgiver, and king, a being both accessible and actively present in history. Yet there is a concurrent tradition of a God who actively hides, leading to a tension between a God who is simultaneously accessible and yet inaccessible, both immanent and transcendent, present and absent. Western Gnostic, esoteric, and mystical thinking capitalizes on the hidden and hiding God. Histories of the Hidden God explores this tradition from (...) antiquity to today. The essays focus on three essential themes: the concealment of the hidden God; the human quest for the hidden God, and revelations of the hidden God. (shrink)

_The Hidden God_ revisits the origins of American pragmatism and finds a nascent "posthumanist" critique shaping early modern thought. By reaching as far back as the Calvinist arguments of the American Puritans and their struggle to know a "hidden God," this book brings American pragmatism closer to contemporary critical theory. Ryan White reads the writings of key American philosophers, including Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce, against modern theoretical works by Niklas Luhmann, Richard (...) Rorty, Jacques Derrida, Sharon Cameron, Cary Wolfe, and Gregory Bateson. This juxtaposition isolates the distinctly posthumanist form of pragmatism that began to arise in these early texts, challenging the accepted genealogy of pragmatic discourse and common definitions of posthumanist critique. Its rigorously theoretical perspective has wide implications for humanities research, enriching investigations into literature, history, politics, and art. (shrink)

For many people, the phenomenon of divine hiddenness is so total that it is far from clear to them that God exists at all. Reasonably enough, they therefore do not believe that God exists. Yet it is possible, whilst lacking belief in God’s reality, nonetheless to see it as a possibility that is both realistic and attractive; and in this situation, one will likely want to be open to the considerable benefits that would be available if God were real. In (...) this paper I argue that certain kinds of desire for God can aid this non-believing openness. It is possible to desire God even in a state of non-belief, since desire does not require belief that its object exists. I argue that if we desire God in some particular capacity, and with some sense of what would constitute satisfaction, then through the desire we have knowledge -- incomplete yet vivid in its personal significance -- about the attributes God would need in order to satisfy us; thus, if God is real and does have those attributes, one knows something about God through desiring him. Because desire does not require belief, neither does the knowledge in question. Expanding on recent work by Vadas and Wynn, I sketch the epistemology of desire needed to support this argument. I then apply this epistemology to desire for God. An important question is how one might cultivate the requisite kinds desire for God; and one way, I argue, is through engaging with certain kinds of sacred music. I illustrate desire’s religiously epistemic power in this context, before replying to two objections. (shrink)

The concept of ‘world visions’, first elaborated in the early work of Georg Lukàcs, is used here as a tool whereby the similarities between Pascal’s Pensées and Kant’s critical philosophy are contrasted with the rationalism of Descartes and the empiricism of Hume. For Lucien Goldmann, a leading exponent of the most fruitful method of applying Marxist ideas to literary and philosophical problems, the ‘tragic vision’ marked an important phase in the development of European thought from rationalism and empiricism to the (...) dialectical philosophy of Hegel, Marx and Lukàcs. The book is not a collection of isolated essays on Kant, Pascal, Racine, the status of the legal nobility in seventeenth-century France and the exact nature of the religious movement known as Jansenism, but an attempt to formulate, by an examination of these different topics, a general approach to the problems of philosophy, of literary criticism, and of the relationship between thought and action in human society. (shrink)

In this phenomenological reading of Luther, Marius Timmann Mjaaland shows that theological discourse is never philosophically neutral and always politically loaded. Raising questions concerning the conditions of modern philosophy, religion, and political ideas, Marius Timmann Mjaaland follows a dark thread of thought back to its origin in Martin Luther. Thorough analyses of the genealogy of secularization, the political role of the apocalypse, the topology of the self, and the destruction of metaphysics demonstrate the continuous relevance of this highly subtle thinker.

An attempt to argue apodictically for the existence of a provident Creator in the spirit, but not the letter of Aquinas. Attempted proofs which depend on Platonic ontology, including Thomas' Fourth Way, are rejected outright, along with other considerations which are considered to have psychological, but not logical force, such as the widespread belief in God. Thomas' other four proofs, described as of the cosmological type, in distinction from the author's metaphysical proof, are criticized, not for being fallacious inferences, but (...) for being incomplete, that is, for proving the existence of something less than a provident Creator. The metaphysical proof which is offered seeks to overcome this defect by taking as its starting point, not the material world, but finite existence as such, and developing the antithesis between finite and absolute being. Two special features of the book are its extensive argument for the independence of metaphysics from all physical science, and its discussion of the problem of evil, which ultimately appeals beyond philosophical arguments to theological considerations.—M. W. (shrink)

This new series brings together a number of great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in a uniform series design in Spring 2000, Oxford Scholarly classics will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship ofthe last century.

In many places and times, and for many people, God's existence has been rather less than a clear fact. According to the hiddenness argument, this is actually a reason to suppose that it is not a fact at all. The hiddenness argument is a new argument for atheism that has come to prominence in philosophy over the past two decades. J. L. Schellenberg first developed the argument in 1993, and this book offers a short and vigorous statement of its central (...) claims and ideas. Logically sharp but so clear that anyone can understand, the book addresses little-discussed issues such as why it took so long for hiddenness reasoning to emerge in philosophy, and how the hiddenness problem is distinct from the problem of evil. It concludes with the fascinating thought that retiring the last of the personal gods might leave us nearer the beginning of religion than the end. (shrink)

SummaryThe hiddenness of God in relation to opus alienum reflects, in Luther, a particular theological anthropology: one based on the limits of humanity and the futility of human action; and one that ascribes a certain role to suffering. One aspect of this account of the hiddenness of God is a figure whose terror remains unmitigated even by the light of salvation. In their discussions of the hiddenness of God, Karl Barth and Eberhard Jüngel reject this particular hiddenness of God. However, (...) their theologies draw on the opus alienum, and in doing so, they examine and analyse the despair and anxiety that characterise it in their own discussions of evil as nothingness. These accounts of nothingness engage with philosophical accounts of nothingness as being that which prompts self-assertion and actualisation as authentic existence. However, this use of the opus alienum opens their theologies up to the figure that they rejected in their prior accounts of hiddenness: the hidden, alien, and terrifying God. (shrink)

This is much more than a sensitive study of Pascal and Racine. Using Lukács concept of a world vision—"the psychic expression of the relationship between certain human groups and their social or physical environment"-Goldmann applies a dialectical method to the interpretation of what he calls "the tragic vision." This is a coherent world vision expressed in the works of Pascal, Racine, Kant, and the Jansenists. Goldmann argues that this coherent vision supersedes rationalism and empiricism and is at the same time (...) the forerunner of the dialectical vision of Hegel and Marx. The work is rich in insights and provides an excellent occasion for evaluating Marxist interpretation at its best.—-R. J. B. (shrink)

If the goods of mystery outweigh the goods of clarity, there is some reason to doubt that any particular good of clarity, such as more people adopting theism here and now, is very important. Theists should acknowledge that it is unlikely that it is part of the goal of human life that we should here and now hold theistic beliefs. If any goods that are essential for human flourishing were dependent on our believing here and now in God's existence, then (...) – if God exists – God would not remain hidden from human beings. For, if God exists, it would be easy for us to be provided with more evidence for the existence of God than we currently have. (shrink)

This book is one philosopher's response to the poetry of R. S. Thomas. It examines the poet's struggle with the possibilities of sense in religion: R. S. Thomas has described his poetry as an obsession with the possibility of having 'conversations or linguistic confrontations with ultimate reality'. Some attempts at giving meaning to religious belief cannot withstand the assaults of criticism. In R. S. Thomas's verse, however, there emerges a hard-won celebration of the worship of a hidden God; a (...) rare achievement in contemporary poetry. In plotting the course of the development of the poetry, the book brings out its many similarities with the thrusts and counter-thrusts of argument in the philosophy of religion in the second half of the twentieth century. The book should be of interest not only to admirers of R. S. Thomas, but to philosophers, theologians, students of literature, and to anyone concerned with questions concerning the sense or senselessness of religious belief. (shrink)

There are many reasons to believe that, if God exists, God is in large measure hidden from us. The hiddenness of God is one aspect of the religious ambiguity of the world. Since the world is religiously ambiguous, it may reasonably be interpreted either in secular terms or in terms provided by any one of a number of religious traditions. Theists have made many attempts to account for God's hiddenness, some of which contend that the advantages of God's hiddenness (...) outweigh whatever benefits would result if God's existence and nature were clear to us. One such good of clarity may be that belief in God would be more common than is now the case. Other attempts to account for the hiddenness of God appeal to human defectiveness or to divine transcendence. (shrink)

Many philosophers have contended that (traditional) theism or supernaturalism suffers from what can properly be called the Problem of Divine Hiddenness (the PDH ). [See Howard-Snyder and Moser 2002]. Moreover, it is the contention of many proponents of the PDH that this “problem,” if, indeed, not just a component of the “problem of evil,” bears a striking similarity to the latter. Specifically, at the heart of this ostensible difficulty for theism is that Divine “Hiddenness,” like pain and suffering—or at least (...) pain and suffering in the amount that the world contains—is precisely the opposite of what one would expect if there existed a (maximally great) supernatural Person. Accordingly, it is maintained by proponents of the PDH that supernaturalism is disconfirmed by the relevant “problem.” The aim of this essay is to establish that there is more than ample metaphysical warrant (of a sort overlooked thus far) for maintaining that the “hiddenness” of God is exactly what should be expected if theism is true. Thus, the conclusion we hope to secure is that the PDH has considerably less to recommend it than its proponents have thought, and, accordingly, that it fails to constitute an effective threat to supernaturalism. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that Pascal understood God and Reason to be part of a continuum, comprehensible to the understanding, and not radically opposed to one another. The paper situates Pascal in the context of seventeenth-century intellectual history and examines the concept of Dieu Caché from the perspective of seventeenth-century linguistics.

Neither the existence of God nor the nature of God is apparent or obvious. If God exists, why is it not entirely clear to everyone that this is so? How can theists explain God's hiddenness, and how plausible are their explanations? God, if God exists, is an omnipotent, morally good, omnipresent being, than whom none greater can be conceived. Surely it is well within the abilities of God to let God's existence and nature be known to us. Why isn't the (...) existence and nature of our Heavenly Father as apparent as, say, the existence of our various earthly fathers? (shrink)

J. L. Schellenberg has recently argued that there is a logical incompatibility between God’s being perfectly loving and there being non-resistant nonbelievers in the proposition that God exists. In this paper I highlight the parallel between this claim and the claim made by the logical problem of evil. Following Plantinga’s strategy in undermining the logical problem of evil, I argue that all that is needed to undermine the alleged incompatibility of divine love with non-resistant non-belief is a counterexample showing how (...) the two might possibly co-exist. But whereas most attempts to show this have been grounded anthropologically, by drawing on forms of love-relationship that God and humans have in common, I offer a defense of the compatibility of perfect divine love with human non-resistant non-belief in God’s existence grounded theologically, in the unique sort of love relationship that God wants with us, which is the relationship of “imaging.”. (shrink)

There have been a number of attempts to argue from the ambiguity that surrounds the existence of God to atheism. John Schellenberg offers one such argument: he proposes that a perfectly loving God would not permit nonbelief to be reasonable for anyone who is capable of a personal relationship with God. I contend that arguments of this sort are unconvincing.

This study considers the hiddenness of God, and the problems it raises for belief and trust in GOd. Talk of divine hiddenness evokes a variety of phenomena--the relative paucity and ambiguity of the available evidence for God's existence, the elusiveness of God's comforting presence when we are afraid and in pain, the palpable and devastating experience of divine absence and abandonment, and more. Many of these phenomena are hard to reconcile with the idea, central to the Jewish and Christian scriptures, (...) that God is deeply lovingly concerned with the lives and emotional and spiritual well-being of human creatures; and the philosophical problem of divine hiddenness ranks alongside the problem of evil as one of the two most important and widely discussed reasons for disbelieving in God. -/- The central argument of the book is that the hiddenness problem, construed as an argument against the existence of God, rests on unwarranted assumptions and expectations about God's love and goodness. In challenging these assumptions, however, Michael C Rea also considers the question of why we should accept traditional positive characterizations of God's love rather than the negative ones suggested by the phenomena of divine hiddenness. In the final four chapters, Rea aims to address this question through discussion of God's widespread experiential availability, God's loving authorization of lament and protest, and the surprising ease of seeking and participating in a relationship with God. (shrink)

New Blackfriars, Volume 103, Issue 1106, Page 433-435, July 2022.

Drawing in part on recent work by Eleonore Stump and Sarah Coakley, I shall argue that even if NO HUMAN GOOD is true, divine hiddenness does not cast doubt on DIVINE CONCERN. My argument will turn on three central claims: (a) that ABSENCE OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE and INCONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE are better thought of as constituting divine silence rather than divine hiddenness, (b) that even if NO HUMAN GOOD is true, divine silence is compatible with DIVINE CONCERN so long as God (...) has provided a way for rational creatures to find him and to experience his presence despite the silence, and (c) that there is some reason to think that Biblical narratives and liturgical acts are vehicles by which we might find and experience the presence of God. Each of these claims will be defended, in turn, in the three sections that follow. (shrink)

This chapter shows that reflecting on Hidden Mickeys can take people at least part of the way to a solution to the problem of divine hiddenness. Here is the basic idea: it is often ambiguous whether some constellation of shapes is a Hidden Mickey, and similarly, it is often ambiguous whether some experience is an experience of God's presence and love. In order to develop this idea, the chapter steps away from Hidden Mickeys in order to develop (...) the problem of divine hiddenness in a bit more detail. There is a crucial disanalogy between the problem of divine hiddenness and Hidden Mickeys. One way to bridge the divide is to try out the idea that God simply cannot make his existence as apparent to people as the Disney corporation can make it apparent that it is run by agents acting intentionally. (shrink)

Kant's sustained reflections on God have received considerable scholarly attention over the years and rightly so. His provocative criticisms of the three traditional theoretical proofs of the existence of God, and his own positive proof for belief in God's existence on moral grounds, have fully deserved the clarification and analysis that has occurred in these discussions. What I want to focus on, however, is the extent to which Kant's position contains resources sufficient to answer a line of questioning about the (...) existence of God that has recently been called the problem of the ‘hiddenness of God’ in contemporary discussions in philosophy of religion. If God exists roughly as the Judeo-Christian philosophical tradition conceives of him, it is puzzling, at least prima facie, why he does not make his existence overwhelmingly obvious to one and all, but rather is hidden from us. For if God is omnipotent, as the tradition maintains, it seems that he would have the power to reveal himself to us and, for that matter, with sufficient clarity that we would be left with no doubt about the matter. And if, as the tradition maintains further, it is important to God that we accept his existence and reject false idols who would pretend to divine status, it would seem that he has a significant reason to reveal himself to us. In short, given that God can make his existence obvious to all, and that doing so would fulfil an important purpose, why does he remain hidden from us? (shrink)

In The Wager of Lucien Goldmann, Mitchell Cohen provides the first full-length study of this major figure of postwar French intellectual life and champion of socialist humanism. While many Parisian leftists staunchly upheld Marxism's "scientificity" in the 1950s and 1960s, Lucien Goldmann insisted that Marxism was by then in severe crisis and had to reinvent itself radically if it were to survive. He rejected the traditional Marxist view of the proletariat and contested the structuralist and antihumanist theorizing that infected French (...) left-wing circles in the tumultuous 1960s. Highly regarded by thinkers as diverse as Jean Piaget and Alasdair MacIntyre, Goldmann is shown here as a socialist who, unlike many others of his time, refused to portray his aspirations for humanity’s future as an inexorable unfolding of history’s laws. He saw these aspirations instead as a wager akin to Pascal’s in the existence of God. “Risk,” Goldmann wrote in his classic study of Pascal and Racine, The Hidden God, “possibility of failure, hope of success, and the synthesis of the three in a faith which is a wager are the essential constituent elements of the human condition.” In The Wager of Lucien Goldmann, Cohen retrieves Goldmann’s achievement—his “genetic structuralist” method, his sociology of literature, his libertarian socialist politics. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This article explores the phenomenology of time and eschatology in the thought of Jean-Yves Lacoste, including his recent book on the philosophy of history. Lacoste’s idea of “the hidden present” is examined within the context of his broader theological and philosophical framework, with a particular focus on the way it addresses the intersection of temporality and eternity. Human temporality is characterized by finitude and death, which are interpreted both philosophically—under the influence of Heidegger’s philosophy—and theologically. Using Husserlian and Heideggerian (...) concepts, Lacoste proposes a theologically inspired conceptual network: phenomenological reduction versus theological reduction, world versus creation, death versus resurrection, care (Sorge) versus eschatological restlessness, and time versus eschaton. All of these describe the liturgical experience of man before God and the possibility of an eternity which, from the point of view of the world and of our experience in the world, can only take on the ever-provisional figure of anticipation. The present article argues for the existence of a theological paradox of eschatology in the writings of the French phenomenologist: even if eschatology is only anticipated, the liturgical man, situated before God (coram Deo), experiences it in an incomplete and apophatic manner. (shrink)

This article argues for an as-yet-undiscovered double allusion to Aratus’ Phaenomena (1–5 and 100–7) embedded in Cicero's De diuinatione (1.79). This intertextual link sheds light on a now-lost passage of Cicero's Aratea and raises some questions about the relationship between Cicero's dialogue and Catullus 64.