Non-Resistant Unbelief | The Problem of Divine Hiddenness

Part 4 of 7 — Theological Letters

The following piece is adapted from a podcast series on the Problem of Divine Hiddenness. While my typical written work includes extensive citations, I have not added references to this particular post. In addition, I have largely preserved my manner of speech, which can be a bit more colloquial than my usual writing style. Perhaps, when time permits, I’ll revise this piece to accommodate a more formal tone with proper citations. But in the meantime, I trust my body of work should suffice to instill confidence that the philosophical, theological, and historical claims presented here are sound and can be verified by an investigation of the figures and sources referenced. If you have yet to read the first several pieces in this series, you may want to do so (links below). However, this particular post — and those to follow — wades into fresh waters, so one can likely dive in without looking back on the start to this series.

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Part 1: The Problem of Divine Hiddenness | When God Seems Silent

Part 2: Why God Stays Hidden

Part 3: Proving God

Part 4: Non-Resistant Unbelief

Part 5: Scrutinizing the Metanarrative of Divine Hiddenness

Part 6: The Eastern Fathers & Divine Hiddenness

Part 7: The Hidden & Revealed God of the Eastern Fathers

In this series, we’ve been looking at the problem of divine hiddenness, which is often articulated roughly as follows: If there is a God, then He should be all-loving; if He is all-loving, then rational unbelief would not be possible; there is rational unbelief; therefore, there is no God of that kind.

This formal problem expresses an informal experience of a great many people, who would like to believe in God but have trouble doing so because he feels absent. I suspect most know what it’s like to cry out to God and feel as if they are shouting at the walls, wishing he would answer — that he would speak or show himself — and yet, he does not. But why?

Divine hiddenness as a phenomenon is nothing new. Anyone familiar with the Psalms knows the frequent mention of God’s absence, of the sense of being forsaken, of wonders at where God has gone. The struggle also appears in the writings of Christian Saints, East and West. In the Western tradition, John of the Cross’ The Dark Night of the Soul speaks explicitly about the sense that God has withdrawn his presence. Eastern Christian writers, too, speak of the savor of early faith experiences that are often followed by God withdrawing so that the believer might learn to obey even when there is no savor in doing so. The saints, when they discuss this phenomenon, view it as purposive — teaching the person to stand on their own two spiritual feet, as it were.

What is unique about the problem of hiddenness is its status as an “anti-proof” for God’s existence, as opposed to a common experience in the spiritual life. This development is virtually synonymous with philosopher J. L. Schellenberg, who first introduced the problem in this form. He has since updated the argument to strengthen it, adding to its formulation “non-resistant unbelief” — an addition we’ll examine today.

The Nature of Anti-Proofs and Qualified Omnipotence

Before delving into non-resistant unbelief, I want to address something tacit in discussions of divine hiddenness and the problem of evil: Most anti-proofs are actually moral arguments. That is to say, they make moral claims about God — if God is loving, then he ought to do this; if God is good, He ought to do that.

When theists respond to these anti-proofs, their replies tacitly presume something I’ve discussed in other contexts, namely, the ubiquitous intuition that moral culpability requires two things, knowledge of what you ought or ought not do and the ability to do or not do it. If either is lacking, then the acting agent is not morally culpable.

We see the intuition in children. When caught doing something wrong, their defense (aside from lying) is either I didn’t know or I couldn’t help it. And though adult moral defense grow more sophisticated, at bottom the appeal is the same, claiming either a lack of knowledge or impaired ability.

When it comes to defending God against a moral charge, the options are the same. Theists have typically not opted to claim that God did not know this or that, given the classical commitment to divine omniscience. Being all-knowing, how could such a claim stick? Instead, Christians have traditionally opted for qualified omnipotence — a tactic that challenges the idea that even God can do what the objector says he ought.

In the problem of evil, for instance, the standard Free Will Defense suggests that the reason evil exists is because God created free creatures. What this defense amounts to is the claim that not even an omnipotent Being can create free creatures and guarantee that they don’t commit evil. The case is one of qualified omnipotence: What the objector proposes — that God create a world just like ours but with free creatures who are never permitted to commit evil — is a mental chimera on par with a “square circle.”

This notion of qualified omnipotence has been a staple of Christianity and Christian apologetics since the dawn of the Church. Now, if the point is new to you, it may be surprising. After all, God is omnipotent; surely, he can do anything. But this is where the classical Christian commitment to realism becomes crucial.

Realism and the Bounds of Omnipotence

Those who read and listen to me regularly are all too familiar with the question of realism. But at the risk of redundancy, realism addresses a fundamental question in metaphysics: All of human perception and thought is built on the observation of common properties — of genera (animal), species (dog), common properties (quadriped). The question is: Why does the mind operate this way?

The fork in the road is this: Does the mind think in these terms because the world itself is structured in these ways? Or is the world void of these structures, but the mind, needing to organize its experiences, invents these structures and imposes these mental fictions on the world? If one says these structures are real, then he is a realist. If he says these so-called structures are mental fictions or empty “names,” then he is a nominalist (from the Latin, nomen).

Christianity has historically been committed to realism. In saying this, I do not mean that a great many early Christians happen to be realists. Rather, I mean something much stronger: The earliest Christian disputes, which set the boundary lines of historical, confessional Christianity, display a dogmatic commitment to realism. In a word, historical Christianity is realist.

I have published on the point in numerous places,¹ so I will not belabor the point here. But suffice it to say for our purposes that the early Christian disputes that gave rise to the Seven Ecumenical Councils — disputes concerning the divinity of Christ, the Holy Trinity, and the Incarnation — were metaphysically robust disputes. Far from being incidental to these controversies, metaphysics was integral to both the refutation of the heresies espoused and the orthodoxies upheld. The Orthodox positions established in this first millenium were metaphysically defined positions. In short, Christianity was metaphysically committed, and one of those commitments was realism.

This commitment is especially important to how Christianity has always understood omnipotence. For a realists like Thomas Aquinas, nothing that implies contradiction is within the bounds of omnipotence. The claim is not that there is a body of “things” called contradictions that are just too difficult for God to perform. Rather, the claim is that contradictions are meaningless word combinations that fail to rise to the level of a thing.

If one says, for example, that God can create a “square circle,” what he has said is this: God can make a two-dimensional geometric object with four sides of equal length and four right angles that has neither four right angles nor sides of equal length because it has a flowing circumference where all points are equal distance from a common center. This rather long assemblage of words may carry the appearance of meaning, but in truth, it is utter nonsense. And as C.S. Lewis once said, “Nonsense remains nonsense, even when we talk it of God.”

The point is no different when it comes to something like free will and evil. When someone says that God ought to create self-determining creatures — the classical meaning of “free will” — and then determine for them that they only do good and never do evil, one has uttered something as nonsensical as “square circle.” The Free Will Defense, which is as old as Christianity, has always insisted that not even God can do such a thing. Why? Because the very suggestion is nonsense, falling into blatant contradiction.

I realize that the phrase “God can’t” may be unnerving to one who has never heard such a thing. Why presume that the law of non-contradiction applies to God? To this, I would say two things in reply.

The first has already been said but bears repeating. The pietistic aversion to the words “God can’t” tends to reflect a misconception, namely, that there is a list of things that are too difficult for God to perform. If this is what sits in the imagination, the hearer has misunderstood the point. The claim is not that a “square circle” or a “free creature that lacks freedom” are things that God cannot produce. Rather, the claim is that these word combinations fail to rise to the level of a thing because they are nonsensical contradictions. And adding “God can” does nothing to make them more meaningful.

The second is this. The reader may be helped by some additional questions. Can God choose to no longer exist? Can God choose to no longer be God? Can God lie? Presumably, even the more pious reader would not answer that God might choose to end his existence or cease to be God or lie. Yet, in saying this, one has said that there is something in the nature of God that contradicts these, making them impossible. In saying this, one has said that the law of non-contradiction applies even to things divine.

Such has always been the classical Christian position, and for that reason, Christianity has always held to qualified omnipotence: God can do anything that is possible, but formal contradictions are not possible; they are nonsense.

For this reason, when considering objections, such as the problem of evil, the classical Christian approach has always been to consider the boundaries of omnipotence, showing that there is good reason why God cannot do what the objector suggests.

Qualified Omnipotence and Divine Hiddenness

This same approach — employing qualified omnipotence to question whether something meaningful is being proposed by the objector — applies to traditional responses to divine hiddenness. In our previous discussion, for example, we examined whether loving relationships are possible under coercion, and this raised the further question of whether removing divine hiddenness entirely would allow for a non-coercive, loving relationship with God. We asked the same about a voluntary life of faith — the kind God apparently desires for his creature.

Such questions wade into the waters of qualified omnipotence, suggesting that “coerced love” is a contradiction on par with “square circles,” or that “voluntary faith that is coerced” falls into contradiction. Hence, if God’s unveiled presence may result in coercion, then hiddenness may well be a necessary condition for a loving and voluntary relationship with God. Hence, these rather common responses are asking whether the thing being proposed — that God unveil himself while asking the creature to enter a voluntarily and loving relationship with him — is meaningful or whether it is a chimera of the imagination. The objection says that God ought to do this, but the question is whether the this proposed is meaningful?

Obviously, other responses can be leveled — Are you sure he ought to do that? On what basis to level this claim? — but the metaphysical dimension is crucial.

The Importance of Metanarrative and Metaphysical Assumptions

This brings us to the metaphysical and metanarrative discussion that I touched on only in brief in my prior post. When one says that God is presently hidden but ought to be less hidden, this seemingly simple claim contains numerous assumptions about God, creatures, and the world that require careful examination to determine whether the proposal is meaningful.

The metaphysics matter deeply. Could God make Himself less hidden while demanding uncoerced love? As already noted, the theist is here asking whether the proposal is in fact possible. But there are other important questions along these same lines that challenge the coherence of the proposal — which is why the metaphysics and underlying assumptions about the world, God, and creatures matter.

Consider the following illustration. If we were pantheists — believing that God and the world are one and the same, with you and I as cells within the cosmic divine organism — could we grant the assumption that God is hidden? I don’t think we could. Under pantheism, you and I are looking at God at every moment, since everything surrounding us is part of God’s cosmic body. God wouldn’t be hidden at all. Hence, we would need to reject the very premise.

Now, I’m not advocating for pantheism. Rather, my point is to illustrate how one’s underlying metaphysics affect his premises. When someone says, God is hidden or I don’t see God when I look around, they presume, for example, that God and matter are not one and the same thing. In a word, they reject pantheism. They may be correct to do so, but as we can see, even seemingly obvious premises are packed with metaphysical assumptions. It is no small thing to say that pantheism is false. And this is precisely why examining the metaphysics and underlying metanarrative of the charge is crucial when asking whether what’s being proposed by the objector is in fact meaningful and possible.

Schellenberg's Updated Argument: Non-Resistant Unbelief

Schellenberg's original formulation — discussed in our first post and approximately summarized above — focused on rational unbelief, but he has since added the qualification of “non-resistant unbelief.” The reason for this addition is obvious: Theists often claim that there is some depravity of heart, some underlying resistance to belief in God, which means the fault for unbelief falls on the creature rather than on God. In other words, God has not failed to provide sufficient evidence — a point discussed in previous posts; rather, the unbeliever is simply resistant to the evidence provided. The “non-resistant” qualification aims to bypass this claim by suggesting there are people who are not resistant and yet still do not believe.

This formulation of the argument has been popularized by Alex O’Connor, a popular YouTuber who advocates for the problem of divine hiddenness. O’Connor identifies as an atheist, but claims he would happily believe in God, if only there were sufficient evidence. Therefore, we cannot suggest that his unbelief results from resistance.

To the contrary, O’Connor presents himself as someone who has actively pursued God: He earned a degree in theology; he has read apologetics books; he’s listened to Christian apologists and engaged in debates about matters of faith; he’s even lived with Christians and tried praying. In sum, he has done both the intellectual work of examining proofs for God’s existence and the spiritual work of opening himself up to God. And yet, he still does not believe.

This brings us back to an important question we touched on previously: How much effort has a person put into assessing the proofs for God's existence? Alex’s answer is that he has done quite a lot. But the point also raises a further question about the pursuit of God. Recognizing that God is not just an abstract principle to be discovered, like a mathematical equation, but is a personal, relational being (assuming the Christians are correct), we must ask whether our chosen method of pursuing God strides in the right direction? After all, the God of the Bible seems to demand rather specific things, a point evidenced in both Scripture and in the spiritual prescriptions of the Saints.

O’Connor says that he has done the intellectual work of reading books and examining proofs, the spiritual work of surrounding himself with Christians, praying, and listening to worship music. Yet, he still does not believe. In essence, he is saying, Look, if we suggest the only reasons for unbelief are either that one has not done an honest assessments of the evidence or one has refused to open himself up to God, then I don’t fit either category. So, you must account, not only for unbelief, but also for my non-resistant unbelief.

This is the strengthened version of the objection that we will examine next, which will most certainly carry us into the metanarratives that underlie these discussions. So be watching for more next week.

To be continued…

1. For refereed articles that demonstrate the point, see my articles “Athanasius of Alexandria”; “On the Metaphysics of God and Creatures in the Eastern Pro-Nicenes”; “The Begotten-Not-Made Distinction in the Eastern Pro-Nicenes”; and “The Metaphysical Idealism of the Eastern Church Fathers.” For a more accessible talk delivered on the same, see my, “Does Christianity Have Metaphysical Commitments? (1 of 2)” and “Does Christianity Have Metaphysical Commitments? (2 of 2).”