Proving God | Evidence & the Problem of Divine Hiddenness
Part 3 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 two pieces in this series, I recommend you do so — links below.
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Part 1: The Problem of Divine Hiddenness | When God Seems Silent
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
On Proof of God
A key premise in the hiddenness argument is that there is insufficient evidence for the existence of God. I noted the point in part 1 amongst the questionable presuppositions of the case. The argument speaks about rational unbelief, which presumes, of course, that an honest inventory of the evidence leaves room for not only unbelief, but rational unbelief. I can only imagine that this requires that the evidence either fails or is so inconclusive as to not favor belief over unbelief.
Now, as also noted in part 1, many who say that one cannot prove the existence of God are ignorant of the classical proofs for God. These classical proofs include two versions of the cosmological argument — Aristotle’s and the Kalam — the teleological argument, the argument from contingency, the argument from perfections, and the ontological argument. Far from being a long-over-turned artifact of ancient and medieval philosophy, these proofs continue to find advocates of note amongst both Modern and contemporary philosophers. And to the ranks of these classical proofs we might add various moral arguments for the existence of God, the argument from the Highest Good, arguments for warranted belief in God, various intelligent design arguments, and a host of evidentialist defenses of the Christian religion generally.
My own assessment is that several of the classical proofs are sound and even the proofs that I hold in lesser esteem are not entirely without merit. And I would offer the same assessment of the other arguments and evidences catalogued above. But rather than surveying arguments that have ample exposure elsewhere, allow me to offer a few considerations in favor of belief that are less common.
An Argument from Realism
Regular listeners to my podcast have heard me speak often about realism. For those unfamiliar with the term, realism begins with the observation that all rational beings think in terms of what medieval philosophers would call “universals” — genera, species, and common properties. The question of realism is whether the mind thinks in this way because these structures are inherent to reality or whether these structures are mental fictions that the mind uses to order reality, which is not in fact orderly. The former position is that of the realist — These structures are real — and the latter position is that of the nominalist — These are mere names that the mind invents and imposes on reality, organizing for itself things that are not in fact ordered.
Those who read or listen to me with any regularity know I’m a full-throated realist. The reasons are many, but for our purposes, I’ll use a remark from Thomist philosopher, Étienne Gilson, who once said, The first step to convince someone of realism is to help him to understand that he has always been a realist. The second step is to help him to see that the moment he ceases to play a part in an argument, he will go back to being a realist. And the third step is to get him to ask why (rough paraphrase). Gilson’s point, of course, is that the inability of the mind to shed realism is its own evidence that realism is true.
I’ve made the case elsewhere (such as my podcast episode, “Why I’m A Realist”) that all math, logic, and scientific inference depends on realism and ceases to function without it, given its reliance on the reality of genera, species, and common properties — and without which all of these crumble as fallacious. In addition, I would argue that every act of perception likewise depends upon realism. We often speak about seeing things as if the eye should be credited with perception. However, when I look out over the horizon and see a child atop a horse in a green pasture beneath the crisp blue sky, such seeing is not an act of the eye. The eye has provided light and shadow information, but the separation of that information into horse, human child, pasture, and sky is an act of mind. The very act of perception is a realist enterprise of separating things seen according to genera, species, and common properties. The act is so immediate — so automatic — that we presume it is an act of sight. But the presumption is false. The act is an act of mind, and specifically of mind operating according to realist principles.
The relevance of realism to the present discussion is a point I’ve made elsewhere, including that same episode: I believe that realism points to the existence of God. For one way of thinking about the realist-nominalist divide is this. The realist believes that Mind is prior to the ordering of matter, giving rational structure to the material world. The nominalist, by contrast, believes that matter coalesces in non-rational ways and without rational structures, and mind arises out of this non-rational happenstance, only to look back on the material that birthed it and falsely sees rational structures that are not there. For mind and reason emerged after the material processes, not before.
Now, as I said, I believe realism is not only true but inescapable — being required by math, science, logic, and any mode of coherent reasoning — which is why the mind cannot shed its realist skin.
Granting the point, every act of mind points to the fact that our world arises from Mind, not vice versa. Every act of perception automatically beholds the rational structures of our world. Every rational utterance draws upon structures of genera, species, and common property. Every inference does the same. So unless we are prepared to dismiss all of human thought as nothing more than mental ether arising from the happenstance of material coalescence, then every act of mind testifies to the fingerprints of God.
An Argument from Justice
A second observation about human experience that I find equally telling is how human beings react to injustice. When encountering a grave evil that smacks of the unfair and unjust, the beholder commonly asks, Why?
I find the reflex noteworthy because it presumes our world ought to be just or fair. But such a presumption is a rather odd thing within a world that is evidently not just or fair. Certainly, the world herself has never taught us that she is fair — that the good are rewarded and the evil punished, that truth comes to light and falsehood is trampled under foot. If our parents have taught us anything on the score, the lesson was no doubt the same: Life is not fair. Not even religious texts can be credited with the inkling, since the cry of the Psalmist is to ask, Why do the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper? At best, such texts offer only the assurance that someday justice will be wrought, but they cannot be blamed for men presuming such justice should be a present reality.
Perhaps more noteworthy is that the reflex does not disappear with the turn to atheism. And yet, when paired with such a turn, the impulse is all the more peculiar.
When discussing the problem of evil, I’ve noted that I am sympathetic to how the realities of evil raise the question, but I am far less sympathetic with the atheist conclusion. Why? Because evil of the kind the argument presumes has no place within the world of the atheist. In a world of blind matter in motion, rational beings can speak about what they find pleasant and unpleasant, but they cannot speak about good and evil in the sense of what ought and ought not be. And so it is with justice. Rational beings can speak about what they prefer or enjoy or find pleasant, what they wish were the case, but they cannot speak about what ought to be. For oughts have no place in a world of blind matter.
The very fact that rational beings find themselves with this peculiar idea of justice and fairness, and somehow believe that our world ought to be just and fair — despite every experience, parent, and religion teaching otherwise — testifies to something innate within the human heart. We intuitively know the world ought to be just, and despite every teacher beating into our heads the fact of its injustice, we still know it ought to be and are never reconciled to its injustices.
Notice that our ability to accept injustice is not merely a reflection of self-interest but extends to our actions — a fact testified by our impulse toward self-justification. If we attend to our own mind, we will notice an exceedingly peculiar fact. When contemplating wrongdoing, we rationalize why the considered deed is okay. When caught having done wrong, we justify our actions, striving to explain why our deed is not so bad as it might appear. Why?
I believe the answer is our root inability to accept the injustice of the world: The human mind knows that the world ought to be just and fair, and it cannot be reconciled to the fact that it is not. And for this reason, we find it intolerable to trace the root of injustice to ourselves, to accept that we are the one who have shifted the world off its axis. So arises in us the need to justify our actions, lest we admit our complicity in corrupting the world.
Such impulses I see as nothing less than testimony to two facts about our cosmos, which every rational being knows, deep down: Our world is a moral realm that ought to be a just place, and something has gone terribly wrong.
On Numinous Awe
In C. S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain, he offers a genealogy of religion, arguing that the first step in its emergence is not a series of proofs but a universal human experience, namely, numinous awe. He draws the point from Rudolf Otto, whose work was a religious rebuttal to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant — meant to show that Kant’s account of human experience misses this critical facet of human experience.
I think there’s something to be said for both Otto’s and Lewis’ observations on the point, though the point I would like to make is not exactly either of theirs. Let’s begin with the concept.
Lewis helps his readers grasp what is meant by the numinous by noting two very different kinds of fear. As he puts it, if you were told there was a tiger in the next room, the fact might excite in you a feeling of fear. But if you were told there was a ghost in the next room (and believed it), you would feel something we might call fear but of a very different kind. For no one is primarily afraid of a ghost because of what it will do to him. Rather, he fears it because of the simple fact that it is a ghost. It is uncanny rather than dangerous. And with this sense of dread, you are at the fringes of the numinous. With this helpful starting point, I would like to diverge from Lewis’ point to another — one concerning the universal understanding of this particular dread.
When I would teach World Religions, I would begin by asking my students how they think religion first emerged. The usual proposals would usher forth, commenting on the uneducated and superstitious nature of ancient peoples who failed to understand the nature of lightning and thus posited musclebound men atop mountains who hurl lightning bolts. Once such explanations had run their course, I would ask a simple question: Has anyone ever seen a ghost? Silence would settle in, along with shifting eyes. Then, inevitably, a sheepish hand would rise, followed by a voice: You’re gonna think I’m crazy, but…. What would follow was always a ghost story — one of personal encounter. Soon would follow a second, and then a third, and then a fourth. By the end of the class, between three quarters and nine tenths of the class would have shared a personal encounter of one kind or another with the paranormal.
Now, I would not suggest that everyone has had a personal encounter with something they would deem paranormal — certainly not. But I am of the mind that everyone believes in ghosts, even the hardbitten atheist who insists he does not. Why? Because if you lock him in an abandoned insane asylum at night, he will experience fear, but not because he believes a hobo might live in those halls. And this fact testifies that even those of us who would not claim to have encountered a spirit nonetheless know the particular kind of dread the threat of such an encounter excites. This sixth sense is part of our very DNA, as it were.
True, the atheist may suppress the feeling, convincing himself that this fear is nothing more than a leftover of some evolutionary impulse that has outlived its utility. But the very fact that he experiences that sensation — that every person knows what it is like to sense that he is in a haunted space — brings us to a fateful fork in the road: Either this universal human experience is a sense, like any other, informing us of something true about the world. Or it is a universal malfunction, one that tells us to beware of apparitions within a world where there is no such thing as ghosts.
For my part, I presume that our faculties are aimed at telling us true things about the world. And candidly, I believe the moment one abandons this presumption, entertaining skepticism or the demand to build impervious foundations upon reason alone, he is on a fool’s errand from which there is no return. For to build brick by brick upon reason is to presume that reason is reliably aimed at telling us true things about the world. To truly cast off everything until rationally justified is to cast off reason itself and with it all hope of return.
For this reason, I believe we must begin with first principles if we are to avoid the blackhole of skepticism. And I see no better first principle than the reliability of our faculties aimed at telling us true things about the world. I’m sure it comes as no surprise, then, to learn that I would reject with great prejudice any explanation of human experience that casts doubt upon our faculties as unreliable.
I say this to explain why I reject out of hand the theory that the numinous is a malfunction. To grant a universal feature of human experience only to dismiss it as a chimerical illusion is to cast suspicion over the whole of our faculties. For why trust the eye or the ear or reason or conscience if our faculties contain fictions about the world? Rather, just as I trust the eye, the ear, reason, and conscience, so I trust the sense of numinous awe: Our world is haunted by spirits.
Now, to move from the sense that our world is filled with spirits to the idea of a supreme Spirit is not a far leap. I have no doubt that more have experienced the dread excited by a ghost than by the dread Spirit before whom one shrinks, seeing himself as nothing more than earth and ash. Yet, if Professor Otto is to be believed, there is just as much testimony in human history to the unique dread that this particular Spirit excites in the idea of the holy.
For my part, I see the step as quite natural to think that the Mind that orders the cosmos is the very same Mind whose structures testify to its intended justice and that were one to encounter this Supreme Mind, he would shrink in its presence, experiencing that unique dread of which Professor Otto calls holy.
II. “God Should Be More Evident”
I expect that some might object to the various evidences and proofs by suggesting that they are too demanding on the would-be believer. In other words, God’s existence should be evident without great effort on the part of the inquirer.
Yet, the point is anything but obvious. Every acquired good — walking, talking, musical skills or art skills — are acquired through effort, and often great effort. So, when it comes to the good of believing in and knowing God, why should effort be excised from the equation?
In fact, we might here turn the objection back on itself. The argument objects to hiddenness based on the great importance of God to the human person. Why not infer the opposite? If God is in fact the greatest good or the Highest Good, then why not expect that this particular good would require the greatest struggle of all. The greater the skill in art or music or learning, the greater the toil on the road to achieve it. Why should we expect an exception when it comes to the Highest Good?
The point naturally raises a question for any who level the objection: How much time and effort and struggle have you put into the pursuit of God? If the answer is very little, then the objection that God is hidden from those who seek him is bound to ring hollow.
On the Conditions of Pursuit
The point raises an important question: If pursuit of God is necessary, how precisely is one to pursue him? No doubt one can pursue any number of tasks in an ineffective way. The autodidact may take countless ineffective paths in the pursuit of music or art or health and wellness, yielding subpar results. So, we would be right to ask, if effort is required to know God, then what sort of effort is required?
When we consider the God of the Hebrew Bible, we discover that he requires things of those who would seek him — purification, repentance, and humility, for example. This deity is unlike the demons, who will happily present themselves to any who happen upon a ouija board or foolishly toy with the dark arts, making no demand of repentance or purification. Unlike these unclean spirits, the God of the Hebrews is holy and pure, and he demands that those who approach him purify themselves, turning from their wickedness, and humble themselves.
The point is critical. If we wish to discover something, we should take stock of the necessary conditions for its discovery. To discover the sun, one need only step outside on a day with clear skies. But the same is not true of every celestial body.
The employment of reason may be well suited to discern the hand of providence, and this rational instrument may garner sufficient proof that our world originates from a divine Mind. But this instrument may not be sufficient to come to know the divine Person who bears this Mind (presuming he is in fact a Person, as the Jews and Christians claim). For a Personal Being may well have personal demands for how he is to be approached. And for my part, I see no reason why he should not.
In this light, when exploring belief in such a deity, an adequate exploration may require something more than rational considerations. It may require action — a pursuit of the deity on his own terms. One may need to climb the mountain, as it were, to see what awaits at the end of the journey. And unless he does so, he cannot legitimately claim to have found nothing at journey’s end.
The Problem of Unequal Access
Both the prior point and the discussion of evidence raise a difficulty: Not all have equal access to either the evidence and requisite conditions.
When it comes to evidence, there is no denying that some are more rationally gifted than others. So, even if the proofs are sound or the evidence is conclusive, not all are capable of understanding this fact.
In addition, there is a question of access to the requisite conditions. If God does, in fact, require something of those who would seek him — requirements that are not obvious through the mere use of reason — then it seems prime facie that some will have access to these requirements and others will not. How can one reasonably be held culpable for failing to meet certain conditions of which he is unaware?
Added to this is a problem of moral luck. Some have the distinct advantage of being raised in an environment where the belief is commonplace, where the evidence is common knowledge, and where the requisite conditions are instilled from childhood. If, however, all are going to be held accountable for whether they believe in God or not, then it seems that equal accountability requires equal access. Yet, the fact remains, not all have equal access to either the evidence or requisite conditions to know God. So what are we to make of this?
III. The Beginning of a Reply
In subsequent posts, I’ll delve deeper into various philosophical and theological considerations. But for now, allow me a general overview of points that are relevant.
The worry about unequal access is a worthy one because it raises a legitimate question about justice. I’ve noted in other discussions about free will that every human person intuitively understands the two necessary conditions of moral culpability, knowledge and ability. When a child is caught doing something wrong, his only defense — aside from lying — is to claim: I didn’t know or I couldn’t help it. And though our adult defenses grow more sophisticated, they still reduce to the same defense. Why? Because we intuitively understand that if we know what we ought or ought not do and have the ability to do or not do, then we are morally responsible for our actions. Yet, if either condition is lacking, then moral responsibility disappears.
The fact — and it is a fact — that human beings have unequal access to the evidence for God and the conditions for knowing God (presuming the truth of Christianity) raises a legitimate question about moral culpability. For lack of knowledge cuts against moral culpability, and a lack of knowledge that hinders one’s ability to know God only further compounds the problem. So what can be said in reply? (Again, I will only here touch on some considerations that will be fleshed out more fully in later posts.)
In Honor of G. W. Leibniz
Several places in Leibniz’s work, he acknowledges this very problem of unequal access to the knowledge of God, and specifically to the Christian gospel — Leibniz presuming, of course, that Christianity is true and relevant to one’s final destiny. In reply, he offers several points. For our purposes, two should suffice.
First, this raises the question about divine obligation. If the creature is ignorant or unable — or unable because he is ignorant — to attain a salvific knowledge of God, then why does God not do more to reveal himself and save the creature?
In reply, Leibniz notes that God’s duties are to the whole of creation. Upon hearing this, I suspect that the reader presumes Leibniz means that the individual recedes to irrelevance in the face of God’s broader obligations. But Leibniz’s point is precisely the opposite. By the whole, Leibniz means to every individual creature. Yet, within this very fact Leibniz believes we find the reason why God does not pursue every creature to the point of submission.
Imagine, by way of analogy, a family with a deeply troubled child. The parents, no doubt, have obligations to that child and are deeply concerned with his good. However, it would be a grave injustice if their concern for this one child led them to neglect the needs of the other children. Their duties bid that they do all that can be done for the troubled child, yes, but only to the point that these efforts do not constitute neglect and failure of the other children.
So it is with God, says Leibniz. God’s duties are to every creature he has made — not only man, but plants, rocks, beasts, and angels. And yes, this duty impels God to pursue every creature, never settling for anything less than its good. However, this pursuit of one creature cannot infringe on God’s duties to others. So, Leibniz argues, God gives to every creature as much as he can without neglecting his duty to the whole. To mankind generally, God offers not only evidence but sends philosophers, prophets, and even his own Son. And to this God adds providential workings in the life of the creature, meant to providentially draw him toward belief.
But the fact that God has vastly more duties than simply the successful pursuit of one creature. Hence, while his pursuit is earnest, it is never so myopic as to treat the persuasion of that one creature as more important than his care for the rest. Hence, the free will of the creature comes into play, the one being pursued bearing some responsibility in how he uses what he has been given.
Second, and no less important, Leibniz traces a thread through Christian tradition to demonstrate that Christianity has consistently held that a person is judged according to his knowledge and ability, not to by an absolute standard, indiscriminately applied to all with no regard for circumstance.
Bringing the two points together, the question is not whether the person has achieved the requisite belief in some absolute sense, but whether he has made a suitable use of whatever he has been given. For he will be judged, not on the former, but on the latter.
On Universal Salvation
To Leibniz’s reply, I would add two further considerations from my own tradition, Eastern Orthodoxy — or, at least, from the Eastern Church fathers. The hiddenness argument presumes that there are some who arrive at rational unbelief and remain, finding themselves damned, presuming Christianity is true. For my part, I would count this amongst the presumptions of the argument that might be questioned. For the claim concerns the ultimate fate of man. That is to say, the claim is stronger than saying that some presently do not believe but that some remain in unbelief in perpetuity in both this life and the next.
You can find amongst my theological letters “On Apokatastasis and Universal Salvation,” where I offer my assessment of the question. Let it suffice for now that I do not think the hope that all will be saved is inherently heretical. Yes, the majority report of the Eastern Church fathers is pessimistic about whether all will be saved — some outright rejecting the suggestion — but some fathers do hold out this hope.
Despite the fact that some fathers question whether all will embrace Christ’s salvific work, none question whether Christ’s work to redeem his creatures was on behalf of and effective for all men. According to the Eastern Church fathers, Christ successfully redeems all of humanity by taking on our human nature in the Incarnation. He descends into Hades, losing all from the bonds of death. All have been raised, leaving none in the grave. But even though the way has been opened for all, the liberated person must choose to walk out of his prison.
The famous phrase of C. S. Lewis, that Hell is locked from the inside, is too strong on this view. For there are no doors left on the prison. If one remains in Hades, he does so in a prison without bars, searching for a shadow to hide in.
Now, one might promptly reply that, despite such imagery of universal liberation, one cannot possibly hope that all will be saved. For surely a great many die without belief or faith — and herein lies the meat of the objection, namely, the hiddenness of God leaves room for the very unbelief that results in damnation. But here, I would point to yet another Eastern patristic doctrine, namely, Christ’s descent into Hades. Again, readers can find a more lengthy treatment amongst my letters — see “Hell, Hades, and Christ’s Descent.”
For our purposes, let it suffice that the doctrine does not presume that simply because one returns to the dust of the earth in a state of unbelief that his fate is sealed. For Christ descended to liberate all of humanity, including those who rebelled in the days of Noah, and some Eastern traditions include the Apostles continuing this pursuit, as they preached not only to the four corners of the earth but also to those under the earth.
The point is this. When considering that the story of humanity is one that does not close until the Final Judgment and the restoration of all things, the story of the dead is one that is not yet finalized. And returning to a point made by Leibniz, God does all that he can for each person, pursuing each one as far as he can without violating his duty to the whole. And this pursuit includes pursuing men into the darkness of Hades.
In the light of such things, we cannot so easily grant the claim that unbelief is something that persists in the hearts of men despite evidence and despite divine pursuit. And we should not be so quick to presume we know the fate of men before the final chapter is written.
Part 3 is the end of this series, correct? Thanks