A Question About Divine Hiddenness

Question:

Hey, Tim. I recently read your paper against the hiddenness argument and I had an interpretation question. The first scenario you describe how “After coming to believe in God, a person may rebel against God and, in turn, damage the faith of other believers.” For me it wasn’t clear what you meant by faith. When you say ‘damage the faith’, do you mean damage the theistic belief of others or do you mean damage the relationship that others have with God? Or, possibly, you mean something else entirely? Any help is appreciated. Thanks! - Justin

Dr. Tim's Response:

Thank you for taking the time to read our paper and for asking this question, Justin. Indeed, your query makes me realize we should have included some clarification in a footnote. When crafting this scenario in

A Molinist Response to John Schellenberg’s Hiddenness Argument

,

Jacobus Erasmus and I had one common Christian understanding of "faith" in mind, where faith is a combination of (1) belief in the Gospel (that God exists, that Jesus is God, that Jesus took on a human nature to sacrifice for our sins, etc.) and (2) trust in God (e.g., submitting to God, and to believe that God does act according to His promises, and that God has promised certain things, such as to save the repentant, and to always love us, and to be with His children spiritually, etc.). Now, a person can hold a belief to certain degrees -- they can be certain of it, or think it's highly probable, think it's more probable than not, or even think it's the best explanation of a bad lot (the latter describes a person who is not yet a Christian, but seems to be on their way), and so on. So, to

 damage a believer's faith

 simply means to cause or influence him to believe in either the Gospel, or the trustworthiness of God, or both, to a lesser degree. Again, this "damaging" can come in various degrees, and it can lead to, for example, a strained relationship between the believer and God, or even to the believer abandoning the belief in the Gospel and his trust in God. While I think the second example offered in our essay is more persuasive than the first, I think both are sufficient to make the point that the argument from divine hiddenness fails if Molinism is true. One counter to the hiddenness objection which was deleted from our article by the editor of the journal for the sake of space was a true story regarding Jordan Peterson. If you'd like to read more about this, I included it in the chapter I wrote for the recently published,

Faith Examined: New Arguments for Persistent Questions, Essays in Honor of Frank Turek

(Edited by Clark Bates). In my opinion, the most important part of our article was the following:

“For all we know, the actual world is the best feasible freedom-permitting world, even with its moral, natural, and gratuitous evils, as well as its divine hiddenness. For example: it is possible that the actual world is the one feasible freedom-permitting circumstance where evil is ultimately defeated and all are saved (the bracketed words leave room for hopeful universalism). If this specific feasible “maximal harvest world” exists, then a perfectly wise and loving God would either create it—no matter how much finite suffering, evil, or divine hiddenness existed—or refrain from creation altogether. ”

This is what I refer to as "The Doctor Strange view." The popular Avengers movies — Infinity War and Endgame — provide a wonderful illustration of why a good heroic person would allow all kinds of terrible suffering, as long as he had the “endgame” (let alone eternity) in mind. Doctor Strange was aware of 14,000,605 feasible worlds he could create. Out of all of them, he knew of only one in which the evil of Thanos would ultimately be defeated, and all the Saints (I mean Avengers who previously turned to dust) would be raised from the dead. However, this best of all feasible worlds would also be suffused with all kinds of pain, affliction, death (and a Doctor Strange who was completely hidden for five years). With all that in mind, millions upon millions of movie-goers loudly cheered as Doctor Strange was raised from the dead — along with all the Saints — and Thanos was crushed “under their feet” (Romans 16:20). In a debate with Joshua Ryan Farris on Capturing Christianity, Philip Goff said: “To the extent I’m open to the God hypothesis, it’s going to be a creator who” is doing the best He can do

— 'This is going to be messy. Sorry! It’s this or nothing!'” But that’s exactly what the good Doctor Strange did — and exactly what God did, too! Indeed, that is exactly what Erasmus and I argued in our essay which I quoted above. To further make the point, consider an argument I have published in two books (

Mere Molinism

and

Faith Examined

):

1. If God (a maximally great being) is omni-benevolent, then he desires genuine loving intimacy with humans.

2. If God desires genuine loving intimacy with humans, then he would create humans with libertarian freedom (because): 2.1. Genuine loving intimacy between God and humans necessarily requires that humans possess libertarian freedom.

3. If God creates humans with libertarian freedom, then he must allow humans to experience suffering (because): 3.1. Suffering results from the choices of libertarian free humans. 3.2. God created a world in which he knew (given His omniscience) that unless he permitted all kinds of evil

, some would not freely choose to eternally preserve the suffering-free state of affairs in the new heavens and new earth (2 Cor 4:17).

4. God is omni-benevolent.

5. Therefore, God allows humans to experience suffering

. 

I have much more to say on this topic, but hopefully I've answered your question sufficiently and a little more. Star reasonable (Isaiah 1:18), - Dr. Tim Stratton