What Is the Problem of Divine Hiddenness?

What Is the Problem?

The problem of divine hiddenness is a relatively recent argument against the existence of God, developed by J. L. Schellenberg in Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (1993) and elaborated in subsequent work. The argument starts from a fact about the world: there exist people who don't believe in God, through no fault of their own. These are people who have considered the evidence, lived openly to the question, and concluded that God doesn't exist or that the evidence doesn't support belief. They are, in Schellenberg's term, "nonresistant nonbelievers"—they're not resisting God, just not convinced.

The argument then presses: if a perfectly loving God exists, such a God would ensure that every nonresistant person is in a position to believe in God, because relationship requires mutual awareness. A loving parent doesn't hide from a child who wants to find them; a loving God wouldn't hide from a person who's open to relationship. Yet nonresistant nonbelief exists. So, the argument concludes, a perfectly loving God probably doesn't exist. The hiddenness of God is, on this view, evidence against God's existence, comparable to the existence of evil.

The argument has a distinctive shape. It doesn't depend on weighing quantities of suffering, which makes it immune to some of the standard replies to the problem of evil (skeptical theism about God's reasons for permitting suffering, for instance). It depends instead on the premise that a loving God would make belief possible for those open to it, which is a different kind of claim. The SEP entry on divine hiddenness treats it as a serious alternative to the problem of evil, with its own structure and its own replies.

The Argument in Detail

Schellenberg's argument runs roughly:

1. If a perfectly loving God exists, then every nonresistant person is in a position to believe that God exists (because relationship requires mutual awareness, and God would ensure the condition for relationship).
2. Some nonresistant persons are not in a position to believe that God exists (reasonable nonbelief exists).
3. Therefore, a perfectly loving God doesn't exist.

The first premise is the key. It's a claim about what perfect love requires: that a loving God would not leave nonresistant people in ignorance of God's existence. The defense appeals to the nature of personal relationship—if you love someone and want relationship, you make yourself available to them; you don't hide, especially from those who are open. The second premise is empirical: there are people who have considered the evidence honestly and remain unconvinced. Schellenberg argues that the existence of such people is undeniable, and that they constitute a serious challenge to theism.

The argument is narrower than the problem of evil in one way (it concerns nonbelief, not suffering) and broader in another (it concerns God's relationship with everyone, not just those who suffer). It's also less dependent on contested judgments about the distribution of evil: while you can argue about whether a given instance of suffering serves a greater good, it's harder to argue that a loving God would leave a nonresistant person in nonbelief. The argument has gained traction because it avoids some of the standard defenses of theism against the problem of evil.

The Distinction from the Problem of Evil

The problem of divine hiddenness is related to the problem of evil but distinct. The problem of evil argues that evil (suffering, wrongdoing) is incompatible with, or improbable on, God's existence. The problem of divine hiddenness argues that nonbelief is incompatible with, or improbable on, a loving God's existence. Both challenge God's goodness, but they target different aspects: the problem of evil targets God's permission of suffering; the problem of hiddenness targets God's failure to make belief possible.

The distinction matters because the two arguments call for different replies. The free will defense, which is the main reply to moral evil, doesn't address hiddenness—if anything, hiddenness makes free response to God harder, which the free will move would predict shouldn't happen. The soul-making theodicy, which handles natural evil, can be extended to hiddenness (nonbelief is a condition for the development of faith), but the extension is awkward. Skeptical theism, which argues we can't judge God's reasons for permitting evil, can be applied to hiddenness, but the application is controversial—can we really not judge whether a loving God would hide from the open? The SEP entry treats hiddenness as a distinct challenge that requires its own replies.

The Main Replies

Several replies press on the argument. The first is skeptical theism: God has reasons for permitting nonbelief that we can't discern, just as God has reasons for permitting evil. The hiddenness of God, on this view, is a feature of a world whose purposes exceed our understanding. The critic replies that the analogy with evil is imperfect—we can at least imagine goods that require suffering, but it's harder to imagine goods that require nonbelief, especially for a God who wants relationship. The skeptical theist responds that the limit is on our imagination, not on the goods; the critic replies that this risks global skepticism.

The second reply is the epistemic distance view, developed by John Hick and others. On this view, God created the world at an "epistemic distance" from Godself, so that humans have genuine freedom in their response to God. If God were too obviously present, free response would be impossible—we'd respond to overwhelming evidence rather than freely choosing relationship. So some nonbelief is a condition of the freedom that relationship requires. The critic replies that the freedom at stake is questionable: a person can freely enter a relationship even if the other party is clearly present (we freely choose our friends, though they're obviously real). The epistemic distance view has force but is contested.

The third reply challenges the premise about nonresistant nonbelief. Some theists argue that the people Schellenberg counts as nonresistant are actually resistant, in a sense that's not transparent to them—sin has distorted their cognition, or their nonbelief is a product of self-deception. This reply is theologically motivated (it echoes Pascal's "the heart has its reasons") but philosophically difficult, because it seems to question the honest nonbeliever's self-report. The critic replies that you can't just assume that all nonbelievers are self-deceived; the reply looks like an ad hoc rescue of the premise. The SEP entry treats this reply as available but costly.

A fourth reply, developed by some analytic philosophers, questions whether nonbelief is really a problem for a loving God. Maybe God's love doesn't require explicit belief; maybe relationship with God is possible for those who respond to the good, even without theistic belief. This "wider" view of salvation would undercut the premise that nonbelief blocks relationship. Schellenberg and others have replied that this view, while theologically appealing, doesn't fit the standard theistic claim that relationship with God requires belief in God. The reply shifts the terms but doesn't fully answer the argument.

Why It Matters

The problem of divine hiddenness matters because it's a serious alternative to the problem of evil that doesn't depend on the contested weighing of suffering. If the argument works, it gives the atheist a shorter route to the conclusion: you don't need to show that evil is incompatible with God; you only need to show that nonbelief is incompatible with a loving God. The argument has refocused the debate in philosophy of religion, with both sides developing new positions in response.

The problem also matters because it presses on a feature of religious life that believers and unbelievers both recognize: the silence of God. Many believers report periods of dryness, doubt, and apparent abandonment; many unbelievers report that they looked for God and didn't find God. The problem of hiddenness gives these experiences a philosophical voice, and it forces theists to explain why a loving God would allow them. The SEP entry treats it as one of the most active areas in contemporary philosophy of religion, with the debate ongoing.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Divine Hiddenness" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-hiddenness/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Philosophy of Religion" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-religion/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Pascal" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Religious Epistemology" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-epistemology/

Related Topics

• What Is the Problem of Evil? — the sibling argument.
• What Is a Theodicy? — the project of justifying God.
• What Is the Free Will Defense? — a reply to evil that hiddenness challenges.
• Does God Exist? — the broader debate this argument belongs to.
• Philosophy of Atheism — the wider framework.