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Summary essay on divinehiddeness
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ATR/97.1C. S. Lewis on the Problem of Divine Hiddenness
Travis Dumsday*
Along with the problem of evil, the problem of divine hiddenness
has become one of the most prominent arguments for atheism in
the contemporary philosophy of religion. Roughly it is this: if
there is a loving God, surely he would make his existence apparent
to us, and in a way that we could not rationally doubt. Why? (i)
Because it is of the nature of love that the lover will seek open re-
lationship with the object of love, and (ii) because on most tradi-
tional theisms it is claimed that our ultimate well-being requires
having a positive relationship with God, which relationship pre-
supposes belief in God’s reality. Yet as a matter of fact many peo-
ple fail to believe in God, and that through no fault of their own.
Such nonbelief is incompatible with the truth of theism. Therefore
God does not exist. Here I explore how the writings of C. S. Lewis
(probably the twentieth century’s most popular Anglican author)
can be brought to bear on the problem.
(1) Introduction
If God exists, why doesn’t he make his existence more obvious,
such that it could not rationally be doubted? This is a question of
longstanding interest within Christian theology, going back to the pa-
tristic period.1 More recently, it has been turned into an argument for
* Travis Dumsday is an assistant professor in the department of philosophy and
religious studies at Concordia University College of Alberta, and a member of the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada. He received his doctorate in philosophy at
the University of Calgary in 2010, and works chiefly in analytic philosophy of science,
natural theology, and the Scholastic tradition (medieval and contemporary).
1 See, for instance, St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. A. Rob-
ertson (Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892), chaps. 11–15; St.
Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis, Ind.:
Hackett, 1993), 106–118; St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Corinthians, trans.
T. W. Chambers (Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1889), homilies
2 and 4–8; St. Gregory Nazianzus, Orations, trans. C. G. Browne and J. E. Swallow
(Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894), oration 28, chapter 12; and
Origen, De Principiis, trans. Frederick Crombie (Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature
Publishing Co., 1885), book 3, chapter 1.
33
,34 Anglican Theological Review
atheism popularly known as the “problem of divine hiddenness”: on
any well-formulated theism, God loves us and so desires a relation-
ship of explicit and reciprocal love with us, both because the seeking
of such a relationship is entailed by the nature of love and because this
relationship is required for our ultimate well-being as humans. But
we cannot have such a relationship with God unless we first believe
that God exists. Consequently, God would ensure that everyone (or
at least everyone who was not actively resisting God) had a rationally
secure belief in him at all times. But as a matter of fact, lots of people
fail to believe in God, often through no fault of their own. The state of
affairs we see in our world contradicts what theism would lead us to
expect a priori. So which assumption should be jettisoned? The most
basic assumption, namely that God exists at all.
While a number of authors earlier in the twentieth century pro-
vided valuable discussions of the problem,2 its most focused treatment
began in the early-to-mid-1990; it has since achieved considerable
prominence in the contemporary philosophy of religion, finding advo-
cates in such authors as Schellenberg, Drange, Keller, and Maitzen.3
They have all formulated versions of this argument, with some differ-
ences between them. Schellenberg’s formulation is the most robust,
claiming that even a single instance of nonresistant nonbelief (non-
belief on the part of someone who is otherwise willing to believe in
God), even for a limited time, suffices to disprove theism. Drange and
Keller adopt a weaker formulation, according to which it is rather the
2 See for instance John Hick, “Soul-Making Theodicy,” in Encountering Evil: Live
Opinions in Theodicy, ed. Stephen T. Davis (Atlanta, Ga.: Westminster John Knox,
1981), 39–52, reprinted in Michael Peterson et al., Philosophy of Religion: Selected
Readings, third edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 341–353; Terence
Penelhum, God and Skepticism: A Study in Skepticism and Fideism (Dordrecht: Rei
del, 1983); and Thomas V. Morris, Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of
Life (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 1992).
3 See J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1993), and The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Re-
ligious Skepticism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007); Theodore M.
Drange, “The Argument from Non-Belief,” Religious Studies 29, no. 4 (December
1993): 417–432; James A. Keller, “The Hiddenness of God and the Problem of Evil,”
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 37 (1995): 13–24; Stephen Maitzen,
“Divine Hiddenness and the Demographics of Theism,” Religious Studies 42, no. 2
(June 2006): 177–191.
, C. S. Lewis on Divine Hiddenness 35
huge amount of such unbelief that disproves theism, while Maitzen’s
concern is the fact that whole cultures are ignorant of God.
The literature on the problem continues to expand, with many
replies4 and counter-replies5 issued. My aim here is to look at what
the writings of C. S. Lewis have to contribute to this ongoing debate.
For while he nowhere examines the problem in quite the form just
laid out, he does have a good deal to say that is of relevance. In what
follows I will outline and assess his various lines of thought regard-
ing hiddenness. I will argue that some of his points are promising in
themselves and prescient of recent developments in the hiddenness
literature, and that one of his ideas supplies ingredients for a new
response to the problem.
The paper is divided as follows: in the next section I look at an
avenue of reply arising from Lewis’s views concerning inherent ob-
stacles to divine revelation; then in section three I examine an alter-
native, compatible response having to do with the indirect knowledge
of God available via the transcendent moral law; section four sees a
brief development of yet another line of response, one not explicitly
present in Lewis’s writings and which has not yet appeared in the hid-
denness literature, but which can be extrapolated from Lewis’s work.
Finally I conclude with a short comment on the place of Lewis’s argu-
ment as part of a broader, cumulative case strategy for addressing the
problem.
4 See for instance Imran Aijaz and Markus Weidler, “Some Critical Reflections on
the Hiddenness Argument,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 61, no.
1 (February 2007): 1–23; Ebrahim Azadegan, “Divine Hiddenness and Human Sin:
The Noetic Effect of Sin,” Journal of Reformed Theology 7 (2013): 69–90; Andrew
Cullison, “Two Solutions to the Problem of Divine Hiddenness,” American Philo-
sophical Quarterly 47, no. 2 (2010): 119–134; Terence Cuneo, “Another Look at Di-
vine Hiddenness,” Religious Studies 49, no. 2 (2013): 151–164; C. Stephen Evans,
“Can God Be Hidden and Evident at the Same Time? Some Kierkegaardian Reflec-
tions,” Faith and Philosophy 23, no. 3 (July 2006): 241–253.
5 Significant contributions include Benjamin Cordry, “Divine Hiddenness and
Belief De Re,” Religious Studies 45, no. 1 (March 2009): 1–19; Robert P. Lovering,
“Divine Hiddenness and Inculpable Ignorance,” International Journal for Philoso-
phy of Religion 56 (2004): 89–107; Stephen Maitzen, “Does Molinism Explain the
Demographics of Theism?” Religious Studies 44 (2008): 473–477; J. L. Schellenberg,
“The Hiddenness Argument Revisited (I),” Religious Studies 41 (2005): 201–215,
“The Hiddenness Argument Revisited (II),” Religious Studies 41 (2005): 287–303,
“Reply to Aijaz and Weidler on Hiddenness,” International Journal for Philosophy of
Religion 64 (2008): 135–140.
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