Abstract
Since its first delivery in 1993, J.L. Schellenberg’s atheistic argument from divine hiddenness keeps generating lively debate in various quarters in the philosophy of religion. Over time, the author has responded to many criticisms of his argument, both in its original evidentialist version and in its subsequent conceptualist version. One central problem that has gone undetected in these exchanges to date, we argue, is how Schellenberg’s explicit-recognition criterion for revelation contains discriminatory tendencies against mentally handicapped persons. Viewed from this angle, our present critique imparts Schellenberg’s position with a philosophical dilemma: (1) endorsing divine discrimination to the effect that God does not love ‘cognitive-affective outsiders’ or (2) giving up on explicit recognition. Either way, the hiddenness argument does not succeed.
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Notes
In the original presentation of the hiddenness argument, the argument is cast in terms of ‘reasonable’ or ‘inculpable’ nonbelief. For some recent modifications of his original terminology, see (Schellenberg 2004b).
The phrase ‘God is hidden’ can be interpreted in various ways. Schellenberg uses it specifically to refer to the obscurity of God’s existence. Cf. (Schellenberg 1993:4–6).
For further details and difficulties regarding Schellenberg’s advance from delivering the hiddenness argument in evidentialist terms to couching it in a conceptualist framework, see footnotes 9 and 10 below.
(Schellenberg 2008).
(Aijaz and Weidler 2007:11ff).
Here we use the expression ‘aware-making’ as a term of art to avoid possible misunderstanding. For Schellenberg, not ‘holding anything back’ does not mean that God would exhaustively reveal Himself so that the believer would become alert to everything there is to know about God. The latter scenario is precluded by God’s infinite depth and richness, which leaves always more for humans to discover. (Incidentally, this divine feature grounds another central claim by Schellenberg, namely, that explicit recognition of God leaves the believer with plenty of room for further growth and progressive maturation in their faith.) Accordingly, unreserved aware-making, in our phrase, does not imply exhaustive revelation.
‘And if some human being, for whatever reason, environmental or genetic, seems at some time utterly incapable of personal relationship with God, we cannot rule out the possibility that God, if he exists and is perfectly loving, will at some future point in that individual’s life, or in the hereafter, provide him with the capacities required for this and other forms of well-being’ (Schellenberg 1993:24–25). In the course of this essay, we will return to this crucial statement and critically examine its wording, which will prove problematic.
Regarding its thematic focus on explicitness, our critique is comparable to the recent criticism of the hiddenness argument by (Poston and Dougherty 2007). In terms of strategy, execution, and theoretical detail, however, our line of analysis differs markedly from Poston & Dougherty’s. Hence, Schellenberg’s reply to these authors (Schellenberg 2007) does nothing to disarm our present case. This will become especially clear at the end of our Sect. 4. See note 20, below.
Here Schellenberg’s inquiry issues the central claim that evidence-based belief in God’s existence is an indispensable prerequisite for a ‘personal’ or ‘positively meaningful’ (in the author’s later phrase) relationship with God. ‘[A] personal relationship with God entails belief in Divine existence, that is, entails a disposition to “feel it true” that God exists. This claim seems obviously true. For I cannot love God, be grateful to God, or contemplate God’s goodness unless I believe that there is a God’ (Schellenberg 1993:30). For critical comments on the hard-to-pin-down meaning of ‘personal’ and ‘positively meaningful’ in this context, see (Aijaz and Weidler 2007:17ff).
(Schellenberg 2004a:40): ‘[R]eflection on the concept of divine love shows that a perfectly loving God would necessarily seek personal relationship with all individuals belonging to [the category of non-resisting nonbelievers] … In defense of … [this claim], we may point out that the seeking of personal relationship is an essential part of the best human love … Something similar must apply to God’s love for us.’ (Schellenberg 2005a:204): ‘[W]e can plausibly take … claims as to what we would find if there were a perfectly loving God to be not just true but necessarily true. The reasoning developed in support of the idea that God would facilitate relationship … seems applicable to any possible world containing human beings created by God – it strongly suggests that the conditionals in question reflect part of the very meaning of “God unsurpassably loves human beings”. Hence that reasoning may be regarded as providing for those propositions a familiar sort of (defeasible) a priori justification.’
See (McCord Adams 2006), particularly, pp. 187–191. Here we are not claiming that McCord Adams would agree with everything we have advanced in the name of Vanstone, nor do we claim that she is an unreserved admirer of Schelling (cf. the next paragraph in the main body of our text, along with note 16, right below). Instead, we merely propose that her Christological analysis invokes the material dimension of divine activity underway to the personal in a way similar to that championed by Schelling. Moreover, McCord Adams’ interim conclusion about materiality seems generally compatible with Vanstone’s conception of God as Creator-Artist, when she writes: ‘[…] God’s love for material creation cannot fail to be open-eyed. Divine desire to make matter as Godlike as possible allows material creation to work itself up into the personal. […] God loves material creation by uniting Godself to it in the most intimate ways metaphysically possible. Put otherwise, God creates us in this world because God wants to be a Lover of this sort of material creation’ (pp. 190–191).
‘Wir sind nicht gleich beim persönlichen Gott; […].’ A more literal, though inelegant rendering would be: ‘We are not immediately with the personal God; […].’ Aside from its clumsiness, however, this literal rendering misses the quest-character implied by Schelling’s claim that ‘negative philosophy’ and ‘positive philosophy’ approach divinity differently. Negative philosophy as ‘a priori science’ (apriorische Wissenschaft, p. 156) starts with the concept of God, while positive philosophy, which Schelling himself advocates, starts from the side of ‘being, which precedes all thinking’ (das allem Denken zuvorkommende Sein, ibid.). In light of these considerations, the translation adopted here seems most appropriate.
For yet another formulation of the same implausible claim by the author about a ‘direct’ revelation of God as loving, cf. (Schellenberg 1993:195).
See Chap. 6.
To be clear, here and in the following we do not contest the irreducibility thesis implied by Schellenberg’s argument. What we take issue with is his stronger independence thesis, which holds that the value and meaning of a divine-human love relationship can be ascertained in thorough insulation from human experience and the scenes of loving (or unloving) encounters therein.
This is basically Paul Moser’s point when he argues persuasively that you can hear God (and respond to Him) even if you do not hear Him as God (Moser 2004:58).
In this sense we would take Pascal’s proposal from the famous ‘Wager’ passages in his Pensées quite seriously: ‘You want to find faith and you do not know the road. […]: learn from those who were once bound like you and who now wager all they have. […]: follow the way by which they began. They behaved just as if they did believe, taking holy water, having masses said, and so on. That will make you believe quite naturally, and will make you more docile’ (Fragment 418). Cited from (Pascal 1995:124–125). These sentences, especially the last one about becoming ‘docile,’ have all too often been interpreted in terms of the quarrel between reason and passion(s), and some of Pascal’s own remarks in this context point in this direction. However, we think that Pascal’s primary emphasis lies on the performativity of faith. On our interpretation, then, Pascal allowed that participatory gestures, which often strike bystanders as mere lip-service or mechanically going through the motions, may well be a concrete embodiment of the seeker’s nascent love for God. And nascent love is not necessarily deficient just because it is groping or because the contours of the beloved are fuzzy. In other words, Pascal’s genius, we think, consisted in stressing the performative, concretely meaning-sponsoring dimension of faith. From this perspective, it is thoroughly possible for someone to genuinely enact love for God in ‘fuzzy worship,’ i.e., before the worshipper knows (explicitly recognizes) God as the sustaining center and guide of her worshipful effort. Conversely, to repeat, God may speak to us, without thereby immediately announcing Himself as our Creator-Parent.
A beautiful statement of this claim can be found in (Buber 2004 [orig. 1923]:27–28): ‘Little, disjointed, meaningless sounds still go out persistently into the void. But one day, unforeseen, they will have become conversation – does it matter that it is perhaps with the simmering kettle? It is conversation. Many a movement termed reflex is a firm trowel in the building up of the person in the world. It is simply not the case that the child first perceives an object, then, as it were, puts himself in relation with it. But the effort to establish relation comes first [emphasis added] – the hand of the child arched out so that what is over against him may nestle under it; second is the actual relation, a saying of Thou without words, in the state preceding the word-form; the thing, like the I, is produced late, arising after the original experiences have been split asunder and the connected partners separated.’
Here we also differ decisively from (Poston and Dougherty 2007). These authors generally accept Schellenberg’s ranking to the effect that the explicit modes of divine-human love are spiritually superior to the implicit ones, a ranking we clearly reject. Their strategy in this regard is twofold: For one thing, they follow William Wainwright in stressing that even the implicit modes of love available to non-resistant nonbelievers (i.e. those modes based on implicit or de re belief in God) are ‘second best’ but still ‘very good indeed.’ Presumably, this makes the waiting period until explicit love is reached less dire (Poston and Dougherty 2007:192, cf. 190). Somewhat predictably, Schellenberg is not impressed with this part of their analysis, because he can maintain that a ‘perfectly loving being’ [italics added] simply wouldn’t settle for second best (Schellenberg 2007:201). For another thing – and this seems to be Poston & Dougherty’s main point – they propose that the lingering ‘epistemic distance’ characteristic of the non-resistant nonbeliever’s condition may be necessary as a preparatory state, namely, a ‘trial of doubt’ or ‘crisis of doubt’ which allows humans or human-like creatures to experience God’s final and full revelation as ‘all the sweeter’ (Poston and Dougherty 2007:184, 187, 195, 196). Again, here Schellenberg has a ready-made reply in store to the effect that his previous account of a ‘second level of hiddenness’ makes for a sufficient challenge, where the believer doesn’t question the existence of God but feels a lack of God’s presence in their life, and this feeling of God being withdrawn is as big a trial as could be demanded (Schellenberg 2007:202–203). Our criticism in terms of discrimination does not invoke epistemic distance in the way Poston & Dougherty do, which is why Schellenberg’s answer to them doesn’t apply to our case and leaves the worry about discrimination fully intact.
Cf. pp. 50–51, in the same volume.
‘Since the experience is had as soon as the capacity for personal relationship with God exists, we may suppose that it occurs quite early on in the life of each individual, in particular, before any investigations as to the existence of God have been undertaken’ (Schellenberg 1993:49).
Since the wording of the following premises is drawn mostly from Schellenberg’s own text at hand, we have temporarily adopted his practice of using a lower-case typeface for masculine personal pronouns referring to the Divine (such as ‘he,’ ‘his,’ etc.). After stating the Divine Discrimination Argument in full, we shall resume our usual practice of capitalizing those pronouns.
For example: ‘For I cannot love God, be grateful to God, or contemplate God’s goodness unless I believe there is a God. […] It is important to note that my point here is a logical one. There is something logically amiss in the suggestion that I could display attitudes and perform actions of the sort in question without being disposed to feel it true that God exists.’ As he states a few lines above, the ‘disposition to “feel it true” that God exists’ is equal to the ‘belief in Divine existence’ (Schellenberg 1993:30).
Cf. (Aijaz and Weidler 2007:6–16).
At present, we are not aware of any reliable statistics about such interviews and how exactly future parents articulate wishes concerning their offspring. However, we find it very plausible to assume that most, if not all, parents want their children to be healthy.
See our Introduction above.
Here Schellenberg adds: ‘Now Adams is writing from within the Christian tradition, but I would suggest that what she and other Christians “naturally see” to be true ought to be more widely held’ (Schellenberg 1993:26).
Here Schellenberg is thinking ‘of those unfortunate individuals who have been deprived and/or abused in childhood and so are suspicious of everyone, incapable of trust in man or God.’ He adds that the existence of such individuals might constitute a problem of evil, which falls outside the scope of his inquiry into hiddenness. See (Schellenberg 1993:26, note 19). Be that as it may, our point is that the discriminatory potential in question remains problematic, in that mentally handicapped cognitive-affective outsiders differ from the aforementioned child-abuse victims. This is because the condition of the former is not obviously linked to other people’s (abusive) exercise of their freedom.
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Weidler, M., Aijaz, I. Divine Hiddenness and Discrimination: A Philosophical Dilemma. SOPHIA 52, 95–114 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-011-0285-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-011-0285-x