Re-evaluating the hiddenness argument from above

Abstract

J. L. Schellenberg's hiddenness argument for atheism (2015) assumes that God's perpetual openness to a relationship with any finite person is consistent with their perpetual flourishing. However, I argue that if Aquinas-Stump's account of the nature of love is true, then any finite person flourishes the most only if they attain the greatest degree of union among God and all relevant parties. Moreover, if Humean externalism is true, then any finite person might not have their greatest attainable degree of union among God and all relevant parties, as soon as possible, unless God sacrifices some time in the union-not the whole union-with them. Accordingly, God's perpetual openness might not be consistent with the future flourishing of any finite person-from which it follows that a crucial assumption of the hiddenness argument might not be true.

“God Smiles”: The Rhythm of Revelation in Sorrentino’s “The Young Pope”

“…find the door to such relationship closed" (Schellenberg 2016, p. 21). Critics of Schellenberg, such as Vandergriff (2018), have argued that this somewhat univocal understanding of divine-human relationship does not in fact represent the fullness of human flourishing, which must necessarily include the freedom to love, and that a perfectly loving God "might derivatively desire to permit various types and tokens of nonresistant nonbelief for some time" out of an intrinsic respect for the individual's capacity to love in freedom (Vandergriff 2018, p. 196). Such arguments bear some relation to John Hick's famous "soul-making" argument regarding the opacity of suffering (see Hick [1957Hick [ ] 1966Hick [ , 1977.…”