On the Hiddeness of God
On the Hiddeness of God
In Two parts
Part 1:
- Belief as Precondition for Relationship
You’re absolutely right that belief is a necessary precondition to relationship—no one relates meaningfully to a being they don’t believe exists. But the theistic claim (especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and explored in Divine Physics) isn’t that God is entirely hidden, but that He is partially veiled, and that the invitation is toward epistemic trust grounded in coherence, not epistemic overwhelm.
You're also correct: conviction ≠ coercion. But here’s the distinction—the kind of evidence God offers isn’t meant to produce belief in isolation, but to create room for belief within relational posture. In other words, God doesn't just aim to convince minds. He aims to shape will, trust, and love. And those are not reliably built on forceful evidence—they are, like you said, enabled by evidence, but shaped in the presence of freedom, uncertainty, and vulnerability.
We trust other minds, moral truths, and consciousness through coherence and experience—not through logical necessity. This doesn’t make belief irrational. It makes it relationally embedded—as belief in God arguably must be, if that God is personal.
- The Question of Sufficient Evidence
You raise a fair challenge: if a deity wants belief and knows what would convince me, why doesn’t it provide that?
The honest answer: I don’t fully know.
But Divine Physics suggests the reason may lie not in evidentiary shortfall, but in dimensional mismatch—between human expectations for proof and the kind of being God is. A timeless, non-physical, morally perfect mind would not fit neatly within our standard criteria of empirical certainty. If you’re expecting God to behave like a cosmic lab rat—visible, testable, measurable—it misunderstands both what God is claimed to be and what counts as appropriate evidence for such a being.
The evidence that is offered—fine-tuning, consciousness, the contingency of existence, moral realism, longing, existential coherence—may not be “sufficient” in the way you demand, but it’s remarkably consistent in pointing to something beyond materialism.
You don’t owe belief. But the structure of reality still whispers suggestion.
- “You’re Filtering Out the Evidence”
You called this psychological projection. It’s not. It’s a recognition of how everyone (myself included) filters experience through prior commitments and identity-defining frameworks. In Divine Physics, we refer to this as epistemic insulation—the protective shell around our beliefs, not because we’re irrational, but because we’re emotionally and existentially invested in maintaining a coherent view of the world.
And you’re absolutely right:
Moral intuition is not universally compelling
Longing is not always trustworthy
Fine-tuning is not unexplainable by alternatives
But here’s the counter:
None of these are standalone proofs. Together, however, they form a convergent case. Like pixels forming a photograph. Not conclusive on their own—but deeply suggestive when viewed as a pattern.
- The Problem of Epistemic Entrapment
This is your strongest point. And it echoes the “soteriological problem of divine hiddenness” precisely as philosophers like Schellenberg and Drange have framed it.
If a person sincerely follows the evidence and ends up wrong, through no fault of their own—how is that just?
This is, in my view, where human constructs of theology often oversimplify. The position of Divine Physics is that the pursuit of truth itself matters—that perhaps the issue is not arriving at a perfect doctrinal endpoint, but walking the path of coherence, integrity, humility, and openness to encounter.
If a person lives in pursuit of truth, in the full light of reason, love, and humility—and God exists—it would be philosophically inconsistent with God's nature to condemn them merely for not drawing the “correct” epistemic conclusion under honest conditions.
- Ambiguity vs. Clarity
Again, a sharp point. If belief in God is supposed to be rational, why not offer clarity on par with belief in other minds, or external reality?
Because the moment belief in God becomes compulsory through clarity, relationship would shift from free trust to transactional compliance. That doesn’t mean God plays games with ambiguity. It means God may work through ambiguity to refine a deeper kind of vision—what Kierkegaard called “the leap,” not into irrationality, but into relational trust born from integrity in uncertainty.
Conclusion
You’re not avoiding the question. You’re asking it honestly.
And you’re right that absence can feel indistinguishable from silence. But the claim of Divine Physics is that the silence is not empty. It is filled with patterned resonance—moral order, quantum coherence, inner longing, philosophical necessity—and these do not prove God, but they strain the logic of a godless universe.
If you’ve sought, wrestled, and waited—then you’re not far from the pulse of what faith actually is. Not certainty. Not blindness. But the posture that remains open when easy answers fail.
If God exists, He sees you. If He is just, He knows your pursuit. If He is personal, He will respond.
And perhaps the waiting is the refinement—not the rejection.
Martin Liebenthal
Part 2
Let’s take the deep structure of your divine hiddenness critique, and let’s render it in terms that mirror how human beings experience love—both in romance and in parenting. Because in Divine Physics, this isn't a stretch; it's a reflection of the very architecture of reality: love, trust, and pursuit are relational and metaphysical analogues.
Romantic Love: The Pursuit Must Be Chosen, Not Forced
Imagine a person who wants to be loved—not manipulated, not obeyed, not merely admired, but truly loved. Would it be love if they forced the other person into it by undeniable displays of power? If they overwhelmed them with evidence of their greatness, their attractiveness, their capacity to provide?
Of course not. That wouldn't be love—it would be compliance. Real love must be chosen freely. And the conditions for love require space for uncertainty—the space to wonder, to pursue, to choose.
Now imagine the lover, watching from a distance—not entirely hidden, but not imposing. Dropping signs: a look, a letter, a pattern of presence. Clarity in pieces. Enough to invite, never to dominate. Because the moment they overpower the other’s will, they lose what they truly want: voluntary love.
This is the logic of divine hiddenness—not as an absence of interest, but as the necessary veil that protects the dignity of freedom.
Parental Love: You Don’t Want Just Obedience—You Want to Be Known
Now shift to a parent’s love. A good parent doesn’t constantly remind their child of their authority. They don’t barge into every decision, dictate every choice, or demand love in return. Why?
Because they want their child to become—to learn to love, reason, choose, and trust on their own.
Sometimes that means stepping back. Sometimes that means letting the child wrestle with fear, doubt, even the feeling of abandonment. But it doesn’t mean the parent is absent. It means the parent knows that love and maturity require the tension of space.
The child might say, “Where are you? Why don’t you stop this? Why don’t you prove you care?”
But the parent knows: rushing in would interrupt the very process that makes the child strong—and, paradoxically, draws them closer in the end.
Back to the Divine: This is Not Game-Playing—It’s the Deep Pattern of Relationship
What you describe as “divine hiddenness” is not arbitrary. It's not cruelty. It's not neglect. It's the same mysterious posture that undergirds every deep, meaningful relationship:
The need to be known without being forced.
The choice to love when it isn’t demanded.
The waiting in the silence when certainty is absent.
You don’t ask your partner to mathematically prove their love daily. You don’t ask your child to provide scientific evidence that they’ll still care for you in 30 years. Love is about relational coherence, not empirical domination.
If God exists as the ground of love itself, then His ways wouldn’t bypass love’s logic. They would mirror it—sometimes painfully, but always purposefully.
So when you say:
"If this is brilliance, it is brilliance indistinguishable from absence."
I hear the ache. I truly do.
But perhaps that brilliance feels absent because it’s not trying to overwhelm you with clarity, but instead to invite you into the same kind of faith, risk, and longing that defines every other true relationship in your life.
That isn't absence.
That’s intimacy waiting for an opening.
—William W. Collins Author of Divine Physics: The Intersection of Faith, Science, and the Human Psyche Available on Amazon
William W. Collins, Copyright, May 27, 2025
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