Divine hiddeness Calvinist perspective

[cw_theology]

I find that a lot of the common answers to divine hiddenness only work given a non Calvinist view of free will. How would you guys go about responding to the problem. I think I have a solid answer, I'm just curious what others thoughts are

 

[MW]

Calvinism allows God to remain hidden and reveal Himself as He pleases. It challenges men for making God comply with human standards.

 

[ladodgers6]

I find that a lot of the common answers to divine hiddenness only work given a non Calvinist view of free will. How would you guys go about responding to the problem. I think I have a solid answer, I'm just curious what others thoughts are

Doesn't Paul say in Romans that God's eternal power is on display all around us?

 

[Ulster Fry]

I find that a lot of the common answers to divine hiddenness only work given a non Calvinist view of free will. How would you guys go about responding to the problem. I think I have a solid answer, I'm just curious what others thoughts are

We would need to parse what a 'Calvinist view of free will' is in the first place, as there is a greater spectrum here than most people realise. Westminster seems thoroughly Thomist in its description of God as the necessary grounding for human free actions (e.g. WCF III.I). On the other hand, Edwards is a classical compatibilist. The debate between Helm and Muller goes into this a bit.

 

[Pictet]

I find that a lot of the common answers to divine hiddenness only work given a non Calvinist view of free will.

Do you mean that they take the view that for God's presence to be too clear would take away our freedom in response to him? e.g. CS Lewis in some of his writings? In which case, yes, that does seem problematic.

How would you guys go about responding to the problem. I think I have a solid answer, I'm just curious what others thoughts are

Sin! Romans 1:18 has to be at the heart of our answer - though, as verse 20 says, God's power and divine nature are clearly seen, we suppress the truth. In debate, people often are reluctant to press this - e.g. against people like Alex O'Connor, who pushes the divine hiddenness argument strongly. But his arguments. and those of a lot of modern philosophers pushing this argument centre (as I understand it) on the existence of non-resistant non-belief: people who aren't against belief in God but would believe if he made himself clearly present to them.

But any Christian answer has to immediately deny that there has ever been anyone in this situation. We all resist, though in very different ways. To argue that strongly and convincingly would mean to demonstrate sin and the way in which it causes us to deny evident truths and push them into our subconscious.

There may also be space for talking, about what it would mean for a transcendent God to be apparent - 'in him we live and move and have our being', after all... Creation is awesome, but we take it for granted; conscience speaks without ceasing in our lives (thus moral arguments for God) but we think it's just part of being human, or dismiss it as an artifact of evolution, or whatever. A genuinely transcendent God is present, but not necessarily so easy to recognise - as the fish may struggle to recognise water. This mustn't be argued in a way to make it an excuse, which it isn't. But it does offer space to ask - what are you looking for, when you look for evidence of God?

CS Lewis's argument that Jesus' miracles in a sense underline and point to the fact that God does these things all the time is helpful here - he turns water into wine every year with grapes, he heals the sick every day, but we just don't notice until Jesus comes along and does it in a more unusual way.

And I suspect that's the experience a lot of us have when we become Christians: we suddenly look about us and see a world suffused with the glory and presence of god, not because the world has changed, but because our eyes have been opened.

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

In the Psalms (often called the prayer book of the Bible), it is said God withdraws His presence, as in Psalm 30:7 KJV, "thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled". Whether due to sin, or worldliness, or simply the LORD desiring to draw us into seeking closer intimacy with Him, He hides His face (which often signifies His presence). One can google 'God hiding Himself in Bible' and many Scriptures will be cited. Or use a concordance.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

As Matthew noted, the Reformed Confessions don't teach a view of God that denies His "hiddenness" in the sense that we only apprehend what God reveals to us as creatures. All knowledge of God is creaturely and limited to the capacity of the creature and what God has revealed of Himself to us in Creation, the acts of Providence, and in His Word.

If anything, many non-Reformed views of God claim a kind of knowing of the creature that is akin to God's and many move from the creature and apply standards to God as if we know how God thinks because we understand reality in a way where God is just another object of our knowledge. You'll often see some prominent Christian apologists or thinkers reasoning form what must be true according to human reasoning and concluding that "...a good God would never..." or "...we know God could never.." or "...God is a gentlemen" when some aspect of Special Revelation clashes with their philosophical notions of what is "self-evidently" true about goodness or love.

If anything, the Reformed have historically insisted upon the Creator/creature distinction whenever other Christian sects have insisted that certain doctrines, such as election, reprobation, freedom, etc, clash with their conceptions of what they insist must be clearly known of God. It is the Reformed who is most apt to protect God's hiddenness where many make God to be altogether like themselves in a way where they assume His knowledge of things is not at all hidden from their understanding and judgment.

 

[MW]

We would need to parse what a 'Calvinist view of free will' is in the first place, as there is a greater spectrum here than most people realise. Westminster seems thoroughly Thomist in its description of God as the necessary grounding for human free actions (e.g. WCF III.I). On the other hand, Edwards is a classical compatibilist. The debate between Helm and Muller goes into this a bit.

What do you mean by "thoroughly Thomist?"

 

[Ulster Fry]

What do you mean by "thoroughly Thomist?"

‘God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.‘ (Emphasis added).

That language is distinctly Thomist regarding the relationship between God’s providence and creaturely actions. Creaturely actions are not hindered but on the contrary are ‘established’ by God. In other words, God is the necessary grounding for all creatively activity, so the possibility of free will itself depends on God.

Then there is primary and secondary causation, and elsewhere the WCF talks about God’s upholding both contingent and necessary things in their appropriate mode. If someone talked about free will and creation in this way, I would immediately assume (on this issue) he was a Thomist.

 

[MW]

‘God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.‘ (Emphasis added).

That language is distinctly Thomist regarding the relationship between God’s providence and creaturely actions. Creaturely actions are not hindered but on the contrary are ‘established’ by God. In other words, God is the necessary grounding for all creatively activity, so the possibility of free will itself depends on God.

I am not seeing it. There is, no doubt, a strain of "concurrentism" in both Calvinism and Thomism which goes back to Augustine, but to say that it is distinctly Thomist is stretching it too far. There are differences with the Thomist doctrine of predestination and grace, so I doubt it can be called "thoroughly" Thomist.

Then there is primary and secondary causation, and elsewhere the WCF talks about God’s upholding both contingent and necessary things in their appropriate mode. If someone talked about free will and creation in this way, I would immediately assume (on this issue) he was a Thomist.

Again, I don't know why you would assume this. Foreordination of necessity and contingency is just too common in the catholic tradition to be assigned to one person.

 

[Ulster Fry]

I am not seeing it. There is, no doubt, a strain of "concurrentism" in both Calvinism and Thomism which goes back to Augustine, but to say that it is distinctly Thomist is stretching it too far.



Again, I don't know why you would assume this. Foreordination of necessity and contingency is just too common in the catholic tradition to be assigned to one person.

The language of primary and secondary causation etc is Aristotelian. In the West, Aristotle only became widely available roughly concurrent with Aquinas' lifetime. Prior to him, I can't see who is speaking in this way about God's providence and creaturely free will. Of course Augustine is talking about the topic itself, but he doesn't use this language because he didn't read Aristotle.

Edit: I should say Augustine didn't read Aristotle directly, as far as I am aware. It was always through the synthesis of the Neoplatonists.

 

[MW]

The language of primary and secondary causation etc is Aristotelian. In the West, Aristotle only became widely available roughly concurrent with Aquinas' lifetime. Prior to him, I can't see who is speaking in this way about God's providence and creaturely free will. Of course Augustine is talking about the topic itself, but he doesn't use this language because he didn't read Aristotle.

So you are saying "thoroughly Thomist" in the sense that the basic concepts are initially derived from Thomas. OK. But I think you have to allow that the concepts would have been floating around academia with varying questions and solutions attached to them, and then utilised insofar as they served orthodoxy. For example, when it comes to Thomas' view of permission of sin, or to single predestination, or to equal agency in good and evil works, it is doubtful consistent Calvinists would have aligned with him.

 

[Ulster Fry]

So you are saying "thoroughly Thomist" in the sense that the basic concepts are initially derived from Thomas. OK. But I think you have to allow that the concepts would have been floating around academia with varying questions and solutions attached to them, and then utilised insofar as they served orthodoxy. For example, when it comes to permission of sin, or to single predestination, or to equal agency in good and evil works, it is doubtful appeal would have been made to Thomas.

Yes, I guess I'm using 'Thomist' as a catch-all term here, rather than assuming the Westminster divines were sitting with the Summa open as they wrote these sections. In free will debates today, anyone who used this sort of language would be assumed to be a Thomist.

By contrast, Edwards is working from a completely different framework in which the terminology is different. He is basically operating from within the British empiricist tradition. Again, I'm not an expert on Edwards (or anyone else for that matter) but even a basic reading of his writings on free will leads one to see a large shift from the Thomist language highlighted above. Once that's acknowledged, then the debate on how much that matters as seen in Helm and Muller arises.

 

[Pictet]

Yes, I guess I'm using 'Thomist' as a catch-all term here, rather than assuming the Westminster divines were sitting with the Summa open as they wrote these sections. In free will debates today, anyone who used this sort of language would be assumed to be a Thomist.

I don't have access to Bonaventure on the sentences, but from a cursory glance at the Breviloquium I suspect he wasn't too far from this position. If so, it would make this not the Thomist position, but the dominant 13th Century position - or at least the dominant position of more Augustinian thinkers.

That said, given Carl Trueman's work on Owen, it's perfectly plausible that some of them had the Summa open, or, if not the Summa, then more recent writers, Protestant and Roman Catholic, who drew on him. Thomas might not have been dominant in the 13th Century, but he certainly was pretty dominant in the 17th.

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

Hello Carter,

You said, you "find a lot of the common answers to divine hiddenness only work given a non Calvinist view of free will."

Why would you think such a thing? How about defining what you think a non Calvinist view of free will is? And what you think a Calvinist view of free will is?

 

[Ed Walsh]

Doesn't Paul say in Romans that God's eternal power is on display all around us?

But not his essence. We can't know his essence for it is beyond our ability to comprehend. If he did not hide his very essence from us and we were exposed to it we would instantly die.
(Exodus 33:20

 

[MW]

Yes, I guess I'm using 'Thomist' as a catch-all term here, rather than assuming the Westminster divines were sitting with the Summa open as they wrote these sections. In free will debates today, anyone who used this sort of language would be assumed to be a Thomist.

Muller's work on divine will and human choice looks at it eclectically with elements of Scotism thrown in.

 

[ladodgers6]

But not his essence. We can't know his essence for it is beyond our ability to comprehend. If he did not hide his very essence from us and we were exposed to it we would instantly die.
(Exodus 33:20

I am not talking about the presence of the Glory of God. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.​

 

[MW]

I am not talking about the presence of the Glory of God. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.​

Infinity is an attribute, yet it is negative. It is only telling you what God is not. If you break down the word eternity to the way it functions in theological discourse it is only saying that God is not bound by time -- He was, and is, and is to come. Unchangeability or immutability is the same. Spirit means He is not material and visible. Incomprehensible that He cannot be comprehended. Immensity, not bound by space. What have we shown? That we do not know God in His essence. He is wholly other in that respect. Do we know "of Him?" Yes, we understand well enough that He is. But what He is, positively, is for Him to reveal to us as the great I am, and we can rest in His revelation because it leads us to know Him as the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

 

[Ploutos]

Infinity is an attribute, yet it is negative. It is only telling you what God is not. If you break down the word eternity to the way it functions in theological discourse it is only saying that God is not bound by time -- He was, and is, and is to come. Unchangeability or immutability is the same. Spirit means He is not material and visible. Incomprehensible that He cannot be comprehended. Immensity, not bound by space. What have we shown? That we do not know God in His essence. He is wholly other in that respect. Do we know "of Him?" Yes, we understand well enough that He is. But what He is, positively, is for Him to reveal to us as the great I am, and we can rest in His revelation because it leads us to know Him as the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

Is Reformed thought normally that apophatic?

 

[MW]

Is Reformed thought normally that apophatic?

For the essence of God or incommunicable attributes, yes. There is the "way of eminence" for what are called communicable or moral attributes.

 

[Ploutos]

We know something of God in his essence insofar as we know of the Trinity, no?

 

[MW]

We know something of God in his essence insofar as we know of the Trinity, no?

We know that it is because God has revealed it to us. But what is it? The uniform confession of the church is that it is ineffable and therefore a mystery. Prov. 30:4.

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

I find that a lot of the common answers to divine hiddenness only work given a non Calvinist view of free will. How would you guys go about responding to the problem. I think I have a solid answer, I'm just curious what others thoughts are

Hello Carter @cw_theology , I repeat what I said earlier:

You said, you "find a lot of the common answers to divine hiddenness only work given a non Calvinist view of free will."

Why would you think such a thing? How about defining what you think a non Calvinist view of free will is? And what you think a Calvinist view of free will is?

Without defining what you mean your question cannot be properly answered. It should not be hard if your question is serious.

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

@cw_theology , clarity is not of interest to you?

 

[cw_theology]

Hello Carter @cw_theology , I repeat what I said earlier:

You said, you "find a lot of the common answers to divine hiddenness only work given a non Calvinist view of free will."

Why would you think such a thing? How about defining what you think a non Calvinist view of free will is? And what you think a Calvinist view of free will is?

Without defining what you mean your question cannot be properly answered. It should not be hard if your question is serious.

In philoaophocal terms the Non Calvinist free will is categorical ability to do otherwise, the Calvinist free will is the conditional ability to do otherwise. I assumed this was well known by everyone on here. Many explanations rely on the categorical ability to do otherwise, such as God is hidden because it gives us a more free choice as to whether to serve him.

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

Thank you for clarifying, Carter, how you see it!

You said (in the OP), "I think I have a solid answer . . . to the problem of . . . divine hiddenness"

What are your thoughts on this?