A Review

I found The Elusive God to be the most profound and interesting work I have read in the past twenty years at the intersection of philosophy and theology. Instead of beginning with a demand for evidence of the existence of a divine being, the author argues that we should expect any intrusion into our lives of the sort that would convince us that God exists to be authoritative evidence that calls us not only to a cognitive viewpoint but also to a surrendering of our wills. The result of such an investigation is a re-conceptualization of the epistemological landscape relevant to the possibility of the knowledge of God.’ ~ Jonathan Kvanvig, Baylor University

Table of Contents 

• • Preface page ix
  • Introduction 1
  • 1. Questions 1
  • 2. Plans 93. God Undercover 18
• 1 Doubting Skeptics 29
  • 1. Skepticism 30
  • 2. Divine Evidence 32
  • 3. Judgment 39
  • 4. Under Authority 46
  • 5. Volitional Knowing 55
  • 6. Skeptical Tests 60
  • 7. Trust and Distrust 71
  • 8. Voice Lessons 7
• 2 Knowing as Attunement 83
  • 1. Rationality and Explanation 83
  • 2. Robust Theism 92
  • 3. Filial Knowledge 95
  • 4. Cognitive Idolatry 101
  • 5. Divine Hiding 105
  • 6. Attunement 113
  • 7. Love’s Evidence 123
  • 8. Revelation for Change 126
• 3 Dying to Know 144
  • 1. Spirit 144
  • 2. Acquaintance with Power 153
  • 3. Jerusalem and Athens 158
  • 4. Good News 162
  • 5. Forgiveness unto Reconciliation 171
  • 6. Dying and Rising 180
  • 7. Dancing on Graves 186
• 4 Philosophy Revamped 201
  • 1. Beginning Again 201
  • 2. Pursuing Questions 203
  • 3. Going for Broke 210
  • 4. Two Modes 222
  • 5. Yielding 228
• 5 Aftermath 242
  • 1. Evidence without Coercion 243
  • 2. Death’s Gain and Loss 247
  • 3. Outside Help 253
  • 4. Dying to Live 257
• Appendix: Skepticism Undone 265
  • 1. Epistemic Circles 266
  • 2. Epistemic Burdens 272
  • 3. Conclusion 278
  • References 279
  • Index 287

An Excerpt

Introduction

QUESTIONS

According to Blaise Pascal’s Pensées, any religion denying that God’s existence is concealed is false (1670, sec. 275, Sellier ed.). The same holds for any philosophy, science, or other theory that denies divine concealment. Let’s say that God’s existence is concealed, hidden, or incognito for a person at a time if and only if at that time God’s existence fails to be not only obvious but also beyond cognitively reasonable doubt for that person. Many psychologically normal adults hold that God’s existence is hidden from them at least at some times. At those times, they report, God’s existence isn’t obvious or even beyond cognitively reasonable doubt for them.

   Here and throughout we’ll use the overused term “God” as a maximally honorific title that connotes an authoritatively and morally perfect being who is inherently worthy of worship as wholehearted adoration, love, and trust, even if God doesn’t actually exist. This title, in keeping with titles generally, is intelligible even if it lacks a titleholder. We’ll use “authoritative” to signify worthiness of an executive decision-making status in some area, and “perfectly authoritative” to connote such inherent worthiness regarding every relevant area. So, one doesn’t become authoritative just by amassing clout.

   It seems undeniable that God’s existence is hidden at least from some people at some times. The theme of divine concealment is endorsed, in one form or another, by many influential proponents of Jewish and Christian monotheism, including Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Maimonides, Aquinas, Luther, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Buber, Barth, Brunner, Bonhoeffer, Rahner, and Heschel. (For references and an extensive bibliography, see Howard-Snyder and Moser 2002.) The theme receives further support from many proponents of Islamic monotheism. Very few writers, however, have developed an account of human knowledge of God’s reality in relation to divine concealment. This book contends that, despite being concealed at times, the reality of the God of traditional monotheism is knowable firsthand by humans on the basis of salient and conclusive, if elusive, evidence. “Conclusive” evidence, in my taxonomy, is well-founded undefeated support suitable for (fulfilling the justification condition for) knowledge; it may or may not be logically, or deductively, demonstrative.

The conclusive evidence suited to one’s knowing God’s reality firsthand is, we’ll see, profoundly challenging for humans and significantly different from our familiar evidence for the reality of, say, pomegranates or kitchen appliances. Person-intended evidence is typically influenced, if not controlled, by the purposes of a personal agent, and such purposes may be elusive and subtle, and leave us with correspondingly elusive and subtle evidence. Conclusive firsthand evidence for divine reality is, I’ll contend, purposively available to humans, that is, available in a way, and only in a way, that accommodates the distinctive purposes of a perfectly loving God. The latter purposes, we’ll see, would aim noncoercively but authoritatively to transform human purposes to agree with divine purposes, despite human resistance of various and sundry sorts. In addition, those purposes would mirror God’s moral character, and thus be constrained by what it would take for a being of that character to be self-revealed. They would, accordingly, be anchored in God’s character, and would not be at all arbitrary or whimsical.

We’ll consider purposively available evidence that is both person-involving and life-involving in its identifying and challenging both who we are and how we live as morally accountable personal agents under the authority of a perfectly loving personal God. Such purposively available evidence would seek whole-hearted transformation of humans toward God’s character via volitional fellowship with God, where such fellowship between God and a human requires sharing in each other’s concerns guided by love. The relevant evidence, then, wouldn’t assume that humans are just spectators in need of further information or intellectual enlightenment. It would thus contrast sharply with any kind of spectator evidence that fails to challenge humans to yield their wills to a perfectly authoritative agent. We’ll have to attend, then, to cognitive problems arising from potential human knowers, including the direction of their wills, beyond any problems with the relevant available evidence. Many philosophers, including many skeptics about God’s existence, can benefit from attention to such problems.

One’s willingly receiving evidence that makes a demand on one doesn’t entail one’s willingly conforming to (the demand of) that evidence. One would willingly conform fully to the available divine evidence in question if and only if, in response to that evidence, one willingly satisfied fully God’s demands and purposes involved in that evidence. The latter purposes may include (a) God’s revealing to a person the adequacy or inadequacy of that person’s moral and cognitive standing before God, (b) God’s entering into full volitional (that is, will-oriented) fellowship with a person on God’s terms, and (c) God’s transforming a person whole-heartedly from any selfishness to God’s perfectly loving moral character. The notion of willing conformity to purposively available divine evidence has been neglected in philosophical and theological treatments of knowledge of divine reality. It can shed significant light, however, on the problem of divine elusiveness and firsthand evidence and knowledge of God’s existence. Henceforth my talk of evidence and knowledge of God’s reality concerns firsthand evidence and knowledge, that is, evidence and knowledge directly from its source. Accordingly, we’ll bracket the ins and outs of secondhand testimonial evidence and knowledge, which depend ultimately for their cognitive grounding on firsthand evidence and knowledge.

This book will identify purposively available evidence that underwrites a new argument from volitional transformation for God’s reality. The evidence involves an inquirer’s core motivational attitudes, and thus sidesteps the abstract and speculative matters characteristic of traditional philosophical arguments for God’s existence. The book’s treatment of purposively available evidence of divine reality seeks, accordingly, to reorient not just beliefs but also readers themselves as personal agents, in terms of their motivational core. The reorienting involves a change of intentional attitudes beyond one’s assenting to information. In particular, it primarily involves one’s will, and not just one’s intellect. It mainly concerns what one intends to be and to do, and not just what one believes about the world. The proposed reorienting of religious epistemology will show that some cognitive questions about (human knowledge of) God’s existence aren’t purely intellectual but irreducibly involve matters of the human will. We’ll see how this works, in detail.

Beliefs do indeed matter, in many important ways, but reality doesn’t consist of beliefs all the way down. The same holds for human reality, as there’s more to human persons than their beliefs. Morally responsible personal agents aren’t just belief-holders, since they intend to act and even do intentionally act at times. They thereby move themselves and the world too. Whether they also move Heaven remains to be seen. In effect, this book will contend that they do, and that this bears on relevant evidence of divine reality.

In light of the distinctive purposively available evidence to be identified, the primary cognitive issue about (human knowledge of) God’s reality, at least from an authoritative divine perspective and perhaps from a judicious human perspective too, would be not so much

(a) Do we humans know that God exists? as

(b) Are we humans known by God in virtue of (among other things) our freely and agreeably being willing (i) to be known by God and thereby (ii) to be transformed toward God’s moral character of perfect love as we are willingly led by God in volitional fellowship with God, thereby obediently yielding our wills to God’s authoritative will?

The shift of primary focus from question (a) to question (b) gives divine authority a central cognitive role, and changes virtually everything in inquiry about knowledge of God’s existence. It yields, as the book will show, a Copernican Revolution in cognitive matters about God’s existence, and it can thereby awaken us from dogmatic slumber regarding divine reality. We’ll see that question (a) is fruitfully approached via question (b), given that a perfectly authoritative and loving God would be distinctively purposive in relating to humans, cognitively (in terms of evidence and knowledge provided) and otherwise.

God, if real, would seek to have humans answer question (a) affirmatively by means of answering question (b) affirmatively, in order to have humans become freely and agreeably willing to be led by God in volitional fellowship and transformation toward God’s morally perfect character. Philosophers and others have generally missed this crucial lesson about knowledge of God’s reality, perhaps owing to an inadequate notion of divine authority, but we’ll give this lesson a properly central role in cognitive inquiry about God’s existence. The result will be a needed reorienting of religious epistemology in a manner appropriate to the character and self-manifestation of a perfectly authoritative and loving God. (The proposed shift is suggested, in passing, in some of Paul’s undisputed epistles, for example, Galatians 4:9 and 1 Corinthians 8:3; cf. Forsyth 1913.)

Question (b) hides a prior noteworthy question:

(c) Are we humans known by God in virtue of (among other things) our freely being willing to receive an authoritative call to volitional fellowship from a God of perfect love that is presented to us in order to reveal, at least to us, the adequacy or inadequacy of our moral and cognitive standing before this God?

Question (c) is less demanding of humans than question (b), because its affirmative answer, unlike that of (b), doesn’t require one’s being willing to be transformed toward God’s character of perfect love. I could answer yes to (c) but refuse to allow myself to be transformed toward a perfectly loving character; indeed, I could even hate and vigorously oppose God in that case. The call in question could come in various forms, and in subsequent chapters we’ll explore its central content and purposes. We’ll assume, in any case, that perfect love requires one’s sincerely intending what is morally good for all people, beyond what people actually “deserve” by familiar retributive standards.

Neither my freely being willing to receive nor my actually receiving a divine call to volitional fellowship (for what it actually is intended to be) entails my conforming to or accepting what the call offers or commands (namely, volitional fellowship with God). Analogously, my receiving an invitation to a celebration party (for what it actually is intended to be) doesn’t require my attending the party or even my intending or being willing to attend. In contrast, an affirmative answer to question (b) entails one’s being willing to be transformed by God toward a character of perfect love. A perfectly loving God could, however, use question (c) as a preliminary means to the more demanding question (b).

We are morally responsible for the questions we willingly pursue, just as we are similarly responsible for everything else we intentionally do. The typical focus on question (a) to the exclusion of questions (b) and (c) tends to place the sole responsibility on God for supplying the desired knowledge to humans, as if humans were just spectators who need only to open their eyes to see the relevant evidence. In contrast, this book’s focus on questions (b) and (c) as means to answering question (a) directs us to ask whether we humans are well-positioned to receive any purposively available evidence and knowledge of God’s reality. Perhaps we aren’t thus well-positioned, because our wills have gone awry and thus need attunement to reality, including divine reality. This book contends that this is indeed so, and redirects the epistemology of God’s reality accordingly. We’ll see how this change puts human inquirers themselves under challenging examination.

A rough, inexact visual analogy may be helpful as a familiar starting place. A volitional commitment to redirect visual focus can bring a new perspective either on an ambiguous visual figure, such as the famous duck–rabbit figure, or on an autostereogram where a three-dimensional visual image is “hidden” (or incognito, we might say) in a two-dimensional pattern, such as the images at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereogram or at http://www.magiceye.com. The new visual perspective in such cases yields access to available visual evidence that wouldn’t be received at all apart from the volitional commitment to redirect visual focus. (This rough illustrative analogy concerns the role of the will in the reception of some available evidence, not the ultimate accuracy or truth-conduciveness of the evidence.) Analogously, as we’ll see, the redirection of one’s will can contribute to one’s receiving otherwise overlooked but nonetheless purposively available evidence regarding divine reality. The point, of course, isn’t that I’ll get firsthand visual evidence of, for instance, what is behind my desk only if I decide to look behind my desk. It’s rather that some evidence is made available with a definite purpose regarding how the evidence is to be acquired, and recipients must receive the evidence, if they receive it at all, in keeping with that purpose.

Another rough analogy comes from our offering a person an unselfish friendship guided by mutual respect, genuine care, and edifying fellowship in keeping with a morally good relationship. The person’s receiving some important components of the available evidence of our offer of friendship would require her willingly attending to the available evidence of our offer in a way that allows it to be salient for what it actually is intended to be in her experience: an evident offer of unselfish friendship that shows genuine care for her. The person’s attending to the evidence in that way would contribute to her receiving available evidence regarding us, including our intentions and moral character, that she would otherwise miss. Evidence regarding our offer would be available to the person at the start and could even impinge rather vaguely on her awareness, but in the absence of her attending to it in the manner indicated, that evidence (in any ordinary situation) would fall short of being salient for what it is intended to be in her experience. It wouldn’t then be received by her for what it is intended to be, regardless of whether she is willing to receive what is being offered.

If God as authoritative and perfectly loving invites people into morally caring and edifying fellowship with God on God’s terms, via human conscience, we have a rough analogy here. In order to receive the relevant available evidence of God’s invitation for what it is intended to be, we would need to attend to available evidence of God’s invitation, in our conscience, in a way that allows it to be salient for what it actually is intended to be: an evident invitation to morally caring and edifying fellowship with God. This would contribute to our receiving available evidence regarding God’s reality (including evidence regarding God’s intentions and moral character) that we would otherwise miss. It would change the evidence from being merely available to us to being received by us as salient for what it actually is intended to be in our experience. We do well, then, to acknowledge a crucial role for one’s will in receiving some purposively available evidence.

One’s firsthand knowledge of God’s reality requires, of course, that purposively available evidence of divine reality become more than merely available for one. It requires one’s attending to the available evidence in a way that allows it to attract one’s attention and become saliently experienced by one for what it actually is intended to be. In that case, the relevant evidence would be revealed to one as including a divine authoritative call, or invitation, to let God know oneself and thereby transform oneself toward God’s moral character in virtue of one’s being led by God in volitional fellowship with God. This divine call to such fellowship would be a natural expression of perfect love, and would come with definite expectations of humans. Our attending to one’s allowing for this distinctive evidence in one’s experience would fit with the proposed shift in focus from question (a) to questions (b) and (c) above. In addition, this shift would be advisable if the problem in our knowing a perfectly authoritative God’s reality lies primarily in us rather than in God, even if at times God’s existence is concealed, hidden, or incognito. We’ll proceed with careful attention to this shift, and ask whether, and if so how, human wills can influence divine concealment.

The previous discussion recommends that we distinguish between three different kinds of human reception of the evidence in question: conforming (or, obedient) reception, indifferent reception, and negative (or, disobedient) reception of available evidence indicating a divine call to human transformation. The adjectives conforming, indifferent, and negative concern one’s attitude to the divine call, beyond one’s simply receiving (evidence of) the call for what it is intended to be. One’s conforming reception of a party invitation, for instance, will include one’s satisfying the invitation by one’s willingly attending the party and perhaps thereby receiving otherwise unavailable evidence regarding the host of the party, including the host’s moral character. Likewise, one’s conforming reception of purposively available evidence of divine reality can lead, as we’ll see, to otherwise unavailable evidence regarding the divine evidence-giver. One’s conforming reception of evidence, however, doesn’t entail one’s deserving reception of evidence; obedient recipients of divine evidence, in particular, may actually be undeserving and unworthy of it, relative to divine moral perfection. We have intentionally moved from simple talk of a divine call or invitation to talk of (defeasible and possibly misleading) evidence of a divine call or invitation in order to join epistemological disputes in a manner that avoids begging controversial questions.

Our focus on human willing, in connection with received purposively available evidence and knowledge of divine reality, is for a good reason. Human diseases can run deeper than physical and intellectual diseases, and can bear on our intentional make-up too, including on our wills. We can be diseased morally responsible intentional agents, not just diseased bodies or minds. Our intentions can go astray, even in morally accountable ways. Can they (and we ourselves) be brought back in line with reality and with what’s truly good for us? If so, how? We’ll consider a widely neglected affirmative answer that puts the spotlight on our ways of willing, including our intentions. (On the causal role of intentions, beyond desires and beliefs, in actions in general, see Mele and Moser 1994.)

This book’s account of purposively available conclusive evidence and knowledge of divine reality focuses on a distinctive kind of evidence available in experience: evident authoritative divine love expressed via human conscience, including an evident invitation to repentance and volitional fellowship with God. Such experiential evidence differs significantly from the mystical, spectacular, or fantastic religious experiences reported by many proponents of religious belief (on which see Wiebe 1997, 2004). In addition, it differs from what some call “numinous” religious experiences, if being numinous entails “being overwhelmingly powerful” (cf. Yandell 1993, p. 236). Religious experiences of a mystical, spectacular, fantastic, or numinous kind are, according to this book’s account, not only unnecessary but also dangerous for experientially well-founded theistic belief. Their danger arises from their easily diverting human attention from what would be crucially important in a divine self-revelation to humans: namely, the purportedly redemptive manifestation of a divine authoritatively loving character worthy of worship and thus of obedient human submission. Such an evident divine manifestation via human conscience would be humanly suppressible, and thus not “overwhelmingly powerful.” Even so, such human suppression of divine evidence could leave salient experiential evidence of its own, including human restlessness (lack of peace), joylessness, selfish fear, and a dearth of unselfish love.

Three main questions will occupy us throughout this book. First, if God’s existence is concealed, hidden, or incognito, why should we hold that God exists at all? More specifically, what is the potential in that case for human knowledge of God’s reality based on genuine conclusive evidence? Second, if God exists, why is God’s existence hidden at all, particularly if God aims to communicate with people in some way and to lead them into better lives? Third, what are the implications of God’s concealment for philosophy and religion as they concern talk of God and of knowledge of God? This book answers these questions with due aversion to fideism and due attention to conclusive purposively available evidence that can challenge skeptical doubts about God’s existence. Careful attention to skeptical qualms will keep us honest in our inquiry, and save us from any uncritical or cognitively arbitrary dogmatism. Chapters 1–3 take up the first two main questions, and Chapter 4 treats the third question. Chapter 5 outlines the aftermath of the proposed cognitive reorientation as it concerns the human predicament of destructive selfishness and impending death. The book’s Appendix defuses any remaining general skeptical worries. The overall result is a new, skeptic-resistant understanding of purposively available evidence and knowledge of God’s reality as incognito. This result, we’ll see, yields an effective new challenge to skepticism about the reality of God.

2   PLANS

Chapter 1, “Doubting Skeptics,” begins with an ageless question kicked around by all age groups. Does our available evidence entitle us to acknowledge a God who can deliver us from the human predicament of destructive selfishness and impending death? The underlying issue: is there really a God who can save us and even cares to save us from our fatal problems? (If a person sincerely holds that we have no fatal problems, that person may benefit from consultation with a psychiatrist.) If the God in question actually exists, how is this God to be flushed out of hiding into plain view? We want plain view, because plain view seems to be easy view for us. Plain view evidently won’t ruffle our feathers. What if, however, a perfectly loving God wants to ruffle our feathers, and even needs, as God, to ruffle dangerous, life-threatening features of ours? How then would God relate to humans? We’ll consider a challenging answer that bears directly on how a worship-worthy God who hides would be known by humans. Realities intrude in our lives in various ways, and we’ll attend to a kind of intruding, and corresponding available evidence, often neglected by philosophers, theologians, and others.

Skeptics about God’s reality, otherwise known as “agnostics,” propose various doubt-raising questions about God’s existence. They contend that some questions of theirs decisively resist answer, owing to inadequate available evidence concerning divine reality. In particular, skeptics about God’s reality contend thus regarding the question of God’s existence, and therefore recommend on evidential grounds that people withhold judgment on the claim that God exists: that is, neither affirm nor deny the claim. Agnostic skeptics, then, aren’t atheists, given that the latter actually deny that God exists.

Skeptics about God’s reality, according to Chapter 1, have overlooked an important kind of purposively available evidence for divine reality. One will receive this available evidence firsthand, as suggested above, only via one’s allowing the evidence to attract one’s attention in such a way that it becomes saliently experienced by one for what it actually is intended to be: an evident divine authoritative call to volitional fellowship whereby one allows one’s volitional attitudes to be conformed to divine perfect love. Chapter 1 calls this perfectly authoritative evidence of divine reality. This is the kind of evidence characteristic of a God worthy of worship.

In contrast with spectator evidence, perfectly authoritative evidence of divine reality makes an authoritative call on a person’s life, including a person’s will, to yield wholeheartedly to divine perfect love, in fellowship with God. It thereby treats the person as something other than a neutral spectator or self-sufficient cognitive judge. (Among humans, there are no neutral spectators or self-sufficient cognitive judges anyway, even if we sometimes pretend otherwise in classrooms, labs, courtrooms, and philosophy discussions.) Is the perfectly authoritative evidence in question real and, if so, where is it to be found? In addition, where is the corresponding personal authority to be found? Who has the needed road map to this authority, and what is the price of this map?

Part of the price to be paid, in accordance with question (c) above, is that we must be freely willing to be known by God in virtue of our allowing a divine authoritative call to volitional fellowship to be saliently presented to us in such a way that it judges us in terms of our moral and cognitive standing before God. This involves the aforementioned decisive shift in focus from asking simply, “Do I know that God exists?” to asking “Am I willing to be known by God in virtue of being authoritatively challenged by God for the sake of my being transformed toward God’s moral character via my being led by God in volitional fellowship?” The latter question looms large in this book, and, as suggested, yields a seismic shift in issues concerning human knowledge of God’s reality. It makes, as we’ll see, all the difference in the world, and in us too, regarding knowledge of God’s existence.

Chapter 1 introduces a widely ignored notion of volitional knowledge of God’s reality that would be suited to a purposive authoritative God who seeks to transform people noncoercively toward God’s moral character of perfect love. Such knowledge involves perfectly authoritative evidence demanding that humans yield their wills to the morally perfect authority offered as the source of the evidence, that is, God. To the extent that a person is unwilling to be led by God in transformation toward God’s moral character, a demand of the authoritative evidence would be violated by that person. For instance, if a person opposes the unselfishly loving ways of God, that person would be in volitional conflict with a demand of the evidence in question.

The demands of the perfectly authoritative evidence would be fully satisfied only by one’s actual volitional fellowship with God whereby one allows oneself to be transformed wholeheartedly toward divine perfect love. The unselfish love inherent to a morally perfect God’s character would be person-relational in that it would be genuinely received only via volitional fellowship of the recipient with the divine giver of this love. Whereas some evidence is sensitive to intellectual or sensory reception, the evidence appropriate to volitional knowledge of divine reality is sensitive to volitional reception of unselfish love. So, we’ll base the needed account of purposively available authoritative evidence and knowledge of divine reality on the character of the perfect love required for worthiness of worship. We thus won’t allow for any ad hoc cognitive exception for belief in God’s existence, with regard to needed supporting evidence. Fideism, as suggested, will find no foothold here. Instead, a distinctive version of volitional theistic evidentialism will emerge and flourish in subsequent chapters.