Philosophy of Love and the Hiddenness Argument

Abstract J.L. Schellenberg and likeminded philosophers have offered a compelling argument against the existence of God known as the hiddenness argument. The idea that a loving God would not permit nonresistant nonbelief seems intuitive at first. Many theists have provided strong rebuttals to the hiddenness argument, attacking one or more of its controversial premises. I attempt to provide a new way forward in rebutting the hiddenness argument by challenging the assumed understanding of love that motivates many of the intuitions behind the hiddenness argument. I offer objections to the account of love that Schellenberg uncritically assumes and applies to divine-human relationships, and then go on to reconstruct the hiddenness argument with other accounts of love that are offered in contemporary philosophical literature discussion. In each case, the hiddenness argument is rendered unsuccessful. Throughout the essay, I comment on the theological merits of these various accounts of love as they are applied to divine-human relationships in order to show that, while not all of them are equally viable, Christian theists have several plausible ways of avoiding the conclusion of the hiddenness argument by adopting a different account of divine love.