If God existed, he would make himself more obvious.
J.L. Schellenberg has given this the most rigorous form (Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason, 1993): if God is perfectly loving and desires relationship with every capable creature, then no such creature should ever be in a state of "non-resistant non-belief" - yet such people demonstrably exist. A loving God who wants to be known would not hide. The very fact that sincere, open, morally earnest people conclude he is not there is itself evidence that he is not there. Pascal could say God gives "enough light for those who desire to see"; Schellenberg replies that a genuinely loving God would give enough light for those who simply have not yet desired, because without the relationship one cannot desire it.
Four lines of response, not one. (1) Hiddenness is not absence: billions across history report experiences of God, and not only the credulous - C.S. Lewis, Simone Weil, Francis Collins, and thousands in rigorously documented studies (Tanya Luhrmann, When God Talks Back) report veridical-seeming encounters. The question is not "why is God hidden?" but "why is he hidden from me?" - a different question admitting different answers. (2) Freedom and love: if God appeared as a coercive presence, the kind of free, trusting love he wants would be impossible; Pascal, Kierkegaard, Eleonore Stump, and Paul Moser develop this in detail. Overwhelming evidence would produce not love but capitulation. (3) Moral/spiritual prerequisites: Paul Moser (The Elusive God, 2008) argues that the God of Christianity is "cognitively elusive" to protect seekers from treating him as a mere object of curiosity; he reveals himself in the context of moral transformation, not neutral examination. (4) Christianity's specific claim: God has made himself obvious - in a person, in a time, in a place, with named witnesses. The shape of the self-revelation is not spectacle; it is incarnation. The question then becomes historical, not abstract: did Jesus rise? If yes, hiddenness is answered. If no, hiddenness is moot.
Schellenberg has a real point about the phenomenology of searching and not finding. Christians should hold it with pastoral weight, not dismissal. But the evidence of "non-resistant non-belief" being widespread is itself contested - many "non-resistant" non-believers, on closer examination, have conditions that foreclose belief (e.g., demanding a specific kind of evidence that would undermine free love). The argument is stronger against a generic deity than against the crucified God of Christianity, who promises to meet seekers inside their suffering, not outside it.
Sources & citations
- Reasonable Faith — William Lane Craig (2008 (3rd ed.))scholarlyFind on Amazon
- Pensées — Blaise Pascal (1670 (posthumous))popularFind on Amazon
- Warranted Christian Belief — Alvin Plantinga (2000)scholarlyFind on Amazon