Alyssa
is like any other ordinary teenager except that she has been especially keen on
living the way she thinks fitted for a good Catholic. She's only fifteen years
old and is in her 8th grade in school, but she already knows how to
set her priorities and do her responsibilities. In school, Alyssa is known to
her teachers and peers as a good student, a good friend, and a helpful person.
Her teachers and friends could always count on her in times when her assistance
matters. At home, she also works without complaints. She has been trained to do
simple household chores, and her parents could not wish for anything more about
the character of their child. Moreoever, Alyssa is an active choir member in
their barrio chapel. She serves during Sundays and important feasts, and she
even assists in the training of younger children. In her age, Alyssa is already
a trusted catechist. All these involvements Alyssa does without complaints and
without even any expectation for return. She has been taught by her parents
that her service to others and to God is the best way to make use of her
God-given talents and gifts. To serve others, she thinks, is the best form of
gratitude that she could offer back to God who is the source of all that she
has.
Her
life has however been changed by one sudden event. One early morning, at around
5:00a.m., her entire family was awakened by a sudden rush of water. They heard
from the news that a typhoon is coming but they had not expected it to hit
their town, and their town has never been flooded before. This flood was
totally unexpected, and they are less prepared for it than they should have
been. They tried as much as they could to at least save themselves but the
water rose so fast that soon they were taken by the flood. The last thing she
heard was the voice of her mother calling her (and her siblings’) name, and
then everything goes dark.
Alyssa
woke up on a hospital bed about three days after the incident. She was told
that she was lucky enough that she was found by her rescuers. She was
unconscious when found, and was bathing with mud, but was at least alive.
Unfortunately, she had no news about the other members of her family. She is
alive and yet she feels robbed of life. Why has she lost her lovedones that
fast? What had she done to merit this misfortune? Has God not been on her side?
Where is God in those moments when she and her family needed Him most? Why has
God allowed this to happen? Alyssa could not find answers to her own questions.
Suddenly, the God that she has adored and served throughout her young life
seems distant, hidden and even absent from her life. She asks: where now is
God?
The
topic on whether God exists or not is a perennial question that remains
unsettled between those who believe that God exists and those who deny God’s
existence. This is one of the reasons why the issue on ‘divine absence’ or
‘divine hiddenness’ continues to form part of the important literature in theodicy
and philosophy of religion. Critics of religion say, “if God really exists, and
He wishes that people will believe in Him, why does God seem to be absent in
the life of some people, where such absence becomes the reason why these same
people doubt His existence?”[1] If God
wants Alyssa to keep her faith in Him, why did God allow such misfortune to
happen to her, where the misfortune becomes the reason for Alyssa to question
God's very existence?
I
have recently read one author, Travis Dumsday[2], who
attempted to reply to the question on divine hiddenness through the concept of
‘creaturely resentment,’ which may refer to the ‘envy’ that develops after
one’s exposure to God’s greatness in revelation. Dumsday claims that God
refrains from employing early revelation to most people “due to the risks
inherent in a too-early exposure of a finite intellect to the Divine Majesty.
Instead, God lets us remain unaware of Him for a time. In addition to this
state of (partial or total) ignorance, He also allows us to experience pain and
loss, perhaps even allowing us to get to the point where our expectations are
lowered” (Travis, p. 45). Then he added, “And so God allows us to remain for a
time in a state of affairs in which His existence is subject to rational doubt,
in order to mitigate the risk of unfortunate reaction to a too-early awareness
of Him” (Travis, p. 45). If Dumsday is to provide answers to Alyssa’s
questions, it would seem that these events happen with the purpose of lowering
Alyssa’s expectations about who God is and what can He do. In lowering Alyssa’s
expectations on God, God is preparing Alyssa to become more open to God’s
future revelations. Dumsday also claimed that divine hiddenness does not have
to mean that God is really absent, or that there is no God. For Dumsday, it
seems that during these instances, God has withdrawn Himself from man in order
to make man expects less from Him.
However,
I believe that Dumsday’s claim about God’s withdrawal (as God’s own doing) also
needs more explanation than what has already been provided in his article,
where he has this to say:
It is not entirely
clear what the reaction of a finite creature is liable to be when first
becoming explicitly aware of the presence of the Divine majesty...
Specifically, one possible reaction is overwhelming jealousy and resentment -
jealousy of God and resentment at not being more godlike. The tradition
suggests that there is a danger in an immediate awareness of the divine, and
that the danger might be mitigated by certain forms of preparation that can
only occur in the absence of an explicit experiential awareness of God. This
risk and the means of its mitigation provide some reason for God to not grant
us such an awareness of Himself from the start of our rational lives” (Travis,
p. 43).
Cognizant
of the risks, Dumsday so argues, God then temporarily refrains from revealing
Himself. It is in doing so that our expectations of Him are lowered, thereby
preventing the possible setback of resentment (jealousy). Dumsday then added
that God “puts us through a set of trials, such that the Divine Majesty will be
welcomed as salvation rather than resented or hated” (Travis, p. 45). The significant issue here however is
whether we could prudently claim that God’s doing is responsible for the loss
of Alyssa’s family, and it happened because God was preparing Alyssa for a
timely closer union with God.
Furthermore,
Dumsday claims that his ‘creaturely resentment’ reply to the question on divine
hiddenness has theological ties with the Christian teaching on ‘fallen angels’
and the sin of our first parents. He recalls that Lucifer’s decision to rebel
against God, or the desire to become an equal to God, is caused primarily by
his envy. Moreover, Adam and Eve’s first sin was ocassioned by the serpent’s
temptation that is premised by the possibility of becoming like God. Dumsday
takes these positions to be theological grounds for the argument that ‘to avoid
man’s resentment, God opted to refrain from revealing Himself.’
But
we ask the following questions: May God
really purposely withdraw his presence from the people in order to avoid their
resentment? Moreover, do we really have a better theological argument when we
say that God has changed His mind (thus, withdraws Himself from us and makes
Himself hidden) because His initial revelations to the angels (Lucifer
included) and to our first parents failed?
Theism,
in agreement with Dumsday, claims that hiddenness does not prove the
non-existence of God. In fact, it seems that divine hiddenness is better
appreciated as a theological question. Dumsday opines, correctly in my view,
that the question on divine hiddenness could even occasion a ‘positive
relationship with God.’[3] However,
I believe that this apophatic
character of revelation need not be seen as God’s strategic withholding of his
revelation in order to prevent the believer’s resentment. Instead, some
Christian literatures, contrary to what Dumsday has pointed out, argue that God
reveals Himself to us. We however oftentimes fail to see God not because He
withdraws Himself from us but because of our human condition: our finitude. Thomas Aquinas for example
claims that even if God reveals himself in this world, such revelation could
not be complete, not because God intended to withhold part of Himself from us
but because of the creaturely (finite) nature of our faculties.[4]
Revelation can only be completed in the Beatific Vision when the limitations of
human cognition are overcome.[5] Hence,
in the question on divine hiddenness, the answer lies in the character of the
human person, the finite character of our
nature including our cognitive faculties.
So,
why does God seem to be absent in the lives of some people? Why can Alyssa (or
we) hardly find God in what had happened to her family? The answer lies in our
human condition. We do not fully
comprehend the reason why those things have to happen. What is easier to see
and feel is the pain that accompanies the tragedy, and that pain blurs our
vision to find God amidst what happened!
In
discerning God in the ordinary things of our life, much more in the painful events
like that of Alyssa, our finite intelligence needs to be aided through the
infused virtues from God and training in natural theology and spirituality.
Hence, to discern ‘religious experiences’ [the presence of God in the events of
our life] from among our varied experiences, we will need certain forms of
discipline. It also needs proper training and instruction from the elders in
our tradition. Inasmuch as we would have to be trained for music or for other
crafts, we would have to be trained in our spirituality. Inasmuch as it
requires discipline and training to discern aesthetics and beauty in the world
around us, we too would have to be initiated into the discipline of
discernment, especially if we are to discover the presence and actions of God
even in the everyday things that we are doing. This is the reason why the help
of spiritual counselors and masters are important. They could point to us the
proper direction for the discernment of the will of God. The readiness of our
faculties is our cooperation and this makes us more receptive of the grace of
God. God is omnipresent, and we need the proper disposition to find Him in the
world. The case of Alyssa makes it more difficult for her and for us to see the
‘good’ that could come out of what had happened, and it s even more difficult
to understand why God would have to allow this to happen. But, in time and with
the grace of God, if she perseveres in her faith, Alyssa will come to
understand the ‘sense’ of what had happened, and that would make her faith even
more mature.
This
is the reason why I argue that divine hiddenness is better treated as a
theological question, that is, the answer to it presupposes a minimum admission
that God exists, and his seeming absence needs to be overcome by a delicate
discernment of God’s presence and a receptive openness to His grace even in
those things and instances (like evil) where He seems to be totally absent. An
atheist could hardly be convinced that God, as theists - especially Christians
- claim Him to be, is present even in those perilous situations. Only believers
may be able to see Him in those times, otherwise, the non-believer may first have
to be converted to faith before s/he can admit the same. In fact, believers who
are aware of our creaturely finitude know that only the discovery of God’s
presence can answer the longings of our heart for perfection. The irony about
who we are is the fact that we long for transcendence despite our existential
limitations. It is only in the admission that God exists where we undersand the
compatibility of our finite human nature and our heart’s inner longing for transcendence.
Our faith aids our understanding as Augustine would say. Without faith, we
remain to be finite creatures and our vision shall be forever limited by the
boundaries of our equally finite world.
[1] This is a theme
pointed out by Robert McKim in an excerpt entitled “Hiddenness of God,” taken
from his Religious Ambiguity and
Religious Diversity (2001) and is featured in Steven Cahn’s (ed.) Exploring Philosophy of Religion: An
Introductory Anthology (USA: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 248-253.
[2] Dumsday, Travis.
“Divine Hiddenness and Creaturely Resentment,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 72/1 (August
2012): 41-51.
[3] Robert McKim, in
the excerpt mentioned above, also pointed out that this is a characteristically
a theist attitude towards the issue of divine hiddenness (see Cahn, p. 250).
[5] Aquinas argues in
ST 1, q. 12, art. 1 that our intellect, though incapable of seeing the essence
of God in this world, remains capable of seeing God “for there resides in every man a natural desire to know the cause of any effect which he sees; and
thence arises wonder in men. But if the intellect of the rational creature could not
reach so far as to the first cause of things, the natural desire would remain void. Hence it
must be absolutely granted that the blessed see
the essence of God.” This possibility of seeing God, he further explains, is
possible in the Beatific Vision of
which he says: “Therefore, since the Divine essence is pure
act, it will be possible for it to be
the form whereby the intellect understands: and this will be the beatific vision. Hence the Master says that the union of the body with the soul is an illustration of the blissful union of the spirit with God” (see ST Suppl., q. 92, art. 1).
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