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  • The Hiddenness of God by Michael C. Rea
  • Michael J. Dodds O.P.
The Hiddenness of God. By Michael C. Rea. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xii + 198. $30.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-19-882601-9.

"God is supposed to be my heavenly father. So why can't he just whisper 'I love you' once in a while?" Michael Rea begins his book recounting these words of a friend from a tearful conversation during his college years. He describes the event as his "first real confrontation with the problem of divine hiddenness as a challenge to faith," which, he says, "has been on my mind in one way or another ever since—sometimes in its guise as a purely philosophical objection to theistic belief, but more often as a kind of pastorally and existentially important theological problem for religious believers" (vii). The conversation sets the tone for his book, which is both pastorally insightful and academically rigorous.

Rea chooses an "interdisciplinary approach" for his study, incorporating not only "relevant philosophical literature, but also ideas and insights drawn from theology and biblical studies" (viii). In chapter 1, he contrasts the contemporary notion that "divine hiddenness counts against the existence of God" with earlier Hebrew and Christian traditions which integrate God's presence and hiddenness in such a way that "God's love and existence remain unchallenged" (5). He explains that his "aim in this book" is to develop "a theory about the attributes of God, and particularly about the love of God, and the way in which it is manifested to humans, that makes room for divine hiddenness in its various forms as a natural outgrowth of who and what God is rather than of what God is doing to serve human needs and desires" (7).

In chapter 2 Rea outlines the problem of divine hiddenness, viewing it, along with the problem of evil, as "the two most important and widely discussed reasons on offer for disbelieving in God" (6). Since he finds the problem to be rooted in "certain ways of understanding the nature of God and God's attributes," his proposed "solution" involves showing how that deficient understanding gives rise to "unwarranted assumptions and expectations about God's love for human beings" (6, 8). In this, the notion of divine transcendence plays a key role: "[A] proper appreciation of the place of divine transcendence both historically within the Christian tradition, as well as in contemporary theology and spirituality, will be a vital component in my overall response to the challenges posed by divine hiddenness" (14-15). Accordingly, he refutes J. L. Schellenberg's arguments from divine hiddenness to the non-existence of God, by arguing that his philosophical notion of God fails to touch "belief in the Christian God" since it lacks "a proper appreciation of divine transcendence" (23, 28).

In chapters 3 and 4, Rea expands on the notion of divine transcendence. Scripture portrays God as both transcendent and personal, but "philosophical literature on the hiddenness problem" tends to "downplay divine transcendence [End Page 475] in favor of God's personal attributes" (35). When God's transcendence is neglected, however, our language about God and creatures tends to become "univocal" (49). An overemphasis on God's transcendence and otherness, on the other hand, renders our language equivocal since it then has "no literal application to God" (41). Rea therefore endorses analogy as a "doctrine of transcendence that falls somewhere in the middle" (51). The problem with most philosophical arguments from divine hiddenness to the non-existence of God is that they are based on false expectations of how God should act, arising from their mistaken presupposition that, in God and humans, love and goodness are univocally the same (57). Rea points out that as "confidence in those preconceptions diminishes, the problem of divine hiddenness dissolves" (63).

He acknowledges, however, that most philosophers engaged in the divine hiddenness discussion tend to overlook divine transcendence and view divine love as "simply an idealized version of one of the best kinds of human love" (63). To answer them, he argues in chapter 5 that "even if we set aside considerations involving divine transcendence, there remain...

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