The God who Seeks but Seems to Hide

Assuming that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good God

who seeks a loving relationship with all humans, it is puzzling that

certain people experience that God seems to hide. It is often argued

that this fact of “divine hiding’ renders it improbable that God exists.

In this study, Francis Jonback defends the view that it would not be

surprising if divine hiding were necessary to realise greater goods or

to avoid worse evils that are beyond our ken, in which case one is not

justified in saying that divine hiding renders it improbable that God

exists.

He goes on to argue that it is difficult to explain why God hides and

that - although believers do not have a probabilistic problem with

believing in a God who seems to hide - there might be an

existential or practical problem, in particular for non-believers, when

seeking a God who seems to hide.