Why doesn't God make his existence more obvious?
If a perfectly loving God existed, he would want a relationship with every person, and so he would make sure everyone who is open to him believes he exists. But many sincere, open-minded people don't believe. So a perfectly loving God probably does not exist.
— J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (1993)
God wants more than our acknowledgment that he exists; he wants a relationship of trust and love. Overwhelming displays could force belief without changing hearts, as Israel's history shows. So God gives evidence that is clear enough for those who seek him, but not so coercive that it overrides our freedom. And he has not stayed hidden: he made himself known in Jesus, who said 'Whoever has seen me has seen the Father' (John 14:9).
What Scripture says
15Truly You are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.
The prophet confesses, 'Truly, you are a God who hides himself', and in the same breath calls him Savior.
13You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
God promises to be found by those who seek him with all their heart.
26From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands. 27God intended that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.
God arranged human history so that people 'should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him'.
27‘Then I beg you, father,’ he said, ‘send Lazarus to my father’s house, 28for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also end up in this place of torment.’ 29But Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let your brothers listen to them.’ 30‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone is sent to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31Then Abraham said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’”
Even someone rising from the dead will not persuade those who will not listen to what God has already said.
37Although Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still did not believe in Him.
Despite the many signs Jesus performed, many still did not believe in him.
19You believe that God is one. Good for you! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
Even the demons believe God exists, and shudder: mere belief that God exists is not the goal.
8Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” 9Jesus replied, “Philip, I have been with you all this time, and still you do not know Me? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
Asked to 'show us the Father', Jesus answers that to see him is to see the Father.
29Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Jesus blesses those who have not seen and yet have believed.
The case
The problem stated fairly
This objection is different from the problem of evil. It does not point to suffering. It points to silence. The philosopher J. L. Schellenberg made it famous in 1993. A perfectly loving God, he argues, would always be open to a personal relationship with every person. Such a relationship requires believing that God exists. So God would make sure that anyone who is not resisting him believes in him. Yet there seem to be people who are open, honest and seeking, and who still do not believe. Therefore, he concludes, there is no perfectly loving God.
Many believers feel this problem too. The Psalms are full of the cry "Why do you hide your face?" (Psalm 44:24; 88:14). Isaiah confesses that God is "a God who hides himself" (Isaiah 45:15). Scripture does not deny divine hiddenness. It helps us understand it.
1. God wants relationship, not mere acknowledgment
Belief that God exists is not the same as trust in God. James points out that the demons believe God exists and tremble (James 2:19). What God desires is a relationship of love, trust and transformed life: "you will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13).
That kind of relationship cannot be forced. Love that is coerced is not love. If God overwhelmed every person with undeniable displays of power, he might produce universal belief, but likely also fear, resentment or grudging compliance, not the free response of love he seeks.
2. More evidence doesn't necessarily produce faith
The Bible records repeated cases where dramatic evidence did not change hearts:
- Israel saw the plagues, the Red Sea and the pillar of fire, then built a golden calf (Exodus 32).
- Many who saw Jesus' miracles still rejected him (John 12:37). After Lazarus was raised, the chief priests plotted to kill both Jesus and Lazarus (John 12:9–11).
- In Jesus' parable, Abraham says that those who will not listen to Moses and the Prophets will not be convinced "even if someone should rise from the dead" (Luke 16:31).
The problem is often not a lack of light but our reaction to it. Blaise Pascal put it memorably: God has given "enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition" (Pensées). God's way of revealing himself respects the condition of the heart.
3. Hiddenness can serve our good
Philosophers have suggested several goods that a degree of divine hiddenness makes possible:
| Good | Why hiddenness helps |
|---|---|
| Genuine freedom | We can choose God, not merely be overpowered by him |
| Moral seriousness | We do good because it is good, not just because we are watched |
| Seeking and growth | A relationship that deepens over time rather than being instant |
| Humility | We come as needy seekers, not as judges demanding proof on our terms |
Michael Rea (The Hiddenness of God, 2018) adds another angle: God is not a human being, and we should not expect his ways of being present to look exactly like a human friend's. Silence may reflect his personality and transcendence rather than his absence. Many Christians, especially in the Orthodox tradition, speak of a God known in stillness, prayer and worship more than in spectacle.
4. God has not stayed hidden
The Christian answer to hiddenness finally is a person. No one has ever seen God, John writes, but the Son who is at the Father's side "has made him known" (John 1:18). In Jesus, God came close enough to be touched, heard and seen. When Philip asked, "Lord, show us the Father," Jesus answered, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:8–9).
The resurrection is the public evidence God has given to all people (Acts 17:31). It is not hidden in a corner. It is open to historical investigation.
Why it matters
If you feel that God is hidden, you are in good company: Job, David, Isaiah and Jesus himself on the cross ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", Mark 15:34) knew that experience. But the promise stands: "Seek, and you will find" (Matthew 7:7). The God who seems hidden has come looking for us in Christ. The honest seeker is invited to read the Gospels, to pray even a doubting prayer, and to see whether God answers.
Word study
hebrew · “one who hides himself” · Isaiah 45:15
A reflexive form of the verb satar, 'to hide, conceal'. The Bible itself acknowledges divine hiddenness rather than denying it. Yet Isaiah's confession comes in a chapter announcing that God will save the nations; his hiddenness is not absence but a mysterious way of working out salvation.
greek · “feel after, grope for” · Acts 17:27
The verb pictures someone groping in the dark. Paul describes humanity's search for God honestly, as partial and uncertain, but he immediately adds that God 'is actually not far from each one of us'.
“But what about…?”
What about people who sincerely seek God and never find him?
We cannot see anyone's heart, and Scripture warns against judging that. Some who seek find God later in life; seeking often takes years. Jesus promises that those who seek will find (Matthew 7:7), and Christians trust God to be just toward every person, including those whose circumstances we do not understand.
Why not just write a message in the stars?
A message in the sky would prove a powerful being exists. It would not by itself produce trust, love or repentance. Many who witnessed the plagues of Egypt and the miracles of Jesus still rejected God. People can explain away almost anything they do not want to accept.
Isn't this just an excuse for the absence of evidence?
No. Christians claim there *is* substantial evidence: the existence and beginning of the universe, its fine-tuning, the moral law, and the historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection. The claim is not that God gives no evidence, but that he gives the kind and amount suited to drawing free persons to himself.
Where Christians differ
Go deeper
- book · 2018The Hiddenness of GodMichael C. Rea
- book · 2002Divine Hiddenness: New EssaysDaniel Howard-Snyder & Paul K. Moser (eds.)
- book · 2008The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious EpistemologyPaul K. Moser
- ancient · 1670PenséesBlaise Pascal
- book · 1993Divine Hiddenness and Human ReasonJ. L. Schellenberg
- book · 1979The Orthodox WayKallistos Ware
Sources (4)
- J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Cornell University Press, 1993)
- Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670), on God as hidden (Lafuma 149 / Brunschvicg 430; numbering varies by edition)
- Michael C. Rea, The Hiddenness of God (Oxford University Press, 2018)
- Daniel Howard-Snyder & Paul K. Moser (eds.), Divine Hiddenness: New Essays (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Related questions
Is there any evidence that God exists?
Yes. One strong line of evidence is the existence of the universe itself. Whatever begins to exist has a cause, and both philosophy and modern cosmology point to the universe having a beginning. So the universe has a cause outside space, time and matter: something timeless, immensely powerful and able to choose to create. That is a remarkably close fit to what the Bible means by God.
Isn't belief in God just wishful thinking?
Wanting something to be true doesn't make it false; how a belief arose doesn't settle whether it is true. And the argument cuts both ways: some people have strong reasons to wish there were no God. In any case, the God of the Bible is not what wishful thinking would invent. He is holy, confronts our pride and demands our whole lives. The question has to be settled by evidence, not by guessing at motives.
Doesn't the multiverse explain the fine-tuning of the universe?
Physicists across the spectrum agree that many constants and initial conditions fall within narrow life-permitting ranges. The multiverse is a serious idea, but it is speculative and unobserved, and the mechanisms proposed to generate universes would themselves need fine-tuning. It also predicts we should be random, short-lived observers rather than in an orderly cosmos like ours. A Mind behind the universe remains the simpler and better explanation.
Who made God?
No serious argument for God says 'everything needs a cause'. The claim is that whatever *begins* to exist, or whatever *could have failed* to exist, needs a cause. God is by definition eternal and self-existent: he never began and depends on nothing. Every worldview has to stop somewhere with something uncaused. The real question is whether that ultimate reality is an impersonal universe that had a beginning, or an eternal, necessary God.
This entry is a draft and has not yet been theologically reviewed.