Why Is God So Invisible?

If God is all-knowing and all-good then God has information which would benefit people, and He should want to communicate it to them. Yet God often seems invisible and uncommunicative.

So, either there is no God (as the villain of Psalm 10 claims) or there must be a reason why God is so invisible.

Invisibility

Invisibility includes two ideas: imperceptibility and undetectability.

Imperceptibility means that people cannot perceive things with their senses. This means that people cannot sense things directly, like seeing a tree. But it also means not being able to sense things by using equipment like microscopes.

If immaterial things like consciousness and minds exist, then they are imperceptible in this sense.

Science is committed to the existence of imperceptible things such as causation. People cannot see causation. They see correlations such as water boiling when it is heated. From correlations people infer causation. However, there is no perceptible feature of reality which distinguishes causation from other correlations.

Dark Matter (if it exists) is another example of something which is imperceptible. Its existence is inferred, and it is thought to account for around 85% of the universe.

Neither causation nor Dark Matter can be perceived. But they are not “invisible” because they can be detected by their effects.

God and Invisibility

The question of whether God is invisible is the question of whether God is perceivable or detectable.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) insists that God cannot be a material being (Summa Theologiae, Part 1, Q3, a.2). If there is no matter to be perceived, then God cannot be perceived.

However, Christians have sometimes claimed that there is a special “extra-sensory” ability to perceive God. This God-sense (or Sensus Divinitatis) is supposed to enable every single person to “see” that God exists, as it is a source of inner “secret” information from God.

Historically, the idea of God-sensing has been problematic. It always leads to disunity and Gnostic outcomes as (inevitably) everyone disagrees about what their God-senses are telling them. The model can also lead to spiritual abuse as cult leaders can end up appealing to their God-sense to justify making inappropriate demands on followers.

For reasons like this, mainstream Christianity has always insisted that essential information from God must be “public,” not private (e.g., Scripture). Would a loving God really choose a secretive mode of communication which opens people to an increased risk of abuse, especially when there is no need to do so?

If the idea of a God-sense is so problematic, then it cannot justify a claim that God is perceptible.

Natural Theology

Natural theology is the idea that God’s existence can be inferred (like causation, or Dark Matter) because God’s effects can be detected.

St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans notes that God can be known from created effects (Romans 1:19). This idea led to the development of proofs for God’s existence, such as the Cosmological Argument, the Design Argument (etc.). These arguments are essentially attempts to explain how God can be known from created effects.

During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Enlightenment, scientific advances began to challenge aspects of Christianity. As a result, Fideists tried to exclude reason from religion. They rejected Natural theology and the idea that there can be reasons for belief in God. Romanticists went further and turned faith into an emotion, so that the claims of science and reason became irrelevant to religion.

When the First Vatican Council (1870) met, it rejected Fideism and Romanticism. Its Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith insisted on the detectability of God. This is repeated in the modern Catechism (CCC 32).

Historically the styles of Natural theology have varied, tending to follow contemporary standards for a scientific proof. In the thirteenth century, scientific standards required deductive logical arguments. So Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways are deductive logical proofs for God’s existence.

In the modern era, scientific proof has become a matter of weighing evidence and using probabilistic induction. So, modern versions of Natural theology tend to be inductive arguments.

This is not an uncontroversial change, as inductive arguments raise questions about the certainty of proofs. Cardinal Newman’s (1801-90) Grammar of Assent is an attempt to address that issue, but it remains a topic for further reflection.

However, if the visibility of God is indeed a matter of weighing factors in inductive arguments, then it raises the question of whether there are new factors to be considered, such as “divine discretion.”

Divine Discretion

Divine discretion is the idea that there may be reasons for God to limit divine visibility. It comes from the biblical idea of Kenosis, that God may sometimes limit the expression of divinity. For example, the Incarnation involves God self-limiting to become human.

Advocates of divine discretion suggest that God’s limiting of divine visibility is an important issue for Natural theology, as it enables the exercise of free will.

Free will involves both an ability to choose freely, but also a context which does not override the use of that ability.

Imbalances of power can create destructive contexts which undermine free will. For example, totalitarian governments create such an inevitability of punishment that people no longer dare to use their free will.

A similar problem can arise in personal relationships. For example, many countries ban relationships between teachers and students, even when they are over the age of 18. This is because there can be an inherent imbalance of power which can erode free will to the point that the freedom of consent becomes questionable.

Similar issues arise in religion. God and humanity represent the most extreme imbalance of power. God is all-powerful, all-knowing and cannot be deceived. Any choices against God will be definitely and inescapably punished. In such a context, how could any human ever exercise a genuine “free will”? Only a lunatic would make choices which they know will inevitably and inescapably lead to (eternal) punishment.

So, even if God gives people free will, there is a serious problem of how people could use free will, when there is a highly visible God in the background of every choice.

The concept of divine discretion is that God limits divine visibility enough to make it possible for people to question the idea of God, thus enabling people to make genuinely free choices and decisions in favor of God.

Biblical Divine Discretion

The idea of divine discretion can be seen in biblical stories. For example, Adam and Eve are depicted as having a close and visible relationship with God. Yet, they are also confused about God, as they think that they can successfully hide and lie to God (Genesis 3:8). This shows that God’s nature is partially veiled to them.

The story of St. Paul’s conversion is a dramatic appearance of God (Acts 9). However, it is a single episode in a life which contains opposite, balancing incidents of hardship which convey divine veiling. For example, Paul was beaten with rods three times, shipwrecked three times, and stoned on one occasion (2 Corinthians 11:25).

Incidents of hardship like this typically veil God’s presence. This is why religious believers can lose faith when hardship occurs. We see this in Peter’s denial (Luke 22:57). We even see veiling in Jesus’s life when the horror of the Cross caused him to cry out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

Problem of Atheism

The concept of divine discretion has particular relevance with the Problem of Atheism.

Traditionally, atheism has presented a problem to Christianity. In the Middle Ages, when Natural theology used deductive logical proofs for God’s existence, doubting God’s existence was puzzling. Only an insane person can doubt a correct deductive logical argument. So, this led to a dilemma. Either there must be something wrong with (deductive) arguments for God’s existence, or there must be something wrong with the atheists.

Christians traditionally took the second horn of this dilemma. The vestiges of that approach remain in the modern Catechism where atheism is explained as arising due to the “disordered appetites” of people who “persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful” (CCC 37).

This makes atheism a disordered thinking, which is a sin (CCC 2125). It explains atheism by making it just another example of (moral) evil. But immorality involves knowing that something is wrong, despite still choosing it (see “Could It Be a Sin to Be a Christian?“). This means that if atheism is a sin, then atheists are people who must know that God exists, yet deliberately persuade themselves otherwise.

Is it really plausible that all atheists are deliberately choosing to self-delude themselves in this way?

Blaming atheists may have made sense to medieval thinkers, when deductive Natural theology left no other options. But the development of inductive Natural theology allows for other considerations. In particular, the idea of divine discretion allows the recognition that reasoning to God may be harder than has traditionally been recognized. It raises the question whether (some) atheism may arise due to the complexities of rationality, rather than just a sinful ill will.

Complexities of Rationality

One of the surprising discoveries of the last century is that rationality is far more complicated than previous generations appreciated. Research has shown that there are a vast number of biases and fallacies which people seem predisposed towards.

We see the results of this in aspects of the culture wars, where ideologies take opposing views on gender, race, sexuality (etc.). Arguments clash and appeals are made to Critical Theory, Postmodernism (etc.). Sometimes even principles of logic are rejected, like the idea that there should not be contradictions.

These disputes often seem intractable as no evidence or argument can persuade opposing ideologues. This is because the disputes are not about evidence or even conclusions. They are clashing worldviews about what should count as rationality and reasonableness.

Disputes between theists and atheists can seem similar. They often reduce to disputes about the rationality of a principle, such as “everything has a cause.” Theists appeal to principles like this and insist God must exist as the cause of the universe. Atheists deny the principle and insist that there is no reason to believe in God. What looks initially like an argument about God, is actually an argument about a principle of rationality.

The arguments between theists and atheists are far more complex and nuanced than this single example. Yet the general point remains. Often, arguments which seem to be about God are really arguments about principles of rationality (see “Atheists, Theists and Rationality”).

This is not to suggest that religious believers are automatically more rational than atheists (or vice versa). There have been plenty of bizarre atheists and plenty of bizarre religious groups (e.g., the Borborites). The issues are far too nuanced and subtle for generalizations to be appropriate.

But if the disputes between Natural theology and atheism are viewed as aspects of a clash between visions of rationality, this helps to explain why theists and atheist arguments can sometimes seem as polarizing and intractable as other elements of the culture wars.

Conclusion

Christians who accept Natural theology do not believe that God is invisible. They are saying that God can be visibly detected by His effects.

However, this does not mean that God’s existence is “obvious,” in such a way that atheists must be blamed for refusing to see the obviousness of it. The concept of divine discretion shows that there may be good reasons for God’s visibility to be veiled in the complexities of rationality, so that free will can be exercised.

If this is so, then it raises the possibility that proofs for God’s existence may be doing far more than simply trying to show that God exists. What they are doing is inviting people to question the foundations of their worldviews and to look at their models of what they count as rationality.

In a modern world of seemingly unresolvable ideological disputes, perhaps there has never been a greater need to do so?