God’s hiddenness has prompted some theists to provide an explanation for God’s silence. Such hiddenness seems to be closely tied with disbelief, which is a form of sin for most Christians, so why has God allows such conditions to prevail?
Murray intends to show that some resoltions can be made to hiddenness.
A free-will theodicy claims that the existence of free-will causes, allows, or presupposes the possibility of certain evils.
The existence of stable, natural laws is essential for this free will, but these stable laws will sometime result in natural evils such as hurricanes.
‘Specifically, it appears that one cannot act freely when one is in the condition of compulsion by another in the context of a threat‘. And if God doesn’t remain hidden, this could constitute a threat, thus removing our ability to act in a morally significant manner.
If could be said that here, freedom has not been lost, because the threatened can still choose what action to take. What the threat does provide, however, is excuses for the behaviour, which suffices to relieve responsibility.
So, in such cases, freedom simpliciter is not eliminated, but the moral significance of an action is.
But what exactly constitutes a significant threat?
Murray idntifies 3 factors; threat strength, threat imminence, and wantonness of the threatened.
Differing degrees in temporal threat imminence may also axplain the fact that some individuals choose to eat a high-fat diet.
Western theistic traditions involve temporal and eternal threats. And those who are aware of their threats ave their freedom at stake, for there is some degree of compulsion in the threat; compulsion by God.
The theist must explain how this threat can be mitigated so as to prevent the compromising of human freedom. We must look at the 3 factors.
Threat strength and threat imminence do seem to provide a real threat here. Wantonness is unlikely to provide what we are looking for, for developing wantonness seems to fall into the domain of freedom (p209), which is a quite Aristotelian view, thus is GOd were to maintain human freedom, he cannot manipulate this element of the picture.
Thus, we are left with imminence. The only imminence we can really draw upon here is epistemic imminence.
‘My claim here is the hidenness of God is required in order for free beings to be able to exercise their freedom in a morally significant manner given the strength of the threat implied be knowledge of the threat implicit in the traditional theistic story’ (p290)
For us to have free will and for our choices to have moral significance, God must ‘decrease the threat imminence of eternal an temporal punishment and He, in fact, does so by making the existence of the threat epistemically ambiguous’.
‘All that is required is that the demonstrative evidence for God’s existence be sufficiently obscured so that it does not compel belief or behaviour in accordance with the perceived divine standard.
In sum, hiddenness seems to preserve the exercise of robust, morally significant free-will.
