Book contents
- Divine Hiddenness
- Divine Hiddenness
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Text
- Prologue
- Introduction
- 1 Divine Hiddenness and Phenomenology
- 2 God the Creator and the Natural Theological Attitude
- 3 Augustine
- 4 Anselm
- 5 Aquinas
- 6 Deferred Ostension
- 7 Hidden Minds
- 8 Desire, Wonder, and Gratitude
- Conclusion
- Epilogue
- Works Cited
- Index
Conclusion
‘God the Creator’ as Deferred Ostension
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2026
Book contents
- Divine Hiddenness
- Divine Hiddenness
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Text
- Prologue
- Introduction
- 1 Divine Hiddenness and Phenomenology
- 2 God the Creator and the Natural Theological Attitude
- 3 Augustine
- 4 Anselm
- 5 Aquinas
- 6 Deferred Ostension
- 7 Hidden Minds
- 8 Desire, Wonder, and Gratitude
- Conclusion
- Epilogue
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
As a basic phenomenological constraint, God is hidden to creation in virtue of being the creator. The conclusion identifies implications for the typical atheistic and the theistic responses to the problem of divine hiddenness. Against the atheist who holds than an all-loving God would always want to be in a relation with us, the conclusion argues that if God is in fact the hidden creator, our ultimate source, he would be uniquely the sort of thing we were implicitly always in relation to even if we were unaware of it. Against the theist who wants to explain divine hiddenness in terms of a moral defect of the one seeking, the conclusion argues that such resistance would only be detectable after the fact, in light of faith, and so would be an issue for theological, not philosophical explication.
Information
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- Divine HiddennessGod the Creator and Phenomenology, pp. 245 - 260Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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