The Hidden God, Second-Person Knowledge, and the Incarnation

The paper considers premises of the hiddenness argument with an emphasis on its usage of the concept of a personal God. The paper’s assumption is that a recent literature on second-person experiences could be useful for theists in their efforts to defend their position against Schellenberg’s argumen...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Dobrzeniecki, Marek 1980- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: MDPI 2021
In: Religions
Year: 2021, Volume: 12, Issue: 8
Further subjects:B second-person knowledge
B the hiddenness argument
B the incarnation
B Interpersonal Relationship
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Summary:The paper considers premises of the hiddenness argument with an emphasis on its usage of the concept of a personal God. The paper’s assumption is that a recent literature on second-person experiences could be useful for theists in their efforts to defend their position against Schellenberg’s argument. Stump’s analyses of a second-person knowledge indicate that what is required in order to establish an interpersonal relationship is a personal presence of the persons in question, and therefore they falsify the thesis that a minimalist requirement for a relationship between a man and God has to be belief in his existence. Recent works by developmental psychologists not only verify a hypothesis that a second-person knowledge is not reducible to knowledge-that, but also suggest that one needs a shared form of life in order to establish an interpersonal relationship. These two insights allow the author to formulate his own response to the hiddenness argument: only when God’s presence is non-explicit—for example, when God is hidden in a human nature—can a finite person enter into a personal relationship with him. It is the fulfilment of the requirement of being personally present that is the justifying reason for God to permit non-resistant non-belief.
ISSN:2077-1444
Contains:Enthalten in: Religions
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.3390/rel12080559