Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief New Perspectives

This collection of new essays written by an international team of scholars is a groundbreaking examination of the problem of divine hiddenness, one of the most dynamic areas in current philosophy of religion. Together, the essays constitute a wide-ranging dialogue on the problem. They balance atheistic and theistic standpoints, and they bring to bear not only on the standard philosophical perspectives but also on insights from Jewish, Muslim, and Eastern Orthodox traditions. The apophatic and the mystical are well-represented too. As a result, the volume throws fresh light on this familiar but important topic in the philosophy of religion. In the process, the volume incorporates contemporary work in epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. For all these reasons, this book will be of great interest to researchers and advanced students in philosophy of religion and theology.

Introduction; Part I. The Argument from God's Hiddenness against God's Existence: 1. Divine hiddenness and human philosophy J. L. Schellenberg; Part II. God's Hiddenness: Overlooked Issues: 2. The semantic problem of hiddenness Meghan Sullivan; 3. Divine hiddenness and the cognitive science of religion Helen De Cruz; Part III. God's Hiddenness: Faith and Skepticism: 4. Divine hiddenness and self-sacrifice Paul K. Moser; 5. Journeying in perplexity Evan Fales; Part IV. Reasons for Hiddenness and Unbelief: 6. No-fault atheism John Greco; 7. Divine openness and creaturely non-resistant non-belief Daniel Howard-Snyder; 8. Hiddenness and the epistemology of attachment Adam Green; Part V. God's Hiddenness and God's Nature in the Major Monotheisms: 9. The hiddenness of 'divine hiddenness': divine love in medieval Islamic lands Jon McGinnis; 10. The hidden God of the Jews: Hegel, Reb Nachman, and the Aqedah Jerome Gellman; 11. The hidden divinity and what it reveals N. N. Trakakis; 12. Hiddenness and transcendence Michael C. Rea; Part VI. God's Hiddenness: Suffering and Union with God: 13. Divine hiddenness or dark intimacy?: How John of the Cross dissolves a contemporary philosophical dilemma Sarah Coakley; 14. Silence, evil and Shūsaku Endō Yujin Nagasawa; 15. Lyric theodicy: Gerard Manley Hopkins and the problem of existential hiddenness Ian DeWeese-Boyd; Bibliography; Index.

Adam Green is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Azusa Pacific University. He has published numerous articles in journals, including Episteme, Synthese, American Philosophical Quarterly, The Monist, Religious Studies and the European Journal for Philosophy of Religion.
Eleonore Stump is the Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at St Louis University. She has published extensively on philosophy of religion, contemporary metaphysics and medieval philosophy. Her recent publications include Aquinas (2003), Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (2010) and The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas (co-edited with Brian Davies, 2012).