DAY 331
CHALLENGE
“If God really exists and wants us to know him, why doesn’t he make his existence more obvious to us?”
DEFENSE
This is a subcase of the problem of evil—specifically, why God would allow us to have less knowledge of him than we would prefer to have. Its solutions fall along the same lines as other aspects of the problem of evil.
God could make it undeniably obvious that he exists, and it is commonly understood he will do so in the next life, paralleling the way he will vanquish evil in the next life in general.
Why God remains partially hidden in this life is a mystery. A common proposal is he does so to avoid overwhelming our free will so we may make a free choice for or against him. It is also proposed he does so to allow us to exercise and grow in virtues such as faith and hope.
Not having the amount of evidence we would like does not mean God is committing an injustice, however. He remains just, even while remaining partially hidden, as long as he ensures that we have adequate evidence concerning him. Even if it isn’t the amount of evidence we would prefer, we have the evidence we need as long as we have the philosophical proofs of God’s existence (cf. Rom. 1:18–20).
Also, the difficulty we have in processing this evidence is due in part to the effects of both original and personal sin (cf. Rom. 1:21, Eph. 4:18). However, God will not hold us accountable for what we are not personally responsible for. Scripture recognizes that one is not ac- countable for what one innocently does not know (John 9:41, 15:22, 24; James 4:17). Thus Paul tells the Athenians—who had achieved a measure of knowledge of the divine (Acts 17:22–29)—that “the times of [their] ignorance God overlooked” (Acts 17:30). God will therefore not hold people accountable who innocently lacked the evidence they
needed (see Day 113).
As with other aspects of the problem of evil, a mystery remains, but
“faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life” (CCC 324).