Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief : New Perspectives / edited by Adam Green, Eleonore Stump.

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 08 Jan 2016).

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.

Cover -- Half-title -- Title page -- Copyright information -- Epigraph -- Table of contents -- List of contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Part I The Argument from God's Hiddenness against God's Existence -- 1 Divine hiddenness and human philosophy -- 1 General background to the arguments -- 2 Ultimate hiddenness -- 3 Personal love and openness to relationship -- 4 The hiddenness argument -- 5 Belief or acceptance? -- Part II God's Hiddenness: Overlooked Issues -- 2 The semantic problem of hiddenness -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Ways we might fix reference to God -- 3 Ways reference can be destroyed -- 4 Hiddenness and semantic vulnerability -- 5 Reference and inspiration -- 6 Conclusion -- 3 Divine hiddenness and the cognitive science of religion -- 1 Divine hiddenness and natural belief in God -- 2 The cognitive origins of theism -- 3 Nonresistant nonbelief and the cognitive origins of atheism -- 4 The epistemic distance reply -- 5 CSR and spiritual attachment -- 6 Spiritual dryness as insecure attachment -- 7 Mediate religious experience -- 8 Concluding remarks -- Part III God's Hiddenness: Faith and Skepticism -- 4 Divine hiddenness and self-sacrifice -- 1 An imagined scenario -- 2 Two sides of sacrifice: divine and human -- 3 Self-sacrifice in evidence for God -- 4 Sacrificial discernment and decision -- 5 Whither hiddenness? -- 6 Conclusion -- 5 Journeying in perplexity -- A Cognitive idolatry or epistemic necessity? -- B The real deal -- C Stump's Job -- D Another Job -- E God speaks -- Job sees -- F Denouement? -- G Eschaton -- Part IV Reasons for Hiddenness and Unbelief -- 6 No-fault atheism -- Part 1: The problem of divine hiddenness and the problem of suffering -- 1 The argument from hiddenness -- 2 The flawed atheist response -- 3 No-fault atheism -- 4 Interim conclusion -- Part 2: A model for testimonial knowledge.

1 A problem in the epistemology of testimony -- 2 The "information economy" model -- 3 Three modes of testimonial exchange: interpersonal, social, and institutional -- Part 3: Implications for epistemology in general, problem of divine hiddenness in particular -- 1 Social location is epistemically important -- 2 Moral and practical aspects of the social environment have epistemic consequences -- 3 Obstacles to transmission might be found in a) the hearer, but also b) the speaker, and c) the social environment -- Conclusions -- 7 Divine openness and creaturely nonresistant nonbelief -- The argument from nonresistant nonbelief -- 8 Hiddenness and the epistemology of attachment -- I Divine hiddenness as an experiential problem -- II Shared attention and religious experience -- III A story about attachment -- IV The case of the atheist -- V Objections and disclaimers -- 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 -- Introduction -- Preliminaries: the vocabulary of love in medieval Arabic -- Divine love within the falsafa tradition -- Understanding "personal relation" in medieval Islam: persons -- Understanding "personal relation" in medieval Islam: relations -- 10 The hidden God of the Jews: Hegel, Reb Nachman, and the aqedah -- Reb Nachman of Breslov -- Reb Nachman and the aqedah -- 11 The hidden divinity and what it reveals -- 1 From West to East -- 2 Implications for the problem of divine hiddenness -- 12 Hiddenness and transcendence -- 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 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 -- Introduction: what is the problem of "divine hiddenness"?.

I Hiddenness, darkness, and epistemic asceticism: the entry into "contemplation" -- II "Darkness" in the night of sense and the night of spirit -- Conclusions: "rightly and discreetly and lovingly" -- 14 Silence, evil, and Shusaku Endo -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Persecution of Kakure Kirishitans -- 3 The problem of divine absence -- 4 The intellectual problem and the experiential problem -- 5 Responding to the experiential problem -- 6 Conclusion -- 15 Lyric theodicy: Gerard Manley Hopkins and the problem of existential hiddenness -- I Locating Hopkins's problem -- II Lyric, lamentation, and the problem of existential suffering -- Lyric of intimate knowledge: weep with them that weep -- Lyric of lamentation: blessed are they that mourn -- III The incarnate Word: touching God in the darkness, touching God in suffering -- References -- Index.

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