Divine Hiddenness

The problem of evil challenges theism by raising the following question: if God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, why is there evil in the actual world? Theists have proposed many responses to the problem, such as the free will response, the soul-making response, the greater good response, and so on. Whether any succeeds has been debated for hundreds of years.

The problem of divine hiddenness is, in some reasonable sense, a “deeper” problem than the problem of evil. If God were vividly present to us, we could suffer almost anything—at least the kinds of things we find on this planet—without (evidential) doubt that God exists (and also with little emotional doubt). But, one clearly could have some (evidential) doubt that God existed, even if God were vividly present to them throughout the suffering.