The Hiddenness Argument

* This is a fragment of J. L. Schellenberg’s paper “Divine Hiddenness and Human Philosophy” originally published in Adam Green and Eleonore Stump (eds.), Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief (Cambridge: CUP 2015), 23–25, 28. Reprinted by permission of the author

There’s Something about Mary: Challenges and Prospects for Narrative Theodicy

This paper explores the constraints of narrative theodicy to account for the misery of the powerless and uses Mary of Bethany as a case study as evaluated through the early modern theodical writings of Mary Astell and Mary Hays. Eleonore Stump has pointed out that Mary of Bethany’s misery is interesting because it is so personal; it results from losing her heart’s desire. But, Mary of Bethany’s case fails as narrative theodicy because it cannot (unlike other cases, such as Job) sufficiently demonstrate the power of God in situated expressions of suffering, speak to plight of the powerless, nor put the sufferer in a stronger epistemic position. Astell and Hays provide a solution for the problem of lived experiences of systemic oppression for the project of narrative theodicy (it must be for and about suffering), and in so doing, remind us of the continued significance of their work to the philosophical canon. To succeed, narratives used for theodicy must speak directly to the plight of those who suffer, and must allow the powerless, miserable, unprivileged, and oppressed to have access to religious knowledge of the relationship between God and the one in misery, the one powerless.

A Theodicy of Kenosis: Eleonore Stump and the Fall of Jericho

When Joshua came to Jericho and encountered the captain of the LORD’s host, his stance appears much like the theodicist, who, facing the awful prospects of suffering, evil, or death, seeks assurance from God, asking, “are you for us or our adversaries?” (Jos 5:13). Yet the angel’s reply is not “yes,” as typical theodicies seek to answer on God’s behalf, but “No; rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the LORD.” (Jos 5:14) The implication is political: the angel seeks to alter Joshua’s stance from one ordered to his own purposes to one ordered to the LORD’s. Like traditional theodicies, Eleonore Stump’s Wandering in Darkness (2010) does not sufficiently establish why a theistic God must create a world where, to preserve our capacity to freely love God, suffering is caused or permitted. I avoid this problem by finding a “kenotic” aspect in the action of signs in which the perennial problems of suffering and evil do not arise, and which is available to direct experience, making it empirically falsifiable in principle. Like the angel’s reply to Joshua, this invites a change from a speculatively grounded stance representing the hopes of a theodicist, to one formed from real interactions that transcend discourse.

Narrative, Liturgy, and the Hiddenness of God

Chapter 7 draws on recent work by Eleonore Stump and Sarah Coakley to defend a response to the problem of divine hiddenness that is consistent with the claim that God does not permit divine hiddenness in order to secure greater human goods. Although this conclusion is consistent with the claim that God permits divine hiddenness for the sake of some greater good, it rules out the idea that whatever human goods may be promoted by divine hiddenness are the goods for the sake of which God remains hidden.

Second-personal theodicy: coming to know why God permits suffering by coming to know God himself

The popularity of theodicy over the past several decades has given rise to a countermovement, “anti-theodicy”, which admonishes attempts at theodicy for various reasons. This paper examines one prominent anti-theodical objection: that it is hubristic, and attempts to form an approach to theodicy which evades this objection. To do so I draw from the work of Eleonore Stump, who provides a framework by which we can glean second-personal knowledge of God. From this knowledge, I argue that we can derive a theodicy which does not utilise the kind of analytic theorising anti-theodicists accuse of intellectual hubris.

Dancing around the Black Box

Giving the impression that perichoresis solves the “threeness-oneness problem” or the “two natures–one person problem” without an explanation of how perichoresis works is problematic; as such, an explanation of perichoresis ought to be provided. I provide one way to address this problem by drawing upon the work of Eleonore Stump. In contrast to approaches that avoid the metaphysics of perichoresis I provide an account of the metaphysics of perichoresis and suggest that a Stump-inspired account of perichoresis—that is, an account that places an emphasis on the notion of sharing some aspect of the mental life—deserves serious attention by those who feel the weight of the problematic use of perichoresis.

Atonement: an overview

The doctrine of the atonement is the distinctive doctrine of Christianity. Over the course of many centuries of reflection, highly diverse interpretations of the doctrine have been proposed. In the context of this history of interpretation, Eleonore Stump considers the doctrine afresh with philosophical care in her book Atonement. This article is an overview of the book.