It seems to me that we do something interesting when relaying to each other stories of valor, and that we can apply such things to various strategies undertaken in arguments from Divine Hiddenness. What I have in mind is a story of the following sort. Centuries ago (or long ago or an unspecified amount of time ago) a group of people are terrorized by some cruel, more powerful tribe. (You could tell any story involving valor: a WW2 story or any story about any kind of victim of any kind of oppression.) Suppose we narrow our focus to tribesman X who rebels against his oppressors and leads his people to freedom. I can't tell you how many times something like following conversation happens after such stories like this are told:
Jones: Wow, how brave X was!
Susan: Indeed! Do you think you'd be able to do something like that if you were in X's position back then?
Jones: I'd like to think I would, but until I actually go through something like that, I'm not sure I know myself well enough to say with any degree of confidence what I would or wouldn't (or might or might not) do.
What's happening here? Jones is doing something that I think is humble and admirable: he's admitting that he hasn't the slightest clue about what he would or wouldn't do in a situation as inimitable or unknown as that. I think a family resemblance of sorts could be fuzzily built up out of stories like these.
Now, it seems to me that there's an a fortiori argument lurking in here. Consider a typical abstract you might read by a philosopher in an argument against God's existence on the basis of Divine Hiddenness (from The Argument From Divine Hiddenness. Daniel Howard-Snyder - 1996 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (3):433 - 453.):
Do we rightly expect a perfectly loving God to bring it about that, right now, we reasonably believe that He exists? It seems so. For love at its best desires the well-being of the beloved, not from a distance, but up close, explicitly participating in her life in a personal fashion, allowing her to draw from that relationship what she may need to flourish. But why suppose that we would be significantly better off were God to engage in an explicit, personal relationship with us? Well, first, there would be broadly moral benefits. We would be able to draw on the resources of that relationship to overcome seemingly everpresent flaws in our character. And we would be more likely to emulate the self-giving love with which we were loved. So loved, we would be more likely to flourish as human beings. Secondly, there would be experiential benefits. We would be, for example, more likely to experience peace and joy stemming from the strong conviction that we were properly related to our Maker, security in suffering knowing that, ultimately, all shall be well, and there would be the sheer pleasure of God's loving presence. As a consequence of these moral and experiential benefits, our relationships with others would likely improve. Thirdly, to be personally related to God is intrinsically valuable, indeed, according to the Christian tradition, the greatest intrinsic good. In these ways our well-being would be enhanced if God were to relate personally to us. Moreover, the best love does not seek a personal relationship only for the sake of the beloved. As Robert Adams rightly notes, "It is an abuse of the word 'love' to say that one loves a person, or any other object, if one does not care, except instrumentally, about one's relation to that object."1 Thus, God would want a personal relationship with us not only for the benefit we would receive from it but for its own sake as well. So, if a perfectly loving God exists, He wants a personal relationship with us, or more accurately, every capable creature, those cognitively and affectively equipped to relate personally with Him
Notice the confidence that Howard-Snyder has in telling his readers what would or wouldn't follow from God's bringing it about that he believes that God exists. Howard-Snyder isn't speculating like Jones was above, but then my question is this: isn't God's bringing it about that he believes that He exists an event or state of affairs that is just as, if not more, momentous than any experience of the type Jones is talking about?
(Expanding: God, being who He is, and Howard-Snyder, being who he is - If God were to reveal Himself with just as much unveiled awesomeness as He did, say, to Isaiah and Jeremiah, how does Howard-Snyder know how he would or wouldn't act upon interfacing with such unalloyed holiness for the first time? How does Howard-Snyder - or anyone! - know for sure, or have any degree of high, prior probability about how they would or wouldn't act if such a momentous occasion were to happen? When I think about it, I have no idea how I'd react. I really don't. I'm inclined to say that I'd fall on my face out of sheer terror, and that even after I'm reassured - in some unspecified way - I'm not sure whether I'd even like it. I'm not sure whether an experience like the one I'm doing my best to imagine would be one where I can like it instantaneously, or it could or couldn't be that its pleasurability might depend on factors outside my control or in factors that have to do with my uncleanness that can only be removed gradually, incrementally, and so diachronically. Thus, I find myself at an even further remove, epistemically, to how I'm suppose to know whether I would or wouldn't act in this or that way had God done something, the exact nature of which is presently, and probably permanently, inexplicable, in this present mode of spatiotemporal existence.)
And if Jones can't speak with confidence about the counterfactual regarding how he would or wouldn't act in the types of experiences noted above, then why do we think that Howard-Snyder should be any more confident about how he thinks he would or wouldn't act or emulate or draw or flourish or experience (even if he's confident about the consequences of what he thinks would or wouldn't happen if those other things were to happen) if God were to bring it about that Howard-Snyder believes he exists - especially if the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that are true of Howard-Snyder's essence don't, in fact, fall out the way they need to so that God's providential decisions can take those counterfactuals into account in His decision so to reveal himself?
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