Authors

• Amirabbas Alizamani ¹
• batul zarkande ²

¹ Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy of Religion, University of Tehran

² Master of Philosophy of Religion, University of Tehran

Abstract

In recent decades, many philosophers of religion have tried to address instances in order to prove the argument of Gratuitous Evil. One of these examples is the divine concealment which presented first time by John L. Schellenberg as an argument against theism. Based on the argument, in spite of that many of God’s servants want honestly and insistently to observe or perceive Him somehow, He denies giving them some signs of his existence and continues to his hiddenness. Schellenberg claims that if God exists then there is no justification to his hiddenness since through his appearance he can bring about His servant’s salvation and happiness. Our question in this paper is whether the concealment of God can be seen as an instant of evil? Is there really no excuse for hiding God?

Keywords

• gratuitous evil
• William Leonard Rowe
• Divine Hiddenness
• John L. Schellenberg
• free will
• epistemic distance