Analytic Inspection of Schellenberg’s and Murphy’s Ideas on Divine Love and Its Consequences on the Argument from Divine Hiddenness

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

PhD, Department of Philosophy of Religion, Faculty of Theology and Islamic Studies, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

10.22059/jrm.2024.379371.630537

Abstract

Divine hiddenness is one of the newest atheistic arguments based on whose main assertor, John L. Schellenberg, hinges on the the Divine all-loving attribute and its implications. To better analyze this argument, it is essential to inspect Divine all-lovingness. On the other side, Mark C. Murphy, the philosopher of ethics, claims that God cannot be attributed to being loving. He poses this claim because one cannot infer from what God conducts to God's intrinsic attributes, so God sometimes acts lovingly, which does not result in the fact that being loving is God's intrinsic attribute. In addition, Divine intrinsic attributes must have some characteristics such as having a maximum intrinsic of which love is deprived. Murphy's idea on this matter makes it possible to refute Schellenberg's argument in addition to comprehending Divine all-lovingness from a different perspective. What is aimed at in this article first states, compares and analyses Schellenberg’s and Murphy's ideas on the the Divine all-loving attribute and then inspects the consequences of Murphy's approach towards Divine love on Schellenberg's argument from Divine hiddenness. It will be seen that although Murphy poses severe and essential points, the cost of accepting his perspective is so high that it renders such an endorsement rather irrational.

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References

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Schellenberg, John L. (2005). The hiddenness argument revisited (I). an article in Religious Studies. published by Cambridge university press. Volume 41, number 2, pp. 201-215
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Religions and Mysticism
Volume 57, Issue 1
September 2024
Pages 225-243

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