Why Is God Silent?

Dialogue with a doubter by Ron Davis

Why doesn’t God interact with me in an existentially substantive way? Many followers of Christ desire to have a real existential relationship with God that is consistent. You most certainly are one of these people and find yourself expressing, “I want to love you, but where are you?” I do not think this is unreasonable, nor do I think it is impossible to answer. I want to address this from a few areas. This is a very complex issue, and I want to try and cover it in a substantive way in this response but also, at the same time, begin a conversation that will continue.

This issue seems to be affected by the metaphysical concepts of reality and how “knowing” is even possible. I say this because you are struggling with accepting a reality where God exists but is silent, and the best we can hope for is agnosticism. The alternative explanation also troubles you because Christian theism is absurd without a personal relationship with God  — a concept that seems to elude you at this moment. In other words, a correspondence with reality (as defined by Christian theism) and a plausible correlation to the world you experience seem to be in opposition (or at least disjunctive). Thus, the question has to be asked: can we really know with precise certainty that true existence, and knowing/comprehending it, is something to be grasped? Within this framework/discussion, certainty is as much existential as it is intellectual. For instance: you are 100% certain that you have anxiety/confusion over why God does not existentially relate to you on a more regular basis. This certainty is as much an existential concept for you as it is an intellectual one. 

Consciousness demands an interaction and explanation of reality that requires confidence in our senses, cognitive abilities, etc., but it also requires our senses and cognitive abilities to be connected to an objective referent. Since we do not have one outside of our senses and cognition, the idea of exhaustive, 100% certainty is more of a straw man than an actual pillar of cognitive and/or faith related concepts of reality. I have come to embrace the idea that I can be certain that I exist and Christ, the resurrected Lord, is my Savior. This certainty is existential, i.e., peace of God, forgiveness of sins, joy, etc.; and it is also intellectual, i.e., the rationality of Christian theism, claims of Scripture, evidence (scientific, historical, anthropomorphic), etc. When I engage both of these, the most reasonable response is: yes, I truly exist and Christ is the impetus of this admission and the Truth by which I correspond to reality and correlate to the world (physical, emotional, spiritual). So, for me, 100% certainty is exhaustive inside of the proper faith framework. Outside of these parameters, what certainty can anyone have? Thus the beauty of the gospel: the brokenness of the world that brings about your anxiety over these issues has found its remedy in the person of Jesus Christ who came for one purpose: to redeem mankind and the world. From our discussion, you seem have experienced this redemption and have hope in Christ and the potential perspective that you, to a 100% certainty, not only exist but have value in God through Christ.

If the former is accurate, it requires admission of the value of humanity, even a single human, to be part of the redemptive expression of biblical concepts, i.e., God cares for mankind because of the redemptive work of Christ. The problem lies inside of the expectations you have for a relationship with a God who “loves,” has made himself “known” through natural and divine revelation, but seems to be hiding himself from the very ones that he claims to love and be reconciled to through Christ. So…let me make a connection to the previous discussion about “knowing” to the concepts of what is known by engaging the parameters of transposition. I would describe transposition as a way of life by which knowledge comes downward to us through sensory experience, i.e., we gather information from an existential and intellectual process providing lower level knowledge that connects to higher level experiences and/or concepts. For instance, you are reading this email because your eyes see organized funny-shaped objects that your brain has assembled into meaning. These objects were introduced to you as lower level knowledge that transposes into higher level understanding. Thus, all communication/learning takes place within this process, i.e., “knowing” is a fluid reality and not a static one. It seems reasonable to conclude that the experience of knowing through sensory perception is a reflection of a principle that operates in the spiritual realm. Modernity did more than bifurcate these two realms (natural/supernatural), it also produced the desire within humanity to do so. (Maybe this is evidenced throughout history, but it seems to be more prevalent in post-enlightenment epistemology.) God does not share this desire, and it is evidenced by the Incarnation. Jesus brought both worlds together in a way that had not been realized since Eden (pre-Fall). Agreeing with Jürgen Moltmann, “Embodiment is the end of all God’s works” ( God in Creation, 244). This Word-become flesh expression of reality enabled the redemption of man as the seen and unseen worlds merge into the beautiful expression of divine humanity — a God-man who redeemed a fallen world and forever merged two worlds together. No wonder Paul exclaims that we are “in Christ” all throughout his writings. Thus, the miraculous advent of Christ in the Incarnation gives the fullest expression of transposition: humanity can become vessels filled with the Spirit of God allowing the acts of redeemed men/women to become nothing less than works of the Divine.

What does this have to do with the silence of God (divine hiddenness)? Everything. The coming of Christ, as the transpositional act of God for man, produced the vehicle by which the world can know the good news of the gospel. Is God silent? Is he hidden? I would like to answer this with another question: are we silent? This broken world that we find ourselves in required a redemptive act — an act that could only be carried out by the One who could unite both the seen and the unseen. The transpositional nature of the Incarnation is evidence of the “beyond knowing” concepts of the Divine, and we, as his followers and mouthpiece, will sometimes have a hard time connecting our lower level learning with the higher level knowledge of the redemption of man, the love of God, and, most importantly, the existential nature of our relationship with him. Why is this so hard for us to grasp in our post-enlightenment world? We have a tendency to let reductionism run rampant without recognizing it for what it truly is: a way of perception and, not necessarily, a way of revealing, i.e., is it not a method by which cognitive realities can be clearly defined but a informative process that engages a part of the equation but not the whole. I think it is impossible to grasp what our existential relationship with God should/could be by comparing it, reductionistically, to relationships we have with friends, family, etc. It seems more prudent to construct a concept of the hiddenness of God based upon the transpositional elements of our relationship with him. Maybe the silence of God is more about the epistemic failure of man than an existential failure of God. Agreeing with Alvin Plantiga, the epistemic environment of mankind is not functioning inside of the original design of God, i.e., we live in a fallen world. This provides a framework by which epistemic blindness can be a reality (of course we have sinful structures, noetic failure/blindness, human freedom that brings epistemic harm, etc.). 

Maybe the silence of God is better described as the blindness of man, i.e., we have not positioned ourselves well to experience the existential presence of God. Is this because God is elusive and the road to experience with the Divine is a shadowy trail on the epistemic journey of existence? I would have to say, no. It seems better to conclude that we have, from a transpositional perspective, failed to connect the beauty and grandeur of God because we do not perceive the true benevolence of God inside of our own lack of being truly benevolent. Of course there could be a myriad of transpositional short-comings, and this is to be expected. After all, we live in a fallen world with a broken epistemic environment that will one day be redeemed, and the new heaven and the new earth will bring about what is so longed for — a return to an Edenic relationship with God. And this is all made possible by the redemptive work of Christ bringing hope to the world and the beautiful existential encounters with the Divine — even if they are remote, sporadic and seemingly fickle.