God as victim of human sin: a sin-based response to J. L. Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument

Journal article

In this paper, I develop an extended sin-based response to J. L. Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument against the existence of God which claims that the existence of God is disproven by the existence of persons whom Schellenberg calls non-resistant non-believers. I aim to problematize Schellenberg’s claim that there are such persons by arguing that his understanding of resistance is too narrow and that there is a broader kind of resistance he has not adequately considered. My argument has two stages. In Stage One, I argue that by culpably gravely injuring other humans, humans injure God indirectly and this is a kind of resistance towards him. In Stage Two, I point out that, if Christianity is true, human sin led to the suffering and death of God incarnate; I then try to show that, if Christianity is true, humans who have committed gravely immoral acts bear some non-negligible moral responsibility for the death of Christ, and that this too is a kind of resistance towards God. Since virtually all humans have gravely injured another human and committed at least one gravely immoral act, virtually all humans are resistant to God in this broader sense. Finally, I try to account for the variation in belief and non-belief by arguing that temporary divine hiding is an acceptable but not necessary divine response to this kind of resistance.

Authors: Gupta, S

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Journal: The Journal of Theological Studies
• Article number: flag016
• Publication date: 2026-03-13
• DOI: 10.1093/jts/flag016
• EISSN: 1477-4607
• ISSN: 0022-5185
• Language: English