The Elusive God

Three questions motivate this book's account of evidence for the existence of God. First, if God's existence is hidden, why suppose He exists at all? Second, if God exists, why is He hidden, particularly if God seeks to communicate with people? Third, what are the implications of divine hiddenness for philosophy, theology, and religion's supposed knowledge of God? This book answers these questions using a new account of evidence and knowledge of divine reality that challenges scepticism about God's existence. The central thesis is that we should expect evidence of divine reality to be purposively available to humans, that is, available only in a manner suitable to divine purposes in self-revelation. This lesson generates a seismic shift in our understanding of evidence and knowledge of divine reality. The result is a much-needed reorienting of religious epistemology to accommodate the character and purposes of an authoritative, perfectly loving God.

What meanings can be ascribed to the existence of God? This question has been investigated by prominent thinkers throughout the ages, and led several of them to suggest arguments for proving this existence and explaining its meaning. The first part of this book reviews some of these proofs and their criticism. Following this discussion, it suggests a new meaning and characterization of God as a connector between different types of entities. This idea sheds new light on several interesting problems, including the emergence of plurality in reality from the unity of God. The second section deals with God and the human mind, and focuses mainly on the mind-body bifurcation problem, the problem of free will, and the existence of consciousness and soul. The third part discusses several problems associated with God and the world. Special emphasis is laid here upon God and the laws of nature, the creation of the universe, and the impact of modern Physics on the belief in God’s existence.

What if the way the book of Esther has been taught to us in church and retold to us in films, cartoons, and romance novels has missed the original point of the story? Far from being models of piety and devotion, Esther and Mordecai seem indifferent to the faith of their ancestors. How then did this story become part of the Bible and gain the broad acceptance that it has? If the church should not neglect the story, how should it be read? Esther and Her Elusive God calls Christians to avoid the common attempts to make Esther more palatable and theological, and to reclaim this secular story as Scripture. Readers will be encouraged to see in Esther a profound message of God's grace and faithfulness to his wayward people.

The Hiddenness of God addresses the problem of divine hiddenness which concerns the ambiguity of evidence for God's existence, the elusiveness of God's comforting presence, the palpable and devastating experience of divine absence and abandonment, and more; phenomena which are hard to reconcile with the idea, central to the Jewish and Christian scriptures, that there exists a God who is deeply and lovingly concerned with the lives of humans. Michael C. Rea argues that divine hiddenness is not a problem to be explained away but rather a consequence of the nature of God himself. He shows that it rests on unwarranted assumptions and expectations about God's love for human beings. Rea explains how scripture and tradition bear testimony not only to God's love, but to God's transcendence. He shows that God's transcendence should be understood as implying that all of God's intrinsic attributes—divine love included—elude our grasp in significant ways.

Philosophers have sought to define knowledge since the time of Plato. This inquiry outlines a theory of rational belief by challenging prominent skeptical claims that we have no justified beliefs about the external world.

Is there anyone “up there” to hear our cries for help? Will there ever be justice in this world? Why do we suffer? Is there life after death? Is there a meaning in history? How will it all end? Is there a God? What do we mean by “God” anyway? The answers are in the Bible, some say. But are they? This book is a guide to reading the Bible not to find answers but to hear the urgency of the questions and to realise that those who wrote the Bible were searching too. They searched in many different ways. Sometimes what they say seems alien to our way of thinking. Sometimes we feel they are kindred spirits. Sometimes they challenge us to think again. Often they argue with one another, and as we read their words and respond to them we become part of the ongoing conversation. This, rather than false notions of “authority”, is what makes the Bible relevant and exciting. ,

A Human-Shaped God approaches the humanlike accounts of God in the Old Testament as the starting places for theology and uses them to build a picture of the divine. This understanding of God is then brought into conversation with traditional conceptions that depict God as a being who knows everything that happens, is at every place at the same time, is constant and unchanging, and does not ultimately have material form. But instead of pitting the Old Testament's humanlike view of God against traditional theology and assuming that only one of these understandings is correct, A Human-Shaped God posits that theologians should embrace both of these constructions simultaneously. This is a new way of theological inquiry that embraces both the humanlike characteristics of God and the transcendence of God in traditional theology. By seeing and understanding the humanlike depictions of God in the Old Testament and by using the rich language of traditional theology together in tandem, the reader acquires a much deeper and meaningful understanding of God.