One of the new and famous arguments in denying the existence of God is the Divine hiddenness argument. Based on this argument that was first proposed by John Schellenberg, a contemporary Canadian philosopher, God’s hiddenness is in conflict with his attribute of perfectly loving. Considering this conflict, defenders of the hiddenness argument have denied the existence of God. By adopting a new approach to the issues of being and knowledge, Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi (1154–1191) has presented a different point of view. Suhrawardi calls God the Light of all lights. In his opinion, God’s essence is nothing but his light, and light is that which is manifest (Ẓāhir). Therefore, it is necessary that God’s essence be also manifest. Of course, Suhrawardi also has paid attention to the issue of divine hiddenness and its relationship with the human soul. In Suhrawardi's view, divine hiddenness is due to man's lack of attention to the origin of the universe (i.e. the Light of all lights) and his neglect of his own existential (luminous) aspect. Nevertheless, in Schellenberg's view, God itself is the cause of divine hiddenness, and man has less responsibility. While comparing the viewpoints of Suhrawardi and Schellenberg on divine hiddenness, this article, using a descriptive-analytical method, tries to explain how God’s essence can be hidden while it is manifest, but this hiddenness should not return to his essence.

Based on the theory of “divine hiddenness”, God has not given human beings sufficient reasons to know Him. According to Schellenberg, divine hiddenness indicates that there is no god, because if there were, he would give humans sufficient reasons to know Him, but he did not. However, according to Pascal, divine hiddenness is necessary for theism because of the positive effects it has on human beings’ life. Our findings of the comparison of the two philosophers’ views are that Pascal's reasons cannot justify the necessity of divine hiddenness. At the same time, Schellenberg's argument based on the divine hiddenness can be answered by theists and cannot justify atheism.

Schellenberg, the main proponent of the proof of Divine Hiddenness, believes that if the God of monotheistic religions really exists and has attributes such as unlimited love and affection towards his servants, he must show much more than the love of a mother to her child and possess it in the first way. Now that he is aware of people's wandering in search of their God and has the ability to remove any obstacles in this regard, regardless of the fact, Divine disappearance has happened many times. As a result, there is basically no such God with such attributes. This article intends to deal with this issue with an analytical-documentary method and based on an epistemological approach, to criticize his inductive reading of the argument from the perspective of religious experience. The findings of the research show that with the investigation done on different types of religious experiences, some types of religious experiences definitely have epistemological value. Especially the cases which are from the tradition of present knowledge and establish direct knowledge about God.

God’ s limited and conditioned attributes of action are the manifestation and expression of His essential absolute attributes of action; however, their limitedness is due to their simultaneous working with each other and in relation to creation. Among the attributes of action, the attribute of wisdom – the manifestation of the essential attribute of knowledge – is dominant over other attributes and constraints them. John Schellenberg, in the Divine Hiddenness Argument, has been heedless of the distinction between these two categories of attributes; something that has resulted in firstly, that he assigns Divine love to an absolute form of human love by employing an analogous approach and secondly, by confusing the different forms of love, i. e. agape and eros, that he have an incorrect understanding of Divine love and the level of their absoluteness and thirdly, even with the validity of Schellenberg’ s emphasis on the distinction between the Hiddenness Argument and the Argument for Evil, his use of the former as a disaffirmation of Divine infinite love somehow takes a person’ s mind to the Argument of Evil and is an incorrect use of it. Based on the action attribute of wisdom, one can show that in contrast to Schellenberg’ s claim, Divine hiddenness does not only not disaffirm Divine love; rather, it is a manifestation of God’ s wise love for man and we will be indicating some of this wisdom in this paper.

This study is intended to explain and criticise Schellenberg's idea of "divine love. " This Canadian scholar, by presenting evidences against God's absolute love, defends religious skepticism and, on this basis, provides a proof in the form of an exceptional deduction in denying the existence of God. Now, the main question of the study follows as: what are the theoretical challenges against Schlinberg's argument? The research, being performed by an analytical and document-based method, shows that Schellenberg's theory is faced with some critiques including neglecting the existential capacity of the beloved, ignoring the empirical evidences of God`s presence in the world, incorrect interpretation of the notion of punishment and torment, and proposing a deterministic interpretation of human knowledge and faith to God.

In 1993, for the first time, John L. Schellenberg, the contemporaryphilosopher of religion, proposed the “Hiddenness Argument’’. According to this argument, as God doesn’t provide for many people sufficient evidence for His existence, He is hidden. In other words, that many people inculpably fail to find sufficient evidence for the existence of God constitutes evidence for atheism. Schellenberg argues that since a loving God would not withhold the benefits of belief, the lack of evidence for God’s existence is incompatible with divine love. This paper argues that his defense of two controversial premises of his argument is unsuccessful: one is that God’s love is incompatible with His allowing some to remain in doubt about His existence, and the other is: the nonbelief of some agnostics is inculpable. Theistic Religions have plausible reasons, which Schellenberg has not succeeded in refuting, for thinking that every nonbelief is culpable.

John Schellenberg’s Divine Hiddenness Argument is one of the contemporary proofs against belief in God. The Quran contains verses regarding the Children of Israel and their request for God’s clear manifestation, as well as verses in Surah Ad-Dhuha and God’s oath declaring that God is never absent from the Prophet (pbuh). These verses explain the issue of divine hiddenness and God's response to human demands for divine manifestation. God absolutely denies any form of visual or sensory manifestation, but does not deny the sensory and visual perception of His divine manifestation (tajalli). Therefore, from the Quranic viewpoint, there is no logical necessity linking belief in a personal God with God’s overt visibility to believers,neither is God’s visibility logically connected to the belief in a “complete personal God, ” nor is divine hiddenness contradictory to it. Divine hiddenness, according to the Quran, is among God’s established divine laws (sunnat), resulting in spiritual growth and a deeper search for truth. Whenever an individual or a people sincerely seek God’s manifestation, God, according to His laws, creates an event for them to perceive His existence sense-perceptually in occurrences. Due to the universality of divine laws, it is impossible that anyone sincerely seeking God’s manifestation is met with divine silence.

Canadian Philosopher, John L. Schellenberg, formally proposed and formulated "Divine Hiddenness Argument" in 1993 for the first time. In this atheistic argument, he states that God does not provide sufficient evidence for His existence at least to some people for some times, thus He is hidden. According to his argument which is based on God’s perfect love, Schellenberg believes that if God perfectly loves people as his creatures, He will provide sufficient evidence for his existence to them and therefore He is not hidden. But God does not provide sufficient evidence to them, therefore He is not perfect lover and disbelieving in His existence is rational and inculpable. Schellenberg believes that "Divine hiddenness Argument" justifies atheism and accordingly refutes the existence of God. Paul K. Moser, contemporary American philosopher, rejects Schellenberg’s view in his new approach to epistemology of religion. Rejecting the evidence for Divine hiddenness, Moser believes that there is sufficient evidence for the existence of God. According to Moser, however, this evidence greatly differs with what the people naturally expect. Based on volitional knowledge, he believes that it is the God, not man, who determines the genuine authority and resource for kinds of evidence and its evaluation. So, Moser does not consider divine hiddenness argument, which is formulated on the basis of human authority, successful in justification of divine hiddenness and in refutation of God’s existence.

In a new formulation of the logical problem of evil, J. L. Schellenberg attempts to develop a new version of the logical form of the problem of evil through the logical inconsistency of the conjunction of three theistic claims with the existence of evil. Schellenberg, by appealing to three commitments of theism: Unsurpassable Greatness (UG), Ontological Independence (OI), and Prior Purity (PP), adopts two approaches the Modeling and the Motivation to demonstrate the inconsistency of the conjunction of these theistic claims with the existence of evil. To pursue this aim, Schellenberg develops his argument by adding supplementary propositions to the four claims. Therefore, what is shown from the conjunction of the three theistic claims and additional propositions is that there is no evil in the world, whereas this is logically inconsistent with the existence of evil in the world.This paper through an analytical-critical approach aims to show Schellenberg’s argument is not sound. To show its falsity, this paper has focused on premise (8) as the central premise of Schellenberg’s argument. By showing its falsity, it would also be vulnerable to the free will defense. In addition to Gellman’s critique over premise (8), this paper also poses a dilemma over (8) to show Schellenberg’s argument is not sound and it cannot avoid Plantinga’s rebuttal.

Atheists have long advanced arguments against the existence of God, challenging the claims of theists. Among these, John L. Schellenberg has proposed an argument known as “divine hiddenness,” which has garnered significant attention from philosophers of religion. Therefore, the subject of this paper is to critique and examine this argument based on the ontological foundations of Avicenna, one of the greatest theist philosophers and prominent figures in Islamic philosophy. The methodology of this article is descriptive-analytical, based on an ontological examination of the rational possibility of connection and the occurrence of connection with the transcendent through religious and mystical experiences. Through a careful examination, it will be demonstrated that Avicenna’s ontological foundations not only support the possibility of relational experiences with the divine but also, when considered within the framework of logical argumentation and the epistemological certainty of mutawātirāt (mass-transmitted hadith), establish the reliability and certainty of such transcendent relations. Consequently, the argument from divine hiddenness—and by extension, atheism—is effectively refuted.