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PALGRAVE FRONTIERS IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Examining
Schellenberg’s
Hiddenness
Argument

Veronika Weidner
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion

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 Veronika Weidner

Examining
Schellenberg’s
Hiddenness Argument
Veronika Weidner
Catholic Theological Faculty
Ludwig Maximilian University
of Munich
Munich, Germany

Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion

ISBN 978-3-319-97516-0 ISBN 978-3-319-97517-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97517-7

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 In loving memory
of my grandparents
 Acknowledgements

First of all, I wish to express my grand gratitude and heart-felt thanks

for the extraordinary support of Prof. Armin Kreiner in the process
of writing this book. Staying calmly in the background, I knew that I
could always count on him being available immediately whenever I
sought advice. I thank the Catholic Theological Faculty at the Ludwig
Maximilian University of Munich, not least for deciding to honour
me with the Cardinal Wetter Award 2017 of the Catholic Academy in
Bavaria. From February until July 2016, I was offered the chance to
take special leave and enroll as a Recognised Student at the University
of Oxford. I sincerely appreciate the generous grants which I received
from the Catholic Theological Faculty, the LMUMentoring excellence
program for female junior scientists, and the international scholar-
ship program PROSALMU at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.
In Oxford, John L. Schellenberg developed his hiddenness argu-
ment while pursuing a D.Phil. under the supervision of Prof. Richard
Swinburne in the late 1980s, and I wrote large parts of my book there.
I owe thanks to Prof. Graham Ward for his welcoming hospitality at
the Faculty of Theology and Religion and to Prof. Brian Leftow as well
as to Prof. Richard Swinburne for conversation about the hiddenness
argument. Furthermore, I very much appreciate Prof. Daniel Howard-
Snyder’s making the latest version of his paper’s then-draft entitled
“The Skeptical Christian” available to me. I am particularly indebted
to Prof. Christoph Jäger, Prof. Thomas Schärtl-Trendel, Prof. John L.
Schellenberg, Prof. Charles Taliaferro, Prof. Holm Tetens, Prof. Martin

vii
viii    Acknowledgements

Thurner, and Dr. Leigh Vicens for their very helpful comments on earlier
drafts of my manuscript. My special thanks goes to Dr. Luke Teeninga
who made significant linguistic corrections on the manuscript’s penul-
timate version and also provided most valuable remarks on its content.
Last but not least, I feel deep gratitude for the more than precious
encouragement of my family and friends. From the bottom of my heart,
I would like to thank Alma, Anna, Bianca, Christin, Constanze, Judith,
Katharina, Lisa, Mari, Miriam, Silvia, and Veronica, my three brothers
Ferdinand, Philipp, and Vinzenz, and, above all, my parents Katharina
and Michael.
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

Part I Schellenberg’s Hiddenness Argument

2 Setting the Stage 13

2.1 Hiddenness in a Literal Sense 16
2.1.1 Missing His Presence—Hiddenness I 17
2.1.2 His Incomprehensible Essence—Hiddenness II 18
2.1.3 His Revelatory Works—Not That Hidden I 26
2.1.4 His Existence in Evidence—Not That Hidden II 43
2.2 Hiddenness Taken Non-Literally 51
2.2.1 The Occurrence of Nonresistant Nonbelief 51
2.2.2 Two Final Notes 53

3 Its Most Recent Statement 57

3.1 Preliminaria 58
3.1.1 Anti-Theistic 59
3.1.2 Deductive 64
3.1.3 Evidentialistic 65
3.1.4 Propositional and Experiential Hiddenness 73
3.1.5 Experiential and Propositional Evidence 77
3.1.6 The Hiddenness Argument and the Argument
from Evil 86
ix
x    Contents

3.2 The Argument Itself 91

3.2.1 Divine Love—Premises (1) and (2) 92
3.2.2 Conclusio (3) 110
3.2.3 No Nonresistant Nonbelief to Be Expected—
Premise (4) 111
3.2.4 Conclusio (5) 146
3.2.5 There Is at Least One Nonresistant Nonbeliever—
Premise (6) 146
3.2.6 Conclusio (7) 151

Part II Discussion of the Hiddenness Argument

4 Where to Go from Here? 155

4.1 Making Travel Arrangements 155
4.2 A Very Short Overview of Various Routes to Take 157
4.2.1 Avoiding Misunderstandings 158
4.2.2 Making Comparisons to the Argument from Evil 161
4.2.3 Challenging Schellenberg’s Premises 162
4.2.4 Introducing Further Propositions 167
4.2.5 Thinking a Step Ahead 175
4.3 My Way 177
4.3.1 Reading the Road Map 179
4.3.2 Tidying up and Packing a Bag 182
4.3.3 Ready for Take-Off 215

5 Conclusion 245

Bibliography 249

Index 265
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

That “atheism should be rated among the most serious characteristics

of this age, and thus be examined more carefully … [, and that] in the
awareness of the gravity of the questions raised by atheism, … these
questions should be considered seriously and more profoundly,”1 is
a remarkable point of view expressed in Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral
Constitution on the Church in the World, which was promulgated on
the final day of the Second Vatican Council on December 7, 1965. As
I see it, the argument against the existence of God which the Canadian
philosopher John L. Schellenberg presented about 28 years later merits
such a diligent examination.2
In a nutshell, his argument has the form of modus tollens3 and claims
that if the God of theism exists, then the following state of affairs does

1 Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et

morum, corr., ext., trans. and ed. Helmut Hoping and Peter Hünermann, 44th ed. (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 2014), 4319, 4321. (Below, citations of this compendium will have
the following form: ‘DH 0123.’ The two letters indicate the compedium’s two main editors,
Denzinger and Hünermann, whereas the numbers are not related to certain pages in the com-
pendium but allude to the compendium’s own counting of all the documents it contains.)
2 See J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Ithaca: Cornell

University Press, 1993).

ing holds: (1) p → q, (2) ¬q, and (3) ∴ ¬p. Hence, MT is also labelled as ‘denying the
3 According to this rule of inference, which I hereafter refer to as ‘MT,’ the follow-

consequent.’

© The Author(s) 2018 1

V. Weidner, Examining Schellenberg's Hiddenness Argument,
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97517-7_1
2 V. WEIDNER

not obtain in the actual world: that someone who, at some time t, is
not resistant toward a relationship with God lacks belief that God exists.
However, according to Schellenberg the consequent of this conditional
must be denied, since there is at least one individual who, at some time t,
is not resistant toward a relationship with God and yet does not believe
that God exists. Thus, it follows that we must also deny the antecedent
of the conditional and conclude that there is no God. As Schellenberg
rightly asserts, “it is a mistake to say that the hiddenness argument is a
very complicated argument. It is rather quite a simple argument which
requires complicated discussion.”4
Presumably, the hiddenness argument, as Schellenberg defends it,
has evolved and gained attention only recently, because we are living in
a time in which God’s existence is no longer taken for granted and in
which the explanatory power of the God-hypothesis seems to be dimin-
ishing.5 As a recent study issued by the General Social Survey of the
social science research organization NORC at the University of Chicago
suggests, worldwide “there is a modest, general shift away from belief in
God.”6 John Calvin’s view on the matter that “[c]ertainly, if there is any
quarter where it may be supposed that God is unknown, the most likely
for such an instance to exist is among the dullest tribes farthest removed
from civilization”7 seems, at least nowadays, to be quite outdated. Those
who lack belief that God exists might not have sufficient evidence for the
existence of God at hand. At least Bertrand Russell reportedly replied,

4 J. L. Schellenberg, The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy’s New Challenge to Belief in God

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 115; see, similarly, also p. 105. For ease of reading,
I omit the temporal tag ‘at some time t,’ but it should be understood as implicit. That is,
I will talk of a person who is, for example, not resistant toward relationship with God but
who lacks belief that God exists. But the present tense used here should not necessarily be
understood as relative to now, but relative to some t which may be now or a time in the past.
5 Accordingto Thomas Aquinas, the claim that all observable effects in the world are
explainable by natural or human-volitional causes without having to presuppose that there
is a God constitutes, in addition to the problem of evil, a likewise severe objection against
theism. According to that objection, the following holds: “Nulla igitur necessitas est
ponere Deum esse” (Thomas de Aquino, Summa Theologiae, ed. Petri Caramello, vol. 1
(Turin: Marietti, 1952), p. 1, q. 2, art. 3).
6 Tom W. Smith, “Beliefs About God Across Time and Countries,” in ISSP Data Report:

Religious Attitudes and Religious Change, eds. Insa Bechert and Markus Quandt (Cologne:
GESIS—Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, 2013), 25. I take it that Smith’s notion
of belief in God here designates belief that God exists.
7 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, newly trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 1

(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1863), 43.

 1 INTRODUCTION 3

upon being asked what he would say if he were to find himself after his
death to be standing, to his utter surprise, before the throne of God:
“‘Sir, why did you not give me better evidence?’.”8 Yet, this lack of suf-
ficient evidence that there is a God is, as Schellenberg sees it, neither a
state of affairs that theists should expect to obtain in the actual world
nor one which a perfectly loving God would allow to obtain. It is a com-
mon saying that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Yet,
Schellenberg does not agree with the view this saying expresses. Rather,
he claims that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. That is, in
Schellenberg’s view, the absence of a certain kind of evidence for the
existence of God is itself evidence that God does not exist.
However, by Schellenberg’s own admission, his reasoning is not
entirely without precedent nor is it entirely original.9

The idea that weak evidence for the existence of God or the presence of
nonbelief might count against the truth of theism does appear here and
there in the history of philosophy—though quite rarely. But it took until
1993 for it to be fully developed into an explicit argument against the
existence of God. And this argument is, I believe, original. (I’m not alone
in saying so: my critics in philosophy have done the same.)10

For example, Schellenberg mentions that he has found hints of sim-

ilar basic lines of thought in the writings of, inter alia, Joseph Butler,
Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ronald W. Hepburn.11
The short outline of the hiddenness argument I gave above may
have reminded an attentive reader of another prominent anti-theistic
8 Leo Rosten, “Bertrand Russell and God: A Memoir,” Saturday Review/World,

February 23, 1974, 26.

9 See, e.g., Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason, 1, fn. 1; J. L.

Schellenberg, “Divine Hiddenness,” in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, eds. Charles

Taliaferro, Paul Draper, and Philip L. Quinn, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010),
509; Schellenberg, The Hiddenness Argument, 24–28; or also J. L. Schellenberg, “Preface
to the Paperback Edition,” in J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason
with a new preface (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), vii.
10 Schellenberg, The Hiddenness Argument, 23.

11 Joseph Butler, for example, states this: “It has been thought by some persons that

if the evidence of revelation appears doubtful, this itself turns into a positive argument
against it because it cannot be supposed that, if it were true, it would be left to subsist
upon doubtful evidence.” Yet, Butler immediately adds that, in what follows, he eluci-
dates “the weakness of these opinions” (Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion: Natural
and Revealed, intro. Ronald Bayne, repr. 1927 (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1906),
181. See ibid. also pp. 181–198). Moreover, Schellenberg mentions this passage from
4 V. WEIDNER

argument that has constantly pressed on theists, namely the argument

from evil. The ancient argument from evil and Schellenberg’s more
novel hiddenness argument at least have in common that they consist of
premises which entail the conclusion that God does not exist.12 In other
words, both sorts of argument question the truth of the central theis-
tic claim that God exists and thus the truth of theism. As a result, these
arguments also question the reasonableness of those still holding an
affirmative doxastic attitude toward the claim that God exists or regard-
ing the truth of theism. Hence, providing suitable theistic responses is
the task of what in classical apologetics has been called a demonstratio

Nietzsche’s Daybreak, i.e., more precisely, aphorism nr. 91 entitled ‘God’s honesty.’ “A
god who is all-knowing and all-powerful and who does not even make sure that his crea-
tures understand his intention—could that be a god of goodness? Who allows countless
doubts and dubieties to persist, for thousands of years, as though the salvation of mankind
were unaffected by them, and who on the other hand holds out the prospect of frightful
consequences if any mistake is made as to the nature of the truth?” (Friedrich Nietzsche,
Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, eds. Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter,
trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 52). Finally,
Schellenberg names Ronald W. Hepburn whom he interprets as referring to an inconclu-
sive evidential situation here: “One might be tempted to see in that ambivalence a vindi-
cation of atheism. For how could such an ambiguous universe be the work of perfect love
and perfect power? Could this be a way to love and express love, to leave the loved one
in bewildering uncertainty over the very existence of the allegedly loving God? … That
is: if the situation is ambivalent, it is not ambivalent; since its ambivalence is a conclusive
argument against the existence of the Christian God” (Ronald W. Hepburn, “From World
to God,” Mind 72, no. 285 (1963): 50). Moreover, to see a link between Schellenberg’s
reasoning and the one of Ludwig Feuerbach and to see that the former may be a remake
of the latter, see Auernhammer, Franziska, and Thomas Schärtl, “Gottesbegriff und
Religionskritik: Alte Muster in neuen Konzepten,” Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und
Religionswissenschaft 98, no. 3–4 (2014): 207–214. I might add that implicit formulations
of anti-theistic hiddenness reasoning are critically discussed in the writings of Michael J.
Murray and Robert McKim, which were published shortly before Schellenberg’s first pres-
entation of the hiddenness argument appeared in public in his book Divine Hiddenness and
Human Reason of 1993. See Michael J. Murray, “Coercion and the Hiddenness of God,”
American Philosophical Quarterly 30, no. 1 (1993): 27–38 (APQ received this paper, as
stated at its end, on March 10, 1992) as well as Robert McKim, “The Hiddenness of
God,” Religious Studies 26, no. 1 (1990): 141–161.
12 In Subsection 3.1.6 of Chapter 3, “The Hiddenness Argument and the Argument from

Evil,” I introduce some further similarities and dissimilarities between these two arguments.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

religiosa.13 Furthermore, the hiddenness argument and the argument

from evil have the same logical form. Both arguments are based on the
aforementioned rule of inference labelled MT and claim that there is
a certain state of affairs obtaining in the actual world each of which is
not to be expected to obtain if God exists. More precisely, first, these
arguments postulate that the existence of God exhibiting certain divine
attributes, i.e., (i) perfect love or (ii) perfect omnipotence, goodness, and
omniscience, makes it expectable that a certain state of affairs obtains in
the actual world, i.e., ad (i), that there is no involuntary lack of belief
that God exists or, ad (ii), that there is no moral evil or natural evil.14
Then, they claim that this state of affairs does not obtain, but that, on
the contrary, the negation of this state of affairs is actually the case, i.e.,
ad (i), there is some involuntary lack of belief that God exists or, ad (ii),
there is some moral evil or natural evil. Hence, they conclude that God
exhibiting the aforementioned divine attributes does not exist. In other
words, according to Schellenberg we

must be open to the possibility that the world would be completely differ-
ent than it is if there were a God. For the properties we ascribe to God
have implications, and these place constraints on what the world could be
like if there were a being with those properties.15

As a matter of fact, alongside the argument from evil the hiddenness

argument “has become one of the most prominent arguments for athe-
ism in contemporary philosophy of religion.”16 Thus, I fear that Paul
K. Moser’s judgement that “divine hiddenness offers no real threat to

13 For an overall account of what a demonstratio religiosa deals with today, see

Armin Kreiner, “Demonstratio religiosa,” in Den Glauben denken: Neue Wege der
Fundamentaltheologie, eds. Heinrich Döring, Armin Kreiner, and Perry Schmidt-Leukel
(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1993), 9–48.
14 The occurrence of moral evil generally denotes a state of affairs obtaining due to mis-

deeds caused by human persons (malum morale). The occurrence of natural evil, on the
other hand, designates a state of affairs consisting of, e.g., natural disasters or fatal illnesses
(malum physicum).
15 J. L. Schellenberg, The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism (Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 2007), 198.

16 Travis Dumsday, “Divine Hiddenness as Deserved,” Faith and Philosophy 31, no. 3

(2014): 286.
6 V. WEIDNER

reasonable belief that the Jewish-Christian God actually exists and loves
us all”17 may probably be made too hasty. In what follows, I do not
enter the “much-traveled (one might say trampled) neighboring territory
of the problem of evil” but turn instead to “the much-neglected and
­little-explored territory … labeled the problem of Divine hiddenness.”18
In my book, the overall leading research question I started with and
which I have been constantly pondering about while undertaking the
investigation is this. Why, if there is a God, is God’s existence not evident
to everyone? Or rather, why is God’s existence epistemically hidden19 for
some? This constitutes the riddle or problem of divine hiddenness in my
eyes. Yet, I agree with Peter van Inwagen that as

is the case with the problem of evil, the problem of the hiddenness of God
is more often referred to than precisely stated. Theologians often refer to
this problem as if it were perfectly clear what it was, but their writings on
the subject do not always make it wholly clear what the problem is.20

I hope that this book helps making it more clear what the problem of divine
hiddenness is. In my attempt of doing so, I enter the field of religious epis-
temology. However, I am well aware that I am not an epistemologist by
training. And so I kindly ask those who are epistemologists by training to
give mercy to my mistakes and, if they wish, please correct them. I approach
the hiddenness argument in a systematic fashion, i.e., I am more concerned
with the content of some person’s argument and the claims made in sup-
port of it than I am with the details of the historic background of the argu-
ment and its claims. On this occasion, I wish to ask pardon from historians
of theology and philosophy for my abbreviated way of often only high-
lighting the tip of the iceberg. Furthermore, I pursue this project from a
theistic point of view. Yet, I join the common academic debate about

17 Paul K. Moser, “Reply to Schellenberg,” in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of

Religion, eds. Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon (Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2004), 58.
18 Schellenberg, The Wisdom to Doubt, 243. There, these two direct quotes appear in

reversed order.
19 Similarly, in correspondence Holm Tetens proposed to speak of God’s ‘cognitive

hiddenness.’
20 Peter van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University

of St. Andrews in 2003 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 136.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

the question of whether or not there is a God without presupposing

God’s existence as an unquestionable factum brutum in my reasoning. My
approach differs from, for example, Alvin Plantinga’s stance in this respect.
According to Plantinga, the “Christian philosopher quite properly starts
from the existence of God, and presupposes it in philosophical work,” so
that, as a result, “Christian philosophers need not and ought not to see
themselves as involved, for example, in a common effort to determine
whether there is such a person as God.”21 Rather, I agree with Richard
Swinburne that “for those of us for whom it is neither overwhelmingly
obvious that there is a God or overwhelmingly obvious that there is no
God, it is normally obligatory to investigate the issue.”22 Furthermore, my
investigation is classifiable as bearing a certain handwriting23 which may be
labelled as what is today called analytic as opposed to continental.24
As Michael C. Rea rightly points out, analytics might generally be charac-
terised as placing “a high premium on spelling out hidden assumptions, on
scrupulously trying to lay bare whatever evidence one has (or lacks) for the
claims that one is making.”25 Winfried Löffler agrees with Rea that analytic
philosophy of religion is not tantamount to a bunch of certain content-based
positions but rather to a specific style of philosophy. Moreover, theologians

21 Both quotes are found in Alvin Plantinga, “Advice to Christian Philosophers,” Faith

and Philosophy 1, no. 3 (1984): 261, 270.

22 Richard Swinburne, Faith and Reason, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press,

2005), 141.
23 For example, the reader may notice the author write from the first-person-perspective

and in direct speech which may be regarded as inapt in other academic settings.
24 No clear-cut line can be drawn between current analytic and continental philosophy

of religion or theology. Yet, there are mutual, more or less justified, prejudices between
those affiliated with one or the other academic group in the community. The former is eyed
with suspicion due to an alleged forgetfulness of history, entertaining a dubious anthro-
pomorphic concept of God, or favouring some cold-blooded reasoning entailing all too
often complicated maths which is accessible only for a fine circle of the chosen few. The
latter group of academics, on the other hand, is confronted with prejudices such as overes-
timating the role of historic knowledge in philosophical or theological discussions, writing
merely associative yet occasionally beautiful prose, or blurring the way of argumentation
under a mountain of stilted verbiage. Maybe, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Presumably, if opportunities for mutual exchange were more frequently utilised, then each
side could learn a lot from the other and be challenged to avoid one-sidedness.
25 Michael C. Rea, “Introduction,” in Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy

of Theology, eds. Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009), 5, fn. 6.
8 V. WEIDNER

and philosophers should neither be afraid of this style of reasoning nor

remain aloof from it and be reassured that it does not per se entail any guar-
antee of quality.26 Furthermore, I aim at accommodating this. “Where ques-
tions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim:
if you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself.”27 I think that
the following jest says a lot about how analytic philosophy works at best. “A
detective novel written by a good philosopher would begin: ‘In this novel I
shall show that the butler did it.’”28
In this spirit, I now give a sketch of the outline of my book and its
central claim. In Part 1 of this survey, Chapter 2 deals with the question
of what the notion of the hiddenness of God traditionally refers to and
means. I also specify two respects in which God has been claimed to be
not so hidden in tradition. As it turns out, Schellenberg’s use of the term
divine hiddenness differs significantly from the traditional one, thus it is
almost inevitable that Schellenberg’s argument would be frequently mis-
understood. In fact, the key purpose of this chapter is to clarify what is
not, at least prima facie, at issue in the hiddenness argument, against the
background of a general introduction into classical theological assertions
about the hiddenness and revelation of God.
Chapter 3 constitutes a fine-pored exposition of the hiddenness argu-
ment in its most recent version. In it, I elucidate in great detail why, on
Schellenberg’s account, it follows from the fact that God’s existence is not
evident to everybody that God does not exist. That chapter likewise evinces
an overall descriptive character and forms the main part of my book. By
painstakingly laying bare the specifics of the hiddenness argument, I endeav-
our primarily to prepare the ground for further reflection on the argument,
novel responses to it, and thus an even more in-depth debate about it.
Finally, Part 2 of this survey is dedicated to the discussion of
Schellenberg’s argument. The beginning of Chapter 4 briefly discusses

26 See Winfried Löffler, “Wer hat Angst vor analytischer Philosophie? Zu einem immer

noch getrübten Verhältnis,” Stimmen der Zeit 6 (2007), 375. As Armin Kreiner illumi-
nates, the significance of analytic philosophy for theologians, including not least its change-
ful history, consists in having drawn attention to two of the most central questions, i.e., the
one about the meaning and the one about the rationality of religious speech (see Armin
Kreiner, “Die theologische Relevanz Analytischer Philosophie,” Salzburger Theologische
Zeitschrift 9 (2005): 130).
27 John R. Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1983), x.

28 J. L. Schellenberg, Evolutionary Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

theistic replies to the hiddenness argument which, inter alia, question

some of its premises or offer a possible answer to the question of why
God’s existence might not be evident to everybody. Additionally, I give
a short outline of other accounts of anti-theistic hiddenness reasoning
which build upon Schellenberg’s reasoning. And so I draw a rough road
map sketching which roads have been taken in response to the hidden-
ness argument so far and which additional ways have been trod in the
wake of it in order to provide an orientation for those who are still unfa-
miliar with the debate.
Last but not least, in the main section of Chapter 4 I present my own
reply to the hiddenness argument. Contrary to my original plan, I do not
directly offer a particular defense29 but leave this task for a future occa-
sion. Instead, in this book I restrict myself to objecting to one particu-
lar subpremise of the hiddenness argument in some detail. To let the cat
out of the bag, I challenge Schellenberg’s view that, necessarily, someone
has to believe that God exists in order to be able to personally relate to
God. Instead, I argue that it is plausible that assuming that God exists
is sufficient to allow someone to be in a personal relationship with God.
In short, I propose that belief that God exists as well as assumption that
God exists are two possible instances of theistic faith that God exists.
Hence, I intend to show that, even though the hiddenness argument is
valid, it is not sound. That is, in my view the fact that there is some-
one who lacks belief that there is a God, even though she is not resistant
toward a personal relationship with God, does not, contra Schellenberg,
give us reason to reject the existence of a perfectly loving God.
The dispute over Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument arose in
English-speaking analytic philosophy of religion but is still hardly noticed
in English or non-English continental philosophy or theology30 and even
among German-speaking analytics. My book is written in English which
enjoys the status of being the international language of scholarship.

29 For what I here refer to and mean by the term ‘defense,’ see Subsection 4.2.4 of

Chapter 4, “Introducing Further Propositions”.

30 An exception might be a publication by Tomáš Halík which appears to be like a dis-

tant echo to the hiddenness debate by way of implicitly referring to it. In light of the reli-
gious ambivalence of the world in evidential terms, i.e., what he calls the hiddenness or
absence of God, Halík recommends that atheists and theists have more patience with God
(see Tomáš Halík, Geduld mit Gott: Die Geschichte von Zachäus heute, 4th rev. and impr. ed.
(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2011), esp. 9, 11, 15).
10 V. WEIDNER

For I want to make a modest contribution to the discussion in which

philosophers as well as theologians are already engaged. Additionally, I
aim at attracting the attention of as extensive a range of scholars as pos-
sible who have not yet joined the debate. In fact, I would like to support
Schellenberg’s own objective that his hiddenness argument “should be
construed by theists not as a cry of triumph but rather as a challenge, an
invitation.”31
Needless to say, the reader may search but will not find an all-
encompassing solution to the riddle of divine hiddenness in this book.
Rather, I wish to help making sure that the anti-theistic force of
Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument as well as the argument’s shortcom-
ings are taken as seriously as they should be. I also wish to provide an
insight into the first preliminary results of my reflection on it. As a mat-
ter of fact, my thinking about it has just begun.32

31 Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason, 13.

32 To conclude the introduction, let me make six technical comments regarding this sur-
vey. First, I use the conjunction ‘or’ in an inclusive sense, i.e., ‘This wine goes well with
game or fish’ may denote at least one of the following: ‘This wine goes well with game,’
‘This wine goes well with fish,’ ‘This wine goes well with game and fish.’ On the other
hand, when formulating ‘either … or’ I use ‘or’ in an exclusive sense, i.e., ‘This wine
goes well with either game or fish’ signifies only one but not both of the following: ‘This
wine goes well with game,’ ‘This wine goes well with fish.’ Second, in brackets like these
‘[ ],’ which may occasionally be found in a direct quote, I omitted a letter in the original
text and substituted it with the one in the brackets. Third, if a word is put in italics in
a direct quote, then this word appears in italics in the original. Fourth, unless otherwise
noted, all translations herein are my own. Fifth, biblical quotations are taken from the New
Revised Standard Version: The Go-Anywhere Thinline Bible Catholic Edition (New York:
HarperOne, 2011), except where otherwise specified. Sixth, citations and references are
based on the notes and bibliography system as outlined in the 16th edition of the Chicago
Manual of Style (see The Chicago Manual of Style Online, 16th ed., http://www.chicago-
manualofstyle.org/home.html).
 PART I

Schellenberg’s Hiddenness Argument

 CHAPTER 2

Setting the Stage

The fact that there is a person who is not resistant towards a ­relationship
with God and yet does not believe that God exists indicates that there
is only weak theistic evidence in the actual world available to that per-
son which again turns out to be strong evidence for atheism. Why?
A perfectly loving God would not allow for such a state of affairs
to obtain. In short, that is Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument.1

1 For a start, see the publications in which Schellenberg has been introducing, defend-
ing, or developing his argument. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason;
id., “What the Hiddenness of God Reveals: A Collaborative Discussion,” in Divine
Hiddenness: New Essays, eds. Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul K. Moser (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 33–61; id., “Divine Hiddenness Justifies Atheism,”
in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, eds. Michael L. Peterson and Raymond
J. VanArragon (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 30–41, and id., “Reply to Moser,” in
Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, eds. Michael L. Peterson and Raymond
J. VanArragon (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 54–56; id., The Wisdom to Doubt, 195–
242; id., “The hiddenness argument revisited (I),” Religious Studies 41, no. 2 (2005):
201–215, as well as “The hiddenness argument revisited (II),” Religious Studies 41, no.
3 (2005): 287–303; id., “Divine Hiddenness,” 510; id., “Divine hiddenness and human
philosophy,” in Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief: New Perspectives, eds. Adam Green
and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 13–32; id., “Divine
hiddenness: part 1 (recent work on the hiddenness argument),” Philosophy Compass 12, no.
4 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12355, as well as “Divine hiddenness: Part 2
(recent enlargements of the discussion),” Philosophy Compass 12, no. 4 (2017), https://
doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12413. See also his recent short presentation of this argument for
a more general audience in The Hiddenness Argument, esp. p. 103.

© The Author(s) 2018 13

V. Weidner, Examining Schellenberg’s Hiddenness Argument,
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97517-7_2
14 V. WEIDNER

Turning the tables he claims that talk of the hiddenness of God is fallacious
and evinces on closer inspection the nonexistence of God.
To the ears of many theists this reasoning might sound a bit strange.
These theists may be baffled by the lively debate in analytic philoso-
phy of religion which Schellenberg kicked off by initially presenting his
hiddenness argument about two decades ago. And they may be all the
more surprised to learn that it has found its way into encyclopedias2 and
textbooks3 meanwhile, thereby informing the education of a significant

2 See, for example, Daniel Howard-Snyder, “Hiddenness of God,” in Encyclopedia of

Philosophy, ed. Donald M. Borchert, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Thomson Gale and Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 352–357. For a special reference to it under the entry “Philosophy
of Religion,” see, e.g.,—in Section 5. “Problems of Evil and Suffering,” Subsection d. “The
Hiddenness of God”—Chad Meister, “Philosophy of Religion,” in The Internet Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, eds. James Fieser and Bradley Dowden, http://www.iep.utm.edu/religion.
And for a short mention of it under the same entry but in the context of introducing the
debate about the evidential weight of religious experience, see, e.g.,—in Section 4. “The
Concept of God,” Subsection 4.2. “God’s Existence,” Subsubsection 4.2.6. “Religious
Experience”—Charles Taliaferro, “Philosophy of Religion,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (first published March 12, 2007, substantively revised
September 11, 2013), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-religion. See also,
more recently, Trent Dougherty, and Ross Parker, “Hiddenness of God,” in Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online, ed. Tim Crane (2015), https://doi.org/10.4324/9780
415249126-k3574-1, as well as Daniel Howard-Snyder, and Adam Green, “Hiddenness of
God,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (first published April 23,
2016), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-hiddenness.
3 See, to begin with, Daniel Howard-Snyder, and Paul K. Moser, eds., Divine Hiddenness:

New Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Kevin Timpe, ed., “Evil and
Divine Hiddenness,” in Arguing About Religion (New York: Routledge, 2009), 201–308.
See also Schellenberg, “Divine Hiddenness,” 509–518. J. L. Schellenberg, “Would a
Loving God Hide from Anyone? Assembling and Assessing the Hiddenness Argument for
Atheism,” in Introducing Philosophy for Canadians: A Text With Integrated Readings, eds.
Robert C. Solomon and Douglas McDermid (Don Mills, Canada: Oxford University Press,
2011), 165–168. Again, see Schellenberg, “Divine Hiddenness Justifies Atheism,” 30–41,
and ibid.—in Part I “Attacks on Religious Belief,” Chapter 2 “Does Divine Hiddenness
Justify Atheism?”—also the aforementioned “Reply to Moser,” 54–56, as well as Paul
K. Moser, “Divine Hiddenness Does Not Justify Atheism,” in Contemporary Debates in
Philosophy of Religion, eds. Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon (Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 2004), 42–54, and Moser, “Reply to Schellenberg,” 56–58. Michael J.
Murray, and David E. Taylor, “Hiddenness,” in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy
of Religion, eds. Chad Meister and Paul Copan, 2nd ed. (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge,
2013), 368–377—to be found in Part IV “The theistic concept of God.” Richard E. Creel,
Philosophy of Religion: The Basics (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 145–147—‘the
Problem of Divine Hiddenness’ is Subchapter 11.4 of Chapter 11 “Arguments against
 2 SETTING THE STAGE 15

number of students. For is not the notion of the hiddenness of God at

the core of the Judeo-Christian and Muslim tradition itself?
“Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior”
(Is 45:15).4 Indeed, God is often described in such biblical texts as for
example in Deutero-Isaiah as being a hidden God.5 “Time and again, the
hidden God has been lamented over in prayer … and negotiated within

Belief in the Existence of God.” Louis P. Pojman, and Michael C. Rea, eds., “Evil and
the Hiddenness of God,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 7th ed. (Stamford, CT:
Cengage Learning, 2015), 228–392—to be found in Part III, where the problem of evil is
discussed alongside the problem of hiddenness. For contributions to an Internet debate, see
John Schellenberg, “What Divine Hiddenness Reveals, or How Weak Theistic Evidence is
Strong Atheistic Proof,” in God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence, ed. and
intro. Paul Draper, Section IV (2008), http://infidels.org/library/modern/john_schel-
lenberg/hidden.html, and John Schellenberg, “The Sounds of Silence Stilled: A Reply to
Jordan on Hiddenness,” in God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence, ed. and
intro. Paul Draper, Section IV (2008), http://infidels.org/library/modern/john_schellen-
berg/silence-stilled.html, as well as Jeff Jordan, “The Sounds of Silence: Why the Divine
Hiddenness Argument Fails,” in God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence,
ed. and intro. Paul Draper, Section IV (2008), http://infidels.org/library/modern/jef-
frey_jordan/silence.html, and Jeff Jordan, “On Joining the Ranks of the Faithful,” in God
or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence, ed. and intro. Paul Draper, Section IV
(2008), http://infidels.org/library/modern/jeffrey_jordan/faith.html.
4 The masoretic text printed in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia reads from right to

left: (see Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, eds. Karl

Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph, 5th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1997)). In
the Vulgata, the Latin wording goes like this: “vere tu es Deus absconditus Deus Israhel
salvator” (see Biblia Sacra Vulgata: Editio quinta, eds. Robert Weber and Roger Gryson
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007)). The verb abscondere of which the perfect
passive principle is used in this expression means among other things: to hide something,
to conceal something; to stash something, to cause something to become invisible; to cover
something, to lose sight of someone or something; to keep something secret (see “abs-
condo,” in Der neue Georges: Ausführliches Lateinisch-Deutsches Handwörterbuch, coll. and
prep. Karl-Ernst Georges, ed. Thomas Baier, and mod. Tobias Dänzer, vol. 1 (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2013), 23).
5 For profound research of some biblical scholars on the subject, see, for example, Samuel

Terrien, The Elusive Presence: Toward a New Biblical Theology (San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1978); Samuel E. Balentine, The Hidden God: The Hiding of the Face of God in the
Old Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); and Otto Kaiser, Vom offen-
baren und verborgenen Gott: Studien zur spätbiblischen Weisheit und Hermeneutik (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 2008). For a trial of summarising and systemising the biblical accounts
of divine hiddenness, see Insa Meyer, Aufgehobene Verborgenheit: Gotteslehre als Weg zum
Gottesdienst (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 11–77.
16 V. WEIDNER

thought,”6 Thomas Reinhuber puts it almost laconically. But one needs

to be very careful in the context of the current analytic debate not to
confuse two distinct modes in which the phrase ‘hiddenness of God,’ or
rather ‘divine hiddenness,’7 can be employed: literally or non-literally.8

2.1   Hiddenness in a Literal Sense

The phrase divine hiddenness in its literal sense originates in theistic dis-
course and implies the belief that God exists. That is, theists referring
to the hiddenness of God believe that God exists and is yet hidden in
some way. Thus, hiddenness understood in that sense is a divine attrib-
ute. However, the peculiar familiarity of this term should not lead to the
conclusion that it is always clear what exactly is meant by it.
Maybe it comes as no surprise that there is neither a basic concep-
tual definition of divine hiddenness in its literal sense which is gener-
ally agreed on nor a thorough systematic account of it. In fact, the term
tends to appear in the vicinity of other well-known, yet similar vague
notions as for example the mystery or mysteriousness, transcendence,
elusiveness, remoteness, depth, or also the otherness of the Divine.9
Therefore, I will begin by examining and clarifying what the theological
statements about the hiddenness of God may be referring to.
Sketching with fairly broad strokes, God is traditionally claimed to be
hidden with regard to (1) his presence or (2) his essence, whereas (3)

6 Thomas Reinhuber, “Deus absconditus/Deus revelatus,” in Religion in Geschichte und

Gegenwart: Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, eds. Hans Dieter

Betz, Don S. Browning, Bernd Janowski, and Eberhard Jüngel, 4th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 1999), 683.
7 Both notions are treated synonymously hereafter.

8 For Schellenberg’s own emphasis on this matter, see, e.g., his Divine Hiddenness and

Human Reason, 4–6, “The hiddenness argument revisited (I),” 204, or also “Divine
Hiddenness,” 509.
9 See on this point also Thomas Gerlach, Verborgener Gott – Dreieiniger Gott: Ein

Koordinationsproblem lutherischer Gotteslehre bei Werner Elert (Frankfurt am Main: Peter

Lang, 1998), 25–27. For an example of mentioning a colorful mixture of these phrases in
a short encyclopedic entry on the hiddenness of God, see Eva-Maria Faber, “Verborgenheit
Gottes,” in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Walter Kasper et al., vol. 10, 3rd ed.
(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2001), 607. Similarly, some of these terms are also named
under the headline of God’s invisibility (see Gerhard Ludwig Müller, “Unsichtbarkeit
Gottes,” in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Walter Kasper et al., vol. 10, 3rd ed.
(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2001), 431–432).
 2 SETTING THE STAGE 17

his energies and (4) his existence is taken to be not hidden but rather
evident. It is these four aspects which I deal with now one by one.

2.1.1   Missing His Presence—Hiddenness I

In the first case, the topic is the unexpected lack of experiencing God’s
being there in one’s life for a certain period of time. The occurrence
of this state of affairs may result in an existentially10 threatening worry
because it might imply the withdrawing of God’s life-giving blessings.
Under these circumstances it is not unusual for the believer to complain
to the apparently distant God about permitting or actually causing this
miserable state of affairs to prevail.11 “Hear my prayer, O LORD; let
my cry come to you. Do not hide your face from me in the day of my
distress” (Ps 102:1–2).12 The psalmist paradigmatically weeps over the
painfully felt apparent loss of God’s presence13 by addressing the Divine
whose mere existence per se he would never seriously cast into doubt.
If God’s withdrawn presence is preceded by an intense life of faith but
leads to a severe spiritual crisis with transformational effects, the idiom of
divine hiddenness alludes to a famous topos in mystical tradition, which

10 Palpably, no reference to the program of, e.g., the French existential philosophers such

as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, or Gabriel Marcel will be made here.
11 This is not to say that the believer claims to always be able to identify the reason why

God does not show his presence to her anymore. While, for example, in the Psalms, God’s
hiddenness is mainly lamented about as occurring without any conceivable divine reason,
the texts of the prophets often designate a reason for God’s withdrawal, namely the sinful
or rather culpable behaviour of the believer herself evoking divine hiddenness (see Meyer,
Aufgehobene Verborgenheit, 12, 13–39).
12 In this context, one might also think of Jesus Christ’s desperate cry on the cross: “‘Eli,

Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Mt 27:46).
13 In other words, the notion of the ‘face of God’ being either turned away or turned

toward a human being is usually interpreted by biblical scholars as referring to the presence
of God which is either withdrawn from or granted to the believer (see Meyer, Aufgehobene
Verborgenheit, 17). Whereas, as stated above, the hiding of God’s face, if it occurs, is mainly
conceived of as a rather life-threatening state of affairs, there is at least one biblical pas-
sage where this is not the case. In the book Exodus, Moses asks God to show him his
divine glory, yet God is reported to refuse to turn his face toward Moses not to seriously
challenge, but, on the contrary, to save Moses’ life: “‘I will make all my goodness pass
before you … But,’ he said, ‘you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live’” (Ex
33:19–20). In the gospel of John, a statement is made which may be viewed as a distant
echo to the passage in Exodus: “No one has ever seen God” (Jn 1:18; see also 1 Jn 4:12).
18 V. WEIDNER

in the wake of St. John of the Cross has been referred to as the dark
night of the soul.14 In light of the closeness to God the saint previously
enjoyed in his life, he unexpectedly undergoes a time of bitter loneliness
casting a vast shadow over him while being imprisoned in Toledo. He
processes the devestating situation in which God seems to be completely
absent by writing this long autobiographically influenced sonnet. In the
end, John of the Cross is reportedly blessed by a direct mystical encoun-
ter with God—the unio mystica, i.e., the loving union of man with God.
Looking at the lyrics of John of the Cross on a meta-level, they can
also be read as a spiritual guide for believers aiming at union with God.
Apparently, the longed for unio mystica needs to be preceded by this
tough process of transformation of the believer himself and his relation-
ship with the Divine which John of the Cross denotes as the dark night
of the soul. More precisely, the latter consists of three phases. It begins,
first of all, with what he calls the night of senses in which the affective
inner life of the believer is purified. Secondly, the night of spirit follows in
which the intellectual inner life of the believer is reformed. In these first
two nights, the believer apparently contributes actively to the transform-
ing power while, thirdly, a passive purification of the human soul takes
place which is caused by a divine cleansing fire owing to the grace of God.
And so talk about the hiddenness of God referring to the believer’s lack
of sensing God’s presence for a while depicts a sort of emotional, practical,
or existential problem.15 The problem of divine hiddenness in this sense is
best taken care of in consultation with spiritual directors and pastoral experts.

2.1.2   His Incomprehensible Essence—Hiddenness II

In the second case, however, the issue is that the essence or nature16
of the transcendent God is epistemically unrecognisable for his finite
creatures. Noticeably, this amounts to a more cognitive,17 theoretical,

14 For the following, see San Juan de la Cruz, “Noche oscura,” in Obras Completas, text

rev., introd. and comments José Vicente Rodríguez, instr. introd. and comments Federico
Ruiz Salvador, 5th crit. ed. (Madrid: Editorial de Espiritualidad, 1993), 431–487.
15 See, exemplarily, Howard-Snyder and Green, “Hiddenness of God.”

16 These two terms are used synonymously hereafter.

17 The distinction Howard-Snyder and Moser make between an existential versus a cog-

nitive concern from divine hiddenness, depending on whether the term hiddenness is taken
literally or non-literally, is a helpful one (see Daniel Howard-Snyder, and Paul K. Moser,
 2 SETTING THE STAGE 19

or intellectual challenge for philosophers of religion and systematic

theologians.18

2.1.2.1 A Standard Issue

Confessions to the incomprehensibilitatis Dei can be found from early on
in older magisterial documents such as, for example, in the resolutions
of the Latin version of the First Lateran Synod of 649 as well as in the
resolutions of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.19 The First Vatican
Council proclaimed God as being incomprehensibilis and “super omnia,
quae praeter ipsum sunt et concipi possunt, ineffabiliter excelsus.”20
Augustine of Hippo had already warned: “Si enim comprehendis, non est
Deus.”21 “His essence, indeed, is incomprehensible, utterly transcending
all human thought,”22 Calvin consented. And Karl Rahner noted that the
Divine’s “incomprehensibility is not one attribute of God among others,
but it is the attribute of his attributes.”23 According to Rahner, God’s
hiddenness in the sense of his incomprehensibility is never going to be
unveiled but is rather confirmed on Earth as in the heavenly visio beat-
ifica, which shows precisely that God remains a radical mystery for us.24

“Introduction: The Hiddenness of God,” in Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, eds. Daniel
Howard-Snyder and Paul K. Moser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),
1–3). Regarding the former, they mainly refer to the elusiveness of the presence of God,
whereas the latter, as will be seen later, points to Schellenberg’s argument. Yet, they as well
as Schellenberg (see, e.g., Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason, 5–6) seem
to miss the fact that the literal notion of the hiddenness-term can also point to a certain
kind of cognitive concern. In fact, it has been treated as such in the theological tradition, as
I illustrate in the next paragraphs.
18 Even though these problems (both the somewhat practical one and the more theoreti-

cal one) need to be sharply distinguished, both of them may plausibly occur simultaneously
in someone’s life, as Howard-Snyder and Moser rightly notice (see Howard-Snyder, and
Moser, “Introduction,” 5).
19 See DH 501, 800, 804.

20 DH 3001.

21 Augustinus, “Sermo CXVII,” in Opera Omnia: Post Lovaniensium Theologorum

Recensionem, ed. J.-P. Migne, vol. 5.1 (Paris, 1865), 663.

22 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 51.

23 Karl Rahner, “Die menschliche Sinnfrage vor dem absoluten Geheimnis Gottes,” in

Schriften zur Theologie, ed. Paul Imhof, vol. 13 (Zürich: Benziger Verlag Einsiedeln, 1978), 116.
24 See
Karl Rahner, “Über die Verborgenheit Gottes,” in Schriften zur Theologie, ed. Karl
H. Neufeld, vol. 12 (Zürich: Benziger Verlag Einsiedeln, 1975), 285–305, esp. 299, 305.
For Rahner’s most prominent theology of the mysteriousness of God, see, e.g., Karl Rahner,
20 V. WEIDNER

Roughly speaking, the hiddenness of God taken in the sense of his

epistemic incomprehensibility is commonly found in writings on the doc-
trine of God. This is particularly true in the case of German theological
texts written by Catholic theologians. In fact, some Catholics seem to
prefer the notion of God’s “incomprehensibility”25 in this context over
the more rarely used notion of God’s ‘hiddenness.’ Yet, they use both
terms mainly to refer to the notion that the nature of God is not utterly
knowable. In writings by Protestant theologians, on the other hand, the
expression of ‘the hiddenness of God’ occurs far more frequently featur-
ing a lot more diverse connotations,26 but also means, inter alia, that
God is not knowable.

“Über den Begriff des Geheimnisses in der katholischen Theologie,” in Schriften zur Theologie,
vol. 4, 2nd ed. (Zürich: Benziger Verlag Einsiedeln, 1961), 51–99, esp. 80–81. By now, the
phrase that ‘God is a mystery’ seems to be part of the active vocabulary of many theologians,
even though it is not always as obvious as it could be what exactly they mean when using it
(see, e.g., Wilhelm Breuning, “Gotteslehre,” in Glaubenszugänge: Lehrbuch der Katholischen
Dogmatik, ed. Wolfgang Beinert, vol. 1 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1995), 206).
25 See Rahner, “Über die Verborgenheit Gottes,” 286. Exemplarily, let me point to these few

dogmatic references on God’s incomprehensibility. Breuning, “Gotteslehre,” 242–243, 254–

255. Johannes Brinktrine, Die Lehre von Gott: Von der Erkennbarkeit, vom Wesen und von den
Vollkommenheiten Gottes, vol. 1 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1953), 39–42, 69. Gerhard
Ludwig Müller, Katholische Dogmatik: Für Studium und Praxis der Theologie (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 1995), 23, 27, 113. Joseph Pohle, Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, ed. Josef
Gummersbach, vol. 1, 10th ed. (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1952), 148–155, 174–176.
26 I agree with Rahner’s assessment on this point, see Rahner, “Über die Verborgenheit

Gottes,” 285–286. Regarding the notion of the knowability of God, see, e.g., Wilhelm
Trillhaas, Dogmatik, 4th ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 97–119, who in the first
section of the first main part of his dogmatics, entitled “The Mystery of God,” names his
seventh chapter “Hiddenness of God and Cognisance of God.” Karl Barth also deals with
it in this context in his Church Dogmatics. More precisely, chapter one of §27 “The Limits
of the Cognisance of God” is “The Hiddenness of God” in which he prominently argues
for the claim that God is only known by God alone (see Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik:
Die Lehre von Gott, vol. 2 (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1980), 200–229). On
the other hand, there are multifaceted treatments on divine hiddenness such as by Wilfried
Härle, Dogmatik, 4th ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 92–96, 284–286, who writes
on “The Hiddenness of God in Jesus Christ” and “The Hiddenness of the Reality of God”.
Regarding the hidden God in respect to “The Reality of the Wrath of God,” see Paul
Althaus, Grundriss der Dogmatik (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt Berlin, 1951), 31–33.
Werner Elert also alludes to it in very different settings; see Werner Elert, Der christliche
Glaube: Grundlinien der lutherischen Dogmatik, ed. Ernst Kinder, 3rd ed. (Hamburg:
Furche-Verlag, 1956), 77, 114, 147–150, 155, 231, 280, 284, 343. For an attempt at a
clarification of and a critical assessment on Elert’s thoughts, see Gerlach, Verborgener
Gott – Dreieiniger Gott. However, there are also publications by Catholics which deal
 2 SETTING THE STAGE 21

2.1.2.2 Apophaticism
(a) A Plea for Silence
Apophatic theologians in particular emphasise the unrecognisability of
God’s nature as well as God’s ineffability resulting from it.27 The roots
of apophaticism can be traced back at least to Plato’s famous dictum in
the Timaios that it is not possible to discover the creator and father of the
whole universe, and even upon having found him to declare him to every-
body, because God is invisible.28 In fact, regarding the hidden Divinity one

shall find that many theologians have celebrated it, not only as invisible
and unencompassed, but also as at once unsearchable and untrackable; for,
there is no path for those who penetrate into its infinite hiddenness.29

In what follows, I briefly mention the most prominent figures

endorsing apophaticism. To begin with, Plotinus gave one of the first
systematic accounts of why the radically transcendent Hen exceeds
any reification and is neither qualitatively nor quantitatively classifi-
able—the reason being its simplicity. Since any positive account of the
One would automatically assert a difference or disunity regarding it,
it is truly unspeakable (“ἄρρητον τῇ ἀληθείᾳ”30). In his comments on

with a diversity of topics under the title of the hiddenness of God. See, e.g., Fernand Van
Steenberghen, Ein verborgener Gott: Wie wissen wir, daß Gott existiert?, author. transl.
from French and epilogue Georg Remmel (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1966);
Walter Kern, and Walter Kasper, “Atheismus und Gottes Verborgenheit,” in Christlicher
Glaube in moderner Gesellschaft, ed. Franz Böckle, vol. 22 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder,
1982), 5–57; and Hans Kessler, Den verborgenen Gott suchen: Gottesglaube in einer von
Naturwissenschaften und Religionskonflikten geprägten Welt (Paderborn: Ferdinand
Schöningh, 2006).
27 In what follows, I only refer to proponents of apophaticism in Christianity, while I

ignore that apophaticism plays a major role in all world religions. For examples of this from
several different religions, see Moses Maimonides, Ibn ‘Arabī, Adi Shankara, and Nāgārjuna.
28 See Plato, “Timaios,” in Platonis Opera, ed. Johannes Burnet, vol. 4 (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1902), 28c, 3–5; 52a, 3. The original Greek wording says that “τὸν μὲν οὖν ποιητὴν
καὶ πατέρα τοῦδε τοῦ παντὸς εὑρεῖν τε ἔργον καὶ εὑρόντα εἰς πάντας ἀδύνατον λέγειν.”
29 Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite, “The Divine Names,” in The Divine Names and

The Mystical Theology, transl. and introd. John D. Jones, repr. with Errata Corrigenda
(Milwaukee, WI: The Marquette University Press, 1999), I.2.
30 This is the case since—given the principle of contradiction—‘It is x’ implies ‘It is not

not-x.’ Plotin, “Ennead VI,” in Plotini Opera, eds. Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer,
vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University, 1982), 9.3, 41–42; for more details, see Brian Leftow,
22 V. WEIDNER

Plato’s Parmenides—the first hypothesis of which Plotinus also refers

to—Proclus highlighted the idea that the divine One transcends all finite
beings and nothing can be properly said about it.31 Being strongly influ-
enced by Neoplatonism, Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite claimed that “the
one beyond being” is epistemically entirely unknowable and nothing
“brings down the hiddenness”32 of the Divine.
Although usually not classified as a proponent of apophatic theology,
Anselm of Canterbury prominently defined God in his Proslogion in this
way: “aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit.”33 Yet, human intellect can
at least reasonably recognise that God is incomprehensible (“rationab-
iliter comprehendit incomprehensibile esse”34). According to Thomas
Aquinas, the ultimate cognisance of God consists exactly in recognis-
ing that God is not finally knowable.35 Master Eckhart, for example,
depicted God as nameless since nobody can say something about God
or know God at all.36 Following in their footsteps, Nicholas of Cusa
famously held the view that if someone recognises that she does not
know God, she does in fact know all the more, i.e., exhibiting docta igno-
rantia.37 At the end of his dialogue discussing the hiddenness of God
with a pagan, Nicholas of Cusa put these solemn words in the mouth of
the Christian interlocutor. “Sit igitur deus, ab oculis omnium sapientium

“Divine Simplicity,” Faith and Philosophy 23, no. 4 (2006): 376. See also Plotin, “Ennead
V,” in Plotini Opera, eds. Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1977), 3.13, 1.
31 See Proclus, Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, trans. Glenn R. Morrow and

John M. Dillon, introd. and notes John M. Dillon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1987), 1128, 1191.
32 Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite, “The Divine Names,” XIII.3.

33 Anselm von Canterbury, “Proslogion,” in Opera Omnia, ed. Franciscus Salesius

Schmitt, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1968), II, 5.

34 Anselm von Canterbury, “Monologion,” in Opera Omnia, ed. Franciscus Salesius

Schmitt, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1968), LXIV, 11.

35 See Thomas de Aquino, “De Potentia,” in Quaestiones Disputatae, eds. P. Bazzi, M.

Calcaterra, T. S. Centi, E. Odetto, and P. M. Pession, vol. 2 (Turin: Marietti, 1965), q. 7,

art. 5, ad 14.
36 See Meister Eckhart, “Predigt 83,” in Meister Eckharts Predigten, ed. and trans. Josef

Quint, vol. 3 (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1976), 585.

37 See Nicolai de Cusa, “De Docta Ignorantia,” in Opera Omnia, eds. Ernst Hoffmann

and Raymund Klibansky, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1932), esp. chapts. 3, 4, and 26.
See in this context also Martin Thurner, Gott als das offenbare Geheimnis nach Nikolaus von
Kues (Berlin: Akademie Verlag GmbH, 2001).
 2 SETTING THE STAGE 23

mundi absconditus, in saecula benedictus.”38 Finally, to mention an

influential contemporary proponent of apophaticism, John Hick based
his pluralistic account of religion mainly on the claim that the noumenal
Real is not knowable at all.39

(b) Or Maybe Not?

However, according to apophaticism a certain kind of cognitive approach
toward the nature of God is possible, i.e., by virtue of negating certain
affirmative propositions about divine properties. That is, in regard to
God’s essence we cannot know what God is, but only what God is not.40
Occasionally, apophatics are considered to be claiming only the latter. In
fact, there are proponents of this view which I call the radical version of
apophaticism. However, there is also what I label a moderate version of
apophaticism according to which the negation of common notions about
God (via negativa) is only an intermediate step between attributing them
to the Divine in the first place (via affirmativa) and exceeding them in
a third step (via eminentiae). Proponents of that view claim that, meta-
phorically speaking, the wheel in this procedure should not be stopped at
a particular moment of time but rather be kept in motion in order to try
to facilitate new insights about God and thereby approximate God.41
But theologians defending a radical version of apophaticism have, in
particular, been widely criticised. For if they do actually insist on the fun-
damental indescribability of God, i.e., denying that positive claims about
God could be actually made at all, then their approach appears to be

38 Nicolai de Cusa, “Dialogus de Deo Abscondito,” in Opera Omnia, ed. Paul Wilpert,

vol. 4 (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1959), 10.

39 See, for example, John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the

Transcendent (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1989), esp. 233–251. For a rather recent German
edition on the topic of apophaticism, see Alois Halbmayr, and Gregor Maria Hoff, eds.,
Negative Theologie heute? Zum aktuellen Stellenwert einer umstrittenen Tradition (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 2008). See also Magnus Striet’s habilitation thesis Offenbares
Geheimnis: Zur Kritik der negativen Theologie (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2003).
40 See Thomas de Aquino, Summa Theologiae, p. 1, q. 3, and, similarly, Thomas de

Aquino, “De Veritate,” in Quaestiones Disputatae, ed. Raymundi Spiazzi, vol. 1 (Turin:
Marietti, 1964), q. 10, art. 11, ad 4.
41 The idea of these three ways can be traced back to Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite, see

the first paragraph of the lyrics in “The Divine Names,” VII.3. Yet, on the whole, his “The
Divine Names” constitute affirmative theology, whereas his “The Mystical Theology”
exemplifies kataphatic theology.
24 V. WEIDNER

self-contradictory. This is the case because even in such a strict form of

apophaticism at least one affirmative claim regarding God is being made,
namely that no affirmative claims about God could be made at all. “It is
a piece of sheer confusion to say that there is such a person as God, but
none of our concepts apply to him. If our concepts do not apply to God,
then … he won’t have the property of being the referent of the term
‘God,’ or any other term; our concept being the referent of a term does
not apply to him.”42
Moreover, if the radical version of apophaticism, i.e., the defense of
the claim that God is completely indescribable, is based on the assertion
that there is a fundamental difference between humankind and God,
it faces two difficulties. On the one hand, it is rendered inconsistent if
this difference is after all somehow describable, i.e., if it is, for example,
describable in terms of the finity of human beings or rather God’s infin-
ity. On the other hand, such a rather extreme apophatic theology tends
to be unjustifiable if the alleged difference cannot be spelled out at all.43
However, some apophatics would presumably regard the latter crit-
icisms as a slight misinterpretation of their theology. This might be the
case if they are only holding the aforementioned more moderate claim
that God is somehow describable, though never adequately, and that
God can furthermore be advanced by the negation and exceedance of
some conceivable affirmative claims about his nature.

(c) The Mystical Path

Even though it “is he alone who … dwells in unapproachable light,
whom no one has ever seen or can see” (1 Tim 6:16), apophatics claim
that, in the end, human beings long for a different, non-epistemic way
to, so to speak, ‘see’ God. More precisely, God can be approached and
known in the realm of spirituality by means of striving for the mystical
union with God. According to Plotinus, for instance, what characterises
the life of the happy ones, of the divine human beings, as well as that

42 Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press,

1980), 22–23. As Thomas Schärtl-Trendel rightly pointed out, for ease of this quote’s clas-
sification I need to add that Plantinga defends a strictly personal concept of God opposing
any form of classical theism and also apophaticism.
43 For a more thorough treatment of this topic, see Armin Kreiner, Das wahre Antlitz

Gottes – oder was wir meinen, wenn wir Gott sagen (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2006),
35–73.
 2 SETTING THE STAGE 25

of the gods, is the abandonment of the world and escape of the lonely
one to the One—“ψυγὴ μόνου πρὸς μόνον.”44 As Pseudo-Dionysius
Areopagite declared:

Into the dark beyond all light we pray to come, through not seeing and
not knowing, to see and to know that beyond sight and knowledge,
itself: neither seeing nor knowing. For by the denial of all that is one sees,
knows, and beyond-beingly hymns the beyond being.45

Probably, it is not least this stress on the uttermost i­mportance of a

mystical way of life which is responsible for the influence of Neoplatonism
on theologians such as, e.g., Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite, Master
Eckhart, or Nicholas of Cusa.
To conclude, the epistemic claims of those apophatic theologians who
stress the absolute indescribability of God are, as sketched above, rather
controversial. Yet, the basic assertion of a more moderate version of
apophaticism, according to which God’s essence, although being rather
incomprehensible, is yet, somehow describable, can not be repudiated
so easily. The main emphasis, which some apophatics put on a non-epis-
temic and spiritual way of coming to know God, may, however, indicate
that the hiddenness of God constitutes, in the end, a rather practical and
even surmountable concern to them. In fact, it seems as if, according to
at least some apophatic strands, God’s unknowable essence could be dis-
closed in the mystical encounter with the Divine. Traditionally, however,
the second usage of the literal notion of the hiddenness of God pointing
to the incomprehensibility of God’s nature usually defines only a theoret-
ical and rather unsolvable problem.

2.1.2.3 What’s Next?
So far, I have described two of the main ways the literal notion of divine
hiddenness, which presupposes the belief in God’s existence, has usually

44 Plotin,“Ennead VI,” 9.11, 51.

45 Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite, “The Mystical Theology,” in The Divine Names and
The Mystical Theology, transl. and introd. John D. Jones, repr. with Errata Corrigenda
(Milwaukee, WI: The Marquette University Press, 1999), II. For a pragmatic guide for
contemplation and prayer of the later middle ages applying apophatic thoughts for this
spiritual way of life which seeks to, so to speak, touch God in the ‘cloud of unknowing,’
see the anonymously published script The Cloud of Unknowing, ed. Patrick J. Gallacher
(Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997).
26 V. WEIDNER

been understood. That is, the claim that God is literally hidden often
refers either to the believer’s lack of feeling the presence of the Divine
in her life, or to the view that God’s essence is not epistemically acces-
sible to her. However, classic theology also holds that there is some-
thing which is not hidden but rather evident concerning God. Namely,
throughout tradition it has been assumed that God is certainly available
in his energies, i.e., regarding the somehow recognisable effects of God’s
divine activities in the world. In fact, that is what the notion of God’s
revelation mainly designates.
Yet, to be a bit more precise, by the term ‘revelation’ I refer to the
so-called special revelation (revelatio specialis) of God, which is some-
times also denoted as ‘supernatural revelation.’46 In contrast, there is the
slightly ambiguous notion of God’s ‘general revelation’ (revelatio gener-
alis), which is occasionally mentioned as the ‘natural revelation’ of the
Divine. I introduce the former now, while I deal with the latter in the
next subsection, and, finally, compare some central features of the two.47

2.1.3   His Revelatory Works—Not That Hidden I

“Quite generally, we understand revelation as the disclosure of the veiled,
the exploitation of the hidden,” writes Rudolf Bultmann.48 It is unconten-
tious that the idea of any disclosure makes sense only if there is some-
thing which is previously concealed. God’s revelation, in turn, is by itself
a reasonable counterterm to the traditional literal notion of the hid-
denness of God concerning content and etymology. For the notion of
revelation is sensible only if there is something which is hidden before-
hand. What is more, from a linguistic point of view the term revelation

46 For a further treatment on this specific notion, see its mention in the dogmatic consti-

tution on the Catholic Faith of the First Vatican Council, Dei Filius, which I introduce in
Subchapter 2.1.3.3 Three Models of Revelation, (e) Divine Instruction.
47 In the following, I summarise a way of categorising revelation which has been very

influential in the last decades of Christian theology without questioning it. Yet, I thereby
do not treat new approaches for classifying revelation as, for example, proposed by Gregor
Maria Hoff, Offenbarungen Gottes? Eine theologische Problemgeschichte (Regensburg: Verlag
Friedrich Pustet, 2007). I leave it as a future task to critically discuss diverse categories of
revelation and their relation to hiddenness literally as well as non-literally understood.
48 Rudolf Bultmann, “Der Begriff der Offenbarung im Neuen Testament (1929),”

in Glauben und Verstehen: Gesammelte Aufsätze, ed. Rudolf Bultmann, vol. 3, 3rd ed.
(Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1965), 1.
 2 SETTING THE STAGE 27

is derived from the Latin word revelatio, or rather from the Greek word
ἀποκάλυψις, each of which can be translated as the withdrawing or lift-
ing of a shroud or a cover, i.e., the unveiling of something originally
veiled. In fact, Christianity understands itself as a revealed religion that is
based on the revelatory activity of God.49 Yet, what is it, more precisely,
that theologians want to express with the notion of God’s revelation?
To answer this question appropriately would, on its own, require one to
conduct rather extensive research. Here, I can only give a brief outline of
this key term50 in Christian theology.51

2.1.3.1 The Special Revelation of God

In a nutshell, it has traditionally been assumed that human beings
are not really able to understand why God acts in certain ways in the
world. This is partly, and more generally, due to the aforementioned
rather insuperable difficulty of recognising God’s essence, partly, and
more specifically, because the divine will and God’s decrees are partly
impenetrable.52 This is exemplarily stated in the letters of St. Paul to
the Romans when he writes, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom

49 See Max Seckler, “Der Begriff der Offenbarung,” in Handbuch der Fundamentaltheologie:

Traktat Offenbarung, eds. Walter Kern, Hermann Josef Pottmeyer, and Max Seckler, vol. 2,
2nd ed. (Tübingen: A. Francke Verlag, 2000), 41.
50 See Seckler, “Der Begriff der Offenbarung,” 42, or also Peter Eicher, Offenbarung:

Prinzip neuzeitlicher Theologie (München: Kösel-Verlag, 1977), 48–57, esp. 48. Its respec-
tive definition has a crucial impact on one’s view regarding other fundamental terms or
topics such as, e.g., faith and its relation to human reason, Holy Scripture, ecclesiology,
ecumenism, or the theology of religion.
51 In classical apologetics, it has been the task of a demonstratio christiana to argue that a

positive epistemic stance toward Christian theism is reasonable and to elucidate the pecu-
liarity of so-called supernatural knowledge of God in contrast to so-called natural knowl-
edge of God (see Perry Schmidt-Leukel, “Demonstratio christiana,” in Den Glauben
denken: Neue Wege der Fundamentaltheologie, eds. Heinrich Döring, Armin Kreiner, and
Perry Schmidt-Leukel (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1993), 49). For more informa-
tion on what natural and supernatural knowledge of God might be, see, in what follows,
Subchapter 2.1.4.1 The General Revelation of God, (i) Systematic Classifications, (ia) A
Natural Knowledge of God as well as (ib) The Twofold Model of Knowledge.
52 This is not to say that according to tradition God did not reveal “aeterna volunta-

tis suae decreta,” as it is stated, for example, in Dei Filius (DH 3004). Yet, according to
the supernatural concept of revelation proclaimed by the First Vatican Council, as I outline
later on, the supernatural content of these eternal decrees of God’s divine will is claimed
to be not recognisable by human reason but needs to be accepted by “the obedience of
faith” (Rom 16:26). Also, this does not imply that human beings would not at least be
28 V. WEIDNER

and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how
inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord?’”(Rom
11:33–34).53
Nevertheless, it is core to the Christian tradition that it is at least clear
that God acts in the actual world, and, more importantly, that human-
kind can recognise the effects of God’s divine activity. And this is, as
already mentioned, what the theological phrase of the revelation of God,
broadly speaking, alludes to. As a matter of fact, Christians assert that
God has already acted in one special historic event in an unsurpassable
way, namely in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. “Whoever has seen me
has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9), the Son can thus say. Ostensibly, God,
the Incomprehensible, wanted to be comprehended—“incomprehensibi-
lis voluit comprehendi.”54

2.1.3.2 A Small Restriction

Yet, this oversimplification would certainly not satisfy Martin Luther
who has made prominent use of the Isaiahan dictum of the Deus
absconditus.55 Famously, Luther claims that humans are actually able
to find God in his word, i.e., in Holy Scripture (sola scriptura).56 But
Luther’s use of the idiom Deus absconditus, at least according to Otto

able to learn about the overall aim of and reason why divine revelation takes place at all.
Traditionally, it has been claimed to be knowable that they both consist in God’s eternal
plan for the salvation of humankind.
53 For other biblical references to the inscrutability of God’s wisdom, see, e.g., the texts

of the newer Wisdom literature in the Old Testament (such as Job 11:7, 28:12 and 20–21;
or Eccl 7:24).
54 See the letter “Lectis dilectionis tuae” of Leo I. which he wrote to bishop Flavian of

Constantinople in 449, DH 294.

55 Unfortunately, there “is arguably no such thing as ‘the’ doctrine of Luther regard-

ing the Deus absconditus which one seeks to find by trying to reconstruct Luther
systematically: the Deus absconditus remains a chiffre which is suitable for different the-
ological problems which are by all means related to each other but just not identical”
(Volker Leppin, “Deus absconditus und Deus revelatus: Transformationen mittelalterlicher
Theologie in der Gotteslehre von ‘De servo arbitrio’,” Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift 22,
no. 1 (2005): 66). In the following, just two interpretations of Luther’s notion of the Deus
absconditus are presented, one in the main text and one in footnote 62.
56 In the German original, the reading is very unique. “Uberal ist er, er will aber nicht,

das du uberal nach ihm tappest, sondern wo das wort ist, da tappe nach, so ergreiffestu ihn
recht” (Martin Luther, “Sermon von dem Sakrament,” in Werke, vol. 19, crit. compl. ed.
(Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1897), 492, lines 22–24).
 2 SETTING THE STAGE 29

Hermann Pesch,57 refers to the claim that the effects of God’s divine
activity are not as obvious as it may be presumed. That is, necessarily,58
they are concealed and can neither be recognised nor comprehended by
human reason when they are performed. “Necesse est enim opus Dei
abscondi et non intelligi tunc, quando sit.”59 This, in turn, is the case
since the cognitive capacities of human persons are impaired after the
fall, and, mainly, because the opus of God is not just hidden but it is “sub
contrario absconditum.”60 Only the eyes of faith (sola fide) being blessed
with divine grace (sola gratia) are able to see the veiled effects of divine
activity that differ from what may initially be expected.
Indeed, it is highly astonishing to think that the transcendent God
might become incarnate, would be born of a poor woman, should be
raised in a rather insignificant place, live for most of his time an unspec-
tacular and reclusive life, in order to then antagonise some people so
much that, in the end, he would be crucified by them like a felon. In
fact, God’s hiddenness sub contrario culminates in the scandalon of the
cross of Christ. On the other hand, God has also shown himself unsur-
passedly in Calvary—although not in his all-powerfullness, but in his
helpless weakness, thereby making clear that God infinitely loves human-
kind.61 Therefore, solely the faithful are able to recognise that the Deus
absconditus is likewise also the Deus revelatus, as the other phrase coined
by Luther goes.62 Even though Luther highlighted that the patterns of
divine action are mainly not as they may be expected to be, he surely
would have agreed that they are, nevertheless, recognisable in some way,
and most visible in God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ.

57 See Otto Hermann Pesch, “‘Unser Gut ist verborgen:’ Der verborgene und offenbare

Gott,” in Hinführung zu Luther, ed. Otto Hermann Pesch, 3rd ed. (Mainz: Matthias-
Grünewald-Verlag, 2004), 274–296.
58 Luther does not mention why he claims that this state of affairs needs to obtain necessarily.

59 Martin Luther, “Der Brief an die Römer,” in Werke, vol. 56, crit. compl. ed. (Weimar:

Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1938), 376, lines 31–32, and 377, line 1.
60 Martin Luther, “Der Brief an die Römer,” 392, line 29.

61 See Pesch, “‘Unser Gut ist verborgen:’ Der verborgene und offenbare Gott,” 291–292.

62 Volker Leppin offers another interpretation of Luther’s Deus absconditus according to

which this notion only refers to the distant majesty of God the Father and God’s unrec-
ognisable essence. “Relinquendus est igitur Deus in maiestate et natura sua” (Martin
Luther, “De servo arbitrio,” in Werke, vol. 18, crit. compl. ed. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus
Nachfolger, 1908), 685, line 14). In fact, Luther is saying that God the Father will-
ingly hides from his creatures since God apparently does not want to be known by them
30 V. WEIDNER

2.1.3.3 Three Models of Revelation

What might count as divine revelation besides the incarnation, however,
is a highly controversial topic in the history of Christianity. To be more
precise, the extension of the term ‘revelation,’ i.e., the scope or extent of
the phenomena which are described by it, is diverse and wide-ranging.63
It alludes to the claim (1) that a divine being is acting in a certain event
in the world, as well as to the claim of (2) what the content of this event
consists of.
More exactly, ad (1), the event itself, which a human being has
reportedly experienced, may involve a vision, a dream, a state of intoxi-
cation, an auditory experience, an oracle, an anatural phenomenon,64 or
also a natural phenomenon. Ad (2), the content of this event comprises
(a) either any knowledge content which the human person in question
can acquire in such a revelatory event, i.e., propositional knowledge
about, for example, the will of the Divine, some recent or future historic
developments, or moral instructions. Also, the event’s content may con-
sist (b) in the appearance of the Deity itself, thereby showing its pres-
ence to the recipient of revelation either (ba) indirectly, i.e., mediated
through any event mentioned above (see (1)), or (bb) directly, i.e., in a
mystical vision of the invisible God. Additionally, the content of the rev-
elatory event may sometimes encompass a mix of (a), and either (ba), or,
more rarely, even (bb). That is, it might imply some form of knowledge
content which is communicated by the Divine, and which is also accom-
panied by God’s appearance that is making God’s presence known to a
human person either in a indirect or direct way.
The intension of the term ‘revelation,’ i.e., the definition or meaning
which a religious group associates with it, is likewise multifaceted. For

(see Luther, “De servo arbitrio,” 685, lines 5–6). And Luther’s phrase of the Deus revela-
tus is taken by Leppin to be pointing solely to God the Son who is somehow available for
humans in that it is possible to learn about and relate to the historical figure of Jesus of
Nazareth. Hence, according to Leppin’s reading of Luther one would be well advised to
concentrate on the saviour who is available in Christ, the Deus revelatus, rather than spec-
ulate about the divine depths, the Deus absconditus (see Leppin, “Deus absconditus und
Deus revelatus,” 55–69, esp. 68).
63 I owe this distinction to Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Grundkurs Fundamentaltheologie: Eine

Einführung in die Grundfragen des christlichen Glaubens (München: Don Bosco Verlag,
1999), 141–142.
64 By this I refer, roughly speaking, to an event which is neither explainable nor predicta-

ble as to be happening in accordance with the laws of nature in the actual world.
 2 SETTING THE STAGE 31

revelation may serve as a “category of theological reflection”65 for reli-

gious groups thinking about what they actually mean when talking about
divine revelation, and how they would define a revelatory event, ad (1),
as well as the content of such an event, ad (2). But the understanding
of revelation may vary between the major world religions. Moreover,
opinions about what counts as a true revelation of God may also differ
within certain religious groups. In fact, the Christian Catholic tradition’s
view on this matter has evolved throughout history. Following Max
Seckler’s classification,66 I sketch three of its key revelatory concepts, i.e.,
the so-called epiphanic, the instructive-theoretical, and the communica-
tive-participatory67 models of revelation.

(d) Divine Epiphany

The epiphanic model of revelation refers to the alleged biblical concept
of revelation, whereby it is not claimed that there is any uniform revela-
tory model to be found in Holy Scripture which in itself does not consti-
tute a homogeneous piece of literature.68

(da) The Revelatory Event

However, it can be noted that often, especially in what Christians refer
to as the Old Testament, the event itself, to which the term revelation
65 Peter Eicher, Im Verborgenen offenbar (Essen: Ludgerus Verlag, 1978), 35; see also

37–44. Similarly, see Seckler, “Der Begriff der Offenbarung,” 48, 49–50.
66 See Seckler, “Der Begriff der Offenbarung,” 43–48. As Seckler remarks, there is a cer-

tain chronological order in which these three revelatory models occurred in history and can
be classified thereby (p. 43). Yet, this is not to say that they exclude each other as regards
content. In other words, it is the case that they partly overlap in this respect, which is true
especially for the first and the third model.
67 To be more exact, Seckler demarcates the third model of revelation in the German

original as “kommunikationstheoretisch-partizipativ,” i.e., as being communication-theoret-

ical and participatory (Seckler, “Der Begriff der Offenbarung,” 47–48). But the notion of
‘theory’ which is added to the term ‘communication’ does not, in my view, contain any
significant additional information about the meaning of this revelatory concept. Also, the
German title of this concept as a whole is rather hard to translate, and even more cumber-
some to handle. Therefore, I refer to this concept of revelation by abbreviating Seckler’s
expression as ‘communicative-participatory.’
68 See Seckler, “Der Begriff der Offenbarung,” 43. See also Alexander Sand, “Erstes

Kapitel: Die biblischen Aussagen über die Offenbarung,” in Offenbarung: Von der Schrift
bis zum Ausgang der Scholastik, ed. Michael Seybold with Pierre-Réginald Cren, Ulrich
Horst, Alexander Sand, and Peter Stockmeier (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1971), 2. For
the following, see Sand, “Erstes Kapitel,” 3–4.
32 V. WEIDNER

refers, consists in a natural phenomenon as, for example, a pillar of fire

or a cloud (see Ex 14:24 or Num 9:15–22), the sound of thunder (see
Ex 19:16 or Ps 18:9, 11, 13), the rustling of the trees (see 2 Sam 5:24),
or the silent whispering of the wind (see 1 Kings 19:12). Alternatively,
the event may involve a rather unusual phenomenon that is noticeable
in nature, such as, e.g., a bush, which is on fire and “blazing, yet … not
consumed” by the flames (Ex 3:2). In these events, God is reported to
have been acting toward certain chosen people such as the prophets,
i.e., in particular by way of speaking to them. Furthermore, it is assumed
that God’s revelatory activity in the course of human history has already
come to a climax, i.e., in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

(db) The Content of Revelation

As to the content of the event, it is a combination of a certain ver-
sion of (a) and (ba). Referring to (ba), the epiphanic concept of reve-
lation derives its name from the emphasis it puts on the claim that the
truly hidden God (see, as already cited, Is 45:15) can be experienced
in a certain kind of divine appearance (ἐπιϕάνεια, or, more exactly, a
θεοϕάνεια), i.e., that God is somehow present to someone while God’s
divine presence is indirectly mediated through a natural or an anatural
event. Moreover, this revelatory concept strongly highlights that God
is only knowable because God himself is unveiling his hidden presence
by way of his occasional appearing, showing himself, or making himself
known to someone in such an event. But God is not held to be recognis-
able due to the efforts of any human reasoning.
In regards to (a), the knowledge content which is attained in the
divine appearance includes, inter alia, guidance for life, moral orienta-
tion, and, particularly, the affirmation of God’s salvatory will. More
precisely, God is frequently asserted to explicate the latter to someone
by way of speaking to her. The word of God is very crucial here. In so
doing, God is reported to speak to the heart of the believer rather than
to appeal to her intellect.69

(e) Divine Instruction

Yet, the concept of revelation which has presumably been mostly influ-
ential and dominant throughout the entire history of Christianity is the

69 See Seckler, “Der Begriff der Offenbarung,” 44.

 2 SETTING THE STAGE 33

instructive-theoretical model.70 At the First Vatican Council 1869–1870,

it was officially confirmed by the magisterium of the Catholic Church.71
In the following, I introduce this Council’s concept of supernatural
revelation.72

(ea) The Revelatory Event

As to the revelatory event itself, it may consist of an auditory experience,
a vision, and natural or anatural events, although this concept of revelation
rather focuses on the content of the event than on embellishing the story
which describes the event.73 However, a peculiar feature of this revelatory
concept worth mentioning is that it is not only God who is claimed to be
acting in an event of divine revelation. Rather, it may also be the case that
God authorises certain chosen human beings to serve as transmitters of
supernatural revelation.74 That is, these people, such as, e.g., the prophets,
are authorised by God to speak to humankind in the name of God. As a
matter of fact, the main biblical point of reference in this regard, which is
cited in Dei Filius,75 is this. “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many
and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us
by a [sic!] Son” (Heb 1:1). In other words, the instructive-theoretical model
also maintains that God’s revelation is claimed to have culminated in God’s
incarnation in Jesus Christ. In addition to this, even though it is not explic-
itly stated in Dei Filius, the rather old claim that the process of revelation is
finally completed with the death of the last apostle is, not without good rea-
son, usually associated with the revelatory concept of Dei Filius.76

70 See Avery Dulles, Models of Revelation, 2nd ed., 19th print (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis

Books, 2013), 36. Contemporary proponents of this view include, for example, Richard
Swinburne or Nicholas Wolterstorff (see Richard Swinburne, Revelation: From Metaphor
to Analogy, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Nicholas Wolterstorff,
Divine discourse: Philosophical reflections on the claim that God speaks (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995)).
71 See for the following Dei Filius, DH 3000–3045.

72 See, for example, DH 3006.

73 To be more exact, the revelatory events, which, e.g., the prophets or apostles reportedly

experienced, are briefly referred to without any further description of the details of these events.
74 See DH 3006. The credibility of many of these transmitters of divine revelation, in

turn, is held to be guaranteed by their martyrdom.

75 See DH 3004.

76 The following pope, Pius X., explicitly condemned some falsities of the m ­ odernists
in the decrete of the Holy Office called “Lamentabili” of 1907, namely, inter alia, the
34 V. WEIDNER

Thereafter, human beings living in later times have reportedly nev-

ertheless had access to supernatural revelation via two sources.77 First,
there is the ‘oral tradition,’ which traces back to the teachings of Jesus
to his apostles. And, second, there is the ‘written tradition,’ i.e., the
Bible or the so-called Holy Scripture. It is conceived of as being divinely
inspired by the Holy Spirit, as having God himself as its final author, and
hence representing divine revelation without any errors. Furthermore,
the Holy Scripture is entrusted to the Catholic Church, which serves as
the “custos et magistra verbi revelati”78 and proclaims the Bible’s obliga-
tory interpretation.79

(eb) The Content of Revelation

At the center of this model of revelation, is, ad (a), a certain kind
of knowledge content (namely propositional knowledge80 about
the so-called divine or supernatural truths) about which someone is
informed by God in the revelatory event. These veritates revelatae rep-
resent the so-called mysteries of faith, or rather the depositum fidei, i.e.,
claims about, for example, the divine Trinity, God’s incarnation, or
human salvation. But reason is per se81 never able to fully recognise and
understand these “mysteria in Deo abscondita”82 because they exceed
by their very nature the capacities of human intellect.83 Yet, there is a

erroneous claim that revelation was not completed with the apostles. That is, the magis­
terium officially proclaimed promptly after Vaticanum I that revelation was actually com-
pleted with the death of the last apostle.
77 For the following, see DH 3006.

78 DH 3012.

79 See DH 3007, or, similarly, DH 3011.

80 In fact, I presume that is why Avery Dulles calls this concept of revelation the proposi-

tional model or also the doctrinal model (see Dulles, Models of Revelation, 36–52).
81 See DH 3016. Additionally, the capacities of human reason are claimed to be limited

because they are irreversibly impaired by original sin (see the encyclical Humani Generis of
Pius XII., DH 3875).
82 DH 3015.

83 However, a small restriction is granted concerning the faithful ones and their cognitive

possibilities. Namely, their faith is claimed to be able to illuminate reason so that the latter
is—with the help of God—at least partly able to recognise the supernatural truths. This
is due to the analogy (i.e., in terms of their resemblance) of these truths with the objects
about which the human intellect can actually acquire full knowledge (i.e., the so-called
religious as well as natural truths—for discussion of them, see the next Subsection 2.1.4.1
 2 SETTING THE STAGE 35

reason why a human being needs to be informed about these supernatu-

ral truths during her lifetime. She must be informed because it is for the
sake of her eternal salvation that these eternal truths are disclosed, not
merely to increase her knowledge or to still her curiosity.84
The proper response of someone who has been instructed about
the supernatural truths is to accept them by faith alone. Faith, in turn,
is conceived of as a supernatural virtue which is owed to the grace of
God,85 and especially to the inspiring working of the Holy Spirit.86 In
fact, having such faith constitutes the beginning of human salvation87
and is necessary in order to attain eternal salvation.88 Moreover, the
intellect and the will of the faithful need to obey the authority of God.89
But the intellect’s and will’s obedience which characterises the act of
faith is not to be identified with a forced compliance being determined
by a source which is external to the human being herself. Rather, it is
a so-called free obedience.90 That is, the latter implies a volitional pro-
cess at the end of which someone deliberately decides to consent to

The General Revelation of God, (i) Systematic Classifications, (ia) A Natural Knowledge
of God), the internal order of the supernatural truths, and their connection with the salv-
ific purpose for which they are disclosed to humankind. Nevertheless, it is also stated that
even for the faithful ones the supernatural truths remain covered by darkness in this life,
i.e., they are neither fully recognisable nor understandable by reason but remain mysteries
(see DH 3016). On the one hand, this understanding of faith does not principally disre-
gard the role which the intellect plays in the act of faith. Moreover, one of the presumed
concerns of the authors of Dei Filius may have been to express their rejection of fideism
which diminishes the value of reason too much, or even denies that it plays any significant
role at all. Nevertheless, it is, on the other hand, quite obvious that reason is at the same
time clearly put into its place. In fact, Dei Filius constitutes, according to Josef Schmitz,
an explicit refusal of any form of rationalism which is feared to unduly overstate the role of
the intellect (see Josef Schmitz, “Das Christentum als Offenbarungsreligion im kirchlichen
Bekenntnis,” in Handbuch der Fundamentaltheologie: Traktat Offenbarung, eds. Walter
Kern, Hermann Josef Pottmeyer, and Max Seckler, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: A. Francke
Verlag, 2000), 4).
84 See DH 3005, 3012. See on this point also Thomas de Aquino, Summa Theologiae,

p. 1, q. 1, a. 1.
85 See DH 3008.

86 See DH 3010.

87 See DH 3008.

88 See, for example, DH 3010, 3012.

89 See DH 3016.

90 See DH 3010.
36 V. WEIDNER

and cooperate with the grace of God.91 This is also the reason why faith
constitutes, according to Aquinas, a meritum92 of man.
Furthermore, the obedience of the faithful is not equivalent to an
intellectually unreflective or blind movement of the heart (“motus
animi caecus”93). On the contrary, this obedience is actually respon-
sible in light of the demands of reason. To be more precise, human
intellect can, according to this model of revelation, certainly recognise
not only that the supernatural revelatory truths do originate in God,
but also that their mainly incomprehensible content actually repre-
sents an expression of divine will. This is made possible by the so-called
external signs which accompany God’s revelation, i.e., particular mir-
acles as well as fulfilled prophecies. In fact, the latter are claimed to
be “divinae revelationis signa … certissima et omnium intelligentiae
accomodata.”94

(f) Divine Communion

The Second Vatican Council 1962–1965 is widely held to have aban-
doned and replaced this rather doctrinaire and fairly intellectual concept
of revelation by the communicative-participatory model. At any rate, it

91 See DH 3010. Thus, I presume, without arguing for it, that the traditional (Catholic)

concept of freedom is the so-called libertarian concept of freedom referring to a certain

kind of inner sovereignty in regards to one’s own volitions and thoughts. As a result, some-
one is the source and cause of her further volitions, thoughts, and additionally, but not
necessarily, also of her corresponding actions, insofar as she has real alternatives, and is
able to choose between them as well as, finally, to make a decision. To be more precise,
this concept of freedom is not compatible with someone being completely determined by
external causes such as, for example, other agents, some conditions of the universe, or any
events in the past. Furthermore, I take it that, according to this traditional concept of free-
dom, exhibiting freedom of will does not necessarily also imply being free in relation to
one’s actions, i.e., being free to act on the decision one made.
92 See Thomas de Aquino, Summa Theologiae, p. 3, q. 55, a. 5, ad 2. More precisely,

Aquinas claims that having meritorious faith consists in believing what one does not see. That
is, having faith, in general, involves holding certain propositional beliefs. Furthermore, having
meritorious faith, more specifically, is conceived of as involving a voluntary element, i.e., being
able to and, then, actually deciding to hold certain propositional beliefs about God (see on
the so-called Thomist view of faith also Swinburne, Faith and Reason, 138–141, esp. 140).
93 DH 3010.

94 DH 3009. Due to space constraints the well-known critique by the English Deists in

the seventeenth and eighteenth century of this alleged role of miracles or prophecies can-
not be discussed here.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Ilonka näytti vaaleammalta kuin hänen tukassaan olevat valkoiset
ruusut. Hän sulki silmänsä ja näytti olevan aivan pyörtymäisillään.
András oli saanut ensimmäisen suukkosen, kuten jokainen muukin
sulhanen tasangoilla, mutta kumminkin katseli hän hyvin
kateellisesti, kun Ilonkan vanhemmat kukin vuorollaan puristivat
tyttärensä syliinsä, ja jalo kreivitär vuodatti runsaasti kyyneliä
äidillisistä silmistään. Näytti siltä kuin hän ei olisi sallinut kenenkään
lähestyä tyttöä nyt.

Huomautuksia sateli nyt kainostelematta. Naisten sydämiä vihloi,

kun he näkivät morsiamen kalpeat kasvot. Mutta kaikki
morsiamethan ovat hääpäivänään kalpeita ja peloissaan. Se on
heidän suurin viehätyksensä, ja András panisi kyllä pian nuo posket
punastumaan ja nuo silmät loistamaan.

Kuinka kauniilta he molemmat näyttivätkään, kun he kävelivät

pääkäytävää poispäin, vaikka morsiamen käsi tuskin koskettikaan
Andrákseen, kun hän ohjasi vaimoaan ovelle. Hiljaa kuiskattu
»Jumala siunatkoon teitä!» kuului heidän jälkeensä. Sitten seuraten
kreiviä ja kreivitärtä virtasi kansa kirkosta nähdäkseen lähdön.

András pysähtyi hetkiseksi, ikäänkuin toukokuun auringon

kirkkaus olisi häikäissyt hänen silmänsä. Tiellä odottivat kreivin
vaunut livreepukuisine palvelijoineen ja punaisissa valjaissa olevine
valkoisine hevosineen, jotka olivat tuoneet morsiamen kirkkoon ja
jotka nyt kärsimättömästi kuopivat maata. Rahvas oli nyt tunkeutunut
kuin Tarnan tulviva vesi kirkosta tarhaan, joka oli liian pieni niin
suurelle joukolle. Kaikki riensivät innoissaan kauemmaksi
nähdäkseen rikkaan talonpojan ajopelit, joita luultiin kuvaamattoman
komeiksi, koska niiden oli määrä kuljettaa jalosukuinen morsian
talonpoikaiseen kotiin. Jokainen otaksui, että hevosten kiiltävät,
loistavat messinkiheloin ja -soljin koristellut valjaat voittavat
Bideskuty’n kreivin hevoset, semminkin kun ei missään ollut sellaisia
juoksijoita kuin Kisfalussa. Kreivitärkin katsoi kysyvästi tielle ja
levottomasti Andrákseen, sillä muita vaunuja kuin hänen ei ollut
näkyvissä. Mitä András odottikaan nuoren vaimonsa kanssa?

Nopeasti hätkähtivät kaikki, sillä tieltä kuului kavioiden kapsetta ja

huutoja, ja kylän asukasten iloisesti katsellessa ja jalon kreivittären
huutaessa kauhusta nosti Keményn András nopeasti nuoren
morsiamensa käsivarsilleen ja hyppäsi Csillagin selkään. Ennenkuin
katselijat oikein huomasivatkaan tapahtuman ja ennen kreivittären
tointumista säikähdyksestä, oli tamma kaksinkertaisine kuormineen
jo kaukana tiellä ja pöläytteli suuria hiekkapilviä ilmaan laukatessaan
tasangolle päin tuulessa liehuvin harjoin.

Kumea »Eläköön!», joka pani pienen kirkon heilumaan

perustuksillaan, kajahti nopeasti pienenevän hevosen ja ratsastajain
jälkeen. Tuo huuto vapautti joukon viimeisten tuntien äärettömästä
jännityksestä, ja oli sopiva, hurja, alkuperäinen ja mitä kiihkein
inhimillinen selitys tällaiselle uudelle morsiamen kotiinviemistavalle.
XXV

KANGASTUS.

Ah, tuon hurjan ratsastuksen suomaa iloa tämän kauniin tasangon

poikki vieviä teitä pitkin, Csillagin tuntiessa, kuten näytti, tuon saman
magneettisen voiman vaikutusta kuin hänen isäntänsäkin suonissa
virtasi, ja lentäessä eteenpäin nopeasti ja varmasti kuin tuulen
kuljettamat pilvet.

Ah, miten András oli odottanutkin tätä ratsastusta ja Ilonkan

käsivarsien säikähtynyttä puristusta, sillä hänen oli pideltävä lujasti
kiinni Csillagin kiitäessä tuulen nopeudella.

Kuinka kalpealta hän näyttikään! Hänen silmänsä olivat kiinni ja

näytti melkein siltä kuin hän olisi ollut pyörryksissä. Andráksen oli
ollut pakko käyttäytyä ripeästi ja raa'asti, nousta Csillagin selkään ja
paeta hänen kanssaan suomatta kenellekään aikaa pysähdyttää
häntä, ja se oli epäilemättä säikähdyttänyt Ilonkaa.

Mutta Csillag kiisi vain eteenpäin, kylä oli jo kaukana heidän

takanaan, eläköön-huudot olivat lakanneet kuulumasta, tasanko
kaikessa äärettömyydessään ja autiudessaan levisi heidän eteensä
ja Csillag, joka rakasti sen rajatonta vapautta yhtä paljon kuin
Andráskin, ja piti taivaan ja maan äärettömästä laajuudesta, laukkasi
eteenpäin kuin Jumalan enkelit olisivat lainanneet sille siipensä.

Eteenpäin ja yhä vain eteenpäin! Ilonka lepäsi niin hiljaa ja

kalpeana hänen käsivarsillaan, hiukan raollaan olevasta suusta
tunkeutui tuskin henkäystäkään ja hänen pitkä valkoinen huntunsa
oli kääriytynyt hänen ympärilleen kuin verho, hänen pienen päänsä
levätessä Andráksen rinnoilla. Tällaisesta hetkestä oli András
haaveillut kaikkien pitkien iltojen kuluessa tasangolla, ja mieletön
toivo oli melkein murtanut hänen sydämensä hänen ikävöidessään
tällaista hetkeä. Ja nyt sai hän katsella sydämensä valittua
ensimmäisen kerran kahden kesken. Kenenkään silmät eivät
nähneet hänen mielenliikutustaan Ilonkan levätessä alistuvaisesti
hänen sylissään. Ah, millainen ilo olikaan saada katsella häntä näin,
kun hän lepäsi tunnottomana ja avutonna miehensä rintaa vasten!
András katseli hellästi jokaista hunnun alta esiinpistävää pehmoista
hiuskiharaa, ummistuneita luomia, joiden ohuet punaiset suonet
kertoivat suruista ja kyynelistä, pientä valkoista nenää, sen kaunista
päätä ja hentoja sieraimia, ja ennen kaikkea, tuota punaista suuta,
jonka puoliavoimien huulien välistä Andráksen tulinen katse etsi
pieniä valkoisia hampaita ja ruusunpunaisen kielen päätä.

Ah, millaista kuvaamatonta ja verratonta iloa, iloa, joka oli kuin

suurinta tuskaa, tuottikaan saada katsella tuon hennon kaunottaren
kaikkia piirteitä, jonka omistaja hän nyt oli ja johon hän ei sulasta
rakkaudesta uskaltanut koskea, vaikka hän ei mitään muuta niin
suuresti halunnutkaan.

Eteenpäin Csillag, eteenpäin!

 Ilonka ei liikahtanutkaan eikä hän näyttänyt enää hengittävänkään.
Hän lepäsi kuin kuollut miehensä käsivarsilla. Kaikki heidän
ympärillään oli vielä samanlaista, sillä ei taivas eikä maa olleet
muuttaneet muotoaan. Keskipäivän aurinko levitti valoaan tasangon
äärettömään autiuteen, ja kuumuus pani ilman aaltoilemaan. Kaikki
inhimillisen elämän merkit olivat kaukana etäisyydessä. Tienpuolen
ravintola oli jo matkojen päässä ja paimenien huudot olivat jo
lakanneet kuulumasta. Ainoastaan taivaalla liitelevät haikarat
kutsuivat toisiaan ja meloonien suurien lehtien alta vilahti
kirkkaanvärisiä sisiliskoja, jotka kiisivät sinne tänne Csillagin
mielettömän laukan peloittamina. Ilmassa oli avautuvien kukkien ja
kypsyvien hedelmien tuoksua. Oikealla oli lauma villejä hevosia,
jotka laukkasivat hurjasti pakoon. András kohotti hetkeksi katseensa
tarkastellakseen autiota ja hiljaista tasankoa, jonka sinistä taivasta,
hedelmällistä maata ja purppuranpunaista sumua vasten
kuvastuvien kaivojen vipuja hän niin suuresti rakasti.

Ja kas, kun hän katsoi, rupesi taitava ja lumoava kangastus

piirustelemaan nopein vedoin muuttuvia kuviaan kauas tuonne
kuumaan, kuivaan ja väreilevään ilmaan. Andráksen kiihtyneistä
aivoista näytti se auringonpaisteessa kimaltelevalta paratiisin
kullalta, hohtavalta valkoiselta kaupungilta. Siellä oli viileitä ja
virtaavia jokia, marmorilinnoja ja viheriöitä niittyjä, loistavia ja
autioita, jotka kutsuivat häntä tulemaan sinne lumivalkoisine
kantamuksineen ja laskemaan sen noiden viileiden virtojen rannalle,
jossa hänenkin kuuma päänsä raitistuisi, kun hän painaisi sen
pehmoiseen viheriään ruohoon.

Hän katsoi sinne pitkään ja kauan samalla kun hänestä tuntui, että
Csillag lensi sinne levitetyin enkelin siivin. Tuo lumoava kuva tuli yhä
lähemmäksi puoleksi peittyneenä ohueen, kyynelistä
muodostuneeseen sumuun.

Silloin hän kumarsi päänsä ja hänen kuumat huulensa hakivat

tuon raollaan olevan suun, jolloin nuoren, raa'an ja puoleksi
barbaarisen talonpojan sielu poistui hänestä yhtyäkseen tuohon
tunnottomaan olentoon pitkässä tulisessa suutelossa.

Kaukana taivaanrannalla oli oikullinen kangastus nopeasti

peittänyt paratiisin kaupungin kultaiset piirteet, taivaalla kiitävät
haikarat olivat lopettaneet huutonsa ja pienet sisiliskot olivat
menneet levolle.

Ääretön ja autio tasanko oli jälleen rauhallinen Csillagin laukatessa

eteenpäin.
XXVI

TALONPOJAN VAIMO.

»Anna hänen olla rauhassa, poikaseni, kuuletko sinä! Hän toipuu

kyllä hoidossani. Laske hänet tuohon vuoteelle. Lakanat ovat
lämpimät ja pehmeät, ja tuoksuvat lavendelilta. Mene hakemaan
minulle kellarista mitallinen tuota etikkaa, jonka panin tynnyriin viime
marraskuussa. Laske se oven edustalle ja tuo minulle ullakosta
muutamia neilikoita, ajuruohoa ja ehkä hieman koiruohoakin. Mene
nyt! Hän on ainoastaan pyörtynyt hurjan ratsastuksesi vaikutuksesta.
Sinun olisi pitänyt menetellä muiden ihmisten tapaan ja tuoda hänet
kotiin vaunuilla, joiden eteen on valjastettu vakava härkäpari».

Vasta paljon jälkeen päivällisen oli András saapunut Csillagilla

kantaen valkoista taakkaa käsivarsillaan. Etelka oli odottanut
toivottaakseen morsiamen tervetulleeksi uuteen kotiin, ja oli
valmistanut sellaisen aterian, ettei kuninkaankaan olisi tarvinnut sitä
hyljeksiä. Hän oli suonut Sárille ja Katille sen ilon, että nämä olivat
saaneet pukeutua parhaimpiin vaatteihinsa ja mennä katsomaan
isäntänsä ja jalosukuisen kreivittären vihkimistä. Hän ei voinut olla
tyyni, sillä hän tiesi poikansa tarkoituksen olevan tuoda morsian
kotiin Csillagin selässä, ja pelkäsi senvuoksi, että nuori jalosukuinen
neito, joka ei ollut tottunut sellaisiin äkillisiin toimenpiteisiin, joko
pyörtyisi tahi sairastuisi. Hän oli muodostanut vaatimattomista
huoneista oikean rakastettavaisuuden puutarhan. Hänen
ruusupensaansa olivat onneksi täydessä kukassaan, ja siten oli
hänelle ollut mahdollista tuoda niitä suuria kimppuja jokaiseen
huoneeseen, mutta erittäinkin yhteen, joka oli juuri paperoitu ja
koristettu kauniisti kirjailluin verhoin nuoren vaimon asunnoksi.

Ah, tuolta kuului vihdoinkin Csillagin tuttu kavioiden kapse

tasangon poikki johtavalta pehmeältä tieltä. Etelka kiiruhti innoissaan
portille toivottaakseen uuden tyttärensä tervetulleeksi kotiin lempein
suudelmin, mutta katsahdettuaan poikansa kasvoihin huomasi hän
heti jonkun asian olevan hullusti. Hiljaa polvistui Csillag muistaen
isäntänsä opettaman sievän tempun, ja András, ollen melkein yhtä
kalpea kuin hänen sylissään oleva olento, laskeutui maahan ja meni
kuormineen sisälle.

Hän laski morsiamensa vuoteelle, ja Etelka auttoi häntä

asettamaan tuon kultakutrisen pään pehmeästi pieluksille. Ilonka oli
hyvin kalpea ja melkein hengetön. Ei voida siis ihmetelläkään, että
András oli pelästynyt. Mutta Etelka ymmärsi, että tuo tunnottomuus
aiheutui vain jännityksestä, ja onnistui pian tyynnyttämään poikansa.
Hän koetti olla iloinen niin kauan kuin poika oli huoneessa, mutta
hänen poistuttuaan pudisti hän surullisesti päätään. Hän ei ollut
milloinkaan ennen nähnyt ketään niin kalpeaa ja hermotonta kuin
Ilonka nyt oli, eikä tämä omituinen kotiintulo ennustanut mitään
hyvää.

András toi etikan, ja sitten kuin Etelka oli lämmittänyt sen

sekoitettuaan siihen ensin hieman lääkekasveja, alkoi hän hautoa
sillä Ilonkan ohimoita. Hän riisui lapsiraukalta kengät ja sukat, ja
hieroi hänen kylmiä jalkojaan karkeiden käsiensä välissä. Vihdoin
tunkeutui heikko värisevä huokaus punaisten huulien välistä.
Kultakutrinen pää liikahti levottomasti pieluksilla, ja pian pari
säikähtynyttä sinistä silmää tuijotti Andráksen äidin ryppyisiin,
ystävällisiin kasvoihin.

Ne koettivat kiertäen pelokkaasti ja hämmästyneenä kaikille

suunnille päästä selville tilanteesta palattuaan juuri unten mailta.
Hän ei tuntenut tätä omituista pientä ja matalaa huonetta, jonka
seiniltä riippui kuivuneita sulotuoksuisia kukkakimppuja, eikä tuota
suurta, kiiltävää ja viheriää kaakeliuunia, jonka pesässä höyrysi tuo
kuuma väkevältä tuoksuva etikka astiassaan. Nuo suurissa
kömpelöissä maljakoissa olevat valkoiset ruusut ja tuo omituinen
ystävällinen vanha vaimo suurine ja tummine silmineen muistuttivat
Ilonkaa jostakin, jonka hän oli toivonut voivansa ainaiseksi unhottaa.

Mutta nuo kasvot näyttivät niin hyviltä ja myötämielisiltä, ja Ilonka

tunsi juuri nyt olevansa niin suuresti lohdutuksen tarpeessa, koska
hänen sydäntään pakotti ja ahdisti, ettei hän voinut vastustaa noiden
vanhojen tummien silmien ilmettä, joissa olevat suuret kyyneleet
puhuivat rakkaudesta ja säälistä. Kaikki oli ollut niin omituista ja
huomaavaa. Ilonka oli näiden viime aikojen kuluessa hengittänyt niin
ankaran velvollisuuden ja ylpeän ryhdin täyttämää ilmaa, että nuo
vaatimattomat talonpoikaisvaatteet, nuo ystävälliset ryppyiset kasvot,
karkeat ruskeat kädet ja nuo myötämieliset kyyneleet menivät
suoraan hänen ahdistettuun sydämeensä, ja hän ojensi molemmat
käsivartensa rukoillen lohdutusta ja rakkautta.

Tuon vanhan talonpoikaisvaimon sydän, joka oli jo kiintynyt tuohon

vuoteessa lepäävään tyttömäisen hentoon olentoon, suli täydellisesti
tuon suloisen vetoamisen vaikutuksesta. Hänen käsivartensa
kiertyivät hienon tytön ympärille, kultakutrinen pää painautui vanhaa
äidillistä rintaa vasten ja hänen kasvoilleen painettiin niin monta
suukkosta ja hänelle sanottiin niin paljon rakkaita ja myötätuntoisia
sanoja, ettei Ilonka ollut milloinkaan kuullut äidiltään sellaisia.

»Nyt, kultaseni, voit kai jo paremmin? Nuku rauhassa hetkinen ja

lepää, sillä olet väsynyt ja kiihtynyt. Katso, minä vedän nämä verhot
ikkunain eteen ja kätken sinut auringolta, joka pian laskeutuu. Ehkä
voitkin sitten nukkua kauan ja rauhallisesti. Menen tuonne toiseen
huoneeseen kehruuksieni ääreen. Jos haluat jotakin, on sinun vain
koputettava seinään. Kuulen sen heti. Olen tuulettanut kaikki kauniit
liinavaatteesi ja ripustanut pukusi tuohon vaatekomeroon. Levättyäsi
voit riisua valkoisen pukusi ja pukea yllesi jonkun noista uusista,
jotka äitisi lähetti tänne eilen. Onko pielus mukavasti pääsi alla?
Hyvää yötä nyt, kultaseni. Nuku makeasti!»

Hän suuteli Ilonkaa viimeisen kerran, veti verhot ikkunain eteen

niin, että auringon säteet tunkeutuivat nyt huoneeseen
heikennettyinä ja tummina, ja poistui sitten tyynesti huoneesta.

Ilonka oli yksinään. Ensin oli hän ainoastaan tietoinen

erinomaisesta ruumiillisesta hyvinvoinnista. Lakanat olivat niin hienot
ja tuoksuivat niin suloisesti lavendelilta ja rosmariinilta, ja laaksosta
poimitut liljat ja ruusut muuttivat huoneen ilman erittäin
hyvätuoksuiseksi. Hän ummisti silmänsä ja makasi hervotonpa
tuntien ääretöntä hyvinvointia. Kuinka väsynyt hän olikaan
viimepäivien vaivoista ja jännityksestä, ympärillä hääräävistä
palvelijattarista, jotka järjestivät liinavaatteita ja uusia pukuja, ja
tuosta valkoisesta morsiuspuvusta, jota hänen oli ollut pakko koettaa
monta kertaa ja joka oli ahdistanut hänen sydäntään, kun hän oli
tuntenut sen laskokset ympärillään. Mutta ennen kaikkea oli hän
äärettömästi väsynyt yhtämittaisiin puheihin varallisuudesta ja
maista, velvollisuuksista ja jälkipolvesta. Hänen poskensa olivat
hehkuneet alituisesti, kun hän oli kuullut sanottavan itseään kaikkien
niiden syntymättömien lasten äidiksi, joista oli tuleva rikkaita maiden
ja rahojen omistajia.

Hän oli taistellut vapautensa puolesta vakavin, hiljaisin tavoin

vetoamalla vanhempiensa rakkauteen ja heidän hänen vuokseen
tuntemaansa ylpeyteen ja heidän halveksimiseensa tuota miestä
kohtaan, jonka he olivat valinneet hänen puolisokseen. Hän ei
välittänyt vähääkään suurista rikkauksista eikä laajoista maa-
alueista, vaan oli onnellinen saadessaan asua Bideskuty’ssa
vaikkapa vanhanapiikanakin. Hän ei voinut ollenkaan ymmärtää,
miksi hänen isänsä näytti niin surulliselta, kun hänen
tulevaisuudestaan keskusteltiin. Ellei hän pitänyt tyttärensä
avioliitosta rikkaan talonpojan kanssa, niin miksi hän sitten salli sen
tapahtua? Varmasti oli hänellä maita, peltoja ja rahaa kylliksi omiksi
tarpeikseen. Mitä hän teki tuolla talonpojan omaisuudella, vaikka se
olikin niin suuri? Ilonka ei voinut sitä ymmärtää. Hänen ylpeä äitinsä
näytti suhtautuvan tähän polkunaimiseen hyvin halveksivasti, vaikka
hän kumminkin ivasi kaikkia köyhiä aatelismiehiä heidän vanhasta
suvustaan huolimatta. Tyttö oli pian ilmaissut kauan säilytetyn
salaisuutensa ja myöntänyt vilpittömästi, että ainoastaan yksi ääni
monien muiden joukosta pani hänen sydämensä riemusta
sykkimään. Hänhän oli vanhempiensa ainoa lapsi, jota oli suuresti
rakastettu ja hemmoiteltu. Tuntui niin hirveällä, että hänen oli
ruvettava asumaan talonpojan talossa, opittava kehräämään ja
työskentelemään puutarhassa ja alentumaan aivan omien
palvelijattariensa tasolle, ja erottava kaikista entisistä ystävistään.
 Sitten eräänä päivänä kerrottiin hänelle, ettei hän välittänytkään
hänestä, ja ilmoitettiin että hän köyhyytensä vuoksi aikoi mennä
naimisiin erään rikkaan käsityöläisen tyttären kanssa, joka oli
taipuvainen vaihtamaan kultapussinsa kreivilliseen kruunuun.
Kuultuaan sen alistui Ilonka. Hän ei enää välittänyt, mitä hänen
parhaakseen päätettiin. Koska hän oli valehdellut hänelle puhuen
rakkaudesta, jonka hän oli sanonut kestävän hamaan kuolemaan
asti, mutta joka oli loppunutkin vuoden kuluttua, koska hän voi
käyttäytyä niin petollisesti ja kunniattomasti, ei hänkään enää
välittänyt, mitä hänelle tehtiin. Koska hän ei saanut tulla onnelliseksi,
voi hän yhtähyvin tehdä, mitä isä ja äiti tahtoivat, ja suostua
menemään vaimoksi talonpojalle, joka ei ollut sen halpamaisempi
tahtoessaan jalosukuisen neidon puolisokseen kuin hänkään.

Maatessaan siinä ummessa silmin ja alistuvaisena rosmariinilta

tuoksuvassa vuoteessaan palautti Ilonka mieleensä ensimmäisen
kohtauksensa tuon pitkän ja komean miehen kanssa, hänen, joka oli
kuvailtu hänelle rikkaaksi ja häikäilemättömäksi talonpojaksi, jonkun
jalosukuisen neidon kosijaksi, jonka hän halusi yhdistää alhaiseen
sukuunsa. Hän muisteli Andráksen omituista persoonallisuutta,
hänen sointuvaa ääntään, hänen silmiään, jotka katsoivat häneen
niin kummallisesti, ja suuteloa, jonka hän aina painoi hänen
kädelleen ja joka pani hänet aina punastumaan ja aiheutti tunteen,
joka sekä peloitti että pyörrytti.

Hän koetti muistella jokaista tuon kirkossa tapahtuneen pyhän

toimituksen erikoiskohtaa, vannomiaan valoja ja toistamiaan
rukouksia; kun hän oli polvillaan tuon omituisen miehen rinnalla, jota
huolimatta hänen syntyperästään hän ei voinut halveksia, sillä hän
oli niin pitkä, niin rauhallinen kaikissa hommissaan ja hänellä oli niin
kummallisen käskevä ilme silmissään.
 Häntä värisytti nyt, kuten silloinkin, kun hän tunsi saaneensa
kultaisen sormuksen sormeensa merkiksi, että hän oli tuon miehen
orja, joka hänen äitinsä sanojen mukaan oli vaimoaan paljon ala-
arvoisempi. Ja hän oli kumminkin vannonut kunnioittavansa,
rakastavansa ja tottelevansa häntä. Ah, hän kyllä koettaisi täyttää
tuon viimeisen lupauksen niin hyvin kuin hän vain voi, täyttää kaikki
hänen pyyntönsä ja työskennellä kuin orja menneinä aikoina, jolloin
kovat lyönnit olivat ainoa palkka päivän: kestävästä raskaasta työstä.
Hän tahtoi kärsiä miehensä ylpeyttä ja valtaa, ja tulla hänen iloiseksi
ja kuuliaiseksi orjakseen. Jos hän täyttää tuon valan, niin ehkä
Jumala vapauttaa hänet noista muista, sillä olihan hän vannonut
tahtovansa myöskin rakastaa miestään.

Sitten muistui hänen mieleensä viimeinen kuva, jonka todellisuus

tuntui hänestä kerrassaan unelta. Hän oli näkevinään ympärillään
paljon kasvoja ja kauempana tuon pienen, olkikattoisen, kuumassa
toukokuun auringonpaisteessa kylpevän kylän. Ilma oli kuuma ja
täynnä aikaisten kesäkukkien huumaavaa tuoksua. Kaikkialta kuului
mehiläisten surinaa ja lintujen laulua, hevosten hirnumista ja
lampaiden määyntää. Sitten tunsi hän nopeasti, miten hänet
nostettiin maasta ja miten hän sitten oli lentävinään ilmojen halki kuin
siivillä. Hän muisti epämääräisesti pitkän huudon, joka häipyi
kuulumattomiin hänen lentäessään, ja oli vieläkin tuntevinaan, miten
joku puristi hänet lujasti syliinsä. Akasiat, talot ja nuo monet
ilmehikkäät kasvot muuttuivat nyt hänen mielestään kauan sitten
unhotetuiksi asioiksi, eikä hän lopulta enää muistanut mitään.

Ah, miksi oli hän palannut tuntoihinsa jälleen? Miksi olikaan hän
herännyt? Hänellä oli ollut niin ihmeellisen hyvä olla tuossa unholan
rauhassa. Miksi ei tuota rauhallisuutta ollut kestänyt iankaikkisesti,
kunnes nuo siivet olisivat vieneet hänet korkeuksiin, joissa vallitsee
iäinen lepo?
XXVII

AUTTAMATON ASIA.

Aurinko oli jo vaipunut matalalle länteen, ja sen kultaiset säteet

tunkeutuivat pienistä ikkunoista arkihuoneeseen muodostaen
jokaisen siellä olevan esineen ympärille pienen sädekehän.

Etelka oli siirtänyt kehruuksensa syrjään. Päivälliseen ei oltu

koskettukaan, ja hän oli valmistanut omin käsin muutamia herkullisia
ruokalajeja illalliseksi, koska Sári ja Kati muistelivat vain
vihkimätilaisuutta ja kaikkia näkemiään ja kuulemiaan niin, ettei
heidän huolekseen voitu jättää ensimmäisen aterian valmistamista
nuorelle emännälle tämän uudessa kodissa.

Hän ei nähtävästi ollut vielä liikahtanutkaan. Etelka oli kurkistanut

huoneeseen ja nähnyt hänen nukkuvan vielä rauhallisesti hienosti
punastunein poskin ja säännöllisesti hengittäen puoliavoimien
huulien välistä. Rauhoittuneena oli hän jättänyt Andráksen
vahtimaan seurusteluhuoneeseen ja kiiruhtanut itse keittiöön.

András istui haaveillen avonaisen ikkunan ääressä ja katseli

tasangon poikki laskeutuvaan aurinkoon päin. Tällaiseksi oli hän
mielessään aina kuvitellut tämän päivien päivän. Hän oli kuin
aavistanut, miten rauhallista tässä erillisessä talossa tulee silloin
olemaan, kun hän valmistautuu tapaamaan vaimoaan ja vaimo
häntä. He saavat nyt oleskella tästä alkaen ikuisesti yhdessä,
rakastaa ja tulla rakastetuiksi, jakaa surut ja ilot, ja elää vain
kokonaan toisilleen. András muisti yksinäistä lapsuuttaan ja
nuoruuttaan, jolloin hän väsyneenä päivän kovasta työstä meni isän
kovista ja oikeudettomista lyönneistä kirvelevin hartioin autiolle
tasangolle, joka oli vielä yksinäisempi kuin hän, ja ollen yksinään
taivaan ja maan välillä kuun ja tuikkivien tähtien valossa pyysi hän
kaunista lumoavaa luontoa kertomaan hänelle muutamia
salaisuuksiaan ja ilmoittamaan hänelle, miksi haikara alituisesti
huutaa puolisoaan, miksi pääskyset rakentavat pesiään, miksi noilla
pienillä sisiliskoillakin on pienet pesänsä meloonien suurien lehtien
alla ja miksi hän huolimatta suuresta rakkaudestaan äitiään kohtaan
tuntee itsensä yksinäiseksi ja kodittomaksi. Nyt hän ymmärsi sen.
Hän käsitti nyt luonnon suuren kaikkiin kohdistuvan lain kahden
olennon liittymisestä yhdeksi kokonaisuudeksi, lain, jota eivät hänen
vanhempansa olleet kyenneet opettamaan hänelle, mutta jonka hän
oli oppinut heti silloin, kun hän ensimmäisen kerran oli nähnyt tuon
lumoavan olennon, joka oli muuttunut hänen unelmakseen, ja
ensimmäisen kerran kuullut tuon äänen, joka oli muuttunut hänen
korvissaan enkelin soitoksi. Kuten haikara, kutsui hänkin nyt
puolisoaan, ja kuten pääskyset ikävöi hänkin nyt kotia, jossa hän voi
rakastaa ja hyväillä häntä, josta oli tuleva tuon kodin kuningatar.

Hänen takaansa kuuluva heikko kolina pakotti hänet kääntämään

päätään. Siellä hän olikin, tuo valkoisiin puettu olento, jonka
ääriviivat näkyivät vain epäselvästi enenevässä pimeydessä. Ilonka
oli irroittanut huntunsa, mutta ei ollut vielä riisunut yltään
morsiuspukuaan.
 »Ilonka!»

Nähtävästi ei Ilonka ollut odottanut löytävänsä miestään täältä,

sillä hän säpsähti, pysähtyi nopeasti ja nojasi kädellään
läheisyydessä olevaan pöytään pysyäkseen pystyssä.

»Ilonka!» sanoi András jälleen tullen aivan hänen viereensä.

Ilonka peräytyi pari askelta.

»Luulin… En tiennyt ollenkaan sinun olevan täällä».

»Äitini läksi täältä juuri äsken», vastasi András hyvin ystävällisesti.

»Huomattuaan sinun vielä nukkuvan meni hän keittiöön, ja käski
minun olla täällä vahtimassa, liikkuisitko sinä».

Hän koetti tarttua Ilonkan käteen ja vetää hänet luokseen, mutta

Ilonka vetäisi kätensä pois ja sanoi nopeasti:

»Missä tuo keittiö on? Haluan mennä puhuttelemaan häntä».

»Keittiö on toisessa rakennuksessa, rakkaani, tuolla puutarhan

toisella puolella. Tämä rakennus on yksinäinen ja rauhallinen, eikä
täällä ole nyt muita kuin me».

András koetti jälleen tarttua hänen käteensä, mutta Ilonka karttoi

häntä ja meni hermostuneesti ovelle.

»Ah, voin kyllä osata sinne. Tiedän hänen tarvitsevan minua.

Hän…»

Mutta András hyppäsi nopeasti hänen tielleen ja kietoi

intohimoisesti käsivartensa hänen ympärilleen.
 »Hän ei kaipaa apuasi, kultaseni», kuiskasi hän kiihkeästi, »etkä
sinä sitäpaitsi voi mennäkään, sillä kuten näet, olen vanginnut sinut.
Ah, älä koetakaan riistäytyä irti, sillä en päästä sinua. Miten kalpea ja
säikähtynyt oletkaan! Oletko peloissasi? Et suinkaan nyt levätessäsi
minun sylissäni. Voin suojella sinua, kultaseni, kaikilta suruilta ja
vahingoilta. Kumarru hieman, että pieni korvasi tulee suuni eteen,
sillä haluan kuiskata siihen jotakin, joka on painanut mieltäni monien
vaikeiden kuukausien kuluessa ja murtanut melkein sydämeni
koettaessaan tunkeutua sieltä esille. Ilonka, omani, suloinen
vaimoni, rakastan sinua»!

Hänen äänensä oli käheä ja omituinen, ja hän oli puristanut

Ilonkan käsivarsiensa väliin kuin pihteihin. Hän veti vaimoaan yhä
lähemmäksi, kunnes Ilonkan kasvot olivat aivan hänen lähellään.
Ilonka ponnisteli vapautuakseen. Hän oli hämmästynyt ja säikähtynyt
eikä hän ymmärtänyt. Hän ei ollut milloinkaan ennen kuullut
kenenkään äänessä niin kummallista sointua eikä nähnyt kenenkään
silmissä tuollaista katsetta, joka peloitti häntä niin hirveästi. Hänen
äitinsä olisi pitänyt varoittaa häntä ja puhua hänelle, oliko hänen
sallittava, että tuo tunkeileva talonpoika kiertää käsivartensa hänen
ympärilleen, kuten jonkun kylän tytön ympärille ravintolassa. Hän
tunsi olevansa nöyryytetty ja äärettömästi peloissaan, kun hän
terävin kynsin repi miehensä käsiä koettaessaan toivottomasti
vapautua hänen sylistään.

»Et saa … et saa!» läähätti hän vain, sillä kauhu kuristi hänen
kurkkuaan. Mutta hän ei näyttänyt ollenkaan välittävän vaimonsa
sanoista, vaan toisti kummallisesti: »Ilonka, rakastan sinua»!, ollen
vähältä tukehtua noihin sanoihin. Ja nämä hänen lausumansa sanat
panivat Ilonkan vapisemaan vastustushalusta, sillä ne olivat aivan
samat, joita muinoin onnellisina aikoina eräs ystävällinen ääni oli
mumissut hänen korvaansa kunnioittavan tunteellisesti ja jotka silloin
olivat synnyttäneet hänessä sellaisen jumalallisen onnen tunteen.

»Et saa!» toisti hän vain koneellisesti.

Andráksen ote höltyi hieman ja Ilonka näki hänen hymyilevän.

»Mitä en saa, kultaseni? Mitä haluat minulta kieltää? Etkö halua

kuunnellakaan tunnustustani, miten äärettömästi sinua rakastan?
Muista, etten ole näiden viikkojen kuluessa uskaltanut sinua juuri
lähestyäkään. Lähellämme oli aina tuo joku, joka tuntui karkoittavan
kaikki rakkauden sanat suustani. Viikkokausiin en ole uskaltanut
sinuun oikein katsoakaan. Olisi julmaa kieltää minua puhumasta nyt,
kun vihdoinkin olemme kahden ja olet todellisuudessa minun
vaimoni».

Nopein liikkein onnistui Ilonkan vihdoinkin vapautua hänen

syleilystään. Hän seisoi miehensä edessä suorana ja
puolustusasennossa kapinoiden kaikin ylimyksellisin ylpeyksin ja
voimin tuota julkeaa talonpoikaa vastaan. András näytti kumminkin
niin pitkältä ja voimakkaalta, ja hänen silmissään oli sellainen
ehdottoman tahdon, melkeinpä tyrannimaisen valtiuden ilme, että
Ilonka vaistomaisesti muisti valansa kunnioittaa ja totella häntä.
Hänen mieleensä juolahti myös äskeinen hiljainen päätöksensä, että
hän halusi ehdottomasti totella, vaikka hän ei voinutkaan rakastaa.

»Niin, niin, kyllä tiedän», sanoi hän hitaasti jonkunlaisin uhmaavin

nöyryyksin. »Ymmärrän ja koetan muistaa. Olen vaimosi, ja tänään
alttarin edessä vannoin tottelevani sinua. Isäni ja äitini pakottivat
minut taipumaan ja minä täytin heidän toivonsa. Vannoin tottelevani
sinua eikä sinun tarvitse pelätä minun rikkovan tuota valaani. Koetan
täyttää vaimon velvollisuudet, ja työskennellä hyväksesi samoin kuin
joku talonpoikaisnainenkin olisi tehnyt. Tahdon kehrätä ja
työskennellä puutarhassa, kävellä kirkkoon kanssasi ja jakaa
työmiehillesi heille tulevat vilja-ja viiniosuudet. Sinun on opetettava
minua ja käskettävä minua, ja minä haluan totella. Sinun ei tarvitse
ollenkaan pelätä. Tiedän, että olen vaimosi»!

András katsoi häneen melkein lumottuna. Hän ei oikein

ymmärtänyt Ilonkan puhetta. Hän näytti hyvin kauniilta huolimatta
tuosta omituisesta kasvojen ilmeestä. András ei voinut ymmärtää
tuon katseen tarkoitusta. Siinä oli varmasti jotakin säikähtynyttä,
kuten hänen äänessäänkin, joka oli selvä ja kirkas. Hänen jokainen
sanansa tuntui sattuvan Andráksen sydämeen pannen sen
vapisemaan tuskasta. Illan varjot pitenivät pitenemistään eikä
András voinut nähdä enää vaimoaan selvästi. Hänen hento
vartalonsa näytti aivan aavemaiselta enenevässä pimeydessä.

Hän keskeytti hetkeksi ja András mumisi »Ilonka»! tunteellisesti ja

vetoavasti. Hän olisi halunnut sanoa jotakin ja koetti lähestyä
vaimoaan jälleen, mutta tämä nosti käskevästi kätensä.

»Älä sano mitään»! sanoi Ilonka ylpeästi. »Äsken en voinut sinua

estää, sillä puristit minua niin kovasti. Koetin kyllä vastustaa, mutta
sinä sanoit kumminkin sanottavasi ja nyt on minun vuoroni. Halusit
puheesi mukaan ilmaista minulle paljon asioita, jotka lausuttuasi ne
panivat poskeni kuumenemaan häpeästä. En tiennyt — olen vain
tyhmä tyttö eikä äitini kertonut minulle — tähän kauheaan kauppaan
sisältyvän senkin, että saat puhua minulle rakkaudesta ja sanoa
minulle sanoja, jotka suussasi muuttuvat pyhyyden loukkaamiseksi».

»Ilonka!»