Jordan Peterson on Divine hiddenness

Jordan Peterson's response to the problem of divine hiddenness is characteristic of his broader theological approach: he transforms a philosophical objection into an existential insight. God's apparent hiddenness, in Peterson's framework, is not a problem to be solved but a feature of the moral structure of reality. Meaning is not given — it must be wrested from chaos through voluntary confrontation with suffering and the assumption of responsibility.

Peterson draws on the story of Job, Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, and Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God to argue that the experience of God's absence is itself a crucial stage in moral and spiritual development. The individual who has never experienced the absence of meaning — who has never stood at the edge of the abyss — has never truly confronted the deepest questions of existence. Divine hiddenness, in this view, is the precondition for genuine faith rather than its refutation.

This approach sidesteps J.L. Schellenberg's formal argument from divine hiddenness entirely. Peterson is not interested in whether a perfectly loving God would ensure that all reasonable people believe — he is interested in why the confrontation with meaninglessness is a necessary stage in the development of a mature moral agent. His answer is that genuine meaning cannot be coerced or guaranteed — it must be chosen, freely, in the face of its apparent absence.