Meeting Face to Face: C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces and the Problem of Divine Hiddenness

Abstract

C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces is, among other things, a meditation on and response to divine hiddenness. The theme of hiddenness stretches throughout the work, and Orual's accusation against the gods centers precisely on the silence of the gods. Accordingly, Lewis gives a number of responses to the problem of divine silence or hiddenness in the novel. In this paper, I explore Lewis's engagement with divine hiddenness by comparing his framing of the problem, and his responses given, to divine hiddenness in modern philosophy of religion: the argument of J. L. Schellenberg and his responders. I argue that at least two of Lewis's responses in Till We Have Faces are similar to those found in this literature, despite predating Schellenberg's argument by almost fifty years, and that a third response, though different, is an important though often neglected response today.