The Henry Center is pleased to announce that the audio and video from Dr. Michael Rea’s lecture and interview on divine hiddenness and divine silence are now available. Click here to watch or listen to his lecture. Click here to stream the audio or here to stream the video of his interview. Visit our media vault to download the audio files. See below for a description of the event:
On March 14, Dr. Rea was the speaker for the Scripture and Ministry lecture series sponsored by the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding. The lecture was held in TEDS chapel. Dr. Rea spoke on the topic of “Divine Hiddenness, Divine Silence.”
“Divine silence—or, as many think of it, divine hiddenness—is the source of one of the two most important and widely discussed objections to belief in God. It is also one of the most important sources of doubt and spiritual distress for religious believers. Many people seem to be utterly broken by divine silence in the midst of their own suffering or the suffering of others, or simply by the ongoing and unsatisfied longing for the presence of God. In this talk, Michael Rea explains why divine silence poses a serious intellectual obstacle to belief in God, and then goes on to consider ways of overcoming that obstacle. After considering several ways in which divine silence might actually be beneficial to human beings, he argues that perhaps silence is nothing more or less than God’s preferred mode of interaction with creatures like us. Perhaps God simply desires communion rather than overt communication with human beings, and perhaps God has provided ways for us to experience God’s presence richly even amidst the silence. Rea concludes that it is plausible to think that Biblical narratives and the liturgies of the church are the vehicles by which God’s presence is mediated to us.”
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