Against Swinburne's Epistemic Distance Argument
I am about 50 pages into Swinburne's "The Resurrection of God Incarnate." So far, I have really enjoyed it and appreciate his rigor. For the most part, I find much of what he says to be quite plausible. But I have some hesitations regarding his argument from epistemic distance to explain why, if God exists, He is not in constant loving connection with humans. Here are a few of my reflections. Please, feel free to share your thoughts and poke any holes in my thinking (there will likely be many)! I also apologize if it is a bit wordy. Swinburne claims that "epistemic distance" (He cannot make his existence/presence too obvious) is needed so that we do the right things for the right reasons (e.g. we may only act righteously to be thought of well by God, to avoid Hell, to gain a reward like Heaven) and to ensure our freedom (that is, so we are not compelled by God's obvious presence to do good instead of evil). I am not particularly compelled by this argument. Is it really true that God would secure such goods by keeping Himself epistemically distant? Drawing from a parental analogy, I can see some plausibility. If a child is in the presence of a parent or authority figure, perhaps they will behave well merely in virtue of the fact that the authority figure is present. This seems less valuable than if the child behaves well in the absence of the parental figure, simply because the child deems such behavior virtuous. However, I don’t think this is analogous in the case of God. The believer in God, to the extent that they are rationally compelled by the existence of God, will not perceive God as being epistemically distant. Furthermore, they will believe that God is omnipresent. Back to the parental analogy, the believer is like the child, but wherever the child goes, they believe the parent is inevitably present. If Swinburne is correct, then it seems like the goods gained by God's epistemic distance are not secured, at least for believers in God. Would this imply that believers are being robbed of their freedom and being compelled by God's existence to do good, that believers' motives for their actions are, in a sense, corrupted by their belief in God? I am not entirely sure, actually, but there seems to be some tension here.