Divine Self-Disclosure in Filial Values: The Problem of Guided Goodness

Abstract

This article’s main thesis is that divine self-disclosure to humans is best understood in terms of manifested filial values with a distinctive moral intention aimed at cultivating righteousness. To that end, it identifies and clarifies a neglected problem of guided goodness and its significance for God’s self-disclosure in manifested filial values. Part I characterizes the relevant values as the potential motivating powers of some goods to enable filial improvement relative to God’s perfect moral character. Part II explains how God is related to manifested filial values in terms of God’s active and empowering moral character and will. Part III illuminates how God can be experienced by humans through divine self-disclosure in manifested filial values, including in morally searching interventions, such as nudges toward goodness, in conscience. Part IV portrays reciprocity between God’s moral will and human wills as central to human receptivity to divine self-disclosure in manifested filial values. Part V clarifies how evidentially grounded assurance for faith in God can arise from divine self-disclosure when cooperatively received by humans. Part VI contrasts my approach to the ground of faith in God with some views of Martin Buber and H. Richard Niebuhr. Moral phenomenology, aided by the apostle Paul, emerges as central to understanding divine self-disclosure in manifested filial values.