Hiddenness and Free Will: Divine Hiddenness, Coercion, and Autonomous Choice — 29

The claim that divine hiddenness preserves human freedom has two importantly different forms. On the logical form, evidential clarity is incompatible with a free relational response. On the empirical form, clarity would predictably dominate normal human evaluation or allegiance even if it did not do so by necessity. This paper separates belief, evaluation, and allegiance and tests each form against that distinction. A coherent disclosure can settle existence and identity while omitting threats, sanctions, manipulation, and cognitive bypass; evaluation and allegiance can therefore remain open. That possibility defeats the logical necessity claim. It does not establish how people would actually respond to unprecedented disclosure. The empirical form consequently requires a causal mechanism, an estimate of its expected force, and a proportionality argument showing why less harmful clarity would not protect the same good. Murray's coercion proposal, Dumsday's victim-centered account, and a Kantian concern about providential reward become more precise when treated as different mechanisms rather than as one inference from evidence to compulsion. The result is firm and limited: clarity alone need not remove relational freedom, while any psychological case for hiddenness bears an unresolved evidential and proportionality burden. This does not refute theism or distinct proposals based on mercy, moral formation, or human love.