Are Swinburne-like free-will rebuttals to divine hiddeness arguments inconsistent with Christian view of free will?

This is not my own question. I just copied and pasted this question from someone else, which that person should have asked here. https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/120705/are-swinburne-like-free-will-rebuttals-to-divine-hiddeness-arguments-inconsisten > For me, the biggest reason to doubt God's existence is that he is so non-obvious/hidden in comparison to his power and performance of highly obvious and visible acts in scriptures (always "a long long time ago..."). > > I asked a philosophically-minded Catholic friend about this, wondering why if God wants us to have a relationship with Him and to act in morally correct ways, why does he make it so hard to even arrive at a conclusion that he exists, let alone whether we should follow and worship him. > > They responded with what is called a "greater goods" argument (similar to responses for Evil), in that "If God made it obvious he existed, then we'd be coerced into being good, which would subvert our moral free will. Coming to believe is in itself a greater good." > > Putting aside my disbelief in "libertarian free will" (of the kind that is supposed to make us theologically responsible for our choices), it seems odd to explain lack of evidence by appealing its impact on free will - if our will is free, then no matter what we know we will always have the capacity to do otherwise -- we just make choices with more or less information. > > I found a nice snippet from an IEP article that summarized my friend's point nicely (with citations to greats like Swinburne): > > > Several goods have been proposed as the reason (or part of the reason) that God allows undesirable nonbelief phenomena. One such good is morally significant free will. The idea here is that the greater awareness one has of God, the greater the motivation one has to act rightly (due to a desire to please God, a fear of punishment for doing wrong, and so forth), and therefore if God were too obvious, we would have such a strong motivation to do good that it would cease to be a true choice. This has been defended by Richard Swinburne (1998). Helen De Cruz also addresses this question, examining it through the lens of cognitive science of religion. She suggests that there is some empirical evidence for the claim that a conscious awareness of God heightens one’s motivation to do good (De Cruz 2016). > > In particular, the following line is borderline incoherent in light of broader Christian views on the nature of free will and moral responsiblity: > > >...if God were too obvious, we would have such a strong motivation to do good that it would cease to be a true choice. > > This flies in the face of much of Christian doctrine. For example, St Andrews Encyclopedia of Theology states (emphasis mine): > > >... God’s goodness and providential control over creation form a very powerful problem of evil: if God is the creator of the world and has providential control over it, it seems that God is also the source of evil and death in the created world. One attractive way to solve these tensions is to assume the existence of a robust human free will. **If humans have free will, God cannot determine what humans freely do in moral and spiritual matters**. Humans are morally responsible because they make their own choices. God is not responsible for evil and sin, because they are the doing of **humans, whose actions are not forced by God**. > > This directly contradicts the statement that there needs to be "epistemic distance" or murkiness to the reality of God for our choice to be a "true choice" -- all choices are true choices according to this theological encyclopedia. > > I also found a discussion by Trent Horn on this in relation to the reality of Hell and its relation to free will: > > > One of my arguments for why I believe Hell is eternal is that the damned make it eternal by continually sinning and rejecting God. **They just double down on their sins and continue to wallow in them and routinely choose them over God for all eternity**. And you probably know people like this who are stubborn, who are malicious, that even when they’re offered mercy and grace, they turn it down and they double down on their own sins and they find almost a sick kind of pleasure in their own sins and in their own stubbornness. And I think that that’s what Hell is, that Hell, it has a lock, but the lock is on the inside. That people choose to not unlock it, that **if you took someone out of Hell and place them into Heaven, they would curse God and march right back into Hell and consider it to be better**. > > Again, this Christian apologist is basically saying that our free will is so strong that even after learning of the true, awful reality of Hell, those people would *still* choose to sin and separate from God. > > In the same article, Trent Horn makes another telling remark: > > > So that’s true. God wants all people to be saved. But just because God wants something, it doesn’t follow that’s going to happen. God wants me to not ever commit a sin in my life. Now, that makes sense, right? Does God want Trent Horn to sin? No, he doesn’t want me to sin. In fact, Jesus says, “Be perfect like your Heavenly father is perfect.” God wants me, from this moment going forward, to not commit a sin. Am I going to commit a sin? You bet I’m going to. In fact, James 3:2 says that we all stumble in small ways. So, there are many things that God wants, and that represents his perfect will for us, but he understands that we are not puppets on a string, we are not marionettes. And so, there are things God wants for us, but **we can choose to not go along with his plan**. > > ---- > So, **Are Christian's trying to have it both ways?** > > They like free will because it (permanently) puts the responsibility on us, not God, for the evils that happen and choices we make. God cannot be held liable *no matter what he does* -- that is a key point apologist answers to God's apparent impotence in the face of evil and disbelief/skepticism. They claim that we should not sin because God wants us not to sin, but if we know he wants this "too well" then we are being compelled?! > > So much of Christianity is geared around fostering a deep feeling of the reality of God, and also a healthy "fear/respect" of him and of the possibility of hell. If freely choosing God is such a greater good, so great that God puts up with all the negatives of free will, why are churches working so hard to undermine that freedom? > > Overall, it seems like free will defense to Divine Hiddenness is a dead end, as it relies on a lack of free will that we are supposed to have according to the exact same theologians.