The Dark Knight of the Soul: Weaning and the problem of divine withdrawal

Could there be a morally sufficient reason for a loving God to withdraw from those that love him and seek to be close to him? If God loves us and so desires union with us, why is it that so many, who once felt close to God and who have subsequently done nothing to precipitate separation from him, now experience only his absence? Although there has been some discussion in the philosophical literature about why a good God would allow evil in the world or why he would be hidden from non-culpable atheists, little has been said about why God might allow those that love him and seek union with him to experience the immense suffering of divine withdrawal. Putting aside those explanations which seek to locate the reason for divine withdrawal by pointing to the agent’s sin, her lack of desire, or her experiencing physical and emotional pain, I ask whether God have any good reasons for withdrawing from an agent.

A metaphor which has been used repeatedly to answer this question, particularly in the Christian tradition, is that separation from God is a kind of spiritual weaning process in which God uses the experience of his absence in order to bring about maturation and greater union with him. After discussing the use of this metaphor in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and John of the Cross’s poem The Dark Night of the Soul, I go on to discuss the question of how someone’s absence could be good for their maturation. From this discussion of weaning, I argue that that separation has an important role to play in deepening relationships of love—drawing on research in de-adaptation in the psychological and sociological literature, I argue that in order for their to be a union of love, there must be an experience of dependence as well as an experience of independence. This position can explain, or so I argue, why God allows people who engage in the spiritual life to suffer the pain of separation from him. Finally, I turn to the question of whether this kind of suffering could ever be morally justifiable for God to inflict on an agent. I ask whether divine withdrawal could be justified as a kind of non-consensual harm removal which negatively benefits the agent in some way. However, built into the problem of divine withdrawal is the premise that agents are sufficiently far into the process of sanctification that they would not benefit negatively from divine withdrawal. And so it looks like divine withdrawal is an unjustified harm for God to inflict on an agent. In order to resolve this problem, I give an account of spiritual consent. Even in the most basic forms of Christian spirituality, believer’s consent for God’s ‘will to be done’. Christian liturgy, hymns and prayers are full of instances of consent that allow God to do whatever he wills for the purposes of our good. Thus, participating in the spiritual life allows God to inflict the suffering of divine withdrawal on an agent, even if the benefits are primarily positive.