Don’t Write Off the Absentee Author: Why the Problems of Divine Hiddenness and Neglect Don’t Destroy Vanhoozer’s Authorial Analogy

Abstract Kevin Vanhoozer’s authorial analogy for the God-World relation is a strong explanatory analogy which can aid Christians in thinking deeply, fruitfully, and systematically about the God they worship and His relationship to His creation. According to this analogy, God relates to His world in an analogous fashion to that of an author to his or her novel. However, the absolute sovereignty at play in the authorial analogy might serve to exacerbate the problems of divine hiddenness and divine neglect. Taken together and applied to the authorial analogy, I will call this the Absentee Author problem. The Author is absent from those characters who are open to relationship with Him and is likewise absent in situations wherein we would expect Him to lovingly intervene in His story, and furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for His absence. If Vanhoozer’s authorial analogy does in fact produce the Absentee Author problem and can offer no defense against it, then perhaps we ought to countermand its use, or at least severally limit its proposed explanatory scope. In this paper, I will argue that while Vanhoozer’s authorial analogy might appear to exacerbate the problems of hiddenness and neglect at first glance, ultimately Vanhoozer’s particular model can provide unique and orthodox answers to these problems which not only exculpate the analogy but commends its further use in theology and philosophy of religion.