‘Those who seek Christ will find him’: Another philosopher at Princeton converts to Catholicism
Princeton philosophy doctoral student Noah McKay recently converted to Catholicism after years of wrestling with questions about faith, evil, and divine hiddenness. Fine-tuning arguments, evidence for Christian miracles, and arguments from consciousness, moral knowledge, and natural beauty strengthened his belief in God. Evidence for miracles tied to distinctively Catholic teachings prompted McKay to study the Church’s history and theology, which he said further convinced him of Catholicism. McKay encouraged people discerning conversion to research Catholic miracles and pray; he is the second Princeton philosophy scholar to convert to Catholicism this year.
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Princeton philosophy doctoral student Noah McKay has converted to Catholicism after years of wrestling with questions about God, evil, and the Bible. He said evidence for miracles associated with distinctively Catholic teachings prompted him to investigate the Church’s history and theology more closely.
McKay said he was never an atheist and remained “at least slightly” more confident than not that God existed, though he faced serious uncertainties in high school and graduate school. These included the problem of evil, divine hiddenness, and questions about the reliability and interpretation of the Bible.
He cited fine-tuning arguments about the conditions necessary for life and empirical evidence for contemporary Christian miracles as the main reasons he became convinced of theism. Arguments from consciousness, moral knowledge, and natural beauty also contributed.
McKay said evidence for “vindicatory” Catholic miracles—miracles that, in his view, support teachings particular to the Catholic Church—helped lead him specifically to Catholicism. He argued that the evidence for these miracles was at least as strong as the evidence for Christian miracles he already accepted, and that he could not reasonably accept one set while rejecting the other.
That evidence encouraged him to study Church history and theology, where he said he found strong support for Catholicism. McKay has urged people considering conversion or a return to the Church to research the miracles he cited.
McKay said his conversion caused distress among some close friends and family because he came from a Protestant background. He encouraged people exploring Catholicism to pray, saying the rosary helped him during his own discernment.
McKay is the second Princeton philosophy scholar reported to have converted to Catholicism that year. Joe Schmid, who had run a popular agnostic-themed philosophy YouTube channel, announced his return to the Church earlier in the summer.
Divine hiddenness and rational grounds for Catholic belief
Divine hiddenness is a serious challenge to belief, but it does not by itself show that Catholic belief is irrational. The Catholic intellectual tradition represented here holds together two claims: the world and human conscience can give real, though indirect, grounds for belief in God; yet God is not ordinarily encountered with the unmistakable immediacy many people long for. Christian faith does not erase that tension. It interprets it in light of revelation, especially the Cross.
Hiddenness is not simply the claim that there is no evidence for God. It names the experience that God does not make himself continuously and unmistakably present: suffering persists, history can appear chaotic, and sincere people may feel met by silence. Newman gives this experience forcefully: God seems to act “under a veil,” leaving traces rather than confronting people directly. He argues that this absence makes the expectation of revelation understandable, not irrational.
Newman also presents hiddenness as a difficulty that conscience can intensify. Conscience, in his account, points both to God and to a sense of estrangement from God, while the suffering of the world makes that estrangement seem even more acute. This is a theological interpretation of the problem, not a demonstration that every person’s doubt is caused by personal fault.
The supplied Catholic scholarship identifies several kinds of rational grounds. One is metaphysical: finite, changing things do not explain their own existence, and the intelligibility, truth, goodness, and beauty found in the world may point beyond it to a transcendent source. Such reasoning is not a direct sight of God; it is an inference about what best explains reality.
Another ground is moral experience. Spaemann argues that conscience makes goodness known, while the existence of a world in which moral concern and suffering matter presses the question of whether reality is ultimately governed by goodness as well as power. His account does not claim that the fit between divine goodness and the world is obvious; rather, it identifies that fit as part of the mystery that belief must confront.
A further ground concerns revelation itself. The cited scholarly account argues that Christian claims should be assessed historically: whether the witness to Christ, the apostles, Scripture, and the developing Church presents a coherent testimony. It also points to the lives of the saints as evidence to consider—not as a substitute for argument, but as a concrete indication of the kind of transformation Christian faith claims to bring about.
These arguments can make belief reasonable without compelling assent as a mathematical proof would. They support a cumulative case: several lines of experience and reasoning may converge, while leaving room for questions and disagreement.
Newman’s account suggests that indirectness itself is part of the human condition: people infer God from the world, conscience, events, and inherited testimony rather than possessing constant, direct awareness of God. He sees this as a painful trial, but also as a circumstance in which the possibility of revelation becomes reasonable to hope for.
The silence is also not presented as something believers simply outgrow. In a cited address, Benedict XVI acknowledges that believers, too, know the experience of God’s silence. He describes prayer that can still cry out for God to speak, alongside moments in which beauty, worship, and sacred music make God’s presence perceptible. These experiences may encourage faith, though they are not equally available or persuasive to everyone.
For Spaemann, the Christian answer to the apparent conflict between divine justice and mercy is not an abstract solution but the sacrifice of Christ: the Cross is where the believer sees the darkness illuminated. This is a claim internal to Christian faith. It does not make every instance of suffering intelligible, nor does it prove to an unwilling observer that God exists. Its force is that Christianity identifies God not as detached from suffering but as entering it.
So the Catholic case is neither “God is obvious, so doubt is unreasonable” nor “God is hidden, so belief has no rational basis.” It is that the world and conscience can furnish genuine but indirect grounds for belief; that revelation can be examined for historical and existential credibility; and that the suffering and silence which remain are real difficulties, not questions Catholics must pretend to have solved. The available sources support this broad account, but they do not establish that divine hiddenness has a single explanation, or that the arguments will persuade every reasonable person.