Warranted Christian belief / Alvin Plantinga.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Plantinga, Alvin.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Apologetics.

Christianity--Philosophy.

Christianity.

Faith and reason--Christianity.

Faith and reason.

Physical Description:

xx, 508 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York ; Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000.

Summary:

This is the third volume in Alvin Plantinga's trilogy on the notion of warrant, which he defines as that which distinguishes knowledge from true belief. Here, he expands his focus of warrant from strictly epistemological issues to examine whether theistic belief, specifically Christian belief, can enjoy warrant.

Is Christian belief intellectually acceptable? Is it acceptable for intelligent people living today, at the beginning of the third millennium? Plantinga tackles these questions, examining whether it is rational, reasonable, justifiable, and ultimately warranted to accept Christian belief. He contends that Christian beliefs are warranted to the extent that they are formed by properly functioning cognitive faculties; thus, insofar as they are warranted, Christian beliefs constitute knowledge if they are true.

Plantinga argues that it is plausible to believe that humans not only have natural cognitive faculties, such as perception, memory, and reasoning, that allow us to know things about objects, but that we also have a natural cognitive faculty that enables us to form basic beliefs about God. He describes how this faculty can be dulled and damaged by sin, and repaired by faith to lead believers to produce warranted Christian belief. He goes on to explore a proposal, common to Aquinas and Calvin, that Christian belief originates in a non-natural source, which Aquinas called the "Internal Instigation of the Holy Spirit" and Calvin called the "Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit."

Warranted Christian Belief, a work of impeccable scholarship by one of today's leading epistemologists, will challenge and engage philosophers as well as scholars of religious studies.

Contents:

Part I. Is There A Question?

1. Kant 3

I. The Problem

II. Kant

A. Two Worlds or One?

B. Arguments or Reasons?

2. Kaufman and Hick 31

I. Kaufman

A. The Real Referent and the Available Referent

B. The Function of Religious Language

II. Hick

A. The Real

B. Coherent?

C. Religiously Relevant?

D. Is There Such a Thing?

Part II. What is the Question?

3. Justification and the Classical Picture 67

I. John Locke

A. Living by Reason

B. Revelation

II. Classical Evidentialism, Deontologism, and Foundationalism

A. Classical Foundationalism

B. Classical Deontologism

III. Back to the Present

IV. Problems with the Classical Picture

A. Self-Referential Problems

B. Most of Our Beliefs Unjustified?

V. Christian Belief Justified

VI. Analogical Variations

A. Variations on Classical Foundationalism

B. Variations on the Deontology

C. Is This the de Jure Question?

4. Rationality 108

I. Some Assorted Versions of Rationality

A. Aristotelian Rationality

B. Rationality as Proper Function

C. The Deliverances of Reason

D. Means-End Rationality

II. Alstonian Practical Rationality

A. The Initial Question

B. Doxastic Practices

C. Epistemic Circularity

D. The Argument for Practical Rationality

E. Practical Rationality Initially Characterized

F. The Original Position

G. The Wide Original Position

H. A Narrow Original Position?

5. Warrant and the Freud-and-Marx Complaint 135

I. The F&M Complaint

A. Freud

B. Marx

C. Others

D. How Shall We Understand the F&M Complaint?

II. Warrant: The Sober Truth

III. The F&M Complaint Again

Part III. Warranted Christian Belief

6. Warranted Belief in God 167

I. The Aquinas/Calvin Model

A. Models

B. Presentation of the Model

II. Is Belief in God Warrant-Basic?

A. If False, Probably Not

B. If True, Probably So

III. The de Jure Question Is Not Independent of the de Facto Question

IV. The F&M Complaint Revisited

7. Sin and Its Cognitive Consequences 199

I. Preliminaries

II. Initial Statement of the Extended Model

III. The Nature of Sin

IV. The Noetic Effects of Sin

A. The Basic Consequence

B. Sin and Knowledge

8. The Extended Aquinas/Calvin Model: Revealed to Our Minds 241

I. Faith

II. How Does Faith Work?

III. Faith and Positive Epistemic Status

IV. Proper Basicality and the Role of Scripture

V. Comparison with Locke

VI. Why Necessary?

VII. Cognitive Renewal

9. The Testimonial Model: Sealed upon Our Hearts 290

I. Belief and Affection

II. Jonathan Edwards

A. Intellect and Will: Which is Prior?

B. The Affirmations of Faith

III. Analogue of Warrant

IV. Eros

10. Objections 324

I. Warrant and the Argument from Religious Experience

II. What Can Experience Show?

III. A Killer Argument?

IV. Son of Great Pumpkin?

V. Circularity?

Part IV. Defeaters?

11. Defeaters and Defeat 357

I. Nature of Defeaters

II. Defeaters for Christian or Theistic Belief

III. Projective Theories a Defeater for Christian Belief?

12. Two (or More) Kinds of Scripture Scholarship 374

I. Scripture Divinely Inspired

II. Traditional Christian Biblical Commentary

III. Historical Biblical Criticism

A. Varieties of Historical Biblical Criticism

B. Tensions with Traditional Christianity

IV. Why Aren't Most Christians More Concerned?

A. Force Majeure

B. A Moral Imperative?

C. Historical Biblical Criticism More Inclusive?

V. Nothing to Be Concerned About

A. Troeltschian Historical Biblical Criticism Again

B. Non-Troeltschian Historical Biblical Criticism

C. Conditionalization

VI. Concluding Coda

13. Postmodernism and Pluralism 422

I. Postmodernism

A. Is Postmodernism Inconsistent with Christian Belief?

B. Do These Claims Defeat Christian Belief?

C. Postmodernism a Failure of Nerve

II. Pluralism

A. A Probabilistic Defeater?

B. The Charge of Moral Arbitrariness

14. Suffering and Evil 458

I. Evidential Atheological Arguments

A. Rowe's Arguments

B. Draper's Argument

II. Nonargumentative Defeaters?.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0195131924

0195131932

OCLC:

40473829