THE ANALYTIC THEIST THE ANALYTIC THEIST An Alvin Plantinga Reader Edited by James F. Sennett Contents Preface Vii Alvin Plantinga: A Short Chronology ix Introduction The Analytic Theist: An Appreciation, by James F Sennett xi I NATURAL THEOLOGY AND ATHEOLOGY 1 1. God and Analogy 4 2. The Free Will Defense 22 3. The Ontological Argument 50 4. Is Naturalism Irrational? 72 II REFORMED EPISTEMOLOGY 97 5. Reason and Belief in God 102 6. Justification and Theism 162 7. A Defense of Religious Exclusivism 187 III DIVINE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES 211 8. Necessary Being 214 9. Does God Have a Nature? 225 10. On Ockham's Way Out 258 IV CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 293 11. Advice to Christian Philosophers 296 12. Sheehan's Shenanigans: How Theology Becomes Tomfoolery 316 13. Christian Philosophy at the End of the Twentieth Century 328 Afterword, by Alvin Plantinga 353 Alvin Plantinga: A Bibliography 359 Reprint Permission Acknowledgments 368 Preface This project began as an idea in the summer of 1993. I was a participant in a National Endowment for the Humanities summer institute at UC-Berkeley under the direction of Keith Lehrer and Nick Smith. The subject was "Knowledge, Teaching, and Wisdom," and one of our guest lecturers was Alvin Plantinga. While visiting with him and talking over some of his more significant work, I was suddenly struck by the fact that so much of that work is scattered hither and yon in a dozen different sources - a journal here, a book chapter there, etc. "How odd," I thought, "that no one has put all this important philosophy of religion in one place." I broached the idea of a collection to Plantinga that summer and received his endorsement to pursue it. But, as academic careers so often go, it would be over two years before I launched the project in earnest. Now at last I am pleased to present this volume. I hope it will be a valuable contribution to the study of philosophy of religion and Christian philosophy in America. But more than anything it is a labor of love, presented with gratitude to one who has given so much to me and to Christian philosophers across this country. I testify to those contributions in some detail in my introductory essay, and will reserve the accolades until then. As can be seen from the bibliography at the end of this book, Plantinga's published corpus is immense. Choosing a representative sample of that corpus was no mean task, as they say. Some selections were simple: no collection of his work would be complete without "Reason and Belief in God" or "Advice to Christian Philosophers." But beyond that the selection task was quite arduous. In choosing the pieces I did I was guided primarily by the desire to represent as adequately as possible Plantinga's immeasurable contribution to contemporary philosophy of religion in general and to the resurgence of Christian philosophy in particular. But I was painfully aware that there were many different ways this might be done. One problem I faced was that Plantinga's work ranges from the semipopular to the laboriously technical. To make the right selections, I had to decide exactly what kind of audience I envisioned. For better or worse, I have selected these essays primarily with the scholarly audience in mind. They are not, for the most part, easily digested. They require intense study and reflection, plus perhaps some delving into related literature, for full appreciation. However, I do not think one need be a philosophical scholar to benefit from this work. (For example, I selected Plantinga's less technical treatments of the Ontological Argument and the Free Will Defense in God, Freedom, and Evil, rather than his highly specialized and technical treatments of them in The Nature of Necessity.) Theologians, biblical scholars, and social scientists, among others, should be able to read and understand Plantinga's writings, and benefit greatly from them in their specific disciplines. Two editorial notes. First, as I intimated above, I include a bibliography of Plantinga's work at the end of this volume. The entries in this bibliography are numbered consecutively. References to Plantinga's works in the introductory essay, editor's notes, and the section introductions are then made by using those numbers. Second, I have tried to stay out of the way as much as possible in this volume and allow Plantinga to speak for himself. I have kept the actual editing of the original texts to a bare minimum (with the exception of chapters five and nine, very large works that had to be excerpted to make it feasible to include them at all). On occasion, however, clarity requires my intervention with a short editor's note. These are indicated in the text by an asterisk (*) and appear at the bottom of the relevant page. Many colleagues and friends across the country provided me with insights and suggestions regarding the composition of this collection and other dimensions of the project. I thank all of them profusely, though I could never pretend to name them all. I will offer special thanks to Paul Draper, William Hasker, Dewey Hoitenga, Philip Quinn, Tom Senor, Richard Swinburne, William Wainwright, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, who provided me with very helpful written comments concerning the structure of the volume and offered helpful words of advice regarding a project of this nature. Of course, I must say a very special word of thanks to Alvin Plantinga for making himself available to me as this project unfolded, for writing the Afterword, and for being the kind of philosopher, Christian, and human being that is worthy of the appreciation this volume intends. Soli Deo Gloria May 1998