Warranted Christian Belief by Alvin Plantinga About Warranted Christian Belief by Alvin Plantinga Title: Warranted Christian Belief URL: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/plantinga/warrant3.html Author(s): Plantinga, Alvin (1932-) Publisher: Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library Print Basis: Oxford University Press, 2000 Rights: Copyright 2000 by Alvin Plantinga. Used by permission of Oxford University Press. Date Created: 2008–01–26 CCEL Subjects: All; Apologetics LC Call no: BT1102.P57 1999 LC Subjects: Doctrinal theology Apologetics. Evidences of Christianity Warranted Christian Belief Alvin Plantinga Table of Contents About This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. ii Title Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 1 Dedication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 2 Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 3 Part I. Is There a Question?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 11 1. Kant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 11 I. The Problem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 12 II. Kant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 16 A. Two Worlds or One?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 18 B. Arguments or Reasons?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 26 2. Kaufman and Hick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 33 I. Kaufman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 34 A. The Real Referent and the Available Referent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 34 B. The Function of Religious Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 40 II. Hick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 43 A. The Real. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 43 B. Coherent?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 48 C. Religiously Relevant?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 54 D. Is There Such a Thing?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 56 Part II. What is the Question?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 61 3. Justification and the Classical Picture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 61 I. John Locke. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 65 A. Living by Reason. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 68 B. Revelation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 72 II. Classical Evidentialism, Deontologism, and Foundationalism. . . . . p. 73 A. Classical Foundationalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 74 B. Classical Deontologism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 77 III. Back to the Present. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 79 IV. Problems with the Classical Picture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 83 A. Self-Referential Problems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 84 B. Most of Our Beliefs Unjustified?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 86 V. Christian Belief Justified. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 88 VI. Analogical Variations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 90 A. Variations on Classical Foundationalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 90 B. Variations on the Deontology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 91 iii Warranted Christian Belief Alvin Plantinga C. Is This the de Jure Question?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 93 4. Rationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 95 I. Some assorted versions of rationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 96 A. Aristotelian Rationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 97 B. Rationality as Proper Function. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 97 C. The Deliverances of Reason. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 100 D. Means-Ends Rationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 102 II. Alstonian Practical Rationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 103 A. The Initial Question. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 103 B. Doxastic Practices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 104 C. Epsitemic Circularity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 105 D. The Argument for Practical Rationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 105 E. Practical Rationality Initially Characterized. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 106 F. The Original Position. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 107 G. The Wide Original Position. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 108 H. A Narrow Original Position?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 110 5. Warrant and the Freud-and-Marx Complaint. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 115 I. The F&M Complaint. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 117 A. Freud. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 117 B. Marx. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 120 C. Others. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 122 D. How Shall We Understand the F&M Complaint?. . . . . . . . . . . . p. 123 II. Warrant: The Sober Truth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 130 III. The F&M Complaint Again. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 136 Part III. Warranted Christian Belief. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 139 6. Warranted Belief in God. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 139 I. The Aquinas/Calvin Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 141 A. Models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 141 B. Presentation of the Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 142 II. Is Belief in God Warrant-Basic?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 155 A. If False, Probably Not. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 155 B. If True, Probably So. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 157 III. The de Jure Question is not Independent of the de Facto Question. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 159 IV. The F&M Complaint Revisited. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 160 7. Sin and Its Cognitive Consequences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 165 I. Preliminaries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 166 II. Initial Statement of the Extended Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 169 III. The Nature of Sin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 172 IV. The Noetic Effects of Sin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 177 iv Warranted Christian Belief Alvin Plantinga A. The Basic Consequences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 177 B. Sin and Knowledge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 180 8. The Extended Aquinas/Calvin Model: Revealed to Our Minds. . . . . . p. 198 I. Faith. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 203 II. How Does Faith Work?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 205 III. Faith and Positive Epistemic Status. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 208 A. Justification. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 208 B. Internal Rationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 210 C. External Rationality and Warrant: Faith is Knowledge. . . . . . . . . p. 211 IV. Proper Basicality and the Role of Scripture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 213 V. Comparison with Locke. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 219 VI. Why Necessary?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 220 VII. Cognitive Renewal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 230 9. The Testimonial Model: Sealed upon Our Hearts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 237 I. Belief and Affection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 238 II. Jonathan Edwards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 241 A. Intellect and Will: Which Is Prior?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 242 B. The Affirmations of Faith. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 249 III. Analogue of Warrant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 253 IV. Eros. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 254 10. Objections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 264 I. Warrant and the Argument from Religious Experience. . . . . . . . . . p. 266 II. What Can Experience Show?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 271 III. A Killer Argument?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 274 IV. Son of Great Pumpkin?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 280 V. Circularity?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 287 Part IV. Defeaters?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 290 11. Defeaters and Defeat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 290 I. The Nature of Defeaters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 292 II. Defeaters for Christian or Theistic Belief. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 298 III. Projective Theories a Defeater for Christian Belief?. . . . . . . . . . . p. 299 12. Two (or More) Kinds of Scripture Scholarship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 303 I. Scripture Divinely Inspired. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 305 II. Traditional Christian Biblical Commentary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 309 III. Historical Biblical Criticism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 313 A. Varieties of Historical Biblical Criticism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 317 B. Tensions with Traditional Christianity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 324 IV. Why Aren’t Most Christians More Concerned?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 325 A. Force Majeure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 327 B. A Moral Imperative?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 330 v Warranted Christian Belief Alvin Plantinga C. Historical Biblical Criticism More Inclusive?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 333 V. Nothing to be Concerned About. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 334 A. Troeltschian Historical Biblical Criticism Again. . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 335 B. Non-Troeltschian Historical Biblical Criticism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 336 C. Conditionalization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 340 VI. Concluding Coda. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 341 13. Postmodernism and Pluralism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 342 I. Postmodernism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 343 A. Is Postmodernism Inconsistent with Christian Belief?. . . . . . . . . p. 344 B. Do These Claims Defeat Christian Belief?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 346 C. Postmodernism a Failure of Nerve. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 354 II. Pluralism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 355 A. A Probabilistic Defeater?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 358 B. The Charge of Moral Arbitrariness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 360 14. Suffering and Evil. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 371 I. Evidential Atheological Arguments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 377 A. Rowe’s Arguments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 377 B. Draper’s Argument. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 381 II. Nonargumentative Defeaters?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 391 [Original] Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 405 Indexes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 425 Index of Scripture References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 425 Greek Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 426 Index of Pages of the Print Edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 426 vi Warranted Christian Belief Alvin Plantinga iii WARRANTED CHRISTIAN BELIEF Alvin Plantinga New York     Oxford Oxford University Press 2000 Copyright © 2000 by Alvin Plantinga Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. iv 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York, 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian belief / Alvin Plantinga. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0–19–513193–2 (pbk.)—ISBN 0–19–513192–4 1. Apologetics.  2. Christianity—Philosophy.  3. Faith and reason—Christianity. I. Title. BT1102.P57 1999 230’.01-dc21   98.054362 Warranted Christian Belief Alvin Plantinga   To v WILLIAM P. ALSTON Mentor, Model, Friend vi 2 Warranted Christian Belief Alvin Plantinga   Preface vii This book is about the intellectual or rational acceptability of Christian belief. When I speak here of Christian belief, I mean what is common to the great creeds of the main branches of the Christian church, what unites Calvin and Aquinas, Luther and Augustine, Menno Simons and Karl Barth, Mother Teresa and St. Maximus the Confessor, Billy Graham and St. Gregory Palamas—classical Christian belief, as we might call it. Classical Christian belief includes, in the first place, the belief that there is such a person as God. God is a person: that is, a being with intellect and will. A person has (or can have) knowledge and belief, but also affections, loves, and hates; a person, furthermore, also has or can have intentions, and can act so as to fulfill them. God has all of these qualities and has some (knowledge, power, and love, for example) to the maximal degree. God is thus all-knowing and all-powerful; he is also perfectly good and wholly loving. Still further, he has created the universe and constantly upholds and providentially guides it. This is the theistic component of Christian belief. But there is also the uniquely Christian component: that we human beings are somehow mired in rebellion and sin, that we consequently require deliverance and salvation, and that God has arranged for that deliverance through the sacrificial suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who was both a man and also the second member of the Trinity, the uniquely divine son of God. I shall use the term ‘Christian belief’ to designate these two components taken together. Of course, I realize that others may use that term more narrowly or more broadly. There is no need to argue about words here: the beliefs I mentioned are the ones I shall discuss, however exactly we propose to use the term ‘Christian’. I also recognize that there are partial approximations to Christian belief so understood, as well as borderline cases, beliefs such that it simply isn’t clear whether they qualify as Christian belief. All viii of this is true, but as far as I can see, none of it compromises my project. Accordingly, our question is this: is belief of this sort intellectually acceptable? In particular, is it intellectually acceptable for us, now? For educated and intelligent people living in the twenty-first century, with all that has happened over the last four or five hundred years? Some will concede that Christian belief was acceptable and even appropriate for our ancestors,1 people who knew little of other religions, who knew nothing of evolution and our animal ancestry, nothing of contemporary subatomic physics and the strange, eerie, disquieting world it postulates, nothing of those great masters of suspicion, Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud, nothing of the acids of modern historical biblical And perhaps (as they may add) even for contemporaries who lead sheltered lives in cultural backwaters—for instance, the 1 area between the east and west coasts of the United States. 3 Warranted Christian Belief Alvin Plantinga criticism. But for us enlightened contemporary intellectuals (so the claim continues) things are wholly different; for people who know about those things (people of our rather impressive intellectual attainments), there is something naive and foolish, or perhaps bullheaded and irresponsible, or even vaguely pathological in holding onto such belief. But can’t we be a little more precise about the objection? What, exactly, is the problem? The answer, I think, is that there are alleged to be two main problems. Western thought since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment has displayed at least two distinct styles of objection. First, there have been de facto objections: objections to the truth of Christian belief. Perhaps the most important de facto objection would be the argument from suffering and evil. This objection goes all the way back to Democritus in the ancient world but is also the most prominent contemporary de facto objection (see chapter 14). It has often been stated philosophically, but has also received powerful literary expression (for example, in Dostoevski’s The Brothers Karamazov). The objection goes as follows: according to Christian belief, we human beings have been created by an all-powerful, all-knowing God who loves us enough to send his son, the second person of the divine Trinity, to suffer and die on our account; but given the devastating amount and variety of human suffering and evil in our sad world, this simply can’t be true. The argument from evil may be the most important de facto objection, but it isn’t the only one. There are also the claims that crucial Christian doctrines—Trinity, Incarnation, or Atonement, for example—are incoherent or necessarily false. Many have argued that the Christian doctrine of three divine persons with one nature cannot be coherently stated; many have claimed that it is not logically possible that a human being, Jesus of Nazareth, should also be the second person of the divine ix Trinity, and many have thought it impossible that one person’s suffering—even if that person is divine—should atone for someone else’s sins. Indeed, there are claims that the advance of science has somehow shown that there really isn’t any supernatural realm at all—no God who has created us and governs our world, let alone a Trinity of divine persons, one of whom became a human being, died, and rose from the dead, thereby redeeming human beings from sin and suffering. De facto objections, therefore, are many, and they enjoy a long and distinguished history in Western thought. Even more prevalent, however, have been de jure objections. These are arguments or claims to the effect that Christian belief, whether or not true, is at any rate unjustifiable, or rationally unjustified, or irrational, or not intellectually respectable, or contrary to sound morality, or without sufficient evidence, or in some other way rationally unacceptable, not up to snuff from an intellectual point of view. There is, for example, the Freudian claim that belief in God is really a result of wish fulfillment; there is the evidentialist claim that there isn’t sufficient evidence for Christian belief; and there is the pluralist claim that there is something arbitrary and even arrogant in holding that Christian belief is true and anything incompatible with it false. De facto and de jure objections are separate species, but they sometimes coincide. Thus there is a de jure objection from suffering and evil as well as a de facto: it is often claimed that the existence of suffering and evil in the world makes it irrational to hold that Christian belief is, in fact, true. 4