Alvin Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 55-71
Author(s):  
Gabriel Mustață
Keyword(s):  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
Reformed Epistemology

"Alvin Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology. Alvin Plantinga is a well-known defender of Reformed epistemology. The main thesis of the Reformed epistemology argues that faith in God is rational and justified without the aid of arguments or evidence. In this paper, we intend to describe Alvin Plantinga’s perspective, more precisely, the A / C model (Aquinas / Calvin) proposed by him, in which faith in God is innate and does not need arguments or evidence, and then to analyze the objections on this model, in order to determine whether faith in God can be considered basic. Keywords: epistemology, reformed, Alvin Plantinga, warrant, justification"

The epistemological limits of experience-based exclusive religious belief

2008 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERIK BALDWIN ◽  
MICHAEL THUNE
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
General View ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Salient Features ◽  
Reformed Epistemology ◽  
Epistemic Criteria

AbstractAlvin Plantinga and other philosophers have argued that exclusive religious belief can be rationally held in response to certain experiences – independently of inference to other beliefs, evidence, arguments, and the like – and thus can be ‘properly basic’. We think that this is possible only until the believer acquires the defeater we develop in this paper, a defeater which arises from an awareness of certain salient features of religious pluralism. We argue that, as a consequence of this defeater, continued epistemic support for exclusive religious belief will require the satisfaction of non-basic epistemic criteria (such as evidence and/or argumentation). But then such belief will no longer be properly basic. If successful, we will have presented a challenge not only to Plantinga's position, but also to the general view (often referred to as ‘reformed epistemology’) according to which exclusive religious belief can be properly basic.

Reforming reformed epistemology: a new take on the sensus divinitatis

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 537-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
BLAKE MCALLISTER ◽  
TRENT DOUGHERTY
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Cognitive Science Of Religion ◽  
Inferential Justification ◽  
Support Relations ◽  
Theistic Belief ◽  
Sensus Divinitatis ◽  
Science Of Religion ◽  
Reformed Epistemology

AbstractAlvin Plantinga theorizes the existence of a sensus divinitatis – a special cognitive faulty or mechanism dedicated to the production and non-inferential justification of theistic belief. Following Chris Tucker, we offer an evidentialist-friendly model of the sensus divinitatis whereon it produces theistic seemings that non-inferentially justify theistic belief. We suggest that the sensus divinitatis produces these seemings by tacitly grasping support relations between the content of ordinary experiences (in conjunction with our background evidence) and propositions about God. Our model offers advantages such as eliminating the need for a sui generis religious faculty, harmonizing the sensus divinitatis with prominent theories in the cognitive science of religion, and providing a superior account of natural revelation.

Reformed Epistemology in a Jamesian Perspective

Horizons ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrence W. Tilley
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
William James ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Religious Epistemology ◽  
William Alston ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Reformed Epistemology

AbstractThis essay argues that the reformed epistemologists (William Alston, Alvin Plantinga) have not (yet) sustained claims in religious epistemology significantly more extensive than William James did in the Varieties. It argues that even if reformed epistemologists show that religious belief can have a positive epistemic status, their approach may finally lead to relativism (given that religious traditions generate contradictory religious beliefs) because it offers no method for finding which, if any, concrete religious beliefs might be preferable to hold or in which religious practices one should engage, if any, and because it fails to distinguish between original and derived religious belief. I suggest that more attention must be paid to “social epistemology” if religious epistemology is to go significantly beyond James's accomplishments.

scholarly journals Fundamentalism on stilts: A response to Alvin Platinga�s reformed epistemology

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaco S. Gericke
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
The Past ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Interdisciplinary Dialogue ◽  
Reformed Epistemology ◽  
Biblical Scholar

During the greater part of the 20th century, biblical scholarship and the philosophy of religion were not considered to have much in common. However, towards the end of the millennium, a movement of a few Christian philosophers of religion called �Reformed Epistemology� (RE) suggested the need for interdisciplinary dialogue. With Alvin Plantinga as primary representative, these philosophers claimed to be concerned with what they considered to be the lack of philosophical reflection on the foundations of historical criticism and its non-traditional findings. In this article, the author (qua biblical scholar) suggests that Plantinga�s arguments have not been taken seriously because of his fundamentalism and the resulting failure to grasp the nature and contents of the hermeneutical debates that have raged within biblical theology for the past 200 years.

HOW REFORMED IS REFORMED EPISTEMOLOGY? ALVIN PLANTINGA AND CALVIN'S ‘SENSUS DIVINITATIS’

1997 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEREK S. JEFFREYS
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Statistical Probability ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Sensus Divinitatis ◽  
Reformed Epistemology ◽  
Cognitive Environment

In his recent two volumes on epistemology, Alvin Plantinga surveys contemporary theories of knowledge thoroughly, and carefully defends an externalist epistemology. He promises that in a third volume, Warranted Christian Belief, he will present John Calvin's sensus divinitatis as an epistemic module akin to sense perception, a priori knowledge, induction, testimony and other epistemic modules. Plantinga defines the sensus divinitatis as a ‘many sided disposition to accept belief in God (or propositions that immediately and obviously entail the existence of God) in a variety of circumstances’. Like other epistemic modules, it produces beliefs in an appropriate cognitive environment, aims at the production of true beliefs, and generates beliefs which have a high statistical probability of being true.

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