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Warranted Christian Belief
Binding: Paperback
Author: Alvin Plantinga
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Average Rating: 4.5
Total Customer Reviews: 15
List Price: $29.99
Our Price: $19.34
Sales Rank: 154720
Product Description
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. In this volume, Plantinga examines warrant's role in theistic belief, tackling the questions of whether it is rational, reasonable, justifiable, and warranted to accept Christian belief and whether there is something epistemically unacceptable in doing so. 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 are knowledge if they are true.
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Users Product Reviews: |
Product Review Summary: Acta est fabula plaudite Alvin Plantinga, "America's leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God", earns the aforementioned worthy title all over again with this formidable scholarly masterstroke. In Warranted Christian Belief, the author takes 21st century Christian apologetics from the rarified realm of the academic philosopher, and into the living room of the earnest layperson, effectively re-contextualizing the entire aegri somnia within the framework of a teleologically bifurcated weltanschauung. Specifically, he posits a virtual ad vitam aut culpam, if you will, using J.L. Mackie's loose definition of theodicy (as it applies to the popular axiomatic understanding of naturalism) to establish a starting point for subsequent Kantian deconstructions. While some have argued in this forum for an acknowledgment of certain "saltus in demonstrando" logical flaws in Plantinga's attempt to contextualize causation/induction without first completing his explication of Hume's posthumously published four principals of ontological depersonalization, I beg to differ. Not to put too fine a point on it, but in light of the recent dubious rise of the annus terribilis of the so-called "new atheism", Plantinga's application of the free will defense leveraged against the epistemological fulcrum of a Goldmanian bona officia, so to speak, elicits from the reader (as well it should) an "in statu nascendi" conception of the multifarious strains of modal logic necessary for the truly effective unfolding of a series of personal epistemic refutations that may prove potent against this rampant reductive (and, indeed, quasi-reductive) materialism.
All this is not to suggest that Plantinga's work here is by any means "dry" or "ponderous". Alvin's touches of irony mixed with occasional bittersweet tragicomedy, especially when applied to the brief biographical touches, are a serendipitous treasure. For example, the anecdote about his father, Cornelius A. Plantinga, having suffered a near breakdown while trying to philosophically synergize Calvinism, Arminianism, and his own nascent Rastafarianism is at once side-splittingly funny and relentlessly bleak.
Where the author succeeds most admirably is in his ad fundum exploration of the divergent strands of post-Hergenrotherian thought that have interpenetrated (some would say vivified) the reputedly inevitable flowering of ostensible neo-Bonaventurianism in both literary and academic strata, producing a long overdue per ardua ad alta around the thorny subject of reliabilist assertions regarding the origins of the belief paradigm that are at once seemingly contradictory while at the same time teeter on the edge of an ad hoc rectal prolapsy unprecedented in the realm of quasi-preterist neologistic Biblical scholarship. Yet this very same reductionist mechanism of belief/non-belief and warranted/unwarranted faith dichotomies ultimately emerges in the final chapter's summation as being indispensible to Alvin's startlingly original thesis. And therein is the stunning, incandescent triumph of this landmark work, this conceptually monolithic "a capite ad calcem", one might say, that will surely stand the test of time and survive the ubiquitous hammer-blows of misinformed cynicism and heretical post-modernism that, if past experience is any indication, we can confidently predict shall forever rain upon the mighty anvil of reasoned, intellectual Christian faith.
I can say with confidence that no educated Christian will be able to complete this highly rewarding yet accessible work without being stimulated into a state of ardent theological arousal.
Product Review Summary: Unwarranted Christian Belief I gave this book one star. I think it is all but mandatory to read it (that would suggest five), but not for the purpose of agreeing with it. I would rate its salvational value as negative three. That gives an average of one star, below which is out of Amazon's range.
To the good, Plantinga discusses the relation between warranted belief and true belief, which would tend to go together. Unwarranted and false beliefs are likewise a natural pair. However, the opposite pairings are also possible. The best of current evidence might suggest that a belief is true, in which case it would be warranted, even if later evidence ran otherwise and it were actually false. Similarly, one might hold a true belief by blind luck, say, in which case it would not be warranted.
In toto, the book is an argument that Christian belief is warranted, even though it might not be easily proven. The overall effect is to give Christians an *out* when their apologetics are unconvincing to others.
Long story short, I don't buy this. One might be wowed (or just buffaloed) by all the conditional probability notation. But just as pure logic cannot prove even the existence of giraffes, it is also the wrong tool for trying to prove God. Probability theory fares no better. Indeed, religious belief in general is replete with internal discrepancies, contradictions of observable reality, and primitive--even obnoxious--moralities. Matching behavior, too. In short, it is unbefitting of any genuine Divinity, and hence almost surely false. And unwarranted.
Inculcating defenseless children in superstition is a grave sin. Perpetuating adults in it is almost as bad. Hence the negative three salvational stars.
Product Review Summary: "If true, warranted; if not true, probably not warranted..." ...so goes the single thesis of this book, and is the single principle at work in fending off criticisms, from various quarters, of the epistemological propriety of Christian faith. Its five hundred pages are spent not so much in depth of developing this thesis, but in breadth of applying it to a variety of topics.
Starting from Kantian and Hickian questions of how to locate the question of warrant with respect to truth, or whether there is a question, Plantinga goes on to tackle, in due course, considerations of justification, deontology, rationality, and such. Following that is a tour of classical Christian conceptions of faith, and discussions of how to locate Plantinga's notion of warrant within the concepts inherited from past thinkers such as Aquinas and Calvin. Finally, some common philosophical and other objections to Christian faith are addressed in light of the preceding.
It is the breadth of the topics addressed that makes this book most useful, rather than its depth in argumentation, in which I found a certain amount of repetition in the kinds of defenses Plantinga offers to a variety of criticisms: something along the lines of "But why think *that*?" seemed to crop up most often. In this, as well as other of Plantinga's works, he seems to leave himself open to the charge (that I have in fact heard made) that he's making his job a bit too easy for himself.
In particular, what Plantinga leaves out is an explanation of just how *Christian* belief, in particular, is warranted over and above other species of religious belief. What kept coming up in my mind is what I call "The Mormon Problem"--the fact that a subjectively-based defense essentially just like Plantinga's could be given by, say, Mormons, who typically appeal to purely subjective (viz. "a burning in my bosom") considerations in their epistemology. Plantinga does go on to say that a Christian who goes on to consider objections and find them unconvincing retains warrant, but what I'd like to know is just what such objection-meeting considerations have to do with warrant, specifically. Plantinga is consistently vague on what, if any, connection there is. Here's the problem more explicitly: isn't a Mormon who does not admit of the relevance of what might, without too much exaggeration, be called historical and archeological disproofs of The Book of Mormon to their religious epistemology still in qualitatively the same position as a Christian vis-a-vis their faith: "warranted *if* true"? It seems that without begging the question for or against one or the other, a warrant-based account per se doesn't tell us what's different from the two. In other words, I don't see how you can't admit of a certain degree of evidentialism into your religious epistemology without falling into this problem. And whatever intrinsic connection that has with warrant per se, if there is one, needs to be spelled out. That said, I think Plantinga's warrant-based account of faith is probably correct so far as it goes.
Finally, I notice a very interesting connection between one of Plantinga's central themes here (if not *the* central theme): that the _de jure_ objection is not, in the end, distinct from the _de facto_ objection. When I hear the way that the crop of militant "New Atheists" like Richard Dawkins (well, he's not so new, just increasingly vociferous) and Sam Harris talk about religious belief, they seem to be coming to basically the same conclusion, in a way, albeit from the opposite direction, as it were. To be sure, these paragons of reason don't so much present arguments as inveigh, pontificate, and bloviate, so they don't state their position as such, but it seems as though they also are saying the same thing, except taking the _de facto_ question as primitive and assumed answered, and then naturally going on to answer the _de jure_ question in like fashion. This would certainly seem to explain their extreme intolerance. In fact, in not explicitly distinguishing between the two, one's dialectic, such as it is, can easily consist in whipping back and forth between the two in a very tight circle. Plantinga's distinction is thus a useful one that can be used to diagnose such argumentative problems in the midst of shrill voices and strongly-worded rhetoric.
Product Review Summary: Christian Belief Has Warrant. _Warranted Christian Belief_ by analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga is the third book in Plantinga's trilogy on warrant and is perhaps the most important. Plantinga (a theist, Calvinist, and member of the Reformed Church) is perhaps one of the most important analytic philosophers of religion today and is definitely one of the most important theistic philosophers. While this book is the third book in a trilogy, unlike the other books in the trilogy it is longer and more detailed in scope. Further, Plantinga notes that he tries to make the discussion in this book independent of that presented in the previous two books (_Warrant: The Current Debate_ and _Warrant and Proper Function_), but the book obviously follows in the sequence (and also may be considered a sequel to Plantinga's _God and Other Minds_). Thus, this book may be read independently. Plantinga makes the point that this is a work of both apologetics and philosophy, but it is also a work of philosophy of religion, and in particular Christian philosophy. Thus, it will include reference to Christian belief in the same way that a philosophy of physics book would include reference to physics.
To begin with it is necessary for Plantinga to explain what he means by Christian belief. Plantinga maintains that Christian belief (or "mere Christian belief") includes two components: the theistic component (that God exists, is a person, and has certain attributes) and the Christian component (that human beings are mired in sin and require salvation, that this was attained through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity). In this book, Plantinga will consider two types of objections to Christian belief - the de facto objections (that Christian belief is false) and the de jure objections (that Christian belief is unwarranted). The de jure objection, "I do not know whether Christian belief is true or not, but I do know that it is unwarranted given modern understandings, etc.", is a common one, but as Plantinga will show there are no de jure objections independent of the de facto objections.
An objection that is commonly made to Christian belief is that there is no question at all (that is that the certain attributes of God make Christian belief impossible). This is the objection of Kant (that our concepts do not apply to God), in one interpretation of his thought. It is also the objection of other more modern theologians such as Kaufman and Hick. Plantinga begins by showing that the objection of Kant fails because of certain problems in the so-called antinomies that he presents. Plantinga then turns his attention to claims made by Gordon Kaufman and John Hick, showing the weakness of their claims (and the essential worthlessness of their "theologies"). The question is then concerned as to exactly what is the question of Christian belief. Here, Plantinga begins by considering "Justification and the Classical Picture". Plantinga explains classical foundationalism and evidentialism in the work of John Locke. Plantinga notes how Locke distinguished between opinion and reason and maintained that one should try to live by reason. This implies a deontological understanding; in which, we have a duty to conform our beliefs to reason. Among other things, it is also maintained that certain of our beliefs are "properly basic" and that every belief is either properly basic or derived from beliefs which are. However, the classical pictures runs into difficulties; in particular, it encounters the problem of self-reference, in that there is no easily apparent way for it to justify itself. Plantinga considers some variations on the classical picture (in particular, he notes that Christian belief may be justified in a properly basic manner). Plantinga next considers rationality, and he devotes a considerable amount of space to a discussion regarding William Alston, Christian Mystical Practice (CMP), and rationality (as seen in Alston's important book _Perceiving God_). Plantinga also considers the notion of warrant and the "complaints" of Freud and Marx (others such as Nietzsche are not considered because their "complaints" are regarded as falling into the same category and as being over-the-top and less than rational). The discussion of Freud revolves around the central idea that Christian belief involves the process of "wish-fulfillment". This discussion is particularly funny when the actual theories of Freud are presented (because Freud made some rather absurd claims regarding patricide, among others). The discussion of Marx revolves around the idea that Christian belief results from an unjust society (and is the "opiate of the people"). Plantinga shows how both of these ideas are problematic and how neither of them shows that Christian belief is without warrant. In the next section of this book, Plantinga considers the fact of warranted Christian belief. In particular, he presents what he calls the Aquinas/Calvin model (A/C model) which argues that Christian belief may be properly basic (and relies on a "sensus divinitatis"). Plantinga considers various ways in which knowledge of God may be possible, and his discussion here is heavily indebted to William Alston. Plantinga also notes the role of sin and natural knowledge of God (sin interferes with our knowledge of God). Plantinga also shows that the de jure question is not independent of the de facto question. Following this, Plantinga considers the cognitive consequences of sin. In particular, he shows that sin has noetic effects (in that it may cause the sensus divinitatis to malfunction). Plantinga also considers the case of sin and skepticism (this is the radical skepticism of a David Hume for example) and sin and naturalism. In the case of naturalism, Plantinga provides a powerful probabilistic argument showing that given naturalism and evolution it is unlikely that sense perception will be reliable. Plantinga also considers a rejoinder of this to the effect that the same applies to the theist (the "tu quoque" objection), but he shows that this is not the case provided Christian belief is assumed. In the next section, Plantinga extends the A/C model by showing how faith leads to cognitive renewal (and thus the proper functioning of the sensus divinitatis). Plantinga also emphasizes the role of Scripture in the attainment of faith. Plantinga presents a probabilistic argument for Christian belief (relying no the fact of Christ's resurrection), but ultimately rejects this argument, concluding that he does not know a good argument for Christian belief and that such things must be known through faith. Plantinga next considers the testimonial model as well as various objections presented to his model. In particular, Plantinga makes the point that Christian belief is not like a scientific hypothesis (which is the claim of many atheists including the late John Mackie). In the final section of this book, Plantinga considers the possibility of various defeaters for Christian belief (facts we know now which may make Christian belief unwarranted). Plantinga concludes that while none of these defeaters actually defeat Christian belief, that it is possible that such defeaters exist, though they are extremely unlikely. Plantinga considers such defeaters as those presented in modernistic Scripture scholarship (distinguishing between traditional biblical criticism and historical biblical criticism - which may be one of three types: Troelschian, Duhemian, or Spinozistic). Plantinga shows how all of these forms of historical criticism fail to provide a defeater because they disregard the sensus divinitatis. Platinga also considers arguments making use of postmodernism and pluralism. In particular, Plantinga finds that postmodernist claims about truth would provide a defeater for Christian belief if they were true, but that they are in fact self-refuting (Plantinga considers for example Rorty in this respect). Plantinga also shows how claims to epistemic arrogance are also found in pluralism and agnosticism, making the fact of a plurality of religions fail as a defeater for Christian belief. Finally, Plantinga considers the so-called problem of evil (or "problem of suffering"). Plantinga considers both the logical question (does evil contradict the existence of God) and evidential arguments, but he finds all of these to be problematic. The only argument that appears to carry any weight in this respect is a brute appeal to emotion. But, Plantinga shows how this may also be resolved within theism (bringing up in particular the trials of Job). Finally, Plantinga concludes that such objections to Christian belief do not provide defeaters and that there is good reason to believe that Christian belief has warrant. He ends by noting that Christian belief also appears to be true.
This book is one of the most important works in modern analytic theistic philosophy. Plantinga's arguments are well-presented and logically rigorous. For those who claim that Christian belief is irrational or lacks warrant given our current knowledge, these arguments presented here are sure to challenge them.
Product Review Summary: A field manual for effective apologetics I've had this book for several years but never got around to reading it. There was always a commentary or a systematic theology or something that demanded my attention. But I got involved in reading this book while trying to minister to a young guy who was very much romanced by German romanticism (especially Schopenhauer). Plantinga's systematic dismantling of Kant and his followers' position on whether one can know God enabled me to meet his objections.
After the first two chapters, the book became a very easy read - in fact, I didn't read much of anything else until it was finished. Analytic philosophy can be horribly dry, but Plantinga has a great sense of humor in this work. It's hilarious in places (see the 'son of Great Pumpkin' argument, his discussion of what the word 'fundamentalist' really means), but well-argued everywhere. I am no philosopher, but having read and understood Plantinga's work, I feel competent to at least present a cogent alternative to some of the most common objectives to the Christian faith. This book is a steal at $30.
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