Faith Without Reasons - A Review of Warranted Christian Belief by Alvin Plantinga

7/29/2019 Faith Without Reasons - A Review of Warranted Christian Belief by Alvin Plantinga

1/10

h Without Reasons? A Review of Warranted Christian Belief by Alvin Plantinga

//www.proginosko.com/docs/wcbreview.html[21/08/2008 23:08:44]

Faith Without Reasons?

A Review ofWarranted Chri stian Beliefby Alvin Plantinga

James N. Anderson

Note: This essay was originally presented to a reading group of postgraduatesystematic theology students at New College, University of Edinburgh. It is pitched at

an introductory level, specifically for readers who have may some familiarity with

Plantingas work but not with his recent writings in epistemology, and does not pretend

to any originality (except, perhaps, for the closing comments on theological paradox).

Introduction

I do think the Roman Catholic religion is a disease of the mind which has a particular

epidemiology similar to that of a virus. The sentiments of Richard Dawkins, here

expressed in an interview bySkeptic magazine,[1]

may seem a mite strong for manynon-believers; but even so, a widespread contention persists that there is something

mentally out-of-sorts, or epistemically sub-par, or simplyirrational about belief in God

(particularly when that deity is conceived in ways historically associated with the Judeo-

Christian tradition). Does this charge have some weight? Moreover, what exactlyis the

charge here? Just what are the noetic qualities or virtues that religious believers are said

to lack?

It is to answering such pressing questions that Alvin Plantinga sets his hand in

Warranted Christian Belief,[2] the third volume in his critically acclaimed Warrant

trilogy and widely regarded as one of the most important contributions to the

philosophy of religion in recent years. In this work Plantinga not only sets forth a

detailed exposition of the epistemology of religious belief (specifically, Christian theistic

belief), but also takes on (and arguably decimates) some of the most serious

contemporary objections to the rationality of such belief. The thesis of the book has

wide-ranging implications for work in natural theology and Christian apologetics. It

deserves to become a classic.

Having made clear my enthusiasm for WCB from the outset, I will begin by explaining

some of the background to the book and the authors purposes in writing it, before

moving on to review its structure and main arguments. I will conclude by commenting

on Plantingas success in achieving his purposes, as well as mentioning what I consider

to be some productive avenues of further research based on his thesis.

Background: The Basicality Thesis

WCB represents the culmination and maturation of Plantingas thinking on
http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-513193-2http://www.div.ed.ac.uk/http://www.div.ed.ac.uk/http://www.div.ed.ac.uk/http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-513193-2


2/10



epistemology over the course of his academic career. In God and Other Minds,[3]

Plantinga examined the traditional arguments both for and against Gods existence,

concluding that all fall well below the standard of compelling proof. Intriguingly,

however, he proceeded to argue that the rational respectability of theistic belief need not

be thought any the worse in the face of such a verdict. In fact, belief in Godappears to

be on a par (epistemically speaking) with belief in other minds. While there are no

successful arguments for the latter (Plantinga purports to show), it is nonethelessconsidered a rational belief to hold (given that there are no successful arguments

against it); this being so, we should not think that belief in God suffers under anylesser

epistemic credentials simply for lacking successful arguments in its favour.[4]

In his later essay Reason and Belief in God,[5] Plantinga further developed his notion of

the basicality of belief in God, i.e. the legitimacy of holding theist beliefs without those

beliefs being evidentially based on other (non-theistic) beliefs. Arguing against both

evidentialism (the view that it is wrong to hold any belief without sufficient evidence)

and classical foundationalism (the view that beliefs are only rational if self-evident,

incorrigible, evident to the senses, or held on the basis ofother rational beliefs),

Plantinga defended the Reformed view that belief in God can be properly basic that

is, like memory beliefs and perceptual beliefs, it can be perfectly rational without being

held on the basis ofother beliefs.

Ten years later, Plantinga turned his analytical skills to an analysis of knowledgein

general in the first two volumes of his Warrant trilogy.[6] Defining warrant as that

which (in sufficient measure) distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief, he argued

that none of the extant contemporary theories of knowledge varieties of classical

deontologism, internalism, coherentism, and reliabilism offered a satisfactory analysis

of warrant. On the basis of various imaginative counterexamples,[7] Plantinga

maintained that in each case the conception of justification or warrant propounded

was either not necessary for knowledge, or not sufficient for knowledge, or both.

Plantinga proceeded to argue that these counterexamples (as well as the classic Gettier

cases) teach us that what is lacking in current analyses of knowledge is the notion of

proper function, i.e. of beliefs being formed by noetic processes functioning in the

manner in which they were designed (whether by God or by evolution) to function. InWarrant and Proper Function, Plantinga fleshed out in more detail his basic contention

that a belief has warrant if and only if it is produced by cognitive faculties functionally

properly in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully

aimed at the production of true belief[8] by addressing various objections, making some

important refinements, and suggesting how his analysis of warrant might cash out in

terms of the various types of knowledge we possess (a priori, perceptual, inductive,

etc.).[9]


3/10



Warrant and Christian Belief

Warranted Christian Belief first and foremost represents Plantingas application of the

conclusions of his previous Warrantvolumes in a more rigorous defence of the claim in

Reason and Belief in God that theistic belief can be not only rational, but rational even

in the absence of supporting beliefs or arguments. In essence, WCB is Plantingas

thorough answer to the question, Is Christian belief intellectually acceptable? but in

sharp contrast to the received view in secular philosophical circles, Plantingas answer is

a resounding affirmative (albeit with one crucial qualification, discussed shortly).

Plantinga thus characterises his book as a response to the de jure objection to Christian

belief (i.e. Christian belief is unjustified, or irrational, or unwarranted, or otherwise

epistemically under par, regardless of whether it turns out to be true or false) rather

than the related but logically distinct de facto objection (i.e. Christian belief is false or

probably false).

The book is divided into four parts. In the first, Plantinga considers the bold claim thatit is not possible even in principle to have knowledge of God, because human beings do

not (and could not) have cognitive access to such a being. The importance of Plantingas

addressing this contention should be obvious, since if true it would render the de jure

objection to Christian belief irrelevant (or worse, incoherent); if beliefs about God are

impossible per se then it naturally follows that rationalbeliefs about Him are ruled out.

Plantinga begins by assessing the classic argument of Kant (or at least, commonly

attributed to him): God inhabits the noumenal realm; our mental concepts only apply to

phenomena and not to noumena; ergo, our concepts do not apply to God (and thus wecannot think about God as He really is). Plantinga considers the two most popular

interpretations of Kants position regarding the relationship between noumena and

phenomena (the traditional two worlds view and the more recent one world view) and

shows convincingly that both positions suffer from either incoherence or debilitating

implausibility. He then turns his sights on two contemporary philosophers of religion,

Gordon Kaufmann and John Hick, who also express a Kantian skepticism about

theological predication; but concludes that, even on the most charitable readings, their

arguments suffer the same problems as those of their 18th-century predecessor.

Having dispatched the most prominent objections to the idea that we can evenpose the

de jure question, Plantinga turns in the second part ofWCB to the metaquestion,

namely: Just what is the relevant question? What is it, in epistemic terms, that Christian

belief is accused of lacking? Plantinga begins by considering the idea ofjustification,

construed (following Locke and various more recent luminaries) in a deontological

manner, according to which a belief isjustifiedfor a person provided they have flouted

no epistemic duties by holding it. He argues persuasively that a believer in God can


4/10



clearly be justified in this sense and that the de jure question posed thus is of

negligible interest, given that the answer is so obvious. He then considers various

concepts of rationality, showing in each case that either the concept in question is

irrelevant or it can apply to theistic belief (and trivially so).

Finally, Plantinga turns to the idea ofwarrant, as explicated in his previous writings in

terms ofproper function. He considers two classic examples of thinkers who argued (or

rather asserted) that religious belief lacks such warrant: Sigmund Freud, who consideredsuch belief to be the product ofwish fulfilment (which, although often serving a useful

function, is certainly not aimed at the production oftrue beliefs); and Karl Marx, who

contended that such belief is the result of some form ofcognitive dysfunction. Plantinga

concludes that this objection to theistic belief that it lacks warrant is indeed the

most relevant, and most serious, form of the de jure objection.

The scene is thus set for part three ofWCB, in which Plantinga confronts the claim that

theistic belief (Christian or otherwise) lacks warrant (and thus cannot constitute

knowledge even if true). He begins by setting forth a model, inspired by the writings of

Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin (in turn inspired by biblical passages such as Romans

1:18-20), according to which human beings are endowed with a special cognitive faculty

known as the sensus divinitatis (lit. the sense of divinity). The idea here is that the

sensus divinitatis functions, under the appropriate circumstances (when for example,

like Kant, we consider the starry heavens above and the moral law within), to

automatically produce in a person the belief that God, a being possessing maximal

power, knowledge and goodness, exists. This Aquinas/Calvin model finds excellent

support from both Scripture and the Christian tradition; thus, if Christianity is true, themodel (or something close) is also likely to be true. Furthermore, argues Plantinga, the

beliefs produced by the sensus divinitatis would be attributable to a cognitive faculty

functionally properly in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan

successfully aimed at the production of true belief in short, such beliefs would be

warranted.

Turning again to the complaints of Freud and Marx, Plantinga notes that both men (and

those who follow in their footsteps) quite evidently base their theories of religious belief

on the assumption that theism is false. In fact, they do not even argue for thatassumption; they merely assert it or take it as a given. Plantinga happily notes in

agreement that if Christian theism is false, then Christian belief is most probably

unwarranted. But on the basis of the A/C model, he further notes that if Christian

theism is true, then Christian belief is most probablywarranted. Plantinga takes it that

the failure of the Freudian and Marxian objections are merely illustrations of a more

general principle, one of the most significant theses ofWCB: that the de jure question

regarding Christian belief cannot be answered independently of the de facto question. In


5/10



other words, stances such as the following are no longer tenable:

Well, I certainly dont know whether theistic belief is true who could

know a thing like that? but I do know this: it is irrational, or unjustified,

or not rationally justified, or contrary to reason or intellectually irresponsible

or (WCB, p. 191)

Having set out this basic model for theistic belief, Plantinga proceeds to discuss thequestion of the noetic effects of sin: although possessing the sensus divinitatis, human

beings have become corrupted by sin, affecting both the will and the intellect, and

resulting in the distortion and dysfunction of that cognitive faculty (such as absent or

false beliefs about God). In the closing sections of this chapter, he considers the

provocative question of whether cognitive dysfunction in our religious beliefs can have

an adverse effect on our other beliefs, epistemically speaking. In answering

affirmatively, Plantinga rounds off with a highly provocative argument originally

suggested in the final chapter ofWarrant and Proper Function to the effect that an

epistemologically self-conscious naturalist will find allof his knowledge under threat: for

such a person should recognise that the probability of his cognitive faculties being

reliable, given a naturalistic account of their origins, is either low or inscrutable, thus

furnishing him with a defeater for allof his beliefs.

In the following two chapters, Plantinga explains how not only belief in God (i.e. generic

theism) but also belief in the great things of the gospel (i.e. full-blown Christian belief)

can be warranted. In the latter case, the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit is

operative: a person reads or hears the divine testimony recorded in Scripture, and the

Holy Spirit works supernaturally to impress it on that persons mind and heart in such a

way that the person comes to embrace those truths. And in this case, just as that of the

sensus divinitatis, Plantinga explains, it is not difficult to see how the conditions for

warrant may be met. Nevertheless, a natural question at this point is why such an

elaborate scheme should be required at all. Why should God resort to supernatural

intervention in order to secure warranted belief in the Christian story, rather than the

ordinary processes of knowledge acquisition (observation, inference, etc.). Plantingas

response is that in practice it would prove extremely difficult to secure warranted

Christian beliefs in this manner. In short, chains of evidential inference (such as thosefavoured by Richard Swinburne, among others) aimed at showing the essential claims of

the Christian faith to be sufficiently probable to merit belief fall foul of the principle of

dwindling probabilities: although each subconclusion of the historical case may be

shown probable with respect to its immediate premises, the cumulative effect is such

that the final conclusions are rendered rather less than probable with respect to the

original premises.[10]

Part three ofWCB closes with a consideration of various objections to the extended A/C


6/10



model, including Richard Gales argument for the impossibility ofcognitive religious

experiences, and Michael Martins argument to the effect that if Christian theistic belief

can be granted properly basic status then such a privilege cannot fairly be denied to any

number of crazy beliefs (such as voodooism, flat earthism, and faith in the Great

Pumpkin). Space forbids a summary of Plantingas rebuttals; suffice it to say, each

objection is deemed to be based on a misunderstanding of the claims of the A/C model,

or flawed argument, or both.

Suppose then that Plantinga is correct thus far: that if Christian belief is true then it may

also be warranted by virtue of arising from properly functioning cognitive faculties

aimed at true belief production. Is that the end of the story regarding the epistemic

credentials of Christian believers? Not quite. Plantinga recognises that a critic might well

grant that Christian belief (if true) can be properly basic andprima facie warranted, but

still maintain that certain circumstances, evidence or arguments can serve as defeaters

for such belief perhaps going so far as to suggest that the acquisition of such defeaters

is inevitable for any educated and reflective person. In the final part ofWCB, Plantingatherefore discusses the nature of defeaters and considers four main contenders for the

role of Christian belief defeaters: (1) projective theories of religious belief; (2) so-called

higher criticism of the Bible; (3) the spectres of postmodernism and pluralism; and (4)

suffering and evil. After setting out what he takes to be the most plausible forms of each

candidate, Plantinga argues persuasively that each fails: either by begging the de facto

question or by falling foul of unwarranted inferences.

Regarding (2), for example, Plantinga asks whether the common conclusions of

historical biblical criticism (HBC), which in many cases conflict with traditionalChristian beliefs about the identity of Jesus, the occurrence of miracles, and so forth,

should be thought of as defeaters for those traditional beliefs. The problem here,

Plantinga avers, is that HBC favours a methodology which purports to bracket out

theological assumptions (about Gods action in the world, the authorship of Scripture,

etc.) in order to qualify as a truly scientific discipline. Now, practitioners of HBC are

presumably within their rights to define and conduct their trade as they see fit; but why

should anyone think that Christians in general are obliged to share their pared-down

methodology when reflecting on their own religious beliefs? After all, if those beliefs (or

something in the vicinity) are true then it is quite likely that (by virtue of the internal

instigation of the Holy Spirit) they are also warranted indeed, warranted to a degree

sufficient to give them good reason to reject the skeptical results of HBC. The point here,

as elsewhere in WCB, is that critics of traditional Christian beliefs have erroneously

bypassed the de facto question (Is it true?) in their eagerness to pronounce on the de

jure question (Is it rational, warranted, etc.?). To put things another way: in the

absence of any good reasons to think the beliefunwarranted, why should Christians not

bring their belief that the Bible is divinely inspired to bear (as with any other presumed-


7/10



as-warranted beliefs) on their interpretation of the New Testament documents?[11]

Assessment: Are Plantingas Conclusions Warranted?

Does WCB succeed in showing that Christian belief is intellectually acceptable? In my

view, it certainly succeeds in showing that if Christianity is true, then Christian belief is

warranted (at least in normal circumstances). Plantinga does not tackle and indeed,

does not purport to tackle the question of whether the antecedent is true. This maystrike some readers as an anticlimax and even as a glaring omission. Nonetheless,

Plantingas exposition is highly significant insofar as (a) it provides a persuasive model

for the rationality of Christian belief and (b) it turns back the de jure objector to the de

facto question. No one can charge Christians with intellectual dereliction or dysfunction

without taking on the more demanding task of showing their beliefs to be outright

false.[12]

Plantingas book covers a great deal of philosophical ground, doing so with analytical

rigour and thoroughness, yet in a congenial, witty, and readable manner. WCB is

sufficiently detailed and dense as to satisfy the argumentative demands of the academic

philosopher, but will also be of benefit to the well-informed theologian, pastor or

Christian layman. Despite its weight, however, it inevitably raises a whole host of

subsequent questions and research issues that remain unaddressed as Plantinga

himself acknowledges. In the remainder of this review, I will take the opportunity to

highlight what I consider to be some of the most interesting such questions.

First of all, an exegetical concern. Plantinga maintains that his inspiration for his A/C

model for warranted theistic belief comes primarily from the writings of Aquinas and

Calvin regarding the sensus divinitatis. While both theologians surely had much of

relevance to say on this matter, it is not so clear that they conceived of the s.d. along

similar lines to Plantinga; that is, as a cognitivefaculty or process which, under the

appropriate circumstances, produces knowledge about, or awareness of, God. Rather,

they appear to identify the s.d. with the knowledge or awareness itself.[13] This latter

view seems to align better with what Paul actually states in Romans 1, namely, that

humans possess knowledge of God (not merely a knowledge-producing faculty). If this

interpretation of the Christian tradition is correct, then a rethinking of the A/C model is

in order to accommodate this emphasis.[14]

A second question concerns the implications of Plantingas thesis for apologetics: Does

the proper basicality of Christian belief render natural theology and classical

evidentialist argumentation redundant, or does a worthwhile role remain for such

endeavours? If Plantinga is correct, will the future study of the classical theistic

arguments be anything more than that of a historical curiosity? It seems that natural


8/10



theologians need not fret too much about their livelihoods. Even if the average Christian

holds his or her beliefs basically (and with warrant), there are still some Christians who

testify to having adopted their beliefs (at least initially) on the basis of persuasive

argumentation.[15] Moreover, a good case can be made that natural theology and

historical apologetics are still useful (a) as defeater-defeaters for those whose beliefs face

being undermined by critical objections and (b) as evidential support for important

second-levelepistemic beliefs (Do I know that I know that Christ rose from the dead?

). Significant work has already begun in developing this realignment of traditional

theistic arguments and Christian evidentialism.[16]

One further issue and one to which WCB doesnt speak at all, on my reading

surrounds the question of theological paradox. If, as many critics of Christian theism

(not to mention a significant number of its advocates) have held,[17] the conjunction of

certain Christian doctrines leads to apparent contradictions, does this fact constitute a

defeater for Christian belief? This pressing question needs to be addressed in our time

as much as in any. Plantingas own response, I surmise, would be that such difficultiesonly arise from misunderstandings or misstatements of Christian doctrines: in every

case, the doctrines in question can be formulated in such a way as to avoid any

appearance of contradiction. Although the point cannot be argued here, I suspect that

rather more needs to be said and that mere reformulation of Christian doctrines will not

suffice, if orthodoxy is to be preserved. Nevertheless, I believe that Plantingas

arguments in WCB provide at least the groundwork for a comprehensive response to the

charge of epistemic defeat in the face of theological paradox, although to date the

project of developing this thesis remains to be undertaken in earnest.[18]

New College, University of Edinburgh, April 2002

[1]Skeptic, 3:4 (1995).

[2] Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford University Press, 2000);

hereafter, WCB.

[3]

Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Cornell University Press, 1967).

[4] More recently, Plantinga has conceded that the standard he applied for judging the

success of a theistic argument was unreasonably stringent. As he noted in the preface

to the 1990 edition ofGod and Other Minds, no philosophical arguments of any

consequence meet that standard, and the fact that theistic arguments do not is not as

significant as I thought.

[5] In: Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstoff (eds.), Faith and Rationality: Reason


9/10



and Belief in God(University of Notre Dame Press, 1983).

[6] Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate (Oxford University Press, 1993);

Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford University Press, 1993).

[7] Two of the most memorable being The Case of the Epistemically Inflexible Climber

and The Case of the Epistemically Serendipitous Lesion.

[8]WCB, p. 498.

[9] Further critical discussion of Plantingas epistemology can be found in Jonathan

Kvanvig (ed.), Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of

Plantingas Theory of Knowledge (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996).

[10] Not surprisingly, Swinburne has taken exception to this assessment of his apologetic

project; an exchange between the two philosophers has been published inReligious

Studies 37:2 (2001), pp. 203-14.

[11] As Plantinga comments in another context regarding the arbitrary bracketing out of

a subset of ones beliefs: I could probably get home this evening by hopping on one leg;

and conceivably I could climb Devils Tower with my feet tied together. But why would I

want to? (Advice to Christian Philosophers,Faith and Philosophy 1 (1984), pp. 253-

71.)

[12] Should any reader doubt that the de jure question is the primary focus of prominent

critics of theism or Christianity, consider Michael Martins statement of purpose inwriting his atheological tour de force: My object is to show that atheism is a rational

position and that belief in God is not (Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, Temple

University Press, 1990, p. 24). Consider too the title of J.L. Mackies The Miracle of

Theism: the miracle is not that theism is true, but that it has a continuing hold on the

minds of many reasonable people (The Miracle of Theism, Clarendon Press, 1982, p.

12).

[13] See, e.g., CalvinsInstitutes, I.3.

[14] For documented criticisms of Plantinga on this point, see: Michael Sudduth,

Plantingas Revision of the Reformed Tradition: Rethinking our Natural Knowledge of

God,Philosophical Books 43:2 (2002).

[15] C.S. Lewis provides one famous example. It should be further noted that the two

means of acquiring religious beliefs distinguished here need not be mutually exclusive; a

combination of intuition, investigation, and inference may be involved in some cases.


10/10


[16] For example: Stephen J. Wykstra, Toward a Sensible Evidentialism: On the Notion

of Needing Evidence, in William L. Rowe and William J. Wainwright (eds.),

Philosophy of Religion, 3rd ed. (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998); Michael Sudduth,

The Internalist Character and Evidentialist Implications of Plantingian Defeaters,

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 45 (1999), pp. 167-87; Michael

Sudduth, Proper Basicality and the Evidential Significance of Internalist Defeat: A

Proposal for Revising Classical Evidentialism, in G. Brntrup and R.K. Tacelli (eds.),The Rationality of Theism (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999).

[17] On the atheist side: Michael Martin,Atheism, esp. chapter 12; Richard Gale, On the

Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). On the

Christian side: Donald M. Baillie, God Was In Christ: An Essay on Incarnation and

Atonement, 2nd ed. (Faber and Faber, 1961), esp. chapter 5; Cornelius Van Til,An

Introduction to Systematic Theology (Presbyterian & Reformed, 1974).

[18]

My thanks to Michael Sudduth for comments on a draft of this paper.

Copyright James N. Anderson 2002
http://www.proginosko.com/http://www.proginosko.com/

Documents

Faith Without Reasons - A Review of Warranted Christian Belief by Alvin Plantinga