Alvin Plantinga

Life

Plantinga was born in 1932 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His parents, Cornelius and Lettie Plantinga, were members of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, a denomination in the Dutch Calvinist tradition. In 1950 he entered Harvard University on a scholarship. He later recalled that during his first year at Harvard, while walking across campus on a rainy evening, he was suddenly struck by the conviction that the Christian story is true. He then transferred to Calvin College to study under the philosophy professor Jellema. After further study at the University of Michigan, he earned his doctorate in philosophy at Yale University.

After serving as an instructor at Yale, he taught at Wayne State University (1958–1963), at his alma mater Calvin College (1963–1982), and at the University of Notre Dame (1982–2010). After retiring, he returned to Grand Rapids and became the first Jellema Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College. At the 2017 Templeton Prize ceremony, he remarked that he had begun as a member of the Christian Reformed Church and remained a member of that church.

Work and Contributions

Plantinga defended the Christian faith using the methods of analytic philosophy, the Anglo-American philosophical tradition that examines logic and language with precision.

• The existence of God and the problem of evil: In God and Other Minds (1967), The Nature of Necessity (1974), and God, Freedom, and Evil (1974), he argued that belief in God is not irrational. He is especially well known for the "free will defense," which holds that if a good and omnipotent God created genuinely free creatures, those creatures could choose evil; therefore, the coexistence of God and evil involves no logical contradiction.
• Reformed epistemology: Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge and how beliefs are justified. Plantinga coedited Faith and Rationality (1983) with Nicholas Wolterstorff. He held that belief in God can be a "basic belief"—one that may be rationally accepted without being inferred from other evidence or arguments. He later systematized this idea in his trilogy on "warrant" (1993, 1993, 2000). In the final volume, Warranted Christian Belief, he drew on John Calvin's concept of the "sense of divinity" (sensus divinitatis) and on the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit.
• Science and religion: In Where the Conflict Really Lies (2011), he argued that the conflict between science and theism is merely superficial; the deep conflict, he contended, lies instead between science and naturalism, the worldview that denies the supernatural. He also published Science and Religion: Are They Compatible? (2010) with the atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett.

He served as president of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association and as president of the Society of Christian Philosophers. He delivered the Gifford Lectures in Britain twice (1987 and 2005) and was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Influence on the Korean Church

In Korea, Plantinga has been introduced mainly in the fields of Christian philosophy and apologetics (the rational defense of the faith) rather than in pastoral settings. Korean translations include God and Other Minds (Salim), God, Freedom, and Evil (SFC), Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?, coauthored with Dennett (Ewha Womans University Press), and Knowledge and Christian Belief (IVP, 2019). The last includes a commentary by the philosopher Kang Young-ahn. One review of that book, however, pointed out that many of his major works have yet to be translated. As a philosopher rooted in the Reformed faith, he is frequently cited in writings on creation and evolution and on the relationship between faith and reason.

Assessment

The John Templeton Foundation credited his scholarship with making theism (the belief that God exists) a serious option within academic philosophy. Time magazine once described him as America's leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God.

He has also drawn criticism. A representative objection holds that if a belief can be basic without evidence, then any bizarre belief could be claimed as justified in the same way; Plantinga himself addressed this objection. Within Christian apologetics, those who emphasize evidence and argument are reported to criticize his approach for weakening the public grounds of faith. His argument against naturalism also continues to generate debate among philosophers.