[1] At the time of writing Plantinga is engaged in writing Warranted Christian Belief, the final volume of his recent trilogy on epistemology. In this chapter I will be considering Plantinga’s epistemology up to its most recent stage of development based on both published and unpublished material. The key texts are “Reason and Belief in God” (1983a), “Justification and Theism” (1987), “The Prospects for Natural Theology” (1991), Warrant and Proper Function (1993b), “Naturalism Defeated” (1994a, unpublished December draft), and Warranted Christian Belief (1994b, unpublished draft, chapters 1-6).

[2] This claim may not strike one as obviously true. Negatively, Plantinga has argued that classical foundationalism and coherentism are both equally wrongheaded. Positively, he concedes the existence of basic beliefs (among which he includes theistic belief) and nonbasic beliefs in a person’s noetic structure. As noted in chapter 1, a commitment to basic beliefs does not entail a commitment to foundationalism (though the converse does hold). Nevertheless, Plantinga does suggest that properly basic theistic beliefs are at least sometimes “foundational” (1983a, p. 73), and - as the account which follows in the text develops - Plantinga has expressed his sympathies with Reidian foundationalism (1993b, pp. 183-185).

 

[3] Reid's epistemology is discussed in Alston 1991c (pp. 151-155, 162-165), Plantinga 1993b (pp. 182-185), and Wolterstorff 1983b.

[4] Reid himself in all probability did not conceive of theistic belief as foundational - though some scholars dispute the point. When it comes to religious belief, Reid is in many ways very close to the Enlightenment philosophers he criticizes at other points. According to Wolterstorff (1983b, pp. 60-64) Reid was a theistic evidentialist since he views the rational justification for belief in God (at least for adults) as requiring grounding in reason(s). Equally, like Locke, one will be justified in accepting the Bible as a divine revelation only if we have good reason for regarding it as having come from God.

 

[5] This formulation is to be preferred over what is more typically found in the literature: “theistic belief is properly basic” or “theistic belief can be immediately justified.” These locutions obscure the point of Reformed epistemology that some theistic beliefs are justified for some people at certain times under the appropriate circumstances. Equally, the typical formulations of Reformed epistemology set up the position so as to rule out certain kinds of evidentialist requirements. Wolterstorff and Swinburne were instrumental in my coming to formulate the thesis of proper basicality in these terms.

 

[6] I alter the wording here to avoid an ambiguity which would present itself by saying that theistic belief need not be based on adequate reasons, as this might suggest an allowance for its being based on reasons which are not adequate. But the latter is clearly not what Plantinga wants to say.

[7] See Plantinga’s forthcoming Warranted Christian Belief (1994b, chapter 4).

[8] As the following makes clear, Alston's M-beliefs are not identical with Plantinga's properly basic beliefs. What is crucial to Alston's account is God's experientially appearing to the individual and the direct perception of God. Some of Plantinga's examples do not square with this. On the difference between Alston and Plantinga here, see Alston 1991c, pp. 196-97. Also, although for Alston religious experience functions as a ground for theistic belief, Plantinga (1991, p. 310) sees basic belief in God as resembling not just sensory perception, but memory and a priori beliefs. And these latter beliefs - according to Plantinga's warrant theory - do not require anything resembling grounds for rationality, even if they have rationality-conferring conditions (e.g., certain phenomenological qualities, other beliefs, etc).

[9] See chapter 8 Part II for further discussion. For Plantinga’s critical commentary on Alston’s religious epistemology, see Plantinga’s “What is the Question?” (1995a), and his forthcoming Warranted Christian Belief (1994b, chapter 4).

[10] Actually, Plantinga denies an even broader evidence-possession requirement where evidence is inclusive or both propositional and nonpropositional grounds, even though - as noted earlier - he admits a qualified sense of evidence, what he calls impulsional evidence (in the case of memory and a priori beliefs).

[11] I think that Plantinga understands the clause “even if in fact no such argument exists” to be conditioned on the evidence available at any time. It certainly should be taken in that sense. For there might be an argument for the belief that Pt even if, given the evidence available at some time t_n, no such argument can be formulated since there is no deductive or inductive (or probabilistic) path from the available evidence to the proposition Pt.

 

[12] Kenneth Konyndyk 1986 (pp. 106-107) concurs with Plantinga and Wykstra. For a critique of Anthony Kenny's concept of evidentialist proper basicality, see Konyndyk 1991 (pp. 319-332).

[13] The particularist is contrasted with the methodist. The two may be distinguished (as Chisholm does in 1982, pp. 61-75) between two sorts of epistemological questions: (A) What do we know? What is the extent of our knowledge? (B) How are we to decide whether we know? What are the criteria of knowledge? The particularist seeks to answer (A) in order to answer (B), whereas the methodist begins by answering (B) in order to answer (A). The skeptic argues that until one answers (A), one cannot answer (B), and until an answer is provided for (B), an answer cannot be given to (A).

[14] "Justification and Theism” (1987), Warrant and Proper Function (1993b), The Prospects for Natural Theology (1991), and his forthcoming Warranted Christian Belief.

[15] There are a number of other subtle aspects to proper function and design plan that I have will have cause to develop in later chapters.

[16] See chapter 6 of Warranted Christian Belief (1994b) for a thorough account of the Marxist and Freudian objections to theistic belief and their connection with rationality as proper function.

[17] See Hoitenga 1991 (pp. 147-150) and Vos 1985 (pp. 4-9).

 

[18] On Calvin’s “existential” view of knowledge, see Dowey 1952 (pp. 24-27) and Hoitenga 1991 (pp. 143-145).

[19] See Hume 1975 (p. 144). For considerations to the contrary, see Schum 1994 (pp. 33-34; 292-306).

[20] As C. Stephen Evans has recently claimed: “The process of forming a belief on the basis of evidence is one reliable way of arriving at a belief, and I see no reason why the Spirit could not employ such a natural process as part of the divine work.  So the task of the evidential apologist need not be incompatible with the Reformed account. Here the work of the Spirit lies in part in calling the attention of a person to evidence, and enabling that person properly to appreciate and assess that evidence” (1995, unpublished paper). See Evan’s comments also in 1990 (pp. 67, 71-75). See also William Wainwright 1994 for a consideration of how passional factors affect the force of evidence. Wainwright’s discussion focuses on Jonathan Edwards’ stance on natural theology, according to which certain evidence for the existence of God is only appreciated by virtue of the inner work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration.

 

[21] I am indebted to David Reiter for pointing out the more obviously deontological reading of the hard thesis prevalent in Plantinga’s earlier articles.

[22] In 1983a deontologism is not carefully distinguished from proper function (p. 79) and knowledge (pp. 85-87).

 

[23] Hoitenga is the only other writer I know of who deals explicitly with something like the hard thesis. He sees the inappropriateness of nonbasic theistic belief as a consequence (drawn by Reformed thinkers) from the Platonic and Augustinian claim to the immediacy of knowledge of God so central in the tradition of Reformed theology. Such a premise, though, might lead one to think that belief in God mediated through other beliefs is an offense to God, perhaps inconsistent with God's omnipresence and immanence. “To infer God's existence from something else - the idea of him in the mind, the contingency of the universe or its order and design, and so forth - is to imply that these other things are known more immediately than God himself.  For that is the procedure of inference, to begin with what is better known and move from that to what is less well known or not known at all” (1991, p. 220).

[24] Technically speaking, the contrapositive of the conditional consequent of [N1] is “if the belief that Pt is not properly basic. . . .” A belief may fail to be properly basic either because it is nonbasic or basic but not properly basic. I am obviously interested in the former.

 

[25] In “Calvin’s Sense of Divinity and Externalist Knowledge of God” (unpublished) David Reiter distinguishes between doxastic atheism and acceptance atheism. If the distinction between belief and acceptance is correct, my account would have to be extended. Perhaps there are many people who actually believe that God exists (i.e., they are disposed such that whenever they consider <God exists> they normally feel it true that <God exists>), but who do not accept the existence of God (i.e., do not take <God exists> as true as a policy in their reasoning and decision making). Even if a person cannot occurrently believe both p and not-p, if we distinguish between belief and acceptance, a person might believe that p while simultaneously accepting not-p. This would be a form of self-deception. This self- deception would be a cognitive defect compatible with belief in God. Acceptance atheists might even know that God exists, even if they do not believe that they believe that they believe (or know) this. My account is concerned solely with doxastic atheism.

[26] In fact, it is not clear whether there is a “best” or “most appropriate” way without qualification to get to Boots. One way may be one best for the sake of safety, and another for brevity of time of travel. In the case under consideration, basic belief in God is the best way to believe in God for epistemic reasons (as contrasted with nonepistemic reasons).

 

[27] On Plantinga's view, one's cognitive faculties are designed to produce a variety of beliefs with a variety of degrees of strength. The design plan will of course state the strength with which we should hold particular beliefs given the circumstances in which they are formed. As I will explain in the chapters 4 and 5, it seems likely that the design plan dictates that the sensus divinitatis produce theistic belief with a fairly high degree of strength. There is a sense then in which a low degree of belief in God is an indication of a cognitive malfunction (to some degree) with respect to the functioning of the sensus divinitatis. How this particular sort of malfunction relates to nonbasic belief in God is fully developed in chapter 5.