Warranted Christian Belief [Paperback]

There are two different types of criticism commonly given against Christian belief - one type is what Alvin Plantinga calls the De facto objection, which says that Christian belief is false because the evidence has proven it so - the other type (that is becoming more and more popular) is the De jure objection (the subject of this book) which claims that Christian belief is irrational, intellectually unacceptable, or morally suspect - irrespective of whether it is true or false. The beginning of the book discusses the difference between the De facto and De jure objections, and like the whole book it is very clear and illuminating -- The exact opposite of what you will read in this review --

Part 1 (Is there a question) begins by discussing (or searching for) some of Kants arguments concerning the impossibility of referring to anything beyond the world of experience -phenomena. Many others have taken up this 'argument' claiming that Kant proved that the language we use when speaking about the phenomenal world can not speak about the transcendent. Apparently, when the Christian speaks about God, ascribing properties to him -like infinite, ultimate- he is talking nonsense.

Part 2 (what is the question) deals with what is meant by an objector when he says that Christian belief is irrational. After much consideration the most plausible answer is found in Marx & Fraud -the same basic type of objection can be found in Nietzsche and Durkheim too.

In Part 3 Plantinga further develops his model for warranted Christian Belief (even if you have never read the other two books in the series - or God and other minds - you'll still be able to understand). This part of the book is the main response to the masters of suspicion (M&F), showing the futility of their objections. There is also a real good critique of naturalism found here (updated from warrant and proper function).

The final part of the book deals with potential defeaters for Christian belief -- different kinds of scripture scholarship, postmodernism & pluralism, suffering & evil. This book is clear and intelligent (with humor mixed in) it's definitely worth reading.

Plantinga has devoted his scholarly life to answer the question whether the Christian faith can be justified, and this book is the fruit of forty years of excellent work. How can the Christian faith be justified? The usual answer is to give arguments for the truth of Christian convictions (from popular writers like Josh McDowell to first rate philosophers such as Richard Swinburne). Plantinga took a different route by asking: what is justification (or warrant for knowledge)? Why must Christians prove his convictions based on principles accepted by non-Christians? The first part of the book review and refute different theories about how Christian faith may be justified (e.g. evidentialism) or dismissed (e.g. Marx and Freud). The second part argues that experience of faith of an ordinary Christian is a perfect justification for the Christian faith, unless one can show that the Christian faith is likely to be false. The third part looks at reasons for arguing Christian faith is likely to be false (biblical criticism, pluralism, evil and suffering). Plantinga think that the truth of Christian faith cannot be demonstrated or proven, but he provides coherent and compelling reasons that faith is a sufficient justification for Christian belief. The arguments sometimes get very complicated, but Plantinga is exceptionally clear and precise and this work is more accesible to non-philosophers than his previous works.

In WCB, Plantinga repeatedly refers to Alston's PERCEIVING GOD as "magisterial." Alston's book is indeed that. But Plantinga's own work in this volume is that and more.

WCB is a philosophically sophisticated defense of even the simplest (and least sophisticated) faith. He challenges a very common objection to Christian belief: "I am not in a position to say whether Christian theism is true or false (who could know a thing like that?), but one thing I do know is that it is not warranted." Plantinga argues, successfully, I think, that this position itself is without warrant. Why? For the simple fact that *if* Christian theism is true, then believers probably *are* warranted even in simple faith. A serious challenge to warrant must therefore include a serious challenge to the truth of the belief.

Warrant is whatever, when added to true belief, yields knowledge. And Plantinga carries into the WCB discussion the results of the prior two volumes. A belief is warranted when it is the product of a belief-producing mechanism that is (a)functioning properly (b) truth-aimed, and (c) functioning in the epistemic environment for which it was designed to acquire truth.

This account seems to do the best job of making sense of those sorts of basic beliefs that all of us hold without having inferred them from other beliefs. I remember that it rained yesterday. What is my evidence that this memory is reliable? From what more basic and certainly known belief may I infer this? Nothing, really. Indeed, it is logically possible that I was brought into existence by a malevolent cartesian deceiver only five seconds ago, equipped with merely *apparent* memories of yesterday's rain, a particularly happy childhood, and even of having actually typed the beginning of this review (this, too, came into existence partially finished and entrusted to me to complete it). Of course, if I am the victim of such a ploy, then my memory belief is *not* the result of a properly functioning, belief-producing mechanism, and I am not warranted.

But I take it that I am warranted in remembering yesterday's rain. In fact, I am not at all on thin ice in saying that I *know* that it rained yesterday. Assuming that (a) it really did rain and (b) my recalling it now is due to the fact that I saw it (or was told about it by my truthful wife, or some other reliable way of knowing) then my memory belief is indeed warranted and counts as knowledge.

Suppose that God *does* exist just as believers maintain and that, further, God's presence is experienced in some immediate way. Calvin spoke of a *sensus divinitatus*--a sense of the divine--that was a part of the original cognitive equipment of all humans (and which was damaged when we were collectively dropped on our heads in the Fall). Suppose that faith amounts to a sort of restoration of this faculty. I take in the summer night sky in the South Dakota Badlands and this occasions spontaneous thoughts about God's creative activity. Or I commit some shameful deed and am impressed with the thought that God disapproves of what I am doing. Are such beliefs warranted? According to Plantinga, they are warranted in precisely the way that my memory belief is warranted **IF** they are true.

Beyond the notion of the *sensus divinitatus,* biblical Christians believe that the Holy Spirit bears a kind of internal witness, engendering love for God and bearing witness to the Scriptures that they are true.

A critic may challenge all such beliefs by alleging that (a) they are held in the absence of anything that looks like evidence and (b) they are readily explained away on some social science explanation. The Freudian explanation of religious belief, for instance, is that it is natural but it is the result of a belief-producing mechanism that is not truth-aimed: wish-fulfillment. But the critic is in a position to know this *only* if he already knows either that God does not exist (which would certainly get in the way of his doing things like creating, disapproving, or bearing witness) or, at least, that God is not, in fact, making his presence known in these immediate ways.

In short, the de jure objection that the belief is not warranted cannot be offered apart from the de facto objection that the belief is false. Such criticisms thus beg the question against the believer.

In the film, Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner's character, Ray, built a baseball diamond in his cornfield, and ballplayers from the past, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, emerged out of the corn to play. Ray, his wife and their daughter could not only see the players, but carried on conversations with them. Ray's brother-in-law saw nothing and, further, was convinced that Ray and his family had either gone crazy or were pulling some sort of hoax.

Suppose, with the plot, that the ballplayers *really were* there, and Ray believed that they were because he perceived them directly, say, through some additional and extraordinary faculty. Given the story and Plantinga's account, Ray is warranted in believing that he is talking to ballplayers. Indeed, he knows that he is. Can he *prove* to his brother-in-law, on the basis of whatever evidence is available to his brotherf-in-law's ordinary faculties? No. But how does this affect the question of whether his belief is warranted? Can I *prove* my memory belief to be true on the basis of some other faculty, such as perception or reason? Maybe not. But must I be able to do so in order to be warranted? Of course not.

Why, then, should anyone suppose that Christian believers are warranted in their beliefs only if they are able to infer those beliefs from evidence that is available to ordinary faculties?

Plantinga argues along such lines that Christian belief is warranted. Along the way, he takes up discussions of potential challenges to his account. The book opens with a discussion of a view that is prevalent at many divinity schools: that Kant established once and for all that human language cannot refer to God. Gordon Kaufmann offers a rehashed version of this, followed by a rehashed version of his rehashed version. Plantinga's interaction with Kaufmann's work is sheer delight. So is his discussion of John Hick's view of Religious Pluralism, which, as Keith Yandell once quipped, is "in danger of becoming canonical" in religious studies departments.

The book concludes with several potential "defeaters" to Plantinga's model for warranted Christian belief. Some argue that the sheer fact of religious diversity strikes a blow. Others press various arguments from evil. Plantinga's discussion of Paul Draper's version is a gem (as is Draper's version itself, to be honest).

He also takes on a version of the Great Pumpkin Objection, calling it "Son of Great Pumpkin." The basic GPO is what may well have occurred to you as you reflected on Plantinga's model: *anyone* from *any* perspective can claim that her beliefs are warranted. Even Linus could claim that his belief in the Great Pumpkin is properly basic and warranted without appeal to evidence. You'll have to read Plantinga for yourself to decide whether this objection sticks.

This is a rewarding read, very much worth the effort of 500+ pages. It is also highly entertaining, as Plantinga is a sprightly writer--even when in the midst of the most rigorous argument.

I've only recently completed a careful reading of WCB and, as you can probably tell, am still in a sort of "honeymoon period" with the book. Plantinga has persuaded me--a former dyed-in-the-wool evidentialist--that his account of warrant is the correct one. If I think of any telling objections you'll be the first to know.