Show-Me the Argument

Review of Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford University Press, 2000)*

by Andrew Moon

Warranted Christian Belief follows Alvin Plantinga’s previous two books, Warrant: the Current Debate and Warrant and Proper Function as the final installment in his Warrant trilogy.  Plantinga describes Christian belief as having two components: a theistic component and a uniquely Christian component.  The theistic component is the proposition that God exists.  The Christian component is the proposition “that we human beings are somehow mired in rebellion and sin, that we consequently require deliverance and salvation, and that God has arranged for that deliverance through the sacrificial suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who was both a man and also the second member of the Trinity, the uniquely divine son of God” (p. vii).  Plantinga defends the thesis that there is nothing epistemically objectionable about Christian belief.

Part I deals with the objection that we can’t even have Christian belief.  Apparently, many liberal theologians think that Kant showed that our concepts can’t even apply to God.  If this is so, then there can really be no such thing as “Christian belief”.  What is referred to by “Christian belief” would actually have no propositional content and not properly be counted as belief.  Plantinga devotes chapter 1 to showing that there is no good Kantian argument for this conclusion and chapter 2 to responding to contemporary versions of the argument from Gordon Kaufmann and John Hick.

The rest of the book deals with what Plantinga calls the de jure objection – the objection that Christian belief lacks some important, epistemic property.  Part II investigates what the precise content of the de jure objection actually is.  Plantinga’s general strategy, I think, is to show that once we specify the epistemic property that, according to the de jure objection, Christian belief is supposed to lack, it is either the case that a) Christian belief can have this property or b) it’s not a big deal if Christian belief lacks it.

For example, chapter 3 deals with the question of whether Christian belief is justified.  Plantinga understands “justified” deontologically – “it includes being within one’s epistemic rights and also includes being epistemically responsible with respect to belief formation” (100).  Having construed justification this way, Plantinga thinks it’s obvious that Christian belief can be justified.  He takes the case of a Christian believer: “she is often aware, as it strongly seems to her, of the work of the Holy Spirit in her heart, comforting, encouraging, teaching, leading her to accept the “great things of the gospel”… this all seems to her enormously more convincing than the complaints of the critics… How can she possibly be blameworthy or irresponsible, if she thinks about the matter as hard as she can, in the most responsible way she can, and still comes to these conclusions?” (100-101) The upshot of chapter 3: depending on the conception of justification, either Christian belief can be justified or the justification under consideration is not worth having.  Chapter 4 reaches this same conclusion with the de jure complaint that Christian belief is irrational: depending on the conception of rationality, either Christian belief can be rational or the rationality under consideration is not worth having.

Chapter 5 deals with a final de jure complaint that originates from Freud and Marx.  Perhaps Christian belief arises out of wish-fulfillment or is the result of neurosis or cognitive dysfunction (or some other problematic mechanism).  If this is the de jure objection, then Plantinga takes the objection to be that Christian belief lacks warrant, where “warrant” denotes whatever it is which turns true belief into knowledge.  A person can’t know that Christian belief is true if it arises by way of neurosis or wish-fulfillment, even if Christian belief happens to be true.  On Plantinga’s own theory of warrant, a belief has warrant if and only if it is produced by reliable, truth-aimed, properly functioning cognitive faculties in an appropriate epistemic environment.  So if Freud and Marx are correct, then Christian belief lacks warrant.  Plantinga thinks that this is the most viable de jure objection.

In response, Plantinga devotes Part III to presenting a model for how Christian belief can have warrant.  The key to understanding Plantinga’s model is his point that this final de jure objection is inseparable from what he calls the de facto question.  The de jure objection is about the warrant of Christian belief.  The de facto question is about the truth of Christian belief.  One of Plantinga’s main points in Part III is that one cannot make this de jure objection without assuming an answer to the de facto question.

For example, chapter 6 develops a model of warranted theistic belief.  The Freud/Marx objection simply assumes an answer to the de facto question – that God, in fact, does not exist.  For if God does exist, Plantinga argues, then it is likely that God designed us with a faculty (Plantinga calls it the ‘sensus divinitatus’) to produce in us belief in him (186-198).  Then theistic belief need not be formed by neurosis, dysfunction, or wish-fulfillment.  Instead, it would be formed by a reliable, truth-aimed, properly functioning cognitive faculty in an appropriate epistemic environment.  Hence, theistic belief would be warranted.

Chapters 7-10 develop a detailed model of warranted Christian belief.  Any sort of Freud/Marx objection against Christian belief must assume that Christian belief is false.  For if Christian belief is true, Plantinga argues, then there is a plausible model by which Christian belief can have warrant.  Plantinga explores different components of this model in chapters 7-9.  Chapter 7 provides a deep exploration of sin and sin’s cognitive consequences – that it causes our sensus divinitatus to improperly function, resulting in false beliefs about God, ourselves, and other people.  Chapter 8 provides a detailed model for how the Holy Spirit can restore the functioning of our sensus divinitatus so that we can come to have faith (where faith includes having warranted Christian belief) by way of the Bible.  Chapter 9 explores how the Holy Spirit restores our will and affections.  Chapter 10 deals with objections to the model.

Lastly, Part IV deals with potential defeaters to Christian belief.  Chapter 11 provides an account of the nature of defeaters and how, on Plantinga’s model, Christian belief could be unwarranted because of defeaters.  I take chapter 11 to be the book’s major contribution to epistemology.  Chapters 12-14 deal with various potential defeaters for Christian belief.  Chapter 12 deals with contemporary scriptural scholarship, chapter 13 deals with postmodernism and pluralism, and chapter 14 deals with the existence of evil.

I have missed much of importance in my review of this 508-page volume.  There is Plantinga’s exegesis and discussions of Kant on the noumena and phenomena, Locke on epistemic justification and knowledge, Freud and Marx on religion, Aquinas and Calvin on belief in God, and Jonathan Edwards on religious affections.  My own complaints are that the book can be repetitive and there could’ve been more engagement in recent epistemology.  Of course, I highly recommend the book.

*Thanks to Kenny Boyce for help on this review.