From 1963 to 1982, Plantinga taught at Calvin University before accepting an appointment as the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.[2] He later returned to Calvin University to become the inaugural holder of the Jellema Chair in Philosophy.[3]
A prominent Christian philosopher, Plantinga served as president of the Society of Christian Philosophers from 1983 to 1986. He has delivered the Gifford Lectures twice and was described by Time magazine as "America's leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God".[4] In 2014, Plantinga was the 30th most-cited contemporary author in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.[5] A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was awarded the Templeton Prize in 2017.
Some of Plantinga's most influential works include God and Other Minds (1967), The Nature of Necessity (1974), and a trilogy of books on epistemology, culminating in Warranted Christian Belief (2000) that was simplified in Knowledge and Christian Belief (2015).[6]
Biography
Family
Plantinga was born on November 15, 1932, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Cornelius A. Plantinga (1908–1994) and Lettie G. Bossenbroek (1908–2007), immigrants from the province of Friesland in the Netherlands.[7] After Cornelius earned a PhD in philosophy from Duke University, he secured a teaching job in Michigan in 1941.[8] Cornelius also had a master's degree in psychology. He taught several academic subjects at different institutions throughout his career.[9]
As an adolescent, Alvin Plantinga's family moved from Michigan to North Dakota for his father's job at Jamestown College. At his father's advice, Alvin skipped his last year of high school to enroll at Jamestown College in 1949 at 16.[14][15] That year, his father accepted a teaching job at Calvin University which began in January 1950. Alvin Plantinga moved to Grand Rapids with his family and attended Calvin University for a semester. He applied to Harvard and was awarded a scholarship.[16]
In the fall of 1950, Plantinga transferred to Harvard, where he spent two semesters. In 1951, during Harvard's spring recess, Plantinga attended a few philosophy classes at Calvin University and was so impressed with Calvin philosophy professor William Harry Jellema that he returned in 1951 to study philosophy under him.[17] In 1954, Plantinga began his graduate studies at the University of Michigan where he studied under William Alston, William Frankena, and Richard Cartwright, among others.[18] A year later, in 1955, he transferred to Yale University where he received his PhD in 1958.[19]
Teaching career
Plantinga began his career as an instructor in the philosophy department at Yale in 1957, and then in 1958, he became a professor of philosophy at Wayne State University during its heyday as a major center for analytic philosophy. In 1963, he accepted a teaching job at Calvin University, where he replaced the retiring Jellema.[20] He then spent the next 19 years at Calvin before moving to the University of Notre Dame in 1982. He retired from the University of Notre Dame in 2010 and returned to Calvin University, where he holds the first William Harry Jellema Chair in Philosophy. He has trained metaphysics and epistemology-focused philosophers including Michael Bergmann, Michael Rea, and Trenton Merricks.
In 2006, the University of Notre Dame's Center for Philosophy of Religion renamed its Distinguished Scholar Fellowship as the Alvin Plantinga Fellowship.[23] The fellowship includes an annual lecture by the current Plantinga Fellow.[24]
In 2012, the University of Pittsburgh's Philosophy Department, History and Philosophy of Science Department, and the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science co-awarded Plantinga the Nicholas Rescher Prize for Systematic Philosophy,[25] which he received with a talk titled, "Religion and Science: Where the Conflict Really Lies".
In 2017, Baylor University's Center for Christian Philosophy inaugurated the Alvin Plantinga Award for Excellence in Christian Philosophy. Awardees deliver a lecture at Baylor University and their name is put on a plaque with Plantinga's image in the Institute for Studies in Religion. He was named the first fellow of the center as well.[26]
Plantinga has argued that some people can know that God exists as a basic belief, requiring no argument. He developed this argument in two different ways: firstly, in God and Other Minds (1967), by drawing an equivalence between the teleological argument and the common sense view that people have of other minds existing by analogy with their own minds.[28][29] Plantinga has also developed a more comprehensive epistemological account of the nature of warrant which allows for the existence of God as a basic belief.[30]
Plantinga has also argued that there is no logical inconsistency between the existence of evil and the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, wholly good God.[31]
Plantinga proposed a "free-will defense" in a volume edited by Max Black in 1965,[32] which attempts to refute the logical problem of evil, the argument that the existence of evil is logically incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good God.[33] Plantinga's argument (in a truncated form) states that "It is possible that God, even being omnipotent, could not create a world with free creatures who never choose evil. Furthermore, it is possible that God, even being omnibenevolent, would desire to create a world which contains evil if moral goodness requires free moral creatures."[34]
However, the argument's handling of natural evil has been disputed. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the argument also "conflicts with important theistic doctrines" such as the notion of a heaven where free saved souls reside without doing evil, and the idea that God has free will yet is wholly good. Critics thus maintain that, if we take such doctrines to be (as Christians usually have), God could have created free creatures that always do right, contra Plantinga's claim.[35]J. L. Mackie saw Plantinga's free-will defense as incoherent.[36]
Plantinga's well-received book God, Freedom and Evil, written in 1974, gave his response to what he saw as the incomplete and uncritical view of theism's criticism of theodicy. Plantinga's contribution stated that when the issue of a comprehensive doctrine of freedom is added to the discussion of the goodness of God and the omnipotence of God then it is not possible to exclude the presence of evil in the world after introducing freedom into the discussion. Plantinga's own summary occurs in his discussion titled "Could God Have Created a World Containing Moral Good but No Moral Evil", where he states his conclusion that, "...the price for creating a world in which they produce moral good is creating one in which they also produce moral evil."[37]
What Plantinga calls "Reformed epistemology" holds that belief in God can be rational and justified even without arguments or evidence for the existence of God. More specifically, he argues belief in God is properly basic, and due to a religious externalist epistemology, he claims that it could be justified independently of evidence. His externalist epistemology, called "proper functionalism", is a form of epistemologicalreliabilism.
Plantinga discusses his view of Reformed epistemology and proper functionalism in a three-volume series. In the first book of the trilogy, Warrant: The Current Debate, Plantinga introduces, analyzes, and criticizes 20th-century developments in analytic epistemology, particularly the works of Chisholm, BonJour, Alston, Goldman, and others.[38] In the book, Plantinga argues specifically that the theories of what he calls "warrant"—what many others have called justification (Plantinga draws out a difference: justification is a property of a person holding a belief while warrant is a property of a belief)—put forth by these epistemologists have systematically failed to capture in full what is required for knowledge.[39]
In the second book, Warrant and Proper Function, he introduces the notion of warrant as an alternative to justification and discusses topics like self-knowledge, memories, perception, and probability.[40] Plantinga's "proper function" account argues that as a necessary condition of having warrant, one's "belief-forming and belief-maintaining apparatus of powers" are functioning properly—"working the way it ought to work".[41] Plantinga explains his argument for proper function with reference to a "design plan", as well as an environment in which one's cognitive equipment is optimal for use. Plantinga asserts that the design plan does not require a designer: "it is perhaps possible that evolution (undirected by God or anyone else) has somehow furnished us with our design plans",[42] but the paradigm case of a design plan is like a technological product designed by a human being (like a radio or a wheel). Ultimately, Plantinga argues that epistemological naturalism- i.e. epistemology that holds that warrant is dependent on natural faculties—is best supported by supernaturalist metaphysics—in this case, the belief in a creator God or designer who has laid out a design plan that includes cognitive faculties conducive to attaining knowledge.[43]
According to Plantinga, a belief, B, is warranted if:
(1) the cognitive faculties involved in the production of B are functioning properly…; (2) your cognitive environment is sufficiently similar to the one for which your cognitive faculties are designed; (3) … the design plan governing the production of the belief in question involves, as purpose or function, the production of true beliefs…; and (4) the design plan is a good one: that is, there is a high statistical or objective probability that a belief produced in accordance with the relevant segment of the design plan in that sort of environment is true.[44]
Plantinga seeks to defend this view of proper function against alternative views of proper function proposed by other philosophers which he groups together as "naturalistic", including the "functional generalization" view of John Pollock, the evolutionary/etiological account provided by Ruth Millikan, and a dispositional view held by John Bigelow and Robert Pargetter.[45] Plantinga also discusses his evolutionary argument against naturalism in the later chapters of Warrant and Proper Function.[46]
In 2000, the third book of the trilogy, Warranted Christian Belief, was published. In this volume, Plantinga's warrant theory is the basis for his theological end: providing a philosophical basis for Christian belief, an argument for why Christian theistic belief can enjoy warrant. In the book, he develops two models for such beliefs, the "A/C" (Aquinas/Calvin) model, and the "Extended A/C" model. The former attempts to show that a belief in God can be justified, warranted and rational, while the Extended model tries to show that specifically Christian theological beliefs including the Trinity, the Incarnation, the resurrection of Christ, the atonement, salvation etc. Under this model, Christians are justified in their beliefs because of the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing those beliefs about in the believer.
James Beilby has argued that the purpose of Plantinga's Warrant trilogy, and specifically of his Warranted Christian Belief, is firstly to make a form of argument against religion impossible—namely, the argument that whether or not Christianity is true, it is irrational—so "the skeptic would have to shoulder the formidable task of demonstrating the falsity of Christian belief"[47] rather than simply dismiss it as irrational. In addition, Plantinga is attempting to provide a philosophical explanation of how Christians should think about their own Christian belief.
Plantinga criticized Malcolm's and Hartshorne's arguments, and offered an alternative.[48] He argued that, if Malcolm does prove the necessary existence of the greatest possible being, it follows that there is a being which exists in all worlds whose greatness in some worlds is not surpassed. It does not, he argued, demonstrate that such a being has unsurpassed greatness in this world.[49]
In an attempt to resolve this problem, Plantinga differentiated between "greatness" and "excellence". A being's excellence in a particular world depends only on its properties in that world; a being's greatness depends on its properties in all worlds. Therefore, the greatest possible being must have maximal excellence in every possible world. Plantinga then restated Malcolm's argument, using the concept of "maximal greatness". He argued that it is possible for a being with maximal greatness to exist, so a being with maximal greatness exists in a possible world. If this is the case, then a being with maximal greatness exists in every world, and therefore in this world.[49]
The conclusion relies on a form of modal axiom S5, which states that if something is possibly true, then its possibility is necessary (it is possibly true in all worlds). Plantinga's version of S5 suggests that "To say that p is possibly necessarily true is to say that, with regard to one world, it is true at all worlds; but in that case it is true at all worlds, and so it is simply necessary."[50] A version of his argument is as follows:[51]
A being has maximal excellence in a given possible world W if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good in W; and
A being has maximal greatness if it has maximal excellence in every possible world.
It is possible that there is a being that has maximal greatness. (Premise)
Therefore, possibly, it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good being exists.
Therefore, (by axiom S5) it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.
Therefore, an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.
Plantinga argued that, although the first premise is not rationally established, it is not contrary to reason. Michael Martin argued that, if certain components of perfection are contradictory, such as omnipotence and omniscience, then the first premise is contrary to reason. Martin also proposed parodies of the argument, suggesting that the existence of anything can be demonstrated with Plantinga's argument, provided it is defined as perfect or special in every possible world.[52]
Another Christian philosopher, William Lane Craig, characterizes Plantinga's argument in a slightly different way:
It is possible that a maximally great being exists.
If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.
Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
According to Craig, premises (2)–(5) are relatively uncontroversial among philosophers, but "the epistemic entertainability of premise (1) (or its denial) does not guarantee its metaphysical possibility."[53] Furthermore, Richard M. Gale argued that premise three, the "possibility premise", begs the question. He stated that one only has the epistemic right to accept the premise if one understands the nested modal operators, and that if one understands them within the system S5—without which the argument fails—then one understands that "possibly necessarily" is in essence the same as "necessarily".[54] Thus the premise begs the question because the conclusion is embedded within it. On S5 systems in general, James Garson writes that "the words 'necessarily' and 'possibly', have many different uses. So the acceptability of axioms for modal logic depends on which of these uses we have in mind."[55]
In Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism, he argues that if evolution is true, it undermines naturalism. His basic argument is that if evolution and naturalism are both true, human cognitive faculties evolved to produce beliefs that have survival value (maximizing one's success at the four Fs: "feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing"), not necessarily to produce beliefs that are true. Thus, since human cognitive faculties are tuned to survival rather than truth in the naturalism-evolution model, there is reason to doubt the veracity of the products of those same faculties, including naturalism and evolution themselves. On the other hand, if God created man "in his image" by way of an evolutionary process (or any other means), then Plantinga argues our faculties would probably be reliable.
The argument does not assume any necessary correlation (or uncorrelation) between true beliefs and survival. Making the contrary assumption—that there is, in fact, a relatively strong correlation between truth and survival—if human belief-forming apparatus evolved giving a survival advantage, then it ought to yield truth since true beliefs confer a survival advantage. Plantinga counters that, while there may be overlap between true beliefs and beliefs that contribute to survival, the two kinds of beliefs are not the same, and he gives the following example with a man named Paul:
Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief... Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it... Clearly there are any number of belief-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour.[56]
Even though Plantinga believes that God could have used Darwinian processes to create the world, he stands firm against philosophical naturalism. He said in an interview on the relationship between science and religion that:
Religion and science share more common ground than you might think, though science can't prove, it presupposes that there has been a past for example, science does not cover the whole of the knowledge enterprise.[61]
Plantinga participated in groups that support the Intelligent Design Movement, and was a member of the "Ad Hoc Origins Committee"[62] that supported Philip E. Johnson's 1991 book Darwin on Trial, he also provided a back-cover endorsement of Johnson's book: "Shows how Darwinian evolution has become an idol."[63]
Like any Christian (and indeed any theist), I believe that the world has been created by God, and hence "intelligently designed". The hallmark of intelligent design, however, is the claim that this can be shown scientifically; I'm dubious about that.
...As far as I can see, God certainly could have used Darwinian processes to create the living world and direct it as he wanted to go; hence evolution as such does not imply that there is no direction in the history of life. What does have that implication is not evolutionary theory itself, but unguided evolution, the idea that neither God nor any other person has taken a hand in guiding, directing or orchestrating the course of evolution. But the scientific theory of evolution, sensibly enough, says nothing one way or the other about divine guidance. It doesn't say that evolution is divinely guided; it also doesn't say that it isn't. Like almost any theist, I reject unguided evolution; but the contemporary scientific theory of evolution just as such—apart from philosophical or theological add-ons—doesn't say that evolution is unguided. Like science in general, it makes no pronouncements on the existence or activity of God.[67]
The attitude that he proposes and elaborates upon in Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism is that there is no tension between religion and science, that the two go hand in hand, and that the actual conflict lies between naturalism and science.[68]
Philosophy of religion is "the philosophical examination of the central themes and concepts involved in religious traditions". Philosophical discussions on such topics date from ancient times, and appear in the earliest known texts concerning philosophy. The field involves many other branches of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science.
The problem of evil is the philosophical question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God. There are currently differing definitions of these concepts. The best known presentation of the problem is attributed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus. It was popularized by David Hume.
An argument from nonbelief is a philosophical argument for the non-existence of God that asserts an inconsistency between God's existence and a world in which people fail to recognize him. It is similar to the classic argument from evil in affirming an inconsistency between the world that exists and the world that would exist if God had certain desires combined with the power to see them through.
The existence of God is a subject of debate in the philosophy of religion and theology. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God can be categorized as logical, empirical, metaphysical, subjective or scientific. In philosophical terms, the question of the existence of God involves the disciplines of epistemology and ontology and the theory of value.
Nicholas Paul Wolterstorff is an American philosopher and theologian. He is currently Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. A prolific writer with wide-ranging philosophical and theological interests, he has written books on aesthetics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and philosophy of education. In Faith and Rationality, Wolterstorff, Alvin Plantinga, and William Alston developed and expanded upon a view of religious epistemology that has come to be known as Reformed epistemology. He also helped to establish the journal Faith and Philosophy and the Society of Christian Philosophers.
In the philosophy of religion, Reformed epistemology is a school of philosophical thought concerning the nature of knowledge (epistemology) as it applies to religious beliefs. The central proposition of Reformed epistemology is that beliefs can be justified by more than evidence alone, contrary to the positions of evidentialism, which argues that while non-evidential belief may be beneficial, it violates some epistemic duty. Central to Reformed epistemology is the proposition that belief in God may be "properly basic" and not need to be inferred from other truths to be rationally warranted. William Lane Craig describes Reformed epistemology as "One of the most significant developments in contemporary religious epistemology ... which directly assaults the evidentialist construal of rationality."
Metaphysical naturalism is a philosophical worldview which holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences. Methodological naturalism is a philosophical basis for science, for which metaphysical naturalism provides only one possible ontological foundation. Broadly, the corresponding theological perspective is religious naturalism or spiritual naturalism. More specifically, metaphysical naturalism rejects the supernatural concepts and explanations that are part of many religions.
The evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN) is a philosophical argument asserting a problem with believing both evolution and philosophical naturalism simultaneously. The argument was first proposed by Alvin Plantinga in 1993 and "raises issues of interest to epistemologists, philosophers of mind, evolutionary biologists, and philosophers of religion". The EAAN argues that the combined belief in both evolutionary theory and naturalism is epistemically self-defeating. The argument for this is that if both evolution and naturalism are true, then the probability of having reliable cognitive faculties is low, which then destroys any reason to believe in evolution or naturalism in the first place, as the cognitive faculties one used to deduce evolution or naturalism as logically valid are no longer reliable. This argument comes as an expansion of the argument from reason, although the two are separate philosophical arguments.
The Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit is a counter-argument to modern versions of the argument from design for the existence of God. It was introduced by Richard Dawkins in chapter 4 of his 2006 book The God Delusion, "Why there almost certainly is no God".
God and Other Minds is a 1967 book by the American philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga which re-kindled philosophical debate on the existence of God in Anglo-American philosophical circles by arguing that belief in God was like belief in other minds: although neither could be demonstrated conclusively against a determined sceptic both were fundamentally rational. Though Plantinga later modified some of his views, particularly on the soundness of the ontological argument and on the nature of epistemic rationality, he still stands by the basic theses of the book.
The argument from reason is a transcendental argument against metaphysical naturalism and for the existence of God. The best-known defender of the argument is C. S. Lewis. Lewis first defended the argument at length in his 1947 book, Miracles: A Preliminary Study. In the second edition of Miracles (1960), Lewis substantially revised and expanded the argument.
Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense is a logical argument developed by the American analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga and published in its final version in his 1977 book God, Freedom, and Evil. Plantinga's argument is a defense against the logical problem of evil as formulated by the philosopher J. L. Mackie beginning in 1955. Mackie's formulation of the logical problem of evil argued that three attributes ascribed to God are logically incompatible with the existence of evil.
In the philosophy of religion, an ontological argument is a deductive philosophical argument, made from an ontological basis, that is advanced in support of the existence of God. Such arguments tend to refer to the state of being or existing. More specifically, ontological arguments are commonly conceived a priori in regard to the organization of the universe, whereby, if such organizational structure is true, God must exist.
Religious epistemology broadly covers religious approaches to epistemological questions, or attempts to understand the epistemological issues that come from religious belief. The questions asked by epistemologists apply to religious beliefs and propositions whether they seem rational, justified, warranted, reasonable, based on evidence and so on. Religious views also influence epistemological theories, such as in the case of Reformed epistemology.
The Augustinian theodicy, named for the 4th- and 5th-century theologian and philosopher Augustine of Hippo, is a type of Christian theodicy that developed in response to the evidential problem of evil. As such, it attempts to explain the probability of an omnipotent (all-powerful) and omnibenevolent (all-loving) God amid evidence of evil in the world. A number of variations of this kind of theodicy have been proposed throughout history; their similarities were first described by the 20th-century philosopher John Hick, who classified them as "Augustinian". They typically assert that God is perfectly (ideally) good, that he created the world out of nothing, and that evil is the result of humanity's original sin. The entry of evil into the world is generally explained as consequence of original sin and its continued presence due to humans' misuse of free will and concupiscence. God's goodness and benevolence, according to the Augustinian theodicy, remain perfect and without responsibility for evil or suffering.
Sensus divinitatis, also referred to as sensus deitatis or semen religionis, is a term first employed by French Protestant reformer John Calvin to describe a postulated human sense. Instead of knowledge of the environment, the sensus divinitatis is believed to give humans a knowledge of God.
Michael Abram Bergmann is an American analytic philosopher teaching in the department of philosophy at Purdue University. His primary interests are epistemology and philosophy of religion. In epistemology, he writes mostly on externalism and, in philosophy of religion, he mostly writes on the epistemology of religious belief and the problem of evil.
In philosophy, naturalism is the idea that only natural laws and forces operate in the universe. In its primary sense, it is also known as ontological naturalism, metaphysical naturalism, pure naturalism, philosophical naturalism and antisupernaturalism. "Ontological" refers to ontology, the philosophical study of what exists. Philosophers often treat naturalism as equivalent to materialism, but there are important distinctions between the philosophies.
Warrant and Proper Function (1993) is the second book in a trilogy written by philosopher Alvin Plantinga on epistemology.
Kelly James Clark is an American philosopher noted for his work in the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of science, and the cognitive science of religion. He is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Professor at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids Michigan.
↑ Felder, D. W. (1971). "Disanalogies in Plantinga's Argument regarding the Rationality of Theism". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 10 (3): 200–207. doi:10.2307/1384479. JSTOR1384479.
↑ J. L. Mackie wrote: "[H]ow could there be logically contingent states of affairs, prior to the creation and existence of any created beings with free will, which an omnipotent god would have to accept and put up with? This suggestion is simply incoherent. Indeed, by bringing in the notion of individual essences which determine—presumably non-causally—how Curly Smith, Satan, and the rest of us would choose freely or would act in each hypothetical situation, Plantinga has not rescued the free will defence but made its weaknesses all too clear". Mackie 1982, p. 174.
↑ Plantinga, Alvin (1974). God, Freedom and Evil, p. 49.
↑ Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
↑ Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate, 1993. 3.
↑ Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
↑ Fales, E. (1996). "Plantinga's Case against Naturalistic Epistemology". Philosophy of Science. 63 (3): 432–451. doi:10.1086/289920. S2CID170510977.
↑ Beilby, James (2007). "Plantinga's Model of Warranted Christian Belief". In Baker, Deane-Peter (ed.). Alvin Plantinga. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.125–165. ISBN978-0-521-67143-9.
↑ Oppy, Graham (8 February 1996). "Ontological Arguments". substantive revision 15 July 2011. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
↑ Martin, Michael (2003). Philosophy of religion: an anthology. Wiley-Blackwell. pp.282–293. ISBN978-0-631-21471-7.
↑ Craig, William Lane (2008). Reasonable faith. Crossway. p.185. ISBN978-1-4335-0115-9. Premises (2)–(5) of this argument are relatively uncontroversial. Most philosophers would agree that if God's existence is even possible, then he must exist. ... the epistemic entertainability of premise (1) (or its denial) does not guarantee its metaphysical possibility.
↑ Gale, Richard (1993). On the Nature and Existence of God. Cambridge University Press. p.227. ISBN0-521-45723-8.
↑ Garson, James (February 29, 2000). Modal Logic. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University – via plato.stanford.edu.
↑ Plantinga, Alvin Warrant and Proper Function, (New York: Oxford University Press), 1993. pp. 225–226 ( ISBN978-0-19-507864-0).
↑ "Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga has also signed this letter" – We're Not in Kansas Anymore, Nancy Pearcey, Christianity Today, May 22, 2000, cited in Forrest & Gross 2004, p.18 "Alvin Plantinga was also a signatory to this letter, early evidence of his continuing support of the intelligent design movement"– Intelligent design creationism and its critics, Robert T. Pennock (ed), 2001, p44
Schönecker, Dieter (ed.), Essays on "Warranted Christian Belief". With Replies by Alvin Plantinga. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2015.
Baker, Deane-Peter (ed), Alvin Plantinga (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus Series). New York: Cambridge University Press. 2007.
Mascrod, Keith, Alvin Plantinga and Christian Apologetics. Wipf & Stock. 2007.
Crisp, Thomas, Matthew Davidson, David Vander Laan (eds), Knowledge and Reality: Essays in Honor of Alvin Plantinga. Dordrecht: Springer. 2006.
Beilby, James, Epistemology as Theology: An Evaluation of Alvin Plantinga's Religious Epistemology. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2005
Beilby, James (ed), Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2002.
Sennet, James (ed), The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader. Grand Rapids: Eeardman. 1998. ISBN0-8028-4229-1
Kvanvig, Jonathan (ed), Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga's Theory of Knowledge. Savage, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. 1996.
McLeod, Mark S. Rationality and Theistic Belief: An Essay on Reformed Epistemology (Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion). Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1993.
Zagzebski, Linda (ed), Rational Faith. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 1993.
Sennett, James, Modality, Probability, and Rationality: A Critical Examination of Alvin Plantinga's Philosophy. New York: P. Lang. 1992.
Hoitenga, Dewey, From Plato to Plantinga: An Introduction to Reformed Epistemology. Albany: State University of New York Press. 1991.
Parsons, Keith, God and the Burden of Proof: Plantinga, Swinburne, and the Analytic Defense of Theism. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books. 1989.
Tomberlin, James and Peter van Inwagen (eds), Alvin Plantinga (Profiles V.5). Dordrecht: D. Reidel. 1985.
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