In this article, I analyze Alvin Plantinga's approach insofar as it represents the Reformed Epistemology-program. I focus on his second phase - for which the 1983 article Reason and Belief in God is characteristic - and on his third phase - for which the 2000 volume 'Warranted Christian Belief' is characteristic. In his second phase, he criticizes the classical foundationalist criteria for proper basicality and argues that theistic beliefs can legitimately be considered to be properly basic (see I 1). I argue that Plantinga succeeds in demonstrating that religious believers do not violate any epistemic duties when holding their beliefs. But the price he pays for that is a deep-going relativism (see I 2). In his third phase, Plantinga focuses on the notion of warrant which he considers to be a vital ingredient of the concept of knowledge. I show that much of the current secondary literature goes astray when suggesting that his point is to show that Christian beliefs are warranted. Rather, his point is to raise the stakes for a particular kind of critique of religion: He argues that Freudian and other critiques are insufficient when holding that the mechanisms from which theistic knowledge is generated are unreliable. In addition, they have to show the falsity of those beliefs, according to Plantinga (see II 1) - I point a comment on in II 2.

Enthalten in:
Theologische Literaturzeitung; 2014/9 Monatsschrift für das gesamte Gebiet der Theologie und Religionswissenschaft (2014)

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Serie / Reihe: Theologische Literaturzeitung

Personen: Grube, Dirk-Martin

Schlagwörter: Religionsphilosophie Apologetik Plantinga, Alvin