Today:

1. Today: Plantinga’s Positive View: • The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology • Bavinck • Calvin • Barth • Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology

2. Plantinga’s Negative Comments Thus far, we’ve looked at Plantinga’s negative comments. Last class, we saw Plantinga’s reasons for rejecting classical foundationalism. He thus rejects two views that (he claims) depend on classical foundationalism: • Natural Theology • The Evidentialist Objection

4. Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology Plantinga’s positive view is that: It is rationally acceptable to believe in the existence of God without evidence, proof, or argument.

5. Reformed Theology Plantinga develops his positive view by taking a cue from the Reformed Objection to Natural Theology. He draws on comments from: • Bavinck, • Calvin, and • Barth.

6. Bavinck • Argument (or evidence more generally) is not needed for rational justification. • Arguments or proofs are not, in general, the source of the believer’s confidence in God. • We cannot come to knowledge of God on the basis of argument; the traditional arguments just don’t work. • Scripture “proceeds from God as the starting point” and so should the believer. • Belief in God relevantly resembles belief in the existence of the self and of the external world.

7. Calvin • We all have a strong tendency or inclination to believe in God. • This belief is triggered by a common experience: “The Starry Heavens Experience” • This belief is often suppressed by sin. • A theist ought not to believe on the basis of argument, for if he does his belief is likely to be “unstable and wavering.”

8. The Barthian Dilemma Imagine the theist who employs an argument in support of their religious belief Barth claims that the theist has two options: • She can adopt the “standpoint of unbelief”, or • She can pretend to do so. Both options are bad, so she ought not try to give an argument at all.

9. Standpoint of Unbelief One who adopts the “standpoint of unbelief” holds that: “Belief in God is rationally permissible for a person only if he or she has a good argument for it.”

10. Begging the Question “Begging the question” means assuming the very thing you are trying to prove.

11. Begging the Question For example: The Bible is the word of God, and thus everything it says is true. The bible says that God exists ---------------------------------------- Therefore, God exists.

12. The Barthian Dilemma Imagine the theist who employs an argument in support of their religious belief Barth claims that to give a non-question-beggingargument, the theist has two options: • She can adopt the “standpoint of unbelief”, or • She can pretend to do so. Both options are bad, so she ought not try to give an argument at all.

13. Escaping “between the horns” • The theist doesn’t have to adopt the standpoint of unbelief. Nor does the theist have to pretend to adopt the standpoint of unbelief. • The theist may argue for the existence of God without asserting the argument given is his own reason for believing or that this is the only way to have a reasonable belief that God exists.

14. Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology Plantinga’s positive view is that: It is rationally acceptable to believe in the existence of God without evidence, proof, or argument. • This view is common to all of the members of the Reformed tradition. • Plantinga’s addition is to put this view in the language of “Foundationalism”. • For Plantinga, belief in God can be “properly basic”.

15. Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology Plantinga will also draw some other comments of Reformed Theology: • He agrees with Calvin about the strong tendency to religious belief, and with Calvin’s view about the experiences which trigger such belief. • In rejecting the Barthian Dilemma, Plantinga does allow a role for arguments. Specifically, if one faces an argument against the existence of God, it is not rational to continue to believe without defeating the argument.