Alvin Plantinga: Warranted Christian Belief - Christian Classics Ethereal Library

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Table of Contents

Part I. Is There a Question?

A. Two Worlds or One?

B. Arguments or Reasons?

2. Kaufman and Hick

A. The Real Referent and the Available Referent

B. The Function of Religious Language

C. Religiously Relevant?

D. Is There Such a Thing?

Part II. What is the Question?

3. Justification and the Classical Picture

A. Living by Reason

II. Classical Evidentialism, Deontologism, and Foundationalism

A. Classical Foundationalism

B. Classical Deontologism

III. Back to the Present

IV. Problems with the Classical Picture

A. Self-Referential Problems

B. Most of Our Beliefs Unjustified?

V. Christian Belief Justified

VI. Analogical Variations

A. Variations on Classical Foundationalism

B. Variations on the Deontology

C. Is This the de Jure Question?

I. Some assorted versions of rationality

A. Aristotelian Rationality

B. Rationality as Proper Function

C. The Deliverances of Reason

D. Means-Ends Rationality

II. Alstonian Practical Rationality

A. The Initial Question

B. Doxastic Practices

C. Epsitemic Circularity

D. The Argument for Practical Rationality

E. Practical Rationality Initially Characterized

F. The Original Position

G. The Wide Original Position

H. A Narrow Original Position?

5. Warrant and the Freud-and-Marx Complaint

I. The F&M Complaint

D. How Shall We Understand the F&M Complaint?

II. Warrant: The Sober Truth

III. The F&M Complaint Again

Part III. Warranted Christian Belief

6. Warranted Belief in God

I. The Aquinas/Calvin Model

B. Presentation of the Model

II. Is Belief in God Warrant-Basic?

A. If False, Probably Not

B. If True, Probably So

III. The de Jure Question is not Independent of the de Facto Question

IV. The F&M Complaint Revisited

7. Sin and Its Cognitive Consequences

I. Preliminaries

II. Initial Statement of the Extended Model

III. The Nature of Sin

IV. The Noetic Effects of Sin

A. The Basic Consequences

B. Sin and Knowledge

8. The Extended Aquinas/Calvin Model: Revealed to Our Minds

II. How Does Faith Work?

III. Faith and Positive Epistemic Status

A. Justification

B. Internal Rationality

C. External Rationality and Warrant: Faith is Knowledge

IV. Proper Basicality and the Role of Scripture

V. Comparison with Locke

VI. Why Necessary?

VII. Cognitive Renewal

9. The Testimonial Model: Sealed upon Our Hearts

I. Belief and Affection

II. Jonathan Edwards

A. Intellect and Will: Which Is Prior?

B. The Affirmations of Faith

III. Analogue of Warrant

I. Warrant and the Argument from Religious Experience

II. What Can Experience Show?

III. A Killer Argument?

IV. Son of Great Pumpkin?

V. Circularity?

Part IV. Defeaters?

11. Defeaters and Defeat

I. The Nature of Defeaters

II. Defeaters for Christian or Theistic Belief

III. Projective Theories a Defeater for Christian Belief?

12. Two (or More) Kinds of Scripture Scholarship

I. Scripture Divinely Inspired

II. Traditional Christian Biblical Commentary

III. Historical Biblical Criticism

A. Varieties of Historical Biblical Criticism

B. Tensions with Traditional Christianity

IV. Why Aren’t Most Christians More Concerned?

A. Force Majeure

B. A Moral Imperative?

C. Historical Biblical Criticism More Inclusive?

V. Nothing to be Concerned About

A. Troeltschian Historical Biblical Criticism Again

B. Non-Troeltschian Historical Biblical Criticism

C. Conditionalization

VI. Concluding Coda

13. Postmodernism and Pluralism

I. Postmodernism

A. Is Postmodernism Inconsistent with Christian Belief?

B. Do These Claims Defeat Christian Belief?

C. Postmodernism a Failure of Nerve

A. A Probabilistic Defeater?

B. The Charge of Moral Arbitrariness

14. Suffering and Evil

I. Evidential Atheological Arguments

A. Rowe’s Arguments

B. Draper’s Argument

II. Nonargumentative Defeaters?

[Original] Index

Index of Scripture References

Greek Words and Phrases

Index of Pages of the Print Edition