Alvin Plantinga’s ‘bizzare claims’
Review of "The Problem of God in Alvin Plantinga" by James Beilby.
The Problem of God in Alvin Plantinga
James Beilby
Cambridge University Press, 2026.
Alvin Plantinga, arguably North America’s preeminent reformed philosopher, is the subject of a lively study, The Problem of God in Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga leveraged reformed perspectives in a broader academic world.
His comfort with the American academic universe began early. As a first year Calvin student, Plantinga won a major scholarship to Harvard. With Dutch immigrant frugality, he decided to accept. However, visiting Calvin on a break, Plantinga heard William Jellema teach a philosophy class and was captivated. This was the approach he wanted to pursue. So, leaving Harvard, he returned to Calvin to finish his undergraduate philosophy degree.
He then pursued graduate and postgrad work at various American schools where he found bemused acceptance, curiosity about his convictions and lively conversations. He discovered a congenial community of philosophical friends, most neither reformed nor Christian.
His Kuyperian bent convinced him that Christian philosophers should not restrict themselves to topics and methods preferred by secular academics, but think about issues of interest to Christians. This led to lifelong philosophical inquiries about knowledge and belief, and the relationship between the two. Combining a reformed approach to philosophical questions and a commitment to a congenial secular philosophical community gave him a long, productive career of clear, careful thinking.
Bold assertions
His first major work, God and Other Minds, famously argued that belief in God’s existence is no less reasonable than belief in the existence of any mind other than your own. He developed his defense of faith in a multi-volume study, culminating in Warranted Christian Belief. He concluded that for Christians, belief in God may be rooted in knowing God and needs no external rational justification or validation. Belief in God and belief in the laws of logic are not all that different.
In later years Plantinga focused more on the relationship between scientific knowledge and Christian belief, arguing that apparent conflict between evolutionary theory and Christian belief is superficial: deep harmony exists between the two. Examined closely, the evolutionary model undermines a naturalistic, materialistic worldview. The kernel of his argument is that random evolution has a low probability of producing a mind which entertains true (as opposed to convenient) beliefs. The entire scientific project depends on a reliable rationality that willingly plows through convenient false beliefs to seek inconvenient and even risky truth.
Plantinga’s bold assertions, carefully and convincingly reasoned, transformed philosophical conversation in North American and British universities. His tenacious approach not only brought reformed thinking well beyond the immigrant subculture, it also earned a new philosophical lexicon term: “to alvinize. v. To stimulate protracted discussion by making a bizarre claim.”
His winsome personality and brilliant thinking won him philosophical friends and admirers. Years of teaching at Calvin and then Notre Dame produced a new generation of Christian philosophers scattered throughout North American academia.
James Bielby quotes Kelly Clark, “In the 1950s there was not a single published defense of religious belief by a prominent philosopher; by the 1990s there were literally hundreds . . . . The difference between 1950 and 1990 is, quite simply, Alvin Plantinga.”
