Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian
Philosophers Philosophers
Volume 1 Issue 3 Article 1
7-1-1984
Advice to Christian Philosophers Advice to Christian Philosophers
Alvin Plantinga
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Recommended Citation Recommended Citation
Plantinga, Alvin (1984) "Advice to Christian Philosophers,"
Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of
Christian Philosophers
: Vol. 1 : Iss. 3 , Article 1.
DOI: 10.5840/faithphil19841317
Available at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol1/iss3/1
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ADVICE TO CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHERS
Alvin Planting a
I. Introduction
Christianity, these days, and
in
our part
of
the world,
is
on the move. There are
many signs pointing in this direction: the growth
of
Christian schools,
of
the seri-
ous conservative Christian denominations, the furor over prayer in public schools,
the creationism/evolution controversy, and others.
There is also powerful evidence for this contention
in
philosophy. Thirty or
thirty-five years ago, the public temper
of
mainline establishment philosophy in
the English speaking world was deeply non-Christian. Few establishment
philosophers were Christian; even fewer were willing to admit in public that they
were, and still fewer thought
of
their being Christian as making a real difference to
their practice as philosophers. The most popular question
of
philosophical theol-
ogy, at that time, was not whether Christianity or theism is true; the question, in-
stead, was whether it even
makes sense to say that there is such a person as God.
According to the logical positivism then running riot, the sentence "there is such a
person
as
God" literally makes no sense; it is disguised nonsense; it altogether fails
to express a thought or a proposition. The central question wasn't whether theism
is
true; it was whether there is such a thing as
theism-a
genuine factual claim that
is either true or
false--at
all. But things have changed. There are now many more
Christians and many more unabashed Christians in the professional mainstream
of
American philosophical life. For example, the foundation
of
the Society for Chris-
tian Philosophers,
an
organization to promote fellowship and exchange
of
ideas
among Christian philosophers,
is
both an evidence and a consequence
of
that fact.
Founded some six years ago, it
is
now a thriving organization with regional meet-
ings
in
every part
of
the country; its members are deeply involved in American pro-
fessional philosophical life. So Christianity is on the move, and on the move in
philosophy,
as
well as in other areas
of
intellectual life.
But even if Christianity is on the move, it has taken only a few brief steps;
and it is marching through largely alien territory. For the intellectual culture
of
our day is for the most part profoundly nontheistic and hence
non-Christian-more
than that,
it
is anti-theistic. Most
of
the so-called human sciences, much of the
non-human sciences, most
of
non-scientific intellectual endeavor and even a
FAITH
AND
PHILOSOPHY
Vol. 1
No.3
July 1984
All
rights reserved.
253
254
Alvin Plantinga
good bit
of
allegedly Christian theology is animated by a spirit wholly foreign to
that
of
Christian theism. I
don't
have the space here to elaborate and develop this
point; but I don't have to, for it is familiar to you all. To return to philosophy: most
of
the major philosophy departments in America have next to nothing to offer the
student intent on coming to see how to be a Christian in
philosophy-how
to assess
and develop the bearing
of
Christianity on matters
of
current philosophical con-
cern, and how to think about those philosophical matters
of
interest to the Christian
community. In the typical graduate philosophy department there will be little
more, along these lines, than a course in philosophy
of
religion in which it is
suggested that the evidence for the existence
of
God-the
classical theistic proofs,
say-is
at least counterbalanced by the evidence against the existence
of
God-the
problem
of
evil, perhaps; and it may then be added that the wisest course, in view
of
such maxims as Ockham' s Razor,
is
to dispense with the whole idea
of
God, at
least for philosophical purposes.
My aim, in this talk,
is
to give some advice to philosophers who are Christians.
And although my advice
is
directed specifically to Christian philosophers, it is re-
levant to all philosophers who believe in God, whether Christian, Jewish
or
Mos-
lem. I propose to give some advice to the Christian
or
theistic philosophical com-
munity: some advice relevant to the situation in which in fact we find ourselves.
"Who are you," you say, "to give the rest
of
us
advice?" That's a good question. I
shall deal with it as one properly deals with good questions to which one doesn't
know the answer: I shall ignore it. My counsel can be summed
up
on two con-
nected suggestions, along with a codicil. First, Christian philosophers and Christ-
ian intellectuals generally must display more
autonomy-more
independence
of
the rest
of
the philosophical world. Second, Christian philosophers must display
more integrity-integrity in the sense
of
integral wholeness,
or
oneness,
or
unity,
being all
of
one piece. Perhaps 'integrality' would be the better word here. And
necessary to these two
is
a third: Christian courage, or boldness,
or
strength, or
perhaps Christian self-confidence. We Christian philosophers must display more
faith, more trust in the Lord; we must put on the whole armor
of
God. Let me ex-
plain in a brief and preliminary way what I have in mind; then I shall go on to con-
sider some examples in more detail.
Consider a Christian college
student-from
Grand Rapids, Michigan, say, or
Arkadelphia,
Arkansas-who
decides philosophy
is
the subject for her. Naturally
enough, she will go to graduate school to learn how to become a philosopher.
Perhaps she goes to Princeton, or Berkeley, or Pittsburgh,
or
Arizona; it doesn't
much matter which. There she learns how philosophy
is
presently practiced. The
burning questions
of
the day are such topics as the new theory
of
reference; the
realism/anti-realism controversy; the problems with probability; Quine's claims
about the radical indeterminacy
of
translation; Rawls on justice; the causal theory
of
knowledge; Gettier problems; the artificial intelligence model for the under-
ADVICE
TO
CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHERS 255
standing
of
what it is to be a person; the question
of
the ontological status
of
unob-
servable entities
in
science; whether there
is
genuine objectivity
in
science or any-
where else; whether mathematics can be reduced to set theory and whether abstract
entities
generally-numbers,
propositions, properties--can be, as we quaintly
say, "dispensed with"; whether possible worlds are abstract
or
concrete; whether
our assertions are best seen
as
mere moves in a language game or as attempts to
state the sober truth about the world; whether the rational egoist can be shown to be
irrational, and all the rest. It
is
then natural for her, after she gets her
Ph.D.,
to con-
tinue to think about and work on these topics. And it is natural, furthermore, for
her to work on them in the way she was taught to, thinking about them in the light
of
the assumptions made by her mentors and
in
terms
of
currently accepted ideas as
to what a philosopher should start from
or
take for granted, what requires argument
and defense, and what a satisfying philosophical explanation
or
a proper resolution
to a philosophical question is like. She will be uneasy about departing widely from
these topics and assumptions, feeling instinctively that any such departures are at
best marginally respectable. Philosophy is a social enterprise; and our standards
and
assumptions-the
paramenters within which we practice our
craft-are
set by
our mentors and by the great contemporary centers
of
philosophy.
From one point
of
view this
is
natural and proper; from another, however, it is
profoundly unsatisfactory. The questions I mentioned are important and interest-
ing. Christian philosophers, however, are the philosophers
of
the Christian com-
munity; and it
is
part
of
their task
as
Christian philosophers to serve the Christian
community. But the Christian community has its own questions, its own concerns,
its own topics for investigation, its own agenda and its own research program.
Christian philosophers ought not merely take their inspiration from what's going
on at Princeton or Berkeley or Harvard, attractive and scintillating as that may be;
for perhaps those questions and topics are not the ones, or not the only ones, they
should be thinking about as the philosophers
of
the Christian community. There
are other philosopical topics the Christian community must work at, and other to-
pics the Christian community must work at philosophically. And obviously,
Christian philosophers are the ones who must do the philosophical work involved.
If
they devote their best efforts to the topics fashionable in the non-Christian
philosophical world, they will neglect a crucial and central part
of
their task as
Christian philosophers. What is needed here
is
more independence, more au-
tonomy with respect to the projects and concerns
of
the non-theistic philosophical
world.
But something else is at least
as
important here. Suppose the student I mentioned
above goes to Harvard; she studies with Willard van Orman Quine. She finds her-
self attracted to Quine's programs and procedures: his radical empiricism, his al-
legiance to natural science, his inclination towards behaviorism, his uncom-
promising naturalism, and his taste for desert landscapes and ontological par-
256
Alvin Plantinga
simony.
It
would be wholly natural for her to become totally involved in these pro-
jects and programs, to come to think
of
fruitful and worthwhile philosophy as sub-
stantially circumscribed by them.
Of
course she will note certain tensions between
her Christian belief and her way
of
practicing philosophy; and she may then bend
her efforts to putting the two together, to harmonizing them. She may devote her
time and energy to seeing how one might understand or reinterpret Christian belief
in such a way
as
to be palatable to the Quinian. One philosopher I know, embark-
ing on just such a project, suggested that Christians should think
of
God as a set
(Quine is prepared to countenance sets): the set
of
all true propositions, perhaps, or
the set
of
right actions, or the union
of
those sets, or perhaps their Cartesian prod-
uct. This is understandable; but it is also profoundly misdirected. Quine is a mar-
velously gifted philosopher: a subtle, original and powerful philosophical force.
But his fundamental commitments, his fundamental projects and concerns, are
wholly different from those
of
the Christian
community-wholly
different and, in-
deed, antithetical to them. And the result
of
attempting to graft Christian thought
onto his basic view
of
the world will be at best an unintegral pastiche; at worst it
will seriously compromise, or distort, or trivialize the claims
of
Christian theism.
What is needed here
is
more wholeness, more integrality.
So the Christian philosopher has his own topics and projects to think about; and
when he thinks about the topics
of
current concern in the broader philosophical
world, he will think about them in his own way, which may be a different way. He
may have to reject certain currently fashionable assumptions about the philosophic
enterprise-he
may have to reject widely accepted assumptions as to what are the
proper starting points and procedures for philosophical endeavor.
And-and
this is
crucially
important-the
Christian philosopher has a perfect right to the point
of
view and pre-philosophical assumptions he brings to philosophic work; the fact
that these are not widely shared outside the Christian
or
theistic community is in-
teresting but fundamentally irrelevant. I can best explain what I mean by way
of
example; so I shall dec end from the level oflofty generality to specific examples.
II.
Theism and Verifiability
First, the dreaded "Verifiability Criterion
of
Meaning." During the palmy days
of
logical positivism, some thirty or forty years ago, the positivists claimed that
most
of
the sentences Christians characteristically
utter-"God
loves us," for
example, or "God created the heavens and the
earth"~on't
even have the grace to
be false; they are, said the positivists, literally meaningless.
It
is not that they ex-
press false propositions; they
don't
express any propositions at all. Like that lovely
line from Alice
in
Wonderland,
''Twas
brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and
gymbol in the wabe," they say nothing false, but only because they say nothing at
all; they are "cognitively meaningless," to use the positivist's charming phrase.