Introduction: Alvin Plantinga, God's Philosopher

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The dominance of logical empiricism's verification principle in the middle part of the twentieth century forced philosophy of religion almost entirely out of the philosophy curriculum, and, with a few notable exceptions, few philosophers willingly identified themselves as Christians. However, logical empiricism collapsed under the weight of its own principles, and in the spring of 1980 Time magazine reported that in a “quiet revolution in thought and arguments that hardly anyone could have foreseen only two decades ago, God is making a comeback. Most intriguingly, this is happening not among theologians or ordinary believers … but in the crisp, intellectual circles of academic philosophers, where the consensus had long banished the Almighty from fruitful discourse.”

Alvin Plantinga, one of those who had played a role in the demise of the verification principle, was identified by Time as a central figure in this ‘quiet revolution’. In fact, the article went so far as to label him the “world's leading Protestant philosopher of God.” Being singled out in this way by arguably the world's foremost news magazine is made all the more remarkable by the fact that, at the time, Plantinga was a professor of philosophy at a small Calvinist college, whose most important work was yet to come.

The intervening years since Time's report have seen Plantinga emerge as one of contemporary Western philosophy's leading thinkers of any stripe.