| Alvin Plantinga is perhaps the foremost advocate of Reformed epistemology, the position that belief in God can be, and often is, fully epistemologically appropriate even if not supported by evidential considerations, indeed even if no such support exists. More technically, Reformed epistemology is the view that belief in God can be, and often is, "properly basic.".;Plantinga's religious epistemology can be conveniently divided into two stages: the early stage, which is best represented by his 1983 essay "Reason and Belief in God"; and the Warrant Phase, which is made up primarily of a trilogy of books---Warrant: The Current Debate, Warrant and Proper Function (both 1993), and Warranted Christian Belief (2000). The early stage suffered from numerous problems: in particular, it was susceptible to an objection classified as a "Great Pumpkin Objection." At best, the early stage safeguarded properly basic theism at the price of allowing a certain sort of relativism; at worst, it overlooked a promising criterion of proper basicality---Universal Sanction---which deals handily with the usual problem cases, and which also rules out properly basic theism. It was an awareness of some of these problems which led Plantinga to scrutinize the underlying epistemological assumptions of the debate, and to ultimately argue for a radical revolution in both religious epistemology and epistemology in general through the texts of the Warrant Phase.;The present study critically examines the Warrant Phase's ability to surmount the shortcomings in the early stage of Plantinga's Reformed epistemology. I conclude that it fails in this regard: the shift in the epistemological landscape, away from "justification" and "rationality" toward "warrant," is poorly supported and ultimately unconvincing. The updated response to the Great Pumpkin Objection is not obviously any better than the earlier response, and still appears to lead to an unpalatable relativism. Finally, I defend Universal Sanction as a promising criterion of proper basicality, and show that nothing contained in the Warrant Phase successfully counters the threat it poses to properly basic theism. While this dissertation investigates fundamental issues in the philosophy of religion, it also investigates fundamental issues in epistemology. |
