Faith and Rationality.. Reason and Belief in God

Faith and Rationality represents a watershed moment in twentieth-century philosophy of religion, establishing reformed epistemology as a serious challenge to evidentialist assumptions about religious belief. Edited by Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, this collection advances a revolutionary thesis: belief in God can be rational without propositional evidence or formal argumentation.

The volume directly confronts the evidentialist challenge that dominated Anglo-American philosophy since the Enlightenment, particularly as articulated by W.K. Clifford and later philosophers who insisted that religious belief requires sufficient evidence to be rational. Against this prevailing orthodoxy, the contributors argue that belief in God can be properly basic - that is, rationally held without being based on other beliefs or evidence.

Plantinga's contributions develop the theoretical framework for this position through careful analysis of epistemic warrant and proper function. He argues that if human cognitive faculties include a sensus divinitatis (sense of the divine), then belief in God arising from this faculty would be as properly basic as perceptual or memory beliefs. This move shifts the burden of proof debate fundamentally: rather than theists needing to provide evidence for God's existence, critics must now demonstrate that such properly basic beliefs are somehow defective or unreliable.

The volume employs rigorous analytic methodology, drawing on contemporary epistemology, particularly reliabilist theories of knowledge and externalist accounts of justification. Contributors examine parallels between religious belief and other commonly accepted basic beliefs, arguing that the evidentialist demand unfairly singles out religious beliefs for special scrutiny while exempting equally fundamental beliefs about the external world, other minds, or the past.

This work's significance extends beyond defending theistic belief's rationality. It challenges the entire framework of classical foundationalism that had structured debates about God since Descartes, offering instead a more expansive understanding of rationality that acknowledges the legitimate diversity of starting points in human cognition. The collection effectively reframes discussions about faith and reason, moving beyond simple opposition to explore how religious beliefs might function as foundational elements in a rational noetic structure.

By establishing that theistic belief need not answer to evidentialist demands, Faith and Rationality opened new avenues for Christian philosophy while forcing secular philosophers to reconsider assumptions about rationality's relationship to religious commitment.