In the last chapter we explored the issues of truth and knowledge to see just what they are. There we discovered that knowledge has traditionally been defined as justified, true, belief, or JTB for short. One of the major criteria for knowledge, according to JTB, is the criterion of justification. It is justification, according to many epistemologists, that differentiates knowledge from mere true belief or opinion. But as we will see below, justification is a hotly disputed and debated question in modern epistemology: What is it? How does it work? Do we need to have it? All these are important discussions and call for attention.
In this chapter we will focus on justification and some variations of that concept. We will discuss and distinguish between internalism and externalism and provide some examples of each. After this, we will turn to the view known as Reformed epistemology in general and Alvin Plantinga’s proper functionalist A/C models in particular. We will begin with the question of justification.
What Is Justification?
Consider two true beliefs that a particular person named Benjamin may hold. Belief 1 is that it will rain next Thursday, and belief 2 is that he will meet his student Kevin next Thursday. Both of these beliefs are about events next Thursday, but more important, both of these beliefs are true beliefs. That is, as it turns out, it does rain next Thursday, and he does meet his student Kevin. But there is a sharp difference between Benjamin’s two beliefs. While both of those beliefs are true, one of them is a “justified” belief and the other is not: the latter is simply a true belief. His second belief, that he will meet his student Kevin next Thursday, is a justified belief since it is based on the details found in Benjamin’s calendar of future meetings. Because of this, we would typically think that Benjamin is rational in holding such a belief. But what about his belief that it will rain next Thursday? Even though this too turns out to be a true belief, it is nevertheless irrational since it is not based on anything other than a lucky guess. As we will see below, epistemologists are divided over whether this is the right way to think about justification. In fact, offering an exact definition of justification is quite difficult.1 For now, let us just say that, roughly speaking, justification is about being rational in holding the beliefs that we hold. If we are rational about our beliefs, then perhaps we are more likely to be right about them.
So what does it mean to be “rational” about our beliefs? As simple as this question may be, there are at least two major schools of thought on how to answer it. Perhaps the most common school of thought since the Enlightenment is known as internalism. Generally speaking, internalists argue that what justifies a person in holding a particular belief depends on what is “internal” to their own mind. As Lemos puts it, “Let us take internalism, then, to hold that the epistemic justification of a subject’s belief depends solely on factors internal to the subject’s perspective, factors directly accessible to him through reflection.”2 But what does this mean? Dan O’Brien further elaborates: “For internalists, the justification for a thinker’s beliefs must be cognitively accessible to her. She must be able to reflect upon what it is that suggests her beliefs are true.”3 In other words, according to internalists, a person is justified in holding a certain belief if she knows (has internal access to) the reasons or evidence supporting that belief and is able to offer such evidence and reasons as support for the belief in question.
By contrast, externalism, the second major school of thought regarding justification, rejects the internalist requirement that we must have internal access to the supporting reasons for our beliefs in order to be justified. Externalists contend, instead, that what justifies a belief for a person is something external to their own perspective. Lemos is again helpful: “Externalists, however, deny that justification depends solely upon what is internal to the subject’s perspective. Externalists hold that whether a belief is justified might also depend on whether it came about in the right way, through good intellectual procedure or on the basis of an intellectual virtue.”4 So, in other words, what matters for externalism is not what the person has internal access to but rather something external: the process by which, and the environment in which, the belief was formed. If a person is in the right circumstances for forming a belief about something, and if the belief came about by a reliable process, then the belief in question is justified. Internalism and externalism come in a variety of forms. In what follows, we outline two different forms of each while also noting some of the challenges that each approach faces.
Internalism: Classical Foundationalism and Coherentism
One very popular—perhaps the most popular—way of construing an internalist approach to justification is called classical foundationalism (CF). Roughly, CF maintains that there are two general kinds of beliefs: basic and nonbasic. A nonbasic belief is one that is supported by, or justified by, some other belief. As such, we aren’t rational in holding nonbasic beliefs unless we have some justification in holding them. A basic belief, however, is one that needs no further beliefs beneath it to justify it. It is a belief we just hold to be true yet that cannot, nor need not, be supported by argumentation. One might wonder just what kind of beliefs could qualify as basic. Classical foundationalists often offer beliefs that are either (1) self-evident or (2) incorrigible as examples of basic beliefs. A self-evident belief might be something like “2 + 2 = 4,” “a bachelor is an unmarried male,” or “I exist.” An incorrigible belief would be one that cannot be defeated by anyone else because it can be held only by the one holding it. This would be something like “The ball seems to me to be red.” People may dispute that the ball is red. But they cannot dispute how the ball “seems to me.”5
So how does this all fit together as a way to understand justification? Consider an analogy that illustrates the concept. Imagine that we are building a house. Like any good house, it will have floors, walls, doors, windows, and a roof. But most important, the house will have a foundation made of footings dug deep into the ground. Metaphorically, basic beliefs are like the foundation of the house, and nonbasic beliefs are like all the other components of the house. With this distinction, foundationalists argue that epistemic justification is a matter of supporting our beliefs by demonstrating that those beliefs are supported by basic beliefs that serve as a foundation for our nonbasic beliefs. W. Jay Wood puts it this way: “Foundationalism stands historically as one of the most significant efforts at showing what an ideal ordering of one’s cognitive life should be like, if we have a maximally justified set of beliefs as our goal. The root idea suggests that each of us holds some beliefs ‘basically’ or ‘immediately,’ while we hold other beliefs ‘nonbasically’ or ‘mediately.’ Nonbasic or mediate beliefs receive their support from other beliefs we hold.”6 As such, CF is an example of an internalist approach to justification. People who are justified in their personal beliefs will, via reflection on those beliefs, be able to see which beliefs support their belief system.
But if it is true that “one must know which beliefs are basic, which are non-basic, and how the basic beliefs support the nonbasic beliefs,” then, as Alvin Plantinga has pointed out, CF has a big problem. He says, “If you believe a proposition for which there isn’t any evidence from self-evident or incorrigible propositions, then you are unjustified and violating your epistemic duty. But here’s the problem: there don’t seem to be any incorrigible or self-evident propositions that support CF itself.”7 In other words, the statement “One must know which beliefs are basic, which are non-basic, and how the basic beliefs support the nonbasic beliefs” itself is neither (1) self-evident nor (2) incorrigible. Therefore, it seems that the basic premise of CF is unjustified. Another objection suggests that there really aren’t any beliefs that could be basic. On this objection, each supposed basic belief needs a justification. And once we start down this path, we end up in an infinite regress that is never satisfied. Indeed, as the Pyrrhonians argued (we deal with this matter in chap. 4), this could lead us into total skepticism.
Earlier in the book we were introduced to coherentism as a way that some postmodern thinkers have attempted to define truth. Not surprisingly, then, coherentism has also been offered as a way to provide justification for our beliefs. The main idea here is that a belief has justification if it is consistent, or coheres, with other beliefs that we hold to be true in our system of belief. As O’Brien notes: “A particular belief is justified if it increases the coherence of your belief system. Linear justification involves local relations: beliefs are justified by their inferential relations with a small number of related beliefs. Belief A’s justification is wholly provided by beliefs B and C. Holistic justification, however, involves global relations: a particular belief is justified if it fits in well—or ‘coheres’—with the whole of your belief system.”8
O’Brien goes on to explain further, just as foundationalism uses the analogy of a house and its foundations, coherentism uses the analogy of a boat. He says, “They see a belief system as more akin to a raft floating at sea. The structure remains afloat, not through the action of certain key foundational planks, but as a result of the way that all the planks are meshed together.”9 But as we saw with the concerns surrounding coherentism as a way to understand the nature of truth, it seems that we have a problem. As a minimal condition for truth, belief systems must be internally consistent and coherent. But just because it does cohere, it does not follow that the system is actually true. We can imagine and articulate very complex stories that are perfectly consistent and cohere within themselves. But it is also possible that such stories are make-believe. Countless stories from fiction illustrate the point.
Externalism: Causal Theory and Reliabilism
Other examples of internalism could be considered, but foundationalism and coherentism are enough for now. What about externalism? Again, there are a variety of views we could consider here, but we will focus on causal theory and reliabilism. According to causal theory, justification for a belief is grounded in the causal connection between the objects, or events, outside a person’s mind and the corresponding ideas that form as a result. As Alvin Goldman explains, “S knows that p if and only if the fact p is causally connected in an ‘appropriate’ way with S’s believing p.”10 So, for example, we might say that I am justified in believing that the ball hit me in the head if in fact the ball hit me in the head. Or perhaps we might say that I am justified in believing that the sun is setting over the mountain in front of me if in fact the sun is setting over the mountain in front of me. In both of these cases, my beliefs are caused by objects and events outside of my mind. As such, causal theory is an externalist account of justification. As straightforward as the causal account of justification may be, it too seems to have a problem. How do we know the events and objects outside our minds are actually what give rise to the corresponding (or at least seemingly corresponding) beliefs in our minds? It may very well be that the belief that a ball hit me in the head occurred in my mind simultaneously with the ball actually hitting me in the head. But how do I know the event caused the belief? What if, as it turns out, years ago I was in a terrible deep-sea fishing accident and damaged all the nerves in my head such that I can no longer feel anything that touches my head? If that were the case, then the ball hitting me in the head could not be what caused the belief to form in my mind. I have no feeling in my head. What if also, due to brain damage from an old drug habit, my brain is predisposed to form random beliefs about balls hitting me in the head? If such were the case, then I would hardly have confidence that the event of the ball hitting me in the head is what caused the belief of a ball hitting me in the head to form.
Another externalist variation of epistemic justification is called reliabilism. According to reliabilism, a belief is justified if that belief was formed in the appropriate environment and the cognitive faculties of the mind were functioning in a reliable fashion. Lemos notes, “Reliabilism is taken to be an externalist view because it holds that the epistemic justification of a belief depends at least in part on its being the product of a reliable cognitive process. . . . What matters, according to the reliabilist, is whether one’s belief is reliably produced, not whether the reliability of the process is available through reflection. Reliabilism does not limit the factors relevant to justification to those internal to the subject’s perspective.”11 So, for example, consider a group of persons who believe that the sun has just set in front of them over the mountain range. What justifies this belief is not that they are able to introspectively reflect (as internalism would require of them) on a set of basic beliefs that support the newly formed belief that the sun has just set in front of them. Rather, their belief that the sun has just set in front of them is justified from the facts that (1) they are in the right environment to witness a sunset (they are outside looking across the horizon as the sun is actually setting, with no environmental factors that hinder a proper view) and (2) the perception results from a “reliable cognitive process” (they are not crazy and have not been taking hallucinogenic drugs).
Reliabilism is a relatively popular externalist approach to justification, and for good reason. Advocates have found it to be faithful to our commonsense intuitions about the way we actually form our beliefs. Moreover, this view doesn’t seem to place unrealistic epistemic requirements on our beliefs the way foundationalism seems to do. At the same time, this approach is rigid enough to prevent us from being fast and loose with our belief. On this account, justification is not open to any and all beliefs. But like the other approaches, reliabilism also has its challenges. How are we to know that our cognitive processes have been reliable? And how are we to know that our environment is not some illusion?
What Is Reformed Epistemology?
Thus far we have focused on the difference between internalism and externalism broadly construed. Over the past few decades, and within the context of the internalism/externalism debate, a very particular epistemic movement known as Reformed epistemology has been established. Andrew Moon notes that, simply put, Reformed epistemology is the “thesis that religious belief can be rational without argument.”12 So, for example, Reformed epistemologists typically hold that a person can be perfectly rational about one’s belief in God without the kind of evidential or argumentative support that is required by internalism. Defined as such, the temptation here would be to understand Reformed epistemology as nothing more than an externalist variation of justification described above. But as we will see, Reformed epistemology is far more nuanced and detailed than this initial assessment would reflect, and there are also internalist versions of justification that are compatible with the Reformed epistemology thesis. In what follows, we outline three unique strategies for epistemic justification that are expressions of, or at least compatible with, Reformed epistemology.
Plantinga’s A/C and Extended A/C Account
Any discussion about Reformed epistemology must center on the work and contribution of Alvin Plantinga, who adopts and develops what he calls the A/C model (A and C refer to Aquinas and Calvin respectively). Starting in 1967 with the publication of God and Other Minds, Plantinga began setting forth some of his principal concerns with internalist (specifically evidentialism)13 requirements of justification.14 In 1993 he published the first two volumes of his Warrant trilogy,15 and in 2000 completed the series with the most influential work, Warranted Christian Belief.16 More recently he published a shorter overview of his account, titled Knowledge and Christian Belief.17 Throughout these works, Plantinga has championed the idea that we can be perfectly rational in many of our beliefs, including religious beliefs about God and Christian faith, without having the kind of epistemic justification that most evidentialists demand. He says,
In any event, it is perfectly plain that someone could be justified in accepting the whole Christian story; that is, it is plain that someone could accept that story without going contrary to duty. It isn’t at all difficult for a Christian—even a sophisticated and knowledgeable contemporary believer aware of all the criticisms and contrary currents of opinion—to be justified, in this sense, in her belief; and this whether or not she believes in God (or in more specific Christian doctrines) on the basis of propositional evidence.18
So while evidentialists argue that religious belief is unjustified—such that a person is irrational for holding such beliefs—without evidential support for them, Reformed epistemologists disagree. Plantinga has been the leading force in making this case. But how does he make his case?
To understand Plantinga’s account, we must begin with the distinction between two different objections to Christian faith. First, as Plantinga notes, are the de facto objections, which are “objections to the truth of Christian belief.”19 In other words, de facto objections are the kind of objections that attempt to show us that, in fact, Christianity is just false. As Plantinga makes clear, this is not the sort of objection that is in his central focus. Rather, his focus is on a second kind of objection, what he calls de jure objections. As he explains, de jure objections are the sort of objections aimed at showing that Christian faith, “whether or not true, is at any rate unjustifiable, or rationally unjustified, or irrational, or not intellectually respectable, or contrary to sound morality, or without sufficient evidence, or in some other way rationally unacceptable, not up to snuff from an intellectual point of view.”20 One way to describe de jure objections is to say that they seek to show that Christian faith is not the kind of thing we are rational to believe since it does not have the same kind of evidential support that some scientific or philosophical beliefs might enjoy. Consider the following argument:
As Moon explains, evidentialists are of the persuasion that the best way to respond is by attacking premise 2, “There is no good argument for theism.” In response, evidentialists typically offer any number of arguments for God’s existence. But Plantinga and those in the Reformed epistemology camp believe that attacking 2 is the wrong way to reply. Instead, they contend that it is better to attack premise 1, “It is rational to believe in theism only on the basis of a good argument.” As Plantinga will argue, theistic belief can be not just “basic” (held without argument or evidential support) but also “properly basic.” The distinction between “basic” and “properly basic” is important to note. A person can have a basic belief that is irrational. Moon illustrates this point by saying, “My friend Gambler has no good argument for his belief that his next gamble will win; he believes because of wishful thinking. This belief, though basic, is not properly basic.”22 In this case, Gambler’s belief is basic because it isn’t held on the basis of an argument. But it is not “properly” basic because it is an irrational belief. Why is it irrational? It is irrational because it is held on the basis of wishful thinking. So then, a belief is “basic” when it is held without argument. It is “properly” basic when (1) it is held without argument and at the same time (2) it is rational to believe such a thing. Moon adds, “On the other hand, when I stub my toe and believe that I feel pain, this belief is both basic and properly basic.”23
But in the case of our belief in God, how could we say that such a belief is “properly basic”? In other words, how could we (1) hold to the belief that God exists without argumentation and (2) be rational in so doing? In response to these questions, Plantinga offers his account of warrant and proper function, which turn out to be of central importance to his A/C and Extended A/C accounts of Christian belief. Let’s begin with his concept of warrant. Whereas most epistemologists have emphasized the concept of justification in their epistemic models, Plantinga offers the concept of warrant. According to Joseph Kim, “Warrant for Plantinga is that quality and quantity that distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief. It is not merely a quality but a quantity since warrant also comes in degrees.”24 Three things are important to note about Kim’s observation. First, as Kim indicates, for Plantinga warrant serves a similar role to what other epistemologists have attributed to justification. As Plantinga sees it, warrant is what differentiates knowledge from mere true opinion. Second, warrant is similar to justification in that it is a quality that a belief may have, but it is different from justification in that it is also a quantity: it comes in degrees. Finally, as critics and advocates of Plantinga’s concept of warrant have noted, warrant and justification are also focused on different epistemic values. On the one hand, justification is focused more on the issue of epistemic duty (what should one believe?), and on the other hand, warrant seems to be focused more on the value of rationality.25
What is it then that renders a belief warranted? As Plantinga makes clear, it is not the case that just any idea will qualify as warranted. According to Plantinga, “A belief has warrant if it is produced by cognitive faculties (subject to no malfunctioning) in a cognitive environment congenial for those faculties, according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth.”26 This definition of warrant is highly important to Plantinga’s system, and we must unpack it to see the details. Plantinga elaborates on this definition in any number of his works, but most concisely in Knowledge and Christian Belief, offering four general conditions of this idea of warrant.
First, he notes the emphasis on “proper function” within this account. He says, “My suggestion begins with the idea that a belief has warrant only if it is produced by cognitive faculties that are functioning properly, subject to no disorder or dysfunction.”27 This condition is rather straightforward. If our cognitive faculties are malfunctioning, then we simply are not warranted in holding the beliefs that they form. But there is more.
Second, Plantinga contends that those cognitive faculties must also be functioning in the proper environment. He insists that our cognitive faculties “will achieve their purpose only if functioning in an environment much like the one for which they were designed.”28 What Plantinga recognizes here is that a person’s faculties may themselves be functioning properly yet may be doing so in an environment that is not conducive to producing proper beliefs. For example, if you form a belief that your body is only two inches wide while looking at a funny mirror at the circus, we would not think that you are warranted in believing that you actually are just two inches wide. Your faculties may be functioning properly, but they are doing so in an environment that prohibits a belief from forming properly.
Third, Plantinga argues that our belief-forming mechanisms must be aimed at true beliefs. In his account, the first two conditions are not enough. He notes that, per Freud’s and Marx’s specific de jure objections to Christian faith, it is always possible that our belief in God is formed as a survival mechanism to help us deal with the cold, hard realities of the world in which we find ourselves living. If so, then it would be possible for such a “survival” belief to satisfy the first two criteria: proper cognitive function and proper function in the correct environment. And if so, then something more must be added. For this, Plantinga adds “aimed at true belief” as a third criterion to warrant. Kim explains the importance of the third condition:
Proper function and the right sort of environment for a cognitive faculty, though necessary, are still not sufficient for warrant. The fact that a cognitive faculty is to be successfully aimed at truth is something distinct from merely providing us a survival advantage. Consider a rabbit whose faculties give off a warning that there is a predator nearby whenever the rabbit hears any sudden noise. It may be that 99.9 percent of these noises are false alarms, but the fact that the rabbit acts on all of them and runs away ensures its survival. Still, this is not a faculty that is aimed at true beliefs.29
What Kim’s rabbit illustration shows is that warrant requires more than simply proper function of faculties in the appropriate environment. There are cases, such as the rabbit example, that satisfy the first two conditions but still don’t produce warrant. The rabbit’s belief that a predator is coming each time it hears a noise may have formed with properly functioning cognitive faculties and in the right environment, but such a belief is nevertheless nothing more than a survival mechanism that fails to produce truth 99.9 percent of the time. In this case, the belief is intended only to help the rabbit survive. It is not intended to inform the rabbit of what is taking place around him in each case. As such, Plantinga’s third condition of being “aimed at true belief” is intended to address this issue.
Fourth, and finally, Plantinga recognizes that even the first three conditions by themselves are not enough to ensure warrant. As a fourth condition, he argues that our faculties must not only be (1) functioning properly, (2) in the right environment, and (3) aimed at true belief, but they must also be (4) successfully aimed at true belief. Realizing that our faculties can function properly in the right environment and be aimed at forming true beliefs, Plantinga observes that it is still possible that our true beliefs about the world are still nothing more than a lucky guess. As a final condition, therefore, “what must be added is that the design plan in question is a good one, one that is successfully aimed at truth, one such that there is a high probability that a belief produced according to that plan will be true (or nearly true).”30
So what does all this mean for belief in God? In short, what Plantinga has done is offer an account of knowledge that bypasses the internalist/evidentialist account of justification by developing an account of proper basicality, warrant, and therefore knowledge. A belief is properly basic (rational) if it is warranted, and it is warranted if it satisfies the conditions of (1) proper function, (2) right environment, (3) aimed a true belief, and (4) successfully aimed at true belief. With all this in place, Plantinga argues in favor of his famous A/C and Extended A/C model for Christian belief. The A and the C in his account, as noted above, are references to Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, two theologians on whose work he models his account.
What Plantinga argues in the A/C model, from Calvin in particular, is that God has designed us in such a way that we have a natural capacity to form theological beliefs, what Calvin called the sensus divinitatis (sense of divinity). More specifically, given the sensus divinitatis, Plantinga argues that our cognitive faculties are designed in such a way that when in the right environment (such as looking at the stars or pondering beauty) they will naturally form beliefs in God. He says, “The purpose of the sensus divinitatis is to enable us to have true beliefs about God; and when it functions properly, it ordinarily does produce true beliefs about God. These beliefs therefore can meet the conditions for warrant; when they do, if they are strong enough, then they constitute knowledge.”31 Beyond this claim, Plantinga offers the Extended A/C, which moves beyond the generic beliefs that God exists to the more “full-blooded Christian belief in sin, atonement, and salvation.”32 Here, Plantinga argues that such “full-blooded” Christian beliefs can be warranted within his account.
Alternative Reformed Epistemologies
There is, of course, much more that could be said about Plantinga’s approach to Reformed epistemology, but this at least provides an overview of his system. Before concluding, it is worth noting that there are indeed other forms of Reformed epistemology that could be explored. For instance, John Greco and Anthony Bolos have formulated an account that is also externalist in nature.33 In contrast to Plantinga, their account builds on the notion of epistemic virtue, suggesting that intellectual ability or achievement (as opposed to luck) is what warrants our beliefs. Moon illustrates the key concept. “Suppose I am up to bat, get distracted by an annoying fly, try to hit the fly and, in the process, happen to hit a speeding baseball and score a home run. This is success through accident, not success through ability; it is not an achievement. A true belief is warranted, on Greco’s theory, when one attains a true belief because of one’s intellectual ability.”34 While this virtue approach differs from Plantinga’s in that its focus is on intellectual ability and achievement, it is still an example of Reformed epistemology, since it contends that we can be rational without argument, and it is externalist, since it does not say that we must have epistemic access to the evidence or processes that support our beliefs.
Alternatively, some internalist accounts are, surprisingly, compatible with Reformed epistemology. Consider, as an example, Michael Huemer’s account, known as phenomenal conservatism.35 In his account, the notions of “seeming” and “defeat” are of central importance to our knowing. He says, “Phenomenal conservatism holds that undefeated appearances are a source of justification (perhaps the only source of justification) for belief.”36 By “appearances,” Huemer is referencing the way things seem to us. If, for example, it seems to me that there is a tree in front of me, then I have at least prima facie reason—that is, initial reason—to think that there is a tree in front of me. But this is not all that it takes to have justification in his system. It must also be the case that there are no defeaters for that “appearing” or “seeming.” And what does it mean for a belief to not have a defeater? Simply put, Huemer says, “An appearance is ‘undefeated’ when there are no positive grounds for doubting it.”37 This account of justification is interesting for two reasons. First, it is an internalist account, because it requires the person holding the belief to be aware of the fact that there are no defeaters. Second, and most interesting, despite being an internalist account of justification, it is nevertheless compatible with Reformed epistemology, since it allows a person to hold the belief without argumentation.
Far more could be said on each of the issues covered in this chapter: questions about justification are complex and endlessly debated. We hope our short survey is helpful for the student to get a sense of the questions epistemologists ask and the kinds of answers that are given. Internalism and externalism come in a variety of forms, and there are several epistemic values at play in the discussions.
1. Duncan Pritchard, What Is This Thing Called Knowledge?, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2010), 31.
2. Noah Lemos, An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 109.
3. Dan O’Brien, An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016), 87.
4. Lemos, Theory of Knowledge, 113.
5. We should be careful to notice that there are other and more recent forms of foundationalism. Modest foundationalism, e.g., doesn’t require self-evidence and incorrigibility but rather depends on defeasible experiential grounds from five or so sources: sense perception, memory, rational intuition, testimony, and introspection.
6. W. Jay Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous, Contours of Christian Philosophy (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1998), 78.
7. Alvin Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 15.
8. O’Brien, Theory of Knowledge, 77.
9. O’Brien, Theory of Knowledge, 77.
10. Alvin Goldman, “A Causal Theory of Knowing,” in Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology, ed. Sven Bernecker and Fred Dretske (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 28.
11. Lemos, Theory of Knowledge, 110.
12. Andrew Moon, “Recent Work on Reformed Epistemology,” Philosophy Compass 11 (2016): 879.
13. In short, evidentialism is the idea that to be justified in our beliefs, we are obligated to have evidential support for them.
14. Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).
15. Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
16. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
17. Alvin Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015).
18. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 100.
19. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, vii.
20. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, ix.
21. Moon, “Reformed Epistemology,” 880.
22. Moon, “Reformed Epistemology,” 880.
23. Moon, “Reformed Epistemology,” 880.
24. Joseph Kim, Reformed Epistemology and the Problem of Religious Diversity (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 18.
25. See Kim, Reformed Epistemology, 18; and James Beilby, “Plantinga’s Model of Warranted Christian Belief,” in Alvin Plantinga, ed. Deane-Peter Baker (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 127.
26. Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, viii.
27. Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief, 26.
28. Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief, 27.
29. Kim, Reformed Epistemology, 22.
30. Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief, 28.
31. Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief, 36–37.
32. Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief, 45.
33. See John Greco, “The Nature of Ability and Purpose of Knowledge,” Philosophical Issues 17, The Metaphysics of Epistemology, special issue of Nous (2007): 57–69; Greco, “A (Different) Virtue Epistemology,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85, no. 1 (2012): 1–26; and Anthony Bolos, “Is Knowledge of God a Cognitive Achievement?,” Ratio 59, no. 2 (2016): 186–201.
34. Moon, “Reformed Epistemology,” 886.
35. Michael Huemer, Approaching Infinity (New York: Palgrave, 2016).
36. Huemer, Approaching Infinity, 96.
37. Huemer, Approaching Infinity, 96.