ABSTRACT

This chapter aims to introduce Plantinga's mature religious epistemology, both his articulation of a robust and comprehensive theory of knowledge and his application of that epistemology to belief in God. The first installment of Plantinga's trilogy, Warrant: The Current Debate (WCD), is an evaluation of the current epistemological scene. Plantinga concludes WCD by outlining how reliabilism can be fixed his version of reliabilism is the subject of the second volume in the warrant series, Warrant and Proper Function (WPF). Warranted Christian Belief is more than just a simple application of the epistemology he developed in WCD and WPF to the topic of belief in God. The distinction between justification and warrant is related to an important distinction: the distinction between internalism and externalism. Plantinga's shift from permissive or deontological notions of justification and rationality to positive epistemic status/warrant is more than a change of focus, it also involves a change in epistemological conviction.