ABSTRACT
Alvin Plantinga's religious epistemology is expressed in the terms of two models: The A/C Model, which provides a bare bones description of how Christian beliefs might be warranted, and the Extended A/C Model, which applies specifically to our postlapsarian epistemic environment. As the name implies, the A/C Model draws on an insight of Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. At the core of Plantinga's religious epistemology is an account of how faith and beliefs about God are formed. Many of the misconceptions of Plantinga's religious epistemology stem from a failure to understand Plantinga's specific goals and claims. There are three ranges of possibilities for any given belief about the Christian God. The first of these options represents Plantinga's paradigm of Christian belief; and the second is an example of an alternate model of warranted Christian belief. The third occurs when the cognitive faculties producing the relevant belief either fail to function properly or are not aimed at truth.
