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HOW REFORMED IS REFORMED EPISTEMOLOGY? ALVIN PLANTINGA AND CALVIN'S ‘SENSUS DIVINITATIS’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1997

DEREK S. JEFFREYS
Affiliation:
The Divinity School, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637

Abstract

In his recent two volumes on epistemology, Alvin Plantinga surveys contemporary theories of knowledge thoroughly, and carefully defends an externalist epistemology. He promises that in a third volume, Warranted Christian Belief, he will present John Calvin's sensus divinitatis as an epistemic module akin to sense perception, a priori knowledge, induction, testimony and other epistemic modules. Plantinga defines the sensus divinitatis as a ‘many sided disposition to accept belief in God (or propositions that immediately and obviously entail the existence of God) in a variety of circumstances’. Like other epistemic modules, it produces beliefs in an appropriate cognitive environment, aims at the production of true beliefs, and generates beliefs which have a high statistical probability of being true.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1997 Cambridge University Press

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