An Analysis of Alvin Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief and His Response to John Hick's Theory on Religion Essay

In Chapter 2 of his book Warranted Christian Belief, Alvin Plantinga discusses the proposition that human beings cannot talk, think or refer to God in the manner Christians have always done. With this in mind, he examines the claims of two other philosophers of religion, Gordon Kaufman and John Hick, who present this proposition from two different points of view. I will be focusing on Plantingas examination of the argument presented by John Hick, and argue that that there is an attempt on Plantingas part to discredit Hicks theory. Plantinga identifies a series of claims made by Hick that he considers to be inconsistent, giving reasons against the rationality of adopting Hicks view, which is a threat to his defense of the rationality of traditional Christian belief.Plantinga starts by describing John Hicks notion of the Real, and his division of it into how it really is, and how we experience it. For Hick, to say the Real is to say God he uses this distinct word because he wants to account for the idea of the deity as it is in many religions, not just Christianity. In order to understand Hicks view, it is essential to understand one of the interpretations of the influential 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant conceived the world as being divided into two distinct kinds of realms, each containing objects described by different properties. The noumenal realm, on one side, is the world of objects that exist independently from our senses, such as ideas and immaterial entities. Kant uses the words noumenon and thing-in-itself, as synonymous, and implies that in order to have a complete understanding of the world, one must understand the noumena. On the other hand, the phenomenal realm is the material world that we live in, which owes its existence to the noumenal world. Based on a Kantian conception of reality, Hick states that the Real is part of the noumenal realm. He then proceeds to make...

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