Customer Reviews

Faith and Reason from Plato to Plantinga: An Introduction to Reformed Epistemology

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Hoitenga takes the reader from Plato to Plantinga, showing that the roots of present day "Reformed Epistemology" lie in the Christianized form of Plato, which runs through St. Augustine and John Calvin all the way to A. Plantinga. Plato certainly has many similar ideas to those of the Christian philosophers and theologians. Both Plato and the Augustinian tradition, as interpreted by Hoitenga, hold to the presence of a priori knowledge in man. For the Calvinist, this a priori knowledge includes the sensus divinitatis, inter alia.

Hoitenga, along with Plantinga, define knowledge as "justified true belief". Personally I don't like that perspective. But, it is nonetheless an edifying one. Hoitenga interprets Plato's Theaetetus as suggesting a "justified true belief" approach. With acquaintance as an adaquate condition for justification, Hoitenga proposes that belief in God is rational and justified. Furthermore, it is properly basic. But, that is from Hoitenga's discussion of Plantinga--with whom he seems to be in almost total agreement concerning epistemology and metaphyscs.

As a basic introduction, I think it was good. I found it very educational and helpful. The scholarship is also quite good. If it were not for the fact that I disagreed with a couple of the things he said, I might very well have given it 5 stars. We need more books like this, but, I wish there would be more solidarity among Christians, or even reformed Christians. Unfortunately, it seems that Protestants must always be protesting.

One, i was not able to finish the book, i got really bogged down in the several chapters on Augustine, i did not finish about 1/2 the 5th chapter. I was discussing the problem with my wife the other evening and remarked that i had read up to chapter 5, fell fast asleep, woke up and started from the back and read backwards up to the end of chapter 5 and remained stuck. Her remark was so what?, you have lots of other books to read, put it back into our library and move on. Well, for once i am going to take her advice, i am just not a technical Augustine fan and this book is going to remain chapter 5 unread(looking at my TBR pile, i suspect forever unread).

But it is an extraordinarily good read, I got it because i started Plantinga's Warrant series a few weeks back and wanted to extend my background on the topic of reformed epistemology. This is just such a book, a good introduction to the topic, so take my incomplete reading as MY fault not either the author's or the subject's problem. It is technical philosophy, or rather the history of philosophy, and it is not an easy read, why should it be? it is a complex subject and warrants the careful analysis of people's thinking, not necessarily the most eye opening reading we can do. So if you are reading this review to see where to start to read to get an idea of the book, you have to start at the beginning and read the preface, skipping around unless this is your field especially after chapter 3 is simply to ask to be confused and baffled, lacking the background information to read usefully. Plus lacking some distinctions that the author makes that are not (imho) common information.

So what exactly is reformed epistemology?

The central claim of Reformed epistemology is the immediacy of our knowledge of God pg. ix
The main components fo the Reformed view of our knowledge of God are two: its immediacy and its vitality. Calvin is utterly clear that human knowledge of God is originally immediate and direct based neither on infernece and argument nor on human testimony." xiii
and to redeem my view of Augustine "Augustine's great contribution inspired by the Christian religon, was to resue faith, that is, belief on testimony, from the prejudice of Platonic rationalism against it and to emphasize its importance not only for religion but for all of life."

in a few shorts quotes, this is the book. I enjoyed reading the book, especially the chapters on anyone but Augustine, that is Plato, Calvin, Plantinga. I found it a very useful and a thorough introduction to the topic and i am happy to recommend it whenever the conversation turns towards epistemology or specially when Plantinga is mentioned.