Alvin Plantinga's Philosophy of Religion

God, Eternity and Free Will – 21st-Century Perspectives

In this course, Dr Nikk Effingham (University of Birmingham) explores 21st century perspectives on God, eternity, and free will from Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne. In the first module, we look broadly at Alvin Plantinga’s philosophy of religion, and his modern takes on traditional arguments for the existence and human knowledge of God. In the second module, we look at Plantinga’s libertarian notion of free will, and its application in theodicy. In the third module, we introduce the problem of prescience, before turning to Plantinga’s response to the problem of prescience in the fourth module, In the fifth module, we examine Richard Swinburne’s three arguments for a timely God. Finally, in the sixth module, we expand our scope of enquiry to investigate further contemporary philosophers on modern debates in philosophy of religion.

Alvin Plantinga's Philosophy of Religion

In this module, we introduce Alvin Plantinga’s arguments in contemporary philosophy of religion, focusing in particular on (i) Plantinga’s ontological argument, and its focus on God as a necessary being (ii) Plantinga’s argument from John Calvin’s ‘sensus divinitatis’ (iii) Plantinga’s theistic argument from evolution.