.
By Ed Gerritsen, February 2014
Collection Overview
Abstract
The collections contains Alvin Plantinga's notes and papers (1950-1955) while a student, and correspondence (1956-2010) that spans his teaching and writing careers on such topics as God, freedom, evil, creation and evolution. His writings (1961-2010) details his arguments relating to God whose existence does not present a logical inconsistency with the existence of evil, free will for humans, and that a creation with moral good necessitates the existence of moral evil. The collections also details his argument that if evolution is true, it undermines naturalism because if both evolution and naturalism are true, human cognitive faculties must evolve directed toward survival rather than truth, and these faculties would be unreliable in discerning truth. On the other hand, if God created man "in his image" by way of an evolutionary process (or any other means), then Plantinga argues our faculties would probably be reliable.
Biographical Note
At the end of 11th grade, Plantinga's father urged Plantinga to skip his last year of high school and enroll in college and in 1949, a few months before his 17th birthday, he enrolled in Jamestown College, in Jamestown, North Dakota. When his father joined the faculty at Calvin College in January 1950, the younger Plantinga enrolled in Calvin College. During his first semester at Calvin, Plantinga was awarded a scholarship to attend Harvard University, where her spent two semesters but returned to Calvin in 1951 to study philosophy with William Harry Jellema In 1954. Plantinga began his graduate studies at the University of Michigan with William Alston, William Frankena, and Richard Cartwright, and in 1955 transferred to Yale University where he received his PhD in 1958.
Plantinga taught philosophy at Yale, 1957-1958; Wayne State University, 1958-1963; Calvin College (replacing the retiring Jellema), 12063-1982; and the University of Notre Dame, 1982-2010. He has honorary degrees from Glasgow University (1982), North Park College (1994), the Free University of Amsterdam (1995), Brigham Young University (1996), and Valparaiso University (1999). He was a Guggenheim Fellow, 1971-1972, and elected a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1975. In 2006 the University of Notre Dame's Center for Philosophy of Religion renamed its Distinguished Scholar Fellowship as the Alvin Plantinga Fellowship. In 2012, the University of Pittsburgh's Philosophy Department, History and Philosophy of Science Department, and the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science awarded Plantinga the Rescher Prize.
Plantinga was born on 15 November 1932, in Ann Arbor, Michigan to Cornelius A. Plantinga (1908-1994) and Lettie G. Bossenbroek (1908-2007). Plantinga's father, an immigrant from Friesland, the Netherlands, earned Master's Degree in psychology and a PhD in philosophy from Duke University. Alvin Plantinga married Kathleen De Boer in 1955 and they have four children: Carl, Jane, Harry, and Ann. Both sons are professors at Calvin College, Carl in Film Studies and Harry in computer science; daughter, Jane Plantinga Pauw, is a pastor at Rainier Beach Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Seattle, Washington, and his daughter, Ann Kapteyn, is a missionary in Cameroon working for Wycliffe Bible Translators.
Administrative Information
Repository:
Heritage Hall, Hekman Library
Alternate Extent Statement:
30 Boxes
Acquisition Source:
Alvin Plantinga, 2012, 2013
Other Note:
Acc. No. 12.66, 13.15
Box and Folder Listing
Browse by Series:
[
Series 1: [General Materials]],
[
Series 2: Correspondence, 1950-2010],
[Series 3: Writings, 1963-2008, undated],
[
Series 4: Articles],
[
Series 5: Research Material],
[
Series 6: Research Material; A Theory of Content and Other Essays, by Jerry Fodor, 1990, 1972-1981, undated],
[
All]
- Series 3: Writings --- 1963-2008, undated
- Box 20
- Folder 1: "Plantinga on the Free Will Defense" (Clement Dore) --- 1971
- Folder 2-3: "Aquinas and Calvin on Faith and Knowledge" --- 1980
- Folder 4: "Reason and Scripture Scholarship" --- 1986
- Folder 5: "Comments on Plantinga" (R. Feldman) and Reply by A.C.P. --- 1986
- Folder 6: "A Modest Professor" (Interview of A.C.P.) --- 1989
- Folder 7: "The Necessity of Proper Function" --- 1992
- Folder 8-9: "Reid, Hume, and God" --- 1995
- Folder 10: Papers Given at Plantinga Symposium --- Jun 1995
- Folder 11: "Darwin, Mind, and Meaning" --- 1996
- Folder 12: "On Christian Scholarship" --- 1996
- Folder 13: "On Being Honest to God" --- nd
- Folder 14: "Do We Have a Right to Fight for Opec Oil?" --- nd
- Folder 15: "On Actuality" --- nd
- Folder 16: "The Paradox of the Heap" --- nd
- Folder 17: "Do our Concepts Apply to God?" --- nd
- Folder 18: "Precis of Christian Philosophy at End of 20th Century" --- nd
- Folder 19: "Plantinga's Account of Epistemic Warrant" --- nd
- Folder 20: "What's the Question?" --- nd
- Folder 21: "Bonjourian Coherentism" --- nd
- Folder 22: "Naturalism Defeated" --- nd
- Folder 23: "Warrant and Designing Agents: A Reply to James Taylor" --- nd
- Folder 24: "Reply to Sosa and Goldman" --- nd
- Folder 25: "Perceiving God" --- nd
- Box 21
- Folder 1: "Presuppositions of Our Time" --- undated
- Folder 2: "Actuality, Truth, and Trust-in" --- nd
- Folder 3: "Methodological Naturalism?" --- undated
- Folder 4: "On Being Evidentially Challenged" --- nd
- Folder 5: "Epistemic Probability, and Evil" --- nd
- Folder 6: "An Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism" --- nd
- Folder 7: "Divine Knowledge" --- nd
- Folder 8: "On Mereological Essentialism," (R.M. Chisholm), A.C.P. Response --- nd
- Folder 9: "Existence, Self-Interest, and the Problem of Evil," (R.M.), Reply by A.C.P --- nd
- Folder 10: "Reflections on a Methodology for Christian Philosophers," (J. Keller), and Replies --- nd
- Folder 11: "Falsification and the Existence of God: A Discussion of Plantinga's Freewill Defense," (G. Rotterwill) --- nd
- Folder 12: "Plantinga's Freewill Defense," (W. Hasker) --- nd
- Folder 13: "Plantinga and Leibniz's Lapse," (R. Burch) --- nd
- Folder 14: "Plantinga on Probability and Evil," (R. Swinburne) --- nd
- Folder 15: "God, Plantinga and a Better World" --- nd
- Folder 16: "Alvin Plantinga and the Great Pumpkin" --- nd
- Folder 17: "Plantinga's Modal Freewill Defense" --- nd
- Folder 18: "Can, There is a God be a Basic Belief?" (M. Stewart) --- nd
- Folder 19: "Afterword" --- nd
- Folder 20: "Plantinga on Functions and the Theory of Evolution" (M. Levin) --- nd
- Folder 21: "Transworld Identity-The Unstated Premise of Plantinga's Reformulation of Ontological Argument," (P.M. O'Neil) --- nd
- Folder 22: "Christian Theism: Ultimate Reality and Meaning in the Philosophy of Alvin Plantinga," (D, Giutebga) --- nd
- Folder 23: "Taking Plantinga Seriously: More Advise to Christian Philosophers," (M. Westphall) --- nd
- Folder 24: "Reid, Hume, and God" --- nd
- Folder 25: "The Evidentialist Objection to Theistic Belief" --- nd
- Box 22
- Folder 1: Christianity Today article: "Analytic Philosophy and Christianity" --- 1963
- Folder 2: Reformed Journal article: "Radical Theology" --- 1967
- Folder 3: Reformed Journal article: "Why Climb Mountains?" --- 1969
- Folder 4: Article: "Plantinga's Theology of Proper Names," (D.F. Austin- Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic) --- 1983
- Folder 5: Article: "The Boethian Compromise" and Reply by Diana Akerman --- 1978
- Folder 6: Article: "The Probabilistic Argument from Evil" --- 1978
- Folder 7: Pro Rege Article: "Modernizing the Case for God," (N. Van Til- response by A.C.P.) --- 1981
- Folder 8: Reformed Journal Article: "Sheehan's Shenanigans" --- 1987
Browse by Series:
[
Series 1: [General Materials]],
[
Series 2: Correspondence, 1950-2010],
[Series 3: Writings, 1963-2008, undated],
[
Series 4: Articles],
[
Series 5: Research Material],
[
Series 6: Research Material; A Theory of Content and Other Essays, by Jerry Fodor, 1990, 1972-1981, undated],
[
All]
