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The thesis explores and takes a stand with respect to the differences between the religious epistemologies of Alvin Plantinga and Hendrik Hart. For Plantinga, direct rational knowledge of God "in Himself" is possible because it is grounded in the experience of our rational faculties. For Hart, direct rational knowledge of God's nature is impossible because God transcends the created order and, therefore, the limits of rational understanding. Our knowledge of God, as a consequence, can only be faith knowledge that is decidedly indirect and metaphoric in nature. Plantinga believes that such views are Kantian in inspiration and that they turn our knowledge of God into nothing more than rationally incoherent "disguised nonsense." The thesis shows that Plantinga's own philosophical theology fails to meet the rational standards he sets for religious knowledge, his critique of Kantian religious epistemologies fails to apply to Hart's position, and that he himself allows for indirect knowledge of God in certain instances. The thesis concludes by noting if our knowledge of God can be indirect in some instances without also being rationally incoherent disguised nonsense, then perhaps Hart is not wrong for regarding it to be indirect in all instances.

This dissertation compares the religious epistemology of Carl F. H. Henry and of Alvin Plantinga. Chapter 1 briefly examines the impact of the Enlightenment and its subsequent developments upon religious epistemology and provides an overview of the thought of Carl F. H. Henry and of Alvin Plantinga. Chapter 2 examines the religious epistemology of Carl F. H. Henry with specific attention to the development of his religious epistemology within the Augustinian tradition and his conception of the Logos doctrine as an essential component of religious epistemology. Chapter 3 examines the important critiques of Henry's religious epistemology. Chapter 4 examines the religious epistemology of Alvin Plantinga, with specific attention to the development of his religious epistemology within the Augustinian tradition and the development of the concept of warranted Christian belief. Chapter 5 examines several important critiques of Plantinga's religious epistemology. This dissertation concludes that the works of Henry and Plantinga are important for contemporary discussions of theological method and religious epistemology within evangelical theology. Specifically, the connection that is evident in Henry and Plantinga's work between the ability of humanity to know God and the special status of humanity as bearing the image of God could be the core idea which serves as the epistemological application of the ontological reality of God's existence. / This item is only available to students and faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. If you are not associated with SBTS, this dissertation may be purchased from <a href="http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb">http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb</a> or downloaded through ProQuest's Dissertation and Theses database if your institution subscribes to that service.

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity International University, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-110).

This study explores how successful Alvin Plantinga is in his contention that belief in God can be obtained and maintained in a basic way that attains and retains rationality for reflective persons. Plantinga indeed calls into question any confident presumption that theistic belief is epistemically irresponsible. He not only seriously challenges the necessity for propositional evidence to be available for such belief to be justified, he also supplies significant support for the conclusion that it remains legitimate even if it faces a preponderance of contrary considerations. However, Plantinga does not convincingly demonstrate that basic theistic belief merits privileged status by virtue of a character sufficiently analogous to paradigmatic perceptual, memory and ascriptive beliefs. Nor does he adequately argue its independence from the bearing of evidentialist concerns, especially regarding its background moorings. He needs to do more work to show the full warrant for theistic belief.

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1992. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-88).

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity International University, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-110).

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity International University, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-110).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Baylor University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 190-212).

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-20T01:01:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 000464250-Texto+Completo-0.pdf: 443912 bytes, checksum: 5aa71f054c86ca739b56e8d32700b345 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Most – if not all – arguments that purport to demonstrate that God does not exist or that the probability of His existence is low depend, explicitly or implicitly, on the idea that there are gratuitous evils or that, if God existed, He would have created a better world. The goal of this MA thesis is to evaluate the difficulties that the consequential complexity of history could pose to the formulation of this type of arguments. Additionally, I seek to briefly investigate how the molinist model of divine providence, which postulates God’s knowledge of what became known in the literature as counterfactuals of freedom, incorporates or should incorporate the question of the causal complexity of the world. / A maioria – ou talvez mesmo todos – os argumentos que procuram demonstrar a não existência ou a baixa probabilidade da existência de Deus a partir do mal existente no mundo dependem, explicita ou implicitamente, da ideia de que há males gratuitos no mundo ou da ideia de que, se Deus existisse, Ele teria criado um mundo melhor que este. O objetivo desta dissertação é avaliar as dificuldades que a complexidade consequencial da história coloca para a formulação desses tipos de argumentos. Adicionalmente, procuro investigar brevemente como o modelo providencial molinista, que pressupõe o conhecimento por Deus dos chamados contrafatuais da liberdade, incorpora ou deveria incorporar a questão da complexidade causal do mundo.