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Calvin College

And bequeathed the benefits of a remarkable institution in this tradition, Calvin College. Institutions are also not customarily seen as instruments of the grace that shapes one's life with God. But so it was in my case. I had entered what seemed to me a world of dazzling brightness. In part it was a journey into self-understanding. For here, in this college of the tradition, I began to understand the tradition and thus myself. I learned how to live with integrity within this tradition, within any tradition-how to discern and embrace its fundamental contours while treating its details as adiaphora, how to discern and appropriate what is capable of nourishing life in one's own day and how to let the rest lie, how to empathize with the anxiety and suffering embodied in one's tradition and how to celebrate its accomplishments.

More important than coming to understand the tradition, I saw the tradition at work in some remarkably intelligent, imaginative and devoted teachers. I came with the conviction that I was called to make my thoughts captive to Jesus Christ. But now I was plunged deep into the culture of the West-its literature, its philosophy, its theology, its science; everything; nothing was off-limits. The challenge constantly placed before us was to struggle to understand this massive inheritance "in Christian perspective." And more than that: ourselves to embody Christ in culture-ourselves to compose poetry and write philosophy and paint paintings that would breathe the Spirit of Christ. There are two cities, said one of our teachers, Harry Jellema, with gripping charisma, using the language of Augustine, there are two cities-then he would switch to the Latin-the civitas Del and the civitas mundi. Your callingis to build the civitas Del.

Here too nobody was offering evidences for the truth of Christianity, arguments for the inspiration of Scripture, proofs for the resurrection of Jesus, best explanation accounts of Christian faith. The challenge set before us was to interpret the world, culture and society in the light of Scripture-to describe how things look when seen in Christian perspective, to say how they appear when the light of the gospel is shed on them.

It was heady stuff; and we students were as energized and instructed by each other as by our teachers. In my sophomore year I met Alvin Plantinga; we became at once dear friends ~and have remained that ever since. More important, from that time on we have engaged together in the project of Christian philosophy, parceling out the work, learning from each other-but let me be candid, I learning more from Al than Al from me. There was one college class in which Al and I were the only students, a course in Kant's "pure critique" taught by Harry Jellema. A few years back, Al gave the Gifford Lectures; a few years hence, I am slated to give them. Harry Jellema would have chuckled with delight at learning that all the students in one of his classes had become Gifford Lecturers. Too bad he's no longer alive-though perhaps he knows without my telling him. He was the pioneer, breaking up the sod for the second and third generations, for people like 0. K. Bouwsma and William Frankena and Henry Stob and Al and myself, and lots of others; I continue to think that he was maybe the most profound of us all. Certainly the most charismatic.

No doubt some students were bored stiff with all this heady stuff. And some were there for reasons quite different from ours: they too had grown up in the tradition, but were angry with it, infuriated by all its rough edges. Their interest was not Nietzsche interpreted in the light of the tradition but Nietzsche for use as ammunition against the tradition. The arguments we had were wonderful!

I must say a word about Abraham Kuyper, who was in many ways the spiritual eminence behind the college. Kuyper was a turn-of-the-century Dutchman whose creativity came to expression in many areas-church, politics, academia, journalism. For our purposes, what was important was Kuyper's model of theory-construction. Since Aristotle, everybody in the West had regarded proper theorizing as a generically human activity. To enter the chambers of theory one must lay aside all one's particularities and enter purely as a human being. Our religions, our nationalities, our genders, our political convictions-we are to take them off and line them up in the entry. Of course we are never successful at this; always there are some peculiarities that we have failed to strip off. Part of what our peers in the room must do, whenever they notice that, is call it to our attention. It follows that proper theorizing does not eventuate in Muslim sociology or feminist philosophy or Marxist literary criticism or Christian literary criticism, but simply in human sociology, human philosophy and so forth.

Kuyper didn't believe it-didn't believe it was possible. He didn't think one could shed one's nationality or one's social class; but he especially insisted that one could not shed one's religion. A person's religion, on Kuyper's view, was not an inference or a hypothesis but a fundamental determinant of that person's hermeneutic of reality. Of course the hermeneutics of reality shaped by two different religions do not, by any means, yield differences of interpretation on everything; but unless the religions in question are very close, they yield enough differences to have consequences within the field of theorizing. Thus Kuyper thought that the goal of constructing a generically human philosophy was vain; philosophy, and academia generally, is unavoidably pluralistic. The only circumstance under which that would not be true would be that in which Christians, say, would practice amnesia about their religion while doing philosophy, and then remember it when arriving home or at church. Such amnesia Kuyper could not tolerate.

I believed this when first I learned of it in college days; I believe it still. It is a fascinatingly "postmodern" perspective; when I first read Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions my main reaction was "Well, of course." I should add that sometimes Kuyper articulated his view in a much more "expressivist" form than I have given it above. That is to say, sometimes he talked as if the development of philosophy occurred, or should occur, just by expressing in philosophical form one's religious convictions. That seems to me mistaken. To become a philosopher is to enter the ongoing practice of philosophy. That practice is a malleable practice; though one is shaped, one also shapes. But no philosopher ever just gives expression to his inner self. And the Christian who
engages in philosophy will seek to learn from the practice and its tradition as well as to contribute to the shaping of
that practice.

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"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen." ~ An adaptation of Hebrews 11:1

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His most recent book that I have read is geared towards the “every day man,” the layman. It is called Engaging God’s World: A Christian View of Faith, Learning, and Living.

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Umm, SeanG? That book isn't be Alvin Plantinga.

Engaging God's World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living
by Cornelius, Jr. Plantinga


Maybe I misread what you were saying; let's see:

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For those who wish to study Plantinga more in-depth, as I respect him immensely, here are some resources. Of course, Plantinga’s most oft quoted book is God, Freedom, and Evil

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Yes, that seems to be right as confirmed by this bibliography

I just don't understand. How does one own a couple of the mans books, but then attribute one that he didn't even write, let alone has his first name on it? *scratches head*


Cornelius Plantinga, jr.



Alvin Plantinga


I am really lost. Help me out please.






"The Creator's power (by which I mean the capacity to influence the world) is made manifest paradoxically in the vulnerable defenselessness of crucified man."
-John F. Haught

Edited by - A_Theist on 01/20/2003 2:29:02 PM

"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen."

“The problem with creation is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult, and left untried.”