This post is mostly for my students, who might wonder why we made such a big deal at the SCP/SCPT conference about this guy named Alvin Plantinga. Let me refer you to a great article by James Sennett entitled "Faith (Once Again) Seeking Understanding: Alvin Plantinga and the Renaissance of Christian Philosophy" from the Journal of Faith and the Academy. Sennett recalls the key role of my undergraduate alma mater Wheaton College's annual philosophy conference--a conference very much like the one we just held here at Trinity Christian. Money quote:
But something else
was happening at that Wheaton conference that was just as momentous, that was
just as much Plantinga’s doing, and about which I was just as ignorant. I did
not realize how amazing it was, given recent history, that over 100
professional philosophers should be gathered together on the basis of their
common faith and their common interest in issues at the intersection of Christianity
and philosophy. Little did I know that such a scene would have been unheard of
just one generation previous or that the difference between that generation and
this was due in large part to the efforts of the man we had all come to hear.
In the Spring of 1980, Time magazine reported, “In a quiet revolution in thought and
arguments that hardly anyone could have foreseen only two decades ago, God is
making a comeback. Most intriguingly, this is happening not among theologians
or ordinary believers ... but in the crisp, intellectual circles of academic
philosophers, where the consensus had long banished the Almighty from fruitful
discourse.” This revolution has continued and grown in the nearly three decades
since that Time report.
Read on if you want to learn more about Plantinga's influence and about the key role that conference such as ours can play in influencing the wider academy.
