Reformed Epistemology

Reformed epistemology is the thesis that religious belief can be justified or warranted apart from argumentation. For our purposes, we can ignore the technical parts of this definition and simply say that reformed epistemology is the thesis that it is possible to know that God exists, even if we aren’t aware of good arguments that establish his existence. Now, don’t let the word “reformed” trick you. The thesis doesn’t entail Calvin’s view of predestination or a Protestant understanding of soteriology. A philosopher named Alvin Platinga (one of the greatest minds of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries) called this thesis “reformed” as he was inspired by Calvin’s Institutes. Specifically, Plantinga was inspired by Calvin arguing that the human person possesses a sensus divintatis (a sense of divinity). That is, the human person possesses a special cognitive faculty that is responsible for making him/her aware of God and his activities.

There are various ways that one could argue for the thesis of reformed epistemology. Plantinga argues for his thesis, in part, by endorsing what he calls proper functionalism. Without getting into all the details, the main idea is that a person’s belief is warranted if the person’s belief is the result of properly functioning cognitive faculties that are successfully aimed at truth.

Dr. Tyler McNabb