Papers by Alvin Plantinga

This is a collection of philosophical papers by Alvin Plantinga. Eventually, I hope to make it complete.

Articles

(2016) "Law, Cause, and Occasionalism", in Reason and Faith: Themes from Richard Swinburne, Bergmann and Brower, eds. (video here)
(2015) "Replies to my commentators", in Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief: Critical Essays, Dieter Schönecker, ed.
(2011) "Content and Natural Selection", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83: 435-458.
(2011) "Theism and Mathematics", Theology and Science 9: 27-33.
(2010) "Naturalism, Theism, Obligation and Supervenience", Faith and Philosophy 27: 247-272.
(2010) "Reformed Epistemology", in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed., Taliaferro, Draper, and Quinn, eds.
(2010) "Evolution versus Naturalism", in The Nature of Nature, Gordon and Dembski, eds.
(2010) "It's No Illusion!" (reply to William J. Talbott, "More on the Illusion of Defeat"), in The Nature of Nature, Gordon and Dembski, eds.
(2010) "Epistemological Self-Profile", in A Companion to Epistemology, 2nd ed., Steup, ed.
(2010) "Proper Functionalism" (with Kenny Boyce), in Continuum Companion to Epistemology, Cullison, ed.
(2010) "Response to Churchland" (with Aaron Segal), Philo 13: 201-207.
(2009) "Transworld Depravity, Transworld Sanctity, and Uncooperative Essences", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78: 178-191.
(2009) "Games Scientists Play", in The Believing Primate (Murray and Schloss, eds.).
(2009) "Science and Religion: Why Does the Debate Continue?", in The Religion and Science Debate: Why Does It Continue?, Attridge, ed. (Yale); reprinted in Science and Religion in Dialogue, Stewart, ed. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
(2008) "What is 'Intervention'?", Theology and Science 6: 369-401.
(2008) "On 'Proper Basicality'", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75: 612-621.
(2007/1986) "Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments", Alvin Plantinga (Baker, ed.).
(2007) "Materialism and Christian Belief", in Persons: Human and Divine (van Inwagen and Zimmerman, eds.).
(2007) "Religion and Science", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
(2007) "Naturalism vs. Evolution: A Religion/Science Conflict?", in God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence (Draper, ed.).
(2007) "Against 'Sensible' Naturalism", in God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence (Draper, ed.).
(2007) "Objections to Draper's Argument from Evil", in God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence (Draper, ed.).
(2006) "Against Materialism", Faith and Philosophy 23: 3-32.
(2006) "Evolution and Design", in For Faith and Clarity (Beilby, ed.): 201-17.
(2006) "Historical Arguments and Dwindling Probabilities", Philosophia Christi 8: 7-22.
(2006) "Divine Action in the World" (synopsis), Ratio 19: 495-504. (Reprinted in The Meaning of Theism, Blackwell, 2007.)
(2006) "Naturalism, Skepticism, and the Concept of Knowledge", in Analytic Philosophy Without Naturalism (Corradini, Galvan, and Lowe, eds.).
(2005) "Can God Break the Laws?", in God and the Ethics of Belief (Dole and Chignell, eds.): 31-58.
(2004) "Supralapsarianism, or 'O Felix Culpa'", Christian Faith and the Problem of Evil (van Inwagen, ed.).
(2004) "Evolution, Epiphenomenalism, Reductionism", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68: 602-619.
(2004) "Reflections on the Polished Mirror", in Chinese Philosophy in an Era of Globalization (Wang, ed.).
(2004) "Reason and Scripture Scholarship: A Response to Craig Bartholomew and Robert Gordon", in 'Behind' the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation (Bartholomew, Evans, Healy, and Rae, eds.).
(2003) "Probability and Defeaters", Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 84: 291-298.
(2002) "Reply to Stephen Wykstra, Linda Zagzebski and Michael Sudduth", Philosophical Books 43: 124-135.
(2002) "Response to Critics", in Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (Beilby, ed.).
(2001) "Swinburne and Plantinga on Internal Rationality" (with Richard Swinburne), Religious Studies 37: 357-358.
(2001) "Rationality and Public Evidence", Religious Studies 37: 215-222.
(2001) "The 'Onus Probandi' of Theism", in The Rationality of Theism (García de la Sienra, ed.).
(2001) "Direct Acquaintance?", in Resurrecting Old-Fashioned Foundationalism (DePaul, ed.).
(2001) "Creation and Evolution: A Modest Proposal", in Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics (Pennock, ed.).
(2001) "Internalism, Externalism, Defeaters and Arguments for Christian Belief", Philosophia Christi 3: 379-400.
(1999) "On Heresy, Mind, and Truth", Faith and Philosophy 16: 182-193.
(1999) "Warranted Christian Belief: The Aquinas/Calvin Model", in The Rationality of Theism (Brüntrup and Tacelli, eds.).
(1999) "Reid, Hume and God", in Recovering Nature (Hibbs, ed.).
(1999) "William P. Alston", Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Audi, ed.).
(1998) "Twenty Years Worth of the SCP", Faith and Philosophy 15: 151-155.
(1998) "Degenerate Evidence and Rowe's New Evidential Argument from Evil", Nous 32: 531-544.
(1998) "Two (or More) Kinds of Scripture Scholarship", Modern Theology 14: 243-278.
(1997) "Ad Hick", Faith and Philosophy 14: 295-298.
(1997) "Warrant and Accidentally True Belief", Analysis 57: 140-145.
(1997) "Arguments for the Existence of God", Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
(1997) "Religion and Epistemology", Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
(1996) "Science: Augustinian or Duhemian?", Faith and Philosophy 13: 368-394.
(1996) "Respondeo", Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga’s Theory of Knowledge (Kvanvig, ed.).
(1996) "On Being Evidentially Challenged", in The Evidential Argument from Evil (Howard-Snyder, ed.).
(1996) "Methodological Naturalism?", in Facets of Faith and Science, vol. 1 (van der Meer, ed.): 177-221; abridged in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 49.3 (1997): 143-154.
(1995) "Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism", The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith (Senor, ed.).
(1995) "What's the Question?", Journal of Philosophical Research 20: 19-43.
(1995) "Precis of Warrant: The Current Debate and Warrant and Proper Function", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60: 393-396
(1995) "Reliabilism, Analyses, and Defeaters", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60: 427-464.
(1995) "Christian Philosophy at the End of the 20th Century", in Christian Philosophy at the Close of the Twentieth Century (Griffioen and Balk, eds.): 29-53.
(1995) "Pantheism", in A Companion to Metaphysics (Sosa and Kim, eds.).
(1995) "Essence and Essentialism", in A Companion to Metaphysics (Sosa and Kim, eds.).
(1995) "Haecceity", in A Companion to Metaphysics (Sosa and Kim, eds.).
(1995) "Natural Theology", in A Companion to Metaphysics (Sosa and Kim, eds.).
(1994) "On Christian Scholarship", in The Challenge and Promise of a Catholic University (Hesburgh, ed.).
(1993) "A Christian Life Partly Lived", in Philosophers Who Believe (Kelly James Clark, ed.)
(1993) "Divine Knowledge", in Christian Perspectives on Religious Knowledge (C. Stephan Evans and Merold Westphal, eds.)
(1993) "Truth, Omniscience, and Cantorian Arguments: An Exchange" (with Patrick Grim) Philosophical Studies 71: 267-306.
(1993) "Why We Need Proper Function" Nous 27: 66-82.
(1993) "Epistemic Justification" Nous 27: 3-18.
(1993) "Epistemology of Religious Belief", in A Companion to Epistemology (Dancy and Sosa, eds.).
(1993) "Agnosticism", in A Companion to Epistemology (Dancy and Sosa, eds.).
(1993) "Dogmatism", in A Companion to Epistemology (Dancy and Sosa, eds.).
(1992) "Augustinian Christian Philosophy" The Monist 75: 291-320.
(1992) "Belief in God", in Introduction to Philosophy (Boylan, ed.).
(1992) "On Rejecting the Theory of Common Ancestry: A Reply to Hasker", Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 44: 258-263.
(1991) "The Prospects for Natural Theology" Philosophical Perspectives 5: 287-315.
(1991) "Warrant and Designing Agents" Philosophical Studies 64: 203-215.
(1991) "Ad Walls" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51: 621-624.
(1991) "When Faith and Reason Clash: Evolution and the Bible", Christian Scholar's Review 21: 8-33.
(1991) "Science, Neutrality, and Biblical Scholarship: A Reply to McMullin, Pun and Van Till", Christian Scholar's Review 21: 80-109.
(1991) "An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism", Logos 12: 27-49.
(1990) "Justification in the Twentieth Century" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50: 45-71.
(1990) "Actuality, Truth and Truth in" (Italian journal).
(1989) "Ad de Vries", Christian Scholar's Review 19: 171-178.
(1989) "Ad Robbins", Journal of the American Academy of Religion 57: 617-621.
(1989) "The Ontological Argument", in Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology (Burkhardt and Smith, eds.).
(1989) "Essentialism", in Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology (Burkhardt and Smith, eds.).
(1988) "Positive Epistemic Status and Proper Function" Philosophical Perspectives 2: 1-50.
(1988) "Method and Christian Philosophy", Faith and Philosophy 5: 159-164.
(1988) "Justification and Theism", Faith and Philosophy 4: 403-426.
(1988) "Chisholmian Internalism", in Philosophical Analysis: A Defense by Example (Austin, ed.).
(1988) "Epistemic Probability and Evil", in Archivio di Filosofia (Olivetti, ed.).
(1987) "Two Concepts of Modality: Modal Realism and Modal Reductionism", Philosophical Perspectives 1: 189-231.
(1986) "The Foundations of Theism", Faith and Philosophy 3: 298-313.
(1986) "Is Theism Really a Miracle?", Faith and Philosophy 3: 109-134.
(1986) "On Ockham's Way Out", Faith and Philosophy 3: 235-269.
(1986) "On Taking Belief in God as Basic", in Religious Experience, Religious Belief (Runzo and Ihara, eds.).
(1986) "Coherentism and the Evidentialist Objection to Theistic Belief", in Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment (Audi and Wainwright, eds.).
(1985) "Self-Profile", in Alvin Plantinga (Tomberlin and van Inwagen, eds.)
(1984) "Advice to Christian Philosophers", Faith and Philosophy 1: 253-271.
(1984) "Modern Philosophy and the Turn to Belief in God", in The Intellectuals Speak Out About God (Varghese, ed.).
(1983) "On Existentialism", Philosophical Studies 44: 1-20.
(1983) "How to Be An Anti-Realist" (Presidential Address), Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 80: 47-70.
(1983) "Reason and Belief in God", in Faith and Rationality (Plantinga and Wolterstorff, eds.).
(1983) "Guise Theory", in Agent, Language and the Structure of the World (Tomberlin, ed.).
(1983) "Hector-Neri Castañeda", in Agent, Language and the Structure of the World (Tomberlin, ed.).
(1983) "The Reformed Objection Revisited", Christian Scholar's Review.
(1981) "Tooley and Evil", Australasian Journal of Philosophy 60: 66-75.
(1981) "Is Belief in God Properly Basic?" Nous 15: 41-52.
(1981) "The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology" Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 15: 49-62.
(1981) "Response to Van Til" Pro Rege 9, 3: 29-30.
(1981) "The Case of Kant", in Introductory Philosophy (Rogers, ed.).
(1981) "Rationality & Religious Belief", in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion (Cahn and Shatz, eds.).
(1981) "Reply to the Basingers on Divine Omnipotence", Process Studies 11: 25-29.
(1979) "Is Belief in God Rational?", in Rationality and Religious Belief (Delaney, ed.): 7-27.
(1979) "De Essentia", Grazer Philosophische Studien.
(1979) "Transworld Identity or World Bound Individuals", in The Possible and the Actual (Loux, ed.). (Reprint of the 1973 essay.)
(1978) "The Probablistic Argument from Evil" Philosophical Studies 35: 1-53.
(1978) "The Boethian Compromise" American Philosophical Quarterly 15: 129-138.
(1976) "Actualism and Possible Worlds" Theoria 42: 139-160.
(1976) "Necessary and Essential Existence" Canadian Journal of Philosophy 6: 105-111.
(1976) "Existence, Necessity, and God", The New Scholasticism 50: 61-72.
(1975) "On Mereological Essentialism" Review of Metaphysics 28: 468-476.
(1975) "Reply to Henry", Philosophical Books 16: 8-11.
(1975) "Aquinas on Anselm", in God and the Good (Orlebeke and Smedes, eds.).
(1973) "Which Worlds Could God Have Created?" Journal of Philosophy 70: 539-552.
(1973) "Transworld Identity of Worldbound Individuals?", in Logic and Ontology (Munitz, ed.).
(1970) "What George Could Not Have Been" Nous 5: 227-232.
(1970) "World and Essence" Philosophical Review 79: 461-492.
(1970) "The Incompatibility of Freedom with Determinism: A Reply", Philosophical Forum 2: 141-148.
(1969) "De Re et De Dicto" Nous 3: 235-258.
(1968) "Induction and Other Minds, II" Review of Metaphysics 21: 524-533.
(1967) "Norman Malcolm", Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Edwards, ed.).
(1966) "Pike and Possible Persons" Journal of Philosophy 63: 104-108.
(1966) "Kant's Objection to the Ontological Argument" Journal of Philosophy 63: 537-545.
(1966) "Induction and Other Minds" Review of Metaphysics 19: 441-461.
(1965) "On Paul Ziff's 'The Simplicity of Other Minds'" Journal of Philosophy 19: 585-586.
(1965) "A Comment on the Strategy of the Skeptic", in Faith and the Philosophers (Hick, ed.).
(1964) "The Free Will Defense", in Philosophy in America, Max Black, ed.
(1964) "Necessary Being", in Faith and Philosophy (Plantinga, ed.).
(1963) "Analytic Philosophy and Christianity", Christianity Today 8, 2: 17-20.
(1962) "The Perfect Goodness of God", Australasian Journal of Philosophy 40: 70-75.
(1962) "It's Actual, So It Must Be Possible", Philosophical Studies 12: 61-64.
(1961) "A Valid Ontological Argument?" Philosophical Review 70: 93-101.
(1961) "Things and Persons" Review of Metaphysics 14: 493-519.
(1958) "An Existentialist's Ethics" Review of Metaphysics 12: 235-256.

Reviews

(2007) "The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum" (review of Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion), Books & Culture (March/April 2007).
(2012) "Providential Evolution" (review of Giberson and Collins, The Language of Science and Faith), Books & Culture (May/June 2012).
(1972) Review of James F. Ross, Philosophical Theology, The Philosophical Review 81: 509-511.

Misc.

(2011) "Response to Nick Wolterstorff", Faith and Philosophy 28: 267-268.
(2011) Audio Interview with Brian Auten
(2010) "Comments on 'Satanic Verses: Moral Chaos in Holy Writ'", in Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham (Bergmann, Murray, and Rea, eds.).
(2009) "In Memoriam: William P. Alston", Faith and Philosophy 26: 359-360.
(2008) "Evolution vs. Naturalism", Books & Culture 14.4: 37.
(2008) "The Reasonableness of God" (letter), Christianity Today (Sept. 2008).
(2008) Audio Interview with Unbelievable
(2002) "Dawkins and the Alabama Insert", Think 1.2.
(1999) "Faith and Reason", Books & Culture.
(1998) "Afterword", in The Analytic Theist (Sennett, ed.).
(1998) "God is Hamlet niet: Gesprek met Alvin Plantinga" (interview), in Twee zielen: Gesprekken met hedendaagse filosofen.
(1996) "Dennett's Dangerous Idea: Darwin, Mind and Meaning", Books & Culture (May–June 1996): 16-18, 35.
(1996) "Preface", in Dios y el Mal (Conesa Ferrer; U. of Navarre Press).
(1993) "Evolution and the Catholic Character", Common Sense (April 1993).
(1987) "Sheehan's Shenanigans", Reformed Journal 37.4.
(1987) "Reply to Timmer", Reformed Journal 37.9: 10-11.
(1982) "On Reformed Epistemology", Reformed Journal.
(1976) "Possible Worlds", BBC talk (Spring 1976), published in The Listener (May 1976).
(1974) "Aquinas", Reformed Journal.
(1974) "Our Reasonable Service", The Banner.
(1971) "Christians, Scholars and Christian Scholars", The Banner.
(1969) "Why Climb Mountains?", Reformed Journal.
(1966) "Radical Theology and the Death of God", Reformed Journal.
(1964) "On Being Honest to God", Reformed Journal.
(1958) "Dooyeweerd on Meaning and Being", Reformed Journal 8 (Oct. 1958): 10-15.
(1958) "Ethics and Metaphysical Naturalism" (PhD dissertation, Yale).

Books

(2015) Knowledge and Christian Belief
(2011) Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism
(2010) Are Science And Religion Compatible? (with Daniel Dennett)
(2008) Knowledge of God (with Michael Tooley)
(2003) Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality (Matthew Davidson, ed.)
(2000) Warranted Christian Belief
(1998) The Analaytic Theist (James Sennett, ed.)
(1993) Warrant and Proper Function
(1993) Warrant: The Current Debate
(1990) The Twin Pillars of Christian Scholarship
(1983) Faith and Rationality (ed., with Nicholas Wolterstorff)
(1980) Does God Have a Nature?
(1974) God, Freedom, and Evil
(1974) The Nature of Necessity
(1967) God and Other Minds
(1965) The Ontological Argument (ed.)
(1964) Faith and Philosophy (ed.)

Maintained by Andrew M. Bailey. I maintain similar collections of papers by John Martin Fischer, David Lewis, and Peter van Inwagen.

(Last updated: 20 May 2026)