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PLANTINGA, Alvin. Knowledge and Christian Belief. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2015. 124 pp.-This small book is a shortened version of Plantinga's more extensive Warranted Christian Belief (2000), one of the classic texts of what has come to be known as Reformed epistemology. As was the case in the longer (more than 400 pages) book, this smaller volume asks how, in the light of the challenges offered by the likes of Immanuel Kant and Walter Kaufmann, the beliefs of Christians may be considered rational, justified, and warranted. The understanding of warrant as a cognitive function, developed by Plantinga in an earlier work, Warrant and Proper Function (1993), is reiterated here as "cognitive faculties functioning properly in a congenial epistemic environment according to a divine plan successfully aimed at truth."
The argument proceeds with Plantinga's characteristic care and wit. Its accessibility, even elegance, makes it an ideal introductory text for even beginning students in philosophy of religion or apologetics. Consistent with its more popular audience, its starting point is not with the challenges of Kant and Hume, though they make appearances, but with the more popular New Atheists-Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris,...