A Review of Plantinga’s Defense against de jure Objections to Christian Belief

The main argument of the book Warranted Christian Belief by Plantinga is a distinction between de facto and de jure objections to Christian belief. De facto objections, according to him, are those about the truth of Christian belief, where the claim is relatively straightforward that rge belief is false. However, Plantinga is primarily concerned with de jure objections, which are arguments or claims that Christian belief, whether or not true, is at any rate unjustifiable, or irrational, or without sufficient evidence, or in some way not intellectually respectable. While the conclusion of such objections is that there is something wrong with Christian belief, Plantinga contends that the question is never explicitly formulated of what exactly is wrong; however, he finally locates a promising candidate for the de jure question in the complaints against theistic belief by Freud and Marx. Critics, according to Plantinga, cannot simply object to the rationality or justifiability of theistic belief without presupposing that theistic belief is false. However, I will, in this paper, argue that the epistemic objection to the rationality of theism need not presuppose the falsity of theism or Christian belief, and I will show that the most important charge against Plantinga’s defense – if theism is true, it is warranted – is that it proves too much.