Alvin Plantinga Returns to Calvin

Following his retirement from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., philosopher Alvin Plantinga has not quite retired.

He has returned to Grand Rapids, Mich., to teach a class at Calvin College.

Once called by Time magazine “America’s leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God,” Plantinga is the emeritus John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.

He taught at Notre Dame from 1982 until last year. Before that, he taught philosophy for several years at Calvin College. He also attended Calvin College as an undergraduate studying philosophy.

Plantinga says Grand Rapids seemed like the logical place to settle after he retired from Notre Dame.

“We have kids and grandkids here and many old friends,” he says in an in-depth interview, conducted by Michael Van Denend, editor of Calvin’s alumni magazine, Spark. To read the entire interview, visit: Plantinga returns.

In the class at Calvin, Plantinga is going through his new book with about 15 juniors and seniors.

“We meet once a week and we take one chapter at a time. They read the chapter and prepare questions for me and we embark on a discussion,” he says in the interview.

Plantinga’s new book is called Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism. The main theme is that there is deep concord and superficial conflict between religion and science, but that there is superficial concord and deep conflict between naturalism and science, he says.

Plantinga is the author of a number of books, including God and Other Minds, The Nature of Necessity, and Warranted Christian Belief.

Next semester, Plantinga says, he plans to assist another Calvin philosophy professor teach a course at Calvin Theological Seminary. “And we’re talking about a course for next fall at the college titled ‘How to be a Christian Philosopher’,” he says.