Alvin Plantinga Supports Next Wave of Intellectual Discovery at Alma Mater

For more than 50 years, Alvin Plantinga  has been making an intellectual imprint on the field of philosophy.  In 2017, he was awarded the Templeton Prize for his life’s work. And with it came a $1.4 million prize.

Now, Plantinga is donating nearly half of those winnings ($595,000) to what he considers his intellectual home: Calvin College, from which he graduated in 1954.

The funds will be used to support the work of an intellectual community that provided him—as both as an undergraduate student and a faculty member—with the space to ask challenging questions and explore new ground in his field.

Plantinga, who left Harvard to study at Calvin College in the 1950s, said he values Calvin as a place where faculty and students have the freedom to integrate their faith and learning. And so the bulk of the funds he’s donated will work to advance the college’s thought leadership in the academy and the broader world through faculty research and student scholarships.

Noted philosophers Nicholas Wolterstorff and Richard Mouw and historian George Marsden were on the faculty at the same time as Plantinga.

 “Plantinga is an intellectual giant, and at Calvin he walked among other giants of Christian academia. His generation modeled the kinds of teamwork and mutual support that allow Christian scholars to thrive,” said Matt Walhout, dean for research and scholarship at Calvin College. “Calvin honors their legacy by continuing to invest in world-class faculty scholarship.”

“The Reformed tradition has always valued and championed the life of the mind as a way to glorify God. Calvin College’s holistic faith-integration model of scholarship is both intellectually fruitful and culturally winsome,” said Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, professor of philosophy at Calvin College.

 One philosopher who nominated Plantinga for the Templeton Prize wrote: “Alvin Plantinga’s intellectual discoveries have initiated novel inquiry into spiritual dimensions. His precise and carefully developed insights have opened up intellectual-spiritual space.

“In the 1950s there was not a single published defense of religious belief by a prominent philosopher; by the 1990s there were literally hundreds of books and articles … defending and developing the spiritual dimension. The difference between 1950 and 1990 is, quite simply, Alvin Plantinga.”

For more on Plantinga's life's work, see: https://calvin.edu/news/archive/alvin-plantinga-awarded-the-2017-templeton-prize
Also: https://www.crcna.org/news-and-views/prize-winning-career-connecting-faith-and-philosophy