Faith, reason and leap in the dark – a comparison between Plantinga and Swinburne

Abstract

The article aims to evaluate critically the concept of faith and the way Christian faith is rationally justified in Alvin Plantinga’s main work – Warranted Christian Belief (2000). In order to do so, it starts from a comparison with the proposal by Richard Swinburne. After briefly discussing Plantinga’s general epistemology, the text expounds its application to belief in God and Christian faith. Plantinga’s thesis that faith is not a ‘leap in the dark’ and that its non-theoretical component is similar to erotic love is compared with Swinburne’s vision, according to which a firm faith may include elements of uncertain belief, and that faith presupposes a voluntary decision, being for such meritorious as a result. The comparison will suggest that the differences between their approaches indicate a possibility of complementarity between them.