The following is an interview with Greg Welty. He is the author of Alvin Plantinga, the most recent release in our Great Thinkers series.

1. What led you to write Alvin Plantinga? How did you become interested in exploring his teaching and critiquing it from a biblical perspective?

My good friend James Anderson at RTS-Charlotte seminary let me know that a volume on Alvin Plantinga was likely in P&R’s Great Thinkers series. (Anderson himself wrote the David Hume volume, which I really like.) So, I put together a proposal and things proceeded from there. In the Preface to the book I relate how hearing of Plantinga when I was an undergraduate philosophy student at UCLA in 1991 led me to initially examine his writings. Navigating the conflict I later discerned between Plantinga’s positions and those of my Oxford supervisor, Richard Swinburne, led me to become a philosopher: to become aware of multiple views held by equally capable individuals, and to consider deeply who had the better argument.

I think it’s not only important to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a thinker in light of a biblical perspective, but to rank the importance of these as well, and I try to do that in the book. Some of the ways that Plantinga’s work isn’t fully or clearly in line with the Reformed confessions are easily remediable; others not so much. But overall I find a lot of value in Plantinga’s body of work, and I’ve taught through it for twenty years or so.

2. What are the main things you learned from researching Alvin Plantinga; what do you consider his main contributions to Reformed epistemology to be?

I learned that Bill Davis at Covenant College was the perfect person to write the foreword to the book! As one of Plantinga’s students and teaching assistants, who observed him up close for years, Bill is happy to commend Plantinga as a deep, genuine, sincere believer in Jesus Christ. Bill also makes the highly relevant observation that some Christian philosophers are mainly called to speak to fellow Christians about the world of philosophy, while others are mainly called to speak to fellow philosophers about Christian beliefs, and Plantinga is in the latter, almost evangelistic, category.

I also learned that Plantinga’s model of faith and reason, and of how we come to know the Bible is the word of God, is remarkably like John Owen’s view, something that I didn’t realize until I read Owen’s The Reason of Faith (1677) after writing the Plantinga book. In The Reason of Faith (1677: 169-76), Owen makes a series of points that are virtually identical to points made by Plantinga in Warranted Christian Belief(2000: 256-66) and Where the Conflict Really Lies (2011: 178-83). These include the idea that reason is composed of multiple cognitive faculties (both noninferential and inferential), that faith is trust in divine testimony, full-stop (no further arguments needed), and that faith and reason are two ways of knowing. Faith is not an intellectually substandard source of belief. Rather, it’s just a different way to get knowledge.

I learned a few other things. Plantinga found it very difficult to figure out what it means to be a Christian philosopher. He devoted a lot of time at the University of Notre Dame to thinking about this issue. There’s a difference between being a Christian philosopher and being a philosopher who happens to be a Christian. Plantinga wrote a lot about this question—by my reckoning, he articulates five methodological principles and four distinct activities of the Christian philosopher. But he found it hard to practice the integration of Christianity and philosophy. With two notable exceptions (Warranted Christian Belief and “O felix culpa”), most of his philosophical work is about “mere theism,” not Christian distinctives. In the book I offer a reason why that is.

I also learned that, surprisingly, only two of Plantinga’s seven replies to the problem of evil depend on libertarian free will. I learned that Plantinga’s extended “Aquinas/Calvin model” of faith is compatible with determinism about saving faith. Finally, I learned that Plantinga’s rejection of various elements of classical theism doesn’t affect the cogency of his arguments all that much. (As far as I can tell, you can just add these elements to his views if you’d like.)

In my view, Plantinga’s “Reformed epistemology” is neither distinctively Reformed, nor an epistemology. It is, however, a clever reply to the insistence of unbelievers that our belief in God must be based on argument to be rational! His later and much more developed theory of ‘warranted Christian belief’ gives a central role to the testimony of Scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit in producing faith, and deploys this model to deflect some influential unbelieving criticisms of Christian faith.

3. What are some important truths that you would like readers to remember from reading Alvin Plantinga?

In the providence of God, Plantinga influenced a generation of Christian philosophers to be rigorous and bold in their defense of distinctive Christian claims. Like all other uninspired-but-very-useful thinkers, he finds his proper place not above us or below us, but at our side, helping us think through—as he would put it—the antitithesis between believing and unbelieving ways of thought.

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The following is taken from a Zoom interview with Douglas Bond and Joy Woo. Doug is the author of many books, including our upcoming release, God’s Servant Ruth, which will be available August 2, 2023.

1) Tell us about yourself—your family, hobbies, and work.

I have six marvelous kids and 11 grandkids, and another grandchild on the way! I’m currently in the midst of caring for my mother. She’s 86 and has congestive heart failure and viral pneumonia. So that is weighing heavily on my heart and mind right now. It sort of reminds one of the woes that come up for Naomi and Ruth, you know—they experienced lots of loss, and that’s normal in the Christian life.

I’m a very eclectic-hobby person. I love sailing. I love salmon fishing. I love going out and gathering clams and mussels . . . and then eating them! I’m a lifelong renovator of old houses too, and in the last five years, I’ve gotten into building tiny houses!

As for work, I am working on three or four projects right now, and I also do a lot of copyediting and content and developmental editing. I also lead tours related to my books through Scriptorium Press. In fact, I’ll be flying to Rome this summer to lead one of those! I also teach an Oxford Creative Writing Masterclass twice a year in London.

2) How did this idea come about—to tell the stories of Scripture through poetry?

Well, obviously it’s not a new thing! I’ve read a lot of books to my kids and grandkids, and sometimes I read them and I think, “I would’ve put that a little differently,” or  “I would’ve emphasized this instead . . .” So when I wrote my book on Ruth, I wanted to focus the attention on the fulfillment of this whole story in Christ, because we should read the Word of the Lord looking for the Lord of the Word, as Edmund Clowney said.

So I want to figure out how to go to those Old Testament stories and kind of hit the refresh button. And kids love poetry; my mom used to sit on the couch reading Shakespeare out loud. I thought it was so cool—it sounds so wonderful. Part of the reason for that is that there’s rhythm and meter in poetry, and we like that. God gave us a heartbeat, and iambic pentameter echoes the rhythm of the human heart! And in poetry, you have to scrutinize words on many more levels than you do in prose.

So I gravitate to poetry for children because they love those parallelisms of sound: “Oh, that’s so delicious. Do that again. Read that again, Daddy!” I think it captivates them in its genre. Then, when I’ve got them where I want them, I can hopefully communicate truth.

3) What is something you hope children and their parents will learn from reading the story of Ruth together?

I think we’re intractable legalists. I don’t want antinomianism out there either, but legalism is a default for all of us I think, because it’’s so easy. I want mom and dad reading this out loud to their kids. I’m not just interested in the kids—I want mom and dad’s tendency toward legalism to be corrected too. I think the corrective to legalism is also the corrective to antinomianism: show them Jesus, the Savior. Keep him before them.

I hope the content of the book itself will dismantle that sense of legalism that says, “I checked that box; I read good stuff to my kids.” No, no, no. I hope the book exposes that tendency and presents the Savior afresh. We need to hear the truth of God’s grace from all angles. We need to be hemmed in behind and before. And sometimes that hemming in behind and before is really, really painful. It’s like breaking something in pieces. 
God is not capricious when he sends Naomi off. She and her family go to get food because they’re starving, and God doesn’t have a plan to harm them, but it looks like it to Naomi along the way. Sometimes it feels like it along the way for us too. Naomi experienced blow after blow after blow. She had nothing in the ancient semitic world—when your husband dies and then your two sons die and you’re in a foreign land far away from the place where the glory of God dwells, then you are really alone.

And Naomi felt that. “Don’t call me Naomi anymore,” she said, “Call me Mara . . .  Bitter. I’m abandoned, I’m empty. I’ve come back with nothing.” That’s how God wants us. That’s how God wants the parents reading this to their children. He wants them to feel that they are nothing: “I’m Mara, I’m Naomi. And I have nothing. Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling.” We are always trying to bring something with us. But the way of the cross is to break us from all the things we cling to. What’s the story of Ruth about? It’s about a purposeful and kind God breaking everything all to pieces and then graciously restoring and rebuilding Naomi’s shattered family—out of which he would give her a great, great grandson named Jesus!

My hope for parents as they read—and for myself as I retold the story—is that they would see our Savior more clearly.

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Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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The following is taken from an interview with Paul Cox and Joy Woo. Paul is the illustrator of The Illustrated Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English.

1) Tell us about yourself—your family, hobbies, and work.

I live in Janesville with my wife and four kids. As a family we enjoy hiking, gardening, biking, and camping. I work full-time as a freelance illustrator, and in my spare time I create a comic strip called RefToons in which I illustrate quotes from Reformers, Puritans, and other Reformed theologians of the past.

2) How did you first begin your work in illustration?

I graduated college in 2006 with a general art degree and no clue as to how or where to get an art job. In 2009, after being laid off from a job at a failing company and doing a little research, I decided to try my hand at freelance illustration. I spent the first few years building up my illustration portfolio and client base with odd jobs here and there. Eventually I gained some long-term clients, which really helped this to become a full-time career.

3) What was a challenge you faced while illustrating this particular book, The Illustrated Westminster Shorter Catechism?

The biggest challenge with illustrating the catechism was that many of the concepts and doctrines that are taught do not lend themselves well to imagery. To overcome this obstacle in many instances, I decided to illustrate the doctrines in ways they might be seen in practice in everyday life.

4) Reflecting on all your illustration work, which project has been your favorite to draw?

My favorite project so far has been The Pilgrim’s Progress: A Poetic Journey. I worked with my wife to adapt John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress into a rhyming poem, and I loved being able to work with my best friend to create this picture book.

5) Any upcoming projects that the readers should look out for?

I am currently illustrating a graphic novel version of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion that will be published by P&R Publishing. I also create new RefToons occasionally and post them on my RefToons social media pages. 

To see more of Paul’s work, visit RefToons.com and paulcoxillustration.com.

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1. Why is Warfield worth reading and studying today—100 years after his death?

Fred Zaspel: “Warfield was one of those theologians who models Christian scholarship in the most important ways. The depth and the breadth of his grasp was virtually unmatched, and his heart was passionately devoted to Christ. He was a systematic theologian, and yet his approach was keenly exegetical. To this day his writings are a gold mine for scholars. And deeply informed in all the branches of theological work as he was, and with an unswerving loyalty to the truthfulness of Scripture, he remains a model for all the rest of us who wish to study and proclaim God’s Word.”

2. Broadly speaking, what were Warfield’s greatest contributions to the church and to the academy?

David Smith: “(1) His detailed exposition of the doctrine of Scripture rooted in an exposition of Scripture; (2) his essays on particular historical theologians such as Augustine and Calvin; (3) his explanation of the organic, or living, and historical nature of Christian doctrine; (4) his intricate and detailed explanation of various doctrines, especially that of the Trinity and revelation; (5) his essays on systematic theology and apologetics; and (6) his arguments against theological liberalism, as well as all other theologies or doctrines that deviate from Scripture.” 

3. More specifically, what were Warfield’s greatest theological contributions?

David Smith: “It was his recognition that all such matters center on the doctrine of God as revealed in Scripture, so that God is recognized as the supreme authority about himself, so that he unfolds God’s character and revealing of himself. What this amounts to is Warfield unpacking not merely the supernatural source of Scripture and all the doctrines present in it, but the supernatural mode of God’s revealing of himself. He went deep in unpacking many of the implications of the supernatural mode of God’s revelation.”

4. Why do Warfield’s writings have a timeless quality about them, similar to those of Augustine, Calvin, and Bavinck?

Jeffrey Stivason: “Though Warfield lived and wrote during a specific time in history, his writings bear a timeless quality because he dealt with topics of perennial interest using the Word of God as a guide. For example, in his 1894 article ‘The Divine and Human in the Bible,’ we may learn from Warfield that the bookshelves are overrun with books emphasizing the human involvement in the inspiration of Scripture, but when he offers his understanding of the relationship between the human and the divine in Scripture it is not mere opinion or popular philosophy that he offers. We are reading theological construction of the sort that transcends any culture because it is rooted in God’s word.”

Fred Zaspel: “Warfield wanted only to preserve the faith once for all delivered to the saints. He never felt the need to come up with anything new. He was deeply persuaded that the truth given to us by our Lord and his apostles remains always relevant, and he wanted only to expound, preserve, and defend it.”

5. What equipped Warfield to be such a towering theologian and apologist?

Kim Riddlebarger: “His logic is razor sharp, his piety is evident throughout his writings, and the precision of his writing style ranks him among the great minds of Christian past. He also had the proper temperament for the task—a scholar and a gentleman who thought that Calvinism was the pinnacle of Christian doctrine. He made it a point to thoroughly understand those whom he opposed, so that his responses and rebuttals were not directed at mere straw men but focused upon the key points of contention.”

6. How have you personally profited by reading and studying Warfield’s writings, especially The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible and The Person and Work of Christ?

Jeffrey Stivason: “I wrote my PhD dissertation on Warfield’s understanding of Scripture. The first part of that work was historical, and the second part was theological. While working on the first part I developed a deep admiration for the man himself. I love his ability to use wit and precision in theological argumentation, but I was also gripped by how much he loved and served his wife. I found it exceptionally touching that the Warfields, not having children of their own, treated the students of Princeton as their children. They would often have them for dinner or give them gifts at Christmas. I also found him to be a man who struggled. His pugilistic tendencies kept him from attending faculty meetings near the end of his life due to his sharp disagreements with President Stevenson, and he would have to late get ‘filled in’ by his friend Vos. I have profited from Warfield in many ways and count him a grandfather in the faith.”

David Smith: “It is difficult to calculate such personal profit. I have read pretty broadly in the history of Christian theology and in biblical exposition. I did not begin reading extensively in Warfield’s writings until I decided to do my doctoral dissertation on him. It is not an exaggeration to say that Warfield is a one-man seminary curriculum. The depth and breadth of his treatment of the doctrine of Scripture and Christ is stunningly impressive, as is his treatment of everything else he decided to address. Warfield has taught me how to see that very often in biblical expositions, exhortations and theological writings men commit a false either/or. And I am speaking not simply, or even primarily, of those espousing theological liberalism, but of conservative and Reformed writers. Warfield has made me a much more careful reader and a better listener. He has increased my love for and confidence in God’s word, and therefore God himself. He has helped me to better understand the union between God’s Word and Spirit and helped me to pursue biblical and theological study and writing devotionally.”

7. What advice would you give to readers who are new to Warfield or who have not read him in many years?

Kim Riddlebarger: “Warfield can be tough going. Thankfully these new editions make reading his work much easier. One professor recommended that I read him out loud until I became familiar with the cadence of his speech. Doing this at first was very helpful.”

Fred Zaspel: “Just this: Read Warfield! Read, read, read. You’ll learn, you’ll be strengthened in the faith, and you’ll be blessed.”

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About the Interviewees:

• Kim Riddlebarger, Author, The Lion of Princeton: B. B. Warfield as Apologist and Theologian, Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015)
• David P. Smith, Author, B. B. Warfield’s Scientifically Constructive Theological Scholarship
• Jeffrey A. Stivason, Professor of New Testament Studies, Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh; Pastor, Grace Reformed Presbyterian Church, Gibsonia, Pennsylvania; author, From Inscrutability to Concursus: Benjamin B. Warfield’s Theological Construction of Revelation’s Mode from 1880 to 1915
• Fred G. Zaspel, Pastor, Reformed Baptist Church, Franconia, Pennsylvania; Adjunct Professor of Systematic Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; author, The Theology of B. B. Warfield

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The following is taken from a Zoom interview with Dan Doriani and Joy Woo. Dan is professor of theology and vice president at Covenant Theological Seminary. He is the founder and president of the Center for Faith & Work, St. Louis; a member of the Council of The Gospel Coalition; and a regular blogger. He was also a lead pastor for fifteen years. He is the author of many books, including The New Man: Becoming a Man After God’s Heart.

1. What can every believer rejoice in on Father’s Day?

This first question hit me because I didn’t have a very good dad. So this kind of question causes me to contemplate more, but it’s a good question. 

The first thing we do on Father’s Day is give thanks for our physical fathers–somebody is our father. The worst father at least gives us life, probably gives us food, clothing, shelter, and medical care, and almost inevitably gives us some skills or dispositions that are positive. 

At the very best, we may have fathers who taught us many things and who also introduced us to the great truths of the Scripture through Bible stories when we were little. We don’t just tell stories for the sake of stories, we tell stories that show us who God is. Fathers even have opportunities through stories to talk to their children about what God expects fathers and mothers to be, because good and godly fathers reflect the character of God our Father in heaven, who is kind, compassionate, just, and merciful, as Exodus 34 says. So at best, our fathers modeled love and kindness and told us who we are in ourselves in our created goodness but also who we are as redeemed sons and daughters of God who are under a mother and father who reflect, imperfectly but genuinely, who God is. 

2. What are some of the causes for grief that people face on Father’s Day?

Unfortunately, there are several answers to this question. We can probably divide it up into finitude, mistakes, and sin. 

Let’s start with finitude. No matter how good or well-intentioned a father might be, he doesn’t have all the skills or abilities necessary to be a perfect dad. No father can do everything that the community of believers can do or that grandfathers, uncles, brothers, cousins, friends, and teachers can help us do. This finitude is just human nature. 

Second, fathers make mistakes. These occur when fathers make bad judgment calls; maybe they push us to become engineers—when we actually have no interest in math at all—because it’s a good career with good money and so forth. Now that’s a mistake, but the intention was good. Or a mistake our fathers might have made was to spend too much time at work and therefore they weren’t there for us in some crisis. 

Last, fathers sin. There is generational sin—a father who was abused may himself be abusive; a father who was raised by a shouter will likely shout; a father who was raised by a demanding parent will likely demand. Unfortunately, there are some dads who sin all by themselves, apart from generational heritage, as they choose to be given over to some sin—maybe they give themselves to drugs, alcohol, gambling, or some other sin that hasn’t run in their family. This kind of sin also causes catastrophic damage. 

So there are lots of reasons to lament the mistakes, the finitude, and the sins of our fathers. It is helpful to distinguish between these categories and not to view every negative thing our fathers have done as deliberate. 

We also grieve fathers who have died, whom we loved dearly. Maybe we were ourselves older when our father died and we knew it was time, but we just miss our dads on this day. It is also very sad when we grieve fathers who are gone because of divorce, and it’s very sad to lose a dad who may have died at an early age of cancer. 

Or you can have grief because you weren’t as close to your dad as you hoped to be, even though he was a good dad. Maybe you were the less “favored” child or sensed you were a little bit less beloved, even if you had a good father. Parents do play favorites at times, even though they try not to, and that stings in its own way. 

Finally, surrogate fathers and their departure is another cause for grief. Personally, I was blessed with a number of surrogate fathers, including a mentor at work, and one of my grandfathers, an uncle, and so forth. When these figures die, that also leaves a hole in our lives..

3. We have seen why children may be grieving on Father’s Day, but what might even fathers themselves be saddened by on this day? 

The happiest form of grief in this case is the grief that your children are all grown up, on their own and doing so well, but you don’t see them much anymore! 

A second grief would be one over your own imperfections or certain ways in which you didn’t quite handle fatherhood right. All fathers accidentally set bad examples in different ways. These can include things like the way we eat, when we go to sleep, when we wake up; whether we work too hard, whether we don’t work enough. 

Of course, there is greater grief if we know we have sinned against our children. Or maybe we were self-righteous and viewed ourselves as paragons of virtue. In that case, we have reason to grieve, if in our own zeal to be good Christians we didn’t talk enough about grace or live lives of grace and repentance with our children. That is something that even a really good dad could struggle with. 

There is also the possibility that we worked too much and weren’t around enough. Or sometimes dads wish they could have provided more for their kids; maybe they had a good job and worked hard, but they didn’t have a job that paid a lot, and so their children lacked opportunities they wished they could have given them. 

4. How would you encourage those who find themselves grieving rather than celebrating this coming Father’s Day? 

The Bible is very clear that we work our way out of grief with godly or biblical celebration. First of all, we believe God is sovereign, so although my own father was profoundly imperfect, he is the father God gave me, and he was a good father in certain very important ways, no matter what his faults might have been.

If we are grieving our earthly fathers, the key is to take time to name what is praiseworthy, give thanks, and be content. Be thankful for what you can properly and genuinely celebrate about someone’s life. Trust in God’s sovereignty. Be content. Those are the best and first things to do if your own dad was imperfect. 

If you yourself were imperfect as a father, I think the first thing to do is to celebrate God’s grace. Even if it is a little bit late in life, you can express to your children that you do not take God’s grace toward you lightly but that God has indeed forgiven you, though your sins against them are still serious. You can tell them that you hope they are able to forgive you and that they also would taste God’s forgiveness and God’s grace and mercy toward them. 

So we can be encouraged as we give thanks and are aware of the gospel. Even if we had a very grim experience of a father, first we can give thanks that we live in this world because of our fathers. Second, we can give thanks for surrogate fathers, fathers in the faith, those who took a role in our lives to recognize and help us grieve our experience of poor earthly fathers. Third, we can look to God our heavenly Father. The Bible shows him as a Father to the fatherless through the life of the church. 

5. How are you planning on celebrating Father’s Day this year with your own children and grandchildren? 

Well, I have to say, Father’s Day is pretty awesome in our house. We’ll probably have a cookout, and there will probably be a battle to see who gets to be the main griller. Everybody will pitch in and help, and we spend a lot of time giving thanks. We give thanks for all four dads; this is something we do as a family—we regularly celebrate each other. All the dads will hear why they are beloved and what we appreciate about them. Then we will probably do some sports, throw children in the air, and play games together! 

The New Man is based on the traits of God—God works, therefore we work; God cared enough about our bodies to redeem our bodies, therefore we take care of our bodies. Godly parenting starts with knowing God as your Father in heaven, because good dads are like God the Father.

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