Plantinga Chapter 5: Vocation in the Kingdom of God

As I have been reading through Plantinga's book so far, I found myself agreeing with the majority of what he has said, and appreciating the clarity with which he says it. But this chapter did not go down as easily as the others for me. It is hard for me to be critical of writing; I have a deep appreciation for people who can write their thoughts and make others understand them. But this chapter of Plantinga's book disturbed me to the point that I feel I must be critical of it.

I took a class my senior year of high school that very thoroughly covered the topic of vocation using the book Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey. We also talked about vocation during a week of Prelude here at Calvin. These two times interested me and reassured me about God's plans for the lives of His followers and His desire for us to participate in a vocation that honors Him. I appreciated and agreed with many of the points that Plantinga made in this sense. However, I felt that he wrote with an air of superiority in this chapter that would offend any non-Christians and even some Christians who do not happen to be Reformed. My first example of this is on page 109, where he asserts that "Working in the kingdom is our way of life. And many followers have concluded that we need powerful Christian education to learn how to serve the kingdom most intelligently." Even if this were true, and there were not countless examples of people who did not receive a Christian education and are most intelligently serving the kingdom (which there are), I would still say that one should have the tact not to say that sort of thing out loud, much less in a book, and I might add that I would be ashamed for even thinking this way. Not that a Christian education doesn't help you better serve the kingdom; I am just saying that an attitude that pridefully says that "I can serve the kingdom better than you because I went to a Christian high school or college" is both sinful and wrong in my opinion.

I could go on with the examples where I felt that Plantinga wrote with an offensive air of superiority, but I know that this is beside the point. Sometimes we must simply dig deeper and keep the truth in some things. One point that I appreciated from the chapter was his discussion of simply going with the flow and not taking the time or effort to avoid "absorbing the views of the world" and being aware of the differences between our faith and what we are learning. Sometimes it is important to look critically at the things that we are being spoon fed and compare them to the highest authority, the Bible. Plantiga warns against this danger when he says, "such students will be busy with a hundred other things and won't take the time or spend the effort to sort out the good from the evil." I hope and pray that I will be able to resist the temptation to be this kind of student.