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Religious academic Alvin Plantinga, renowned for waging a half-century-long philosophical battle for belief in God, is the winner of the 2017 Templeton Prize.
The 84-year-old retired University of Notre Dame professor is credited with putting theism back on the philosophical agenda as a serious, credible position.
The $1.4 million prize, announced Tuesday, was established in 1972 by the late international businessman and philanthropist Sir John Templeton to "honor a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery or practical works."
In the late 1950s, when Plantinga began resurrecting theism within academic philosophical debates, the role of the divine had largely been rejected as valid. Gradually, however, Plantinga's theistic observations gained ground.
The turning point may have come with his 1984 paper, "Advice to Christian Philosophers," in which Plantinga challenged fellow believing academics — Christian, Jewish, Muslim and others — to reintroduce religious commitment as a proper starting point for human reason.
"Alvin Plantinga recognized that not only did religious belief not conflict with serious philosophical work, but that it could make crucial contributions to addressing perennial problems in philosophy," stated Heather Templeton Dill, president of the John Templeton Foundation.
Plantinga's writings cut to the heart of the debate over deity: the existence of evil.
Plantinga, raised in the Dutch Christian Reformed tradition, countered that, "in a world with free creatures, God cannot determine their behavior, so even an omnipotent God might not be able to create a world where all creatures will always freely choose to do good," the foundation noted in its prize announcement.
Plantinga's landmark 1974 "God, Freedom and Evil" is now "almost universally recognized as having laid to rest the logical problem of evil against theism," the foundation added.
For his part, Plantinga said he hoped that "news of the prize will encourage young philosophers, especially those who bring Christian and theistic perspectives to bear on their work, towards greater creativity, integrity and boldness."
He joins a distinguished list of Templeton winners, among them Mother Teresa (1973), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1983) and Archbishop Desmond Tutu (2013). Last year's winner was Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth.