![]() ![]() ![]() To focus on plausibility structures is to be attentive to the broader sociocultural context in which our understandings of the world (including understandings which may be unconscious) make sense to us in the first place. Why is it that a proposition which, in one time and place, might seem completely self-evident and requiring little or no argument, will seem totally absurd in another era? Questions like this force us to be attentive to more than merely what people believe, but why certain beliefs might feel normal. ![]() Berger to refer to the conditions in a society that make certain beliefs appear reasonable or unreasonable. The phrase “plausibility structures” was coined by sociologist Peter L. Plausibility Structures and Implicit Theology For my part, I am comfortable being neutral on the first question, while presenting a tentative argument for the second and a strong argument for the third.īut what do I mean by “plausibility structures” within the context of the second of these options? Thirdly, a person might argue that Calvin’s theology shows evidence of correlations with nominalist and voluntarist ways of perceiving things, even aside from questions of historical causation.Ī problem occurs when scholars argue against the third of these senses by presenting arguments against the second, or when they argue against the second or third by presenting arguments against the first. Second, a person might argue that Calvin’s theology bears the marks of the more general nominalist milieu of the time, including ubiquitous plausibility structures that hinged on an implicitly nominalist way of viewing the world. (If you are unfamiliar with what I mean by Nominalism and why this question is important, then I recommend the first article in the present series as well as the series I wrote for the Colson Center.) Firstly, a person might argue that Calvin was influenced by reading of nominalist sources, perhaps during his theological training in Paris. I ended my previous article, ‘ Was Calvin a Nominalist? Part 2: Surveying the Scholarship’ by suggesting that there were three separate ways in which a person might talk about John Calvin being a Nominalist. To skip ahead to the section where I begin discussing Calvin specifically, click here. The first half of this article consists in laying out the background to medieval Nominalism, expanding on the historical material presented in Part 1. Was Calvin a Nominalist? Part 2: Surveying the Scholarship.Was Calvin a Nominalist? Part 1: Historical and Theological Background.To read the earlier articles in the series, click on the following links: This is the third article in a series on Calvin and Nominalism. Was Calvin a Nominalist? Part 3: Voluntarism, Nominalism and the Theology of Calvin ![]()
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