- Alvin Plantinga(as the originator of the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism)
- A contemporary American philosopher known for arguing that belief in God is rational without needing scientific proof, and for challenging the idea that evolution supports atheism.
- Christian revelation(as the overall conclusion being evaluated)
- The religious teachings and truths that Christians believe God has made known to humanity, especially through Jesus and the Bible.
- Properly functioning(describing the condition of cognitive faculties)
- Working the way it's supposed to work, without defects or damage; in this context, it means your thinking abilities are operating as they were designed to.
- Reformed epistemologists(as the philosophical school Plantinga belongs to)
- A group of philosophers who argue that knowledge doesn't require the kind of scientific proof or logical demonstration that many people think it does; they often defend religious belief as a valid form of knowledge.
- Salvific knowledge(as the type of knowledge being discussed)
- Knowledge that is necessary for salvation in Christian theology; roughly, the kind of understanding about God and faith that Christians believe saves a person's soul.
- cognitive faculties(referring to our ability to understand religious claims)
- Our mental abilities to think, reason, perceive, and understand—basically, the mental tools our brains use to figure out what's true.
- epistemology(Contrasted with purely descriptive scientific inquiry)
- A normative enterprise that tells us how we ought to reason from evidence and how we ought to justify our beliefs, as distinct from merely describing how we do reason or justify beliefs
- knowledge(Distinguished from mere true belief, which may be the product of indoctrination and need not exercise deliberative capacities.)
- Justified true belief — true belief that has been arrived at through the exercise of deliberative capacities, including comparison of and deliberation among alternatives.