Plantinga and euphemisms

[Steven Carr]

BillyGrahamiscool wrote in the omniscience and freewill thread

'“Free creature” is Plantinga's terminology, a euphemism for “human” in this world, which I merely reference.'

Does Plantinga really write philosophy books using euphemisms and terminolgy which is confusing?

When I read Plantinga's terminology, 'free creature', I thought of 'creatures which are free', not realising that Plantinga is restricting the term to 'human', and so presumably excluding Satan from his list of free creatures which suffer from transworld depravity.

I am surprised that a philosopher like Plantinga would use euphemisms like that.

[wordsmyth]

If Plantinga meant "human", why didn't he just say "human"?

[Luiseach]

Originally posted by Steven Carr
Does Plantinga really write philosophy books using euphemisms and terminolgy which is confusing?

lol...this is a good question. It's almost exactly the same query I have often posed to my husband, who is in the process of completing an atheological PhD dissertation on Plantinga.

Judging by the amount of time and effort my very patient man has spent clearing a path through the twists and turns, rhetoric, contradictions and evasiveness of Plantingan apologetics - I would answer 'yes' to your question.

[Celsus]

I was going to say that I've never had any problems reading Plantinga's works, and then I read Luiseach's post and realised I should just shut up before I give away my superficial mode of reading...

Joel