system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I just started reading William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith and I have some questions.

- Firstly, what does Dr. Craig mean by "properly basic"
- Secondly, what does he mean that the evidence for Christianity being true is 'self-authenticating'. 

Apologies if you need more clarification and I cannot provide it, as I left the book at home!
gpt
Craig introduces that term in the context of talking about Plantinga's attack on theological rationalism. Plantinga's argument is that "God exists" is part of the foundation of reasoning, and not something that demands a basis of further evidence or justification. In other words, this notion is "properly basic". Presumably, this is the source of disagreement between the evidentialists and their detractors. Evidentialists will want to assert that only propositions which are either self-evident or incorrigible can be rightfully called properly basic, foundational truths, while Plantinga argues that under some appropriate circumstances, other sorts of propositions can be properly basic, and that one of those circumstances is that we have a natural, innate, God given capacity to simply *know* that God exists. The upshot is that belief in God is a deliverance of reason, and not a matter of fideistic epistemology, but importantly, belief in God is not merely rational, but because this proposition is properly basic, it is simply known. For this argument to work, the appropriate circumstances do need to hold up; a person's cognitive faculties need to be working in the appropriate way as God intended. Craig extends this understanding of circumstance to say that it is the ministry of the Holy Spirit that supplies the appropriate circumstances for the proper basicality of this belief. In this extended sense, central truths of the Gospel are "self-authenticating" as the testimony of the Holy Spirit (Plantinga arrives at this position, too.)