GOD God are nonsensical, so far from being identical with, or even lending any support to, either of these familiar contentions, is actually incompatible with them For if the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist’s assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted (LTL 115) For some years, believing philosophers were alarmed by verificationist arguments against religious doctrines, and strove to defend their meaningfulness without making much effort to demonstrate their truth Towards the end of the twentieth century, however, some natural theologians recovered confidence and were much less defensive in their attitudes Typical of this phase is Alvin Plantinga, first of Calvin College, Grand Rapids, and later of Notre Dame University For instance, Plantinga has offered a sophisticated restatement of the ontological argument In a simplified version his revision goes like this Let us begin by defining the property of maximal excellence, a property that includes omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection Obviously God, if he exists, has maximal excellence in the actual world But maximal excellence is not sufficient for Godhead: we need to consider worlds other than this one Those who worship God not think of him as a being that happens to be of surpassing excellence in this world but who in some other worlds is powerless or uninformed or of dubious moral character We might make a distinction here between greatness and excellence; we might say that the excellence of a being in a given world W depends only upon its properties in W, while its greatness in W depends not merely upon its excellence in W, but also upon its excellence in other worlds The limiting degree of greatness, therefore, would be enjoyed in a given world W only by a being who had maximal excellence in W and in every other possible world as well.3 Maximal greatness therefore is maximal excellence in every possible world, and it is maximal greatness, not just maximal excellence, that is equivalent to divinity or Godhead Anything that possesses maximal greatness must exist in every possible world, because in a world in which it does not exist it does not possess any properties If it is possible for maximal greatness to be instantiated, then it is instantiated in every world If so, then it is instantiated in our world, the actual world; that is to say, Godhead is instantiated and God exists Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 214 317