I am skeptical

For Harvey, therefore, what makes Christians Christian is not that they “believe in God.” To be a Christian, which to be sure involves “believing,” entails an ongoing transformation of the emotions. Such a transformation means to believe in God is to know how to do something. In particular it means knowing how to go on when you often do not know where you are or where you are going. The truth of what Christians believe cannot be separated from who they must be. I think Harvey is quite right, moreover, to attribute this perspective to how Paul Holmer taught him to read Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein.

Skepticism arises from our desire to know without the self being transformed. Ironically skepticism is but the result of our anxious desire to secure certainty by being “at home in the world.” But we were not created to be at home in the world. We were created to glorify God, which means, as Harvey puts it, that the knowledge that comes from God cannot be possessed. Such knowledge is the work of patience that produces endurance that makes faith possible.

Foreword in Skepticism, Relativism, and Religious Knowledge: A Kierkegaardian Perspective Informed by Wittgenstein’s Philosophy