International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 51: 1–37, 2002. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 1 Uncertainty and religious belief N. K. VERBIN University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK Introduction Christian philosophers and theologians throughout the ages have emphasized the place of certainty in faith, portraying certainty as a necessary component of faith. Luther, in a famous sentence stated: ‘The Holy Spirit is no Skeptic, and it is not doubts or mere opinions that he has written on our hearts, but assertions more sure and certain than life itself and all experience.’ 1 The assumption that faith requires certainty permeated the writings of theologians who have conceived of faith in primarily propositional terms as well as of those writers who have conceived of faith in primarily affective terms. Various contemporary writers continue to take this view for granted, when speaking of religious belief as a ‘framework belief’ for the religious. My concern in this paper is to argue against this presupposition and to show that doubt is not a mere accidental accompaniment of faith, but that it plays a central role within it. More specifically, I shall be arguing against the ‘framework belief’ account of religious belief, and its conception of certainty. My paper has four parts: the first part deals with the ‘framework belief’ account, its strengths and weaknesses. Because of the central role that Wittgenstein’s On Certainty plays within that account, the second part of the paper deals with Wittgenstein’s conception of certainty. In section two, I shall argue that the kind of certainty that Wittgenstein emphasizes in On Certainty is to be understood in terms of ‘primitive reactions’. The third part of the paper is concerned with the extent of Wittgenstein’s claims concerning the foundational role of certainty within our language. I shall argue that Wittgenstein does not propose that certainty grounds all our linguistic prac- tices. The ‘framework belief’ account of religious belief will thereby be exposed as based on a dogmatic misreading of On Certainty. Moreover, I shall argue that Wittgenstein’s conception of certainty allows for primitive doubt as the ground on which a language game may lie. The fourth part of the paper deals with primitive doubt and the manner in which it is constitutive of religious discourse.