Faith, Hope, and Certainty

“Certainty may be quite compatible with being at a loss to say what one is certain of.  Indeed I seriously doubt if the notion of ‘certainty of,’ or ‘certainty that’ will take us accurately to the heart of the matter.  It seems to me that certainty is at least very much akin to hope and faith.  And I agree with Gabriel Marcel that it would be a mistake to undertake the interpretation of hope and of faith under what I will call the aspect of specificity, as if hope were essentially ‘hope that,’ and faith ‘belief that.’  Likewise, then, of certainty: Perhaps it too is not a matter of knowledge we can be said to possess.” 

Henry Bugbee, The Inward Morning, (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1999), pp.36-37.