A Philosopher’s 100-Day Quest Through Scripture Leads to Christ
Larry Sanger, the philosopher and co-founder of Wikipedia, spent over 35 years as a skeptic, steeped in methodological doubt and surrounded by atheists in academia. With a Ph.D. in analytic philosophy and a legacy of shaping how the world accesses knowledge, he never imagined he’d one day call himself a Christian. Yet, on February 5, 2025, Sanger shared a profound testimony: after reading the Bible cover-to-cover in just over 100 days, he embraced faith in Jesus Christ. His story, detailed in a blog post titled How a Skeptical Philosopher Becomes a Christian, is a compelling testament to the power of Scripture—and a challenge to seekers everywhere.
From Skeptic to Faith
Raised in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Sanger drifted from faith as a teen, trading Sunday school for philosophy. By 17, he was a self-described “methodological skeptic,” withholding belief unless it met rigorous standards of certainty. “I was not an enemy of faith,” he writes, “merely a skeptic”—one who saw the Bible as little more than ancient literature. For decades, he lived comfortably as an agnostic, teaching philosophy and co-creating Wikipedia, where he coined its name and championed its “neutral point of view” policy.
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But in December 2019, something shifted. Prompted by a mix of curiosity and unease—sparked partly by the occult’s perversion of biblical themes—Sanger decided to read the Bible straight through, aiming to understand it on its own terms. Using a 90-day study plan on the YouVersion app, he dove in with the same analytical rigor he’d applied to Descartes or Kant. What he found stunned him: “The Bible could sustain interrogation,” he reflects. Far from a disjointed relic, it revealed a coherent narrative of God’s plan—from Abraham’s covenant to Jesus’ sacrifice—that dismantled his old objections.
Months of Seeking
Sanger’s conversion wasn’t a thunderbolt epiphany. It unfolded quietly, reluctantly, over months. By February 2020, as he reached the Gospels, he lay in bed and admitted to himself, “I now believe in God.” Prayer followed—simple, silent, and anticlimactic. “I approached faith slowly and uncomfortably,” he confesses, wrestling with how it squared with his skepticism. Yet, the more he studied, the clearer it became: Jesus, the “perfect lamb of God,” offered redemption he couldn’t earn on his own. By mid-2020, he was drafting God Exists: A Philosophical Case for the Christian God, now a 200,000-word work-in-progress aimed at skeptics like his former self.
What sets Sanger’s journey apart is its intellectual honesty. He didn’t abandon reason for faith; he found faith through reason. “By ‘faith’ I do not mean believing absurdities against reason,” he insists, but a “loyalty to God and His Son” grounded in Scripture. The arguments for God’s existence—cosmological, fine-tuning, moral—gained new weight when combined, pointing to a purposeful design behind the universe. The Bible, he discovered, wasn’t just plausible—it was persuasive.
Now, Sanger urges others to read the Bible daily, calling it “the most influential book in history.” He’s still seeking a church home, cautious not to disrupt with his “too many questions,” but his faith is firm: Jesus is God incarnate, crucified and risen, the Savior who purifies through His Spirit. For a man who once dismissed God as unknowable, it’s a radical shift—and a powerful invitation. As Hebrews 4:12 declares, “The word of God is living and active.” For Larry Sanger, it cut through decades of doubt to reveal a truth worth embracing. Where might it lead you?
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