Does "faith" imply that you do not know, absolutely?

Question

If you know something absolutely, and it is presumably a fact, in your perspective anyway, is 'faith' pointless?

If i know for a fact that my mom brought home a loaf of bread, would there be any reason for me to need to have 'faith' that she did?

So, if faith does mean you do not know absolutely, then do you admit you might be wrong when you show 'faith'?

I say this because Christians say they know for a fact God exists, but they have 'faith' that he exists at the same time.

Answer 1

If you know it, it's not a matter of faith. It's a matter of experience.

If you believe in it, you just haven't been able to prove it by yourself.

Easy as that.

Anyone who claims to know what they believe can only refer to the fact that they know what their belief is, because once anyone knows something it stops being a matter of faith.

Answer 2

There are some overlapping points here. Christians who say they know it for a fact, have evidence that is more than "faith", that's why they call it fact.
They probably mean faith when they talk about what they believe will happen as a result of their belief.
Faith is "the evidence of things unseen" to quote, I believe, C.S, Lewis (I could be wrong there, but it is a common quote anyway). It's fairly solid. It's like believing what you see on TV.. no reason to think those things are real, yet you believe they are and accept that belief into your life.
Faith does mean you don't know absolutely. Everyone chooses how far to go with it and creates their own reality... including the facts in their beliefs.
Enough on this. I'm sure the real Christians will enlighten you and you can decide whether they are real or something you should take on faith.

Answer 3

And there's the rub. People confuse faith with knowledge. Faith says, "I believe this to be true."
Knowledge says, "I know this to be true."

In the case of your mom's loaf of bread, you can bring 100 people to your house and show them the bread. They will, invariably, say, "Yes, that is a loaf of bread." (Except for the ones who are crazy, or just like causing trouble) You could even go so far as to get these 100 people together and follow your mom to the store, where they can watch her select the bread, take it to the checkout line, pay for it, and bring it home. At each step along the way they can see that yes, indeed, your mom is buying the loaf of bread.

The very big difference with the loaf of bread and a belief is that belief requires an internal picture, a vision, a thought, a creed. Something that can not be represented outside of one's head without explanation. You could take those same 100 people and say, "I believe God exists." If you ask those 100 people what they think, they may or may not agree. Even those who do agree will not have the same exact idea of God. Chances are great that their ideas of God will vary widely.

Now. You can sit these 100 people down in a church and show them an overhead screen with Bible verses. Let's say that you show them one of gospel accounts of the sermon on the mount. Even after reading this together, all 100 people will not have the same idea of what happened. If you want them to have the same, or at least a similar, idea of what happened, you need to tell them explicitly what you believe happened. Why the sermon on the mount was important. How many people were gathered. If the words are accurately represented, if the event actually happened or if it is more or less a heroic legend. You will have more agreement there, but you will still have a lot of variation on what happened.

Do you see what I'm driving at? The only way to get everyone to believe the same way is to have everyone tow the same line. Listen to the same rhetoric (whether a preacher or a televangelist) The more you control what these people think, the more you are going to have 'agreement' on who God is and What It All Means.

The Gnostic tradition frightens many hardline Xtians because it relies on each person's individual experience of God. There is no One Way to reach God in the Gnostic tradition. The reason why I prefer a more Gnostic approach to spirituality is that it does not expect for there to be any kind of uniformity of thought. My experience of The Divine is different from yours, and ours is different from hers.

And that is simply perfect.

Answer 4

You say If I know for a fact that my mom brought home a loaf of bread, would there be any reason for me to need to have "faith" that she did? The question is not if you know she brought home the bread. The question is did you have faith she would return. I know God exists. I believe you are confused in your opening statement. Faith means to believe in something you can not see or understand.

Answer 5

Christians say that it is a fact that they believe in God. You may have gotten too technical with someone who spoke incorrectly. They believe that their belief is a fact.
Faith is trust
and is the foundation of all things just as the Christians say God is.
You have faith that mom will bring home the bread because you need it and know that she will because of that fact.

Ask the questions........ but it will come down to what you believe and belief without proof can be trust which is faith.

Answer 6

You are right. We as Christians do not KNOW that God exists, but we have faith that he does. In my case, I believe very strongly without a doubt in my mind that there is a God. Do I have evidence to prove that God exists? No. Does that make me believe any less? No. Why? Because that is what faith is all about.
Faith is founded on reason, and what you believe to be reasonably true.

Answer 7

I blieve there is ample evidence for the existence of God, but it is not hypothecially tested scientiific evidence nor is it like a loaf of bread that you can see, touch and eat.

Faith is based on believing something we can't see or in expecting the usual to happen (ie: you have faith that a traveling loved one will arrive safely home, but sometimes that doesn't happen).

Religious faith is based upon how strongly you believe God exists. People with a lot of faith beleive God exists because of the evidence they see in his presence.

Another example. I know my wife loves me even if she doesn't say so (she does) but even if she didn't, I would know by her actions and the things she does for me.

People who believe in God do so based upon God's actions as they percieve them.

That isn't reserved for Christians. Jews, Muslims and Christians all believe in the same God.

other religions believe in other gods.

Hope this helps

Answer 8

Sometimes people like to use the comparison of having faith that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. You don't know for a fact that it will but you take for granted that its going to. I don't think that is a good analogy but that is an example of how you can have faith in something while still more or less knowing it for a fact

Answer 9

These are the definitions of faith as found in dictionary.com:

1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
8. Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

If you already know something absolutely, then it becomes a fact and is no longer considered "faith." We exercise faith everytime we step onto a bus. We have faith that the operator is fully qualified to drive the bus and that s/he has passed all the State tests applicable to operating a bus. The driver does not have his/her credentials out in the open and does not have to physically prove, everytime someone gets onto the bus, that s/he has indeed honestly passed all the State requirements for operating the bus. Have YOU ever asked to see all a driver's credentials before "daring" to get onto a bus?

Faith, like other abstract ideas, is seen best by its results. Love and hate are two other abstract ideas that become known by their results, for example. If we see mother or father kissing a little child's scraped knee, we assume that the adult loves the child and wants to make the child feel better. If we see someone on tv getting beaten by baseball bats, we assume that the assault is a result of hatred. Your mom buying a loaf of bread is a fact: you can see the result without assuming anything.

Faith is not the same as "blind faith" or "taking a leap of faith." When Christians say that they have faith that God exists, it is not an act of blind faith, nor is it a leap of faith. As you saw when the parent kissed the child's knee above, and the horrible assault on someone, you are seeing the evidence of something unseen, something based on an abstract concept which became concrete through its working out by a physical manifestation. What, I think, Christians (and those of other religions) mean when they say they know for a fact that God exists are basing their assumption on physical and emotional manifestations of their perception of God. They look at what is around them, and even what's unperceptable to the human eye, and in these believe that this is evidence of a Supreme Being. They see the love of a mother to a child and believe that such love has to come from, ultimately, another source greater than the mother. So they have faith that God exists. It may do you well to say that they "believe" that He exists rather than say, as you did, that they have faith that He exists.

I know this is long-winded. Sorry. I love philosophy and semantics.

Answer 10

Yes, faith does imply that you do not know something absolutely. Faith is a difficult thing to explain to someone. The scriptures teach that "..faith is things which are hoped for and not seen.." Another scripture states, ".. faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true." There is an example of a man, and his name was the Brother of Jared, his faith was all the little stepping stones, which led to what is known as a perfect knowledge. In other words, as he exercised his faith, it developed into a knowledge, and the prophet recording this man's life said, ".. and he had faith no longer, for he knew, nothing doubting." If this makes no sense to you, please e-mail me. In response to your last comment, most Christians do not know for a fact that God exists, in the light of having a perfect knowledge. Very few individuals know for a fact that God exists. Can you find any scriptural examples of those who saw God the Father? I only know of one. Now, most of us Christians, have recieved a partial knowledge that God exists. For example, I know that my faith in God is not in vain. How can i say that? I have received answers to my prayers, I have been led by a source that I could not see, and I have received comfort from a loving as well as unseen individual. These experiences, as I have pointed out, are direct results of exercising my faith in God. I firmly believe that spiritual experiences always proceed our faith.

Answer 11

Faith is described as the evidence of thngs hoped for, or for things not seen. I see no dichotomy here: I have faith, for example, that if I keep my job and I am still alive in October I will be going on vacation. While I can't prove to you or even to me that I am going on vacation until the day arrives, I can have faith that it is going to happen based on facts, past events, plans and hope. Faith in God is the same. I absolutely know for myself that God exists based on facts that have occurred to me. You might find these facts subjective and therefore suspect. Nevertheless, God has told me some answers to things that I couldn't have begun to know by myself, and they have turned out to be 100% accurate. And they have occurred exactly as God explained them to me in my heart. I know that God is real because He changed my dad drastically before my dad died. We were a dysfunctional family most of my life. We were also a family full of atheists and gnostics. My dad was one of the last people to become a christian in my family. And we didn't (and couldn't ) 'convert' him. Only God could. My dad was an atheist. He died a happy, happy man full of faith and hope and love. That doesn't imply that non-believing people don't have hope and love. They surely do. I am just saying my dad was a drastic turn around from the man I grew up with. And I love him for it. He never gave up, and in the end God helped him become the person he wanted to be.


Faith only means that we are applying the words of a promise given to us regarding the end of our life. We just have to believe it until we get there and find out ourselves. Much like my vacation analogy above. In this case, the "loaf of bread" won't be bought until the day our heart stops beating. But I can have faith based on the evidences I see around me. It's true that I won't have the full benefit of understanding everything there is about God until I meet Him face to face. For now, I consider it like learning about someone who lives in another country, or like a historical figure. Sure, you may say that this makes our faith speculative and therefore it has the possiblity to fail, but I am saying I have seen the evidence in the completely changed lives of my two best friends, my two brothers, my mother and my father to know that God is real. They are the living evidence. I hope some day (if you haven't already) meet someone who is changed by God over time right in front of your eyes so you will know what I mean. God can heal so deeply that a person can not put into words the depth of the change. I hope you see that someday occurring before you, or even better, happening to you. Because then you will know that faith is the happiest thing to have of all!