Faith vs Knowledge

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Faith

Which is more important, faith or knowledge? As a Christian, have you ever thought about the difference?

Throughout Scripture, you can replace the word faith with the word trust. Faith is a gift from God; faith/trust in God begins with Him and ends with Him. Ephesians 2:8-9, Ecclesiastes 3:11, Romans 1:19-20

When we have faith in God and we trust in Him, we receive the gift of salvation and peace with God. Romans 5:1-2

Have you ever heard the sayings, “You just have to have faith, take a leap of faith, or blind faith”? Atheists and many Christians view faith and knowledge as opposites. The more knowledge you have, the less faith is required. In other words, as your knowledge increases, your faith decreases.

Peter Boghossian wrote “A Manual For Creating Atheists” and defines faith as, “belief without evidence and pretending to know things you don’t know.”¹ Boghossian goes further and outlines faith this way: “My definition of faith is that it’s a leap over the probabilities. It fills in the gap between what is improbable to make something more probable than not without faith. As such, faith is an irrational leap over the probabilities.” ² Another way to look at it is faith is the word people use when they don’t have enough evidence to support their belief. 

Faith vs. Knowledge

If faith and knowledge are opposites, as Boghossian and some confused Christians believe, then on the flip side, the less knowledge you have, the more room for faith you make. Mathematically, it would equate to 90% faith to 10% knowledge. Then 100% faith would correlate to 0% knowledge. Christians would be better off learning nothing about the truth and validity of Scripture. They could then walk about, encouraging each other to stop learning and increasing their knowledge, and trade in their knowledge for 100% faith.

This would be foolish. Imagine applying that line of thinking to academic endeavors. Learn to be a mechanic? Don’t bother, just trust that cars will always run. Some people say they trust science. How did they gain that trust? Was it a leap of faith, or consistent confirmation that engineering, biology, physics, and chemistry perform in a certain way? In a proven, established course, time and time again.

When given a moment to reflect, we know knowledge increases our faith. You have faith that your car will consistently run and take you to and from work. You have faith in your friends; if you need help, they are a phone call away. For that matter, you have faith in your phone because you have used it hundreds of times, and unless something unexpected happens, it has invariably worked. You have faith, or trust that an airline will safely take you from L.A. to New York because it happens hundreds of times a day without a mishap.

Your day-to-day experience proves your car will take you to work in the morning, your friends will show up if you need their help, your phone is reliable, and major airlines don’t crash daily, killing thousands of travelers.

The opposite of knowledge is not faith but ignorance, and we are not called to be ignorant. Knowledge and faith go hand in hand. The opposite of faith is unbelief, and if you have doubt about something, or you don’t believe something is true, it is because you lack the evidence or knowledge to consider it true.

Trusting In God

Think about Moses and his conversation with God in Exodus 4. When God told Moses to give Pharaoh a message, what did Moses say to God? “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?” Moses was worried, and for good reason. Making a claim to a friend and not being able to back it up is one thing, but making a claim to a high-ranking official or a Pharaoh is an entirely different matter.

What was the Lord’s reply? “Time for a leap of faith, Moses.” or “Tell them they just have to have faith.” or “Explain to them they must exercise blind faith.” No, it was quite the contrary; God provided Moses and all involved with evidence, starting with the staff turning into a snake, and ending with an angel of death. Exodus 4:1-7

Christians ought not to fall into that same trap and define faith as what makes up the difference when we don’t have enough knowledge. Faith is trust built on knowledge. Faith is experience. Faith is trusting in what you know and have experienced to be true. Greg Koukl says, “The Biblical word for faith, pistis, doesn’t mean wishing. It means active trust. And trust cannot be conjured up or manufactured. It must be earned. You can’t exercise the kind of faith the Bible has in mind unless you’re reasonably sure that some particular things are true.” ³

We can find another biblical example that faith comes from knowledge in Matthew. John is in prison, wondering if he had it right, that is if Jesus was the one they were waiting for. So John sent his followers to ask Jesus if he was the one to come. What did Jesus say? “Tell that doubting Thomas to have some faith.” or “Tell John to take a leap of faith and just believe in Me.” or “Quit seeking proof and just trust I am the One.” No, Jesus told John’s followers, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” Jesus provided proof so John and his followers could trust and have faith that Jesus was the One they were waiting for. Matthew 11:2-6

Trusting The Story

Norman Geisler and Frank Turek list ten reasons in their book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, we can trust the New Testament authors. Geisler and Turek wrote, “We have seen very powerful evidence that the major New Testament documents were written by eyewitnesses and their contemporaries within 15 to 40 years of the death of Jesus. Add to that the confirmation of non-Christian sources and archaeology, and we know beyond a reasonable doubt that the New Testament is based on historical fact.”⁴ Geisler and Turek pose the rhetorical question, “How can we know if the New Testament authors did not make up the story?”

• They included embarrassing details about themselves.
• They included embarrassing details about Jesus.
• They included demanding sayings of Jesus.
• They carefully distinguished Jesus’ words from their own.
• They included resurrection events that would not have been invented.
• They included more than thirty historically confirmed people in their writings.
• The New Testament writers included divergent details.
• The New Testament writers challenged readers to check the facts.
• The New Testament writers give unembellished accounts.
• The New Testament writers abandoned long-held sacred beliefs and practices, adopted new ones, and did not deny their testimony under the threat of persecution or death.

Faith and knowledge are not at opposite ends of the same ruler, as if you have more knowledge, you have less faith. Quite contrary, faith and knowledge start at the same end, and as your knowledge in Christ increases, so does your faith in Christ.

Atheists often claim their faith is grounded in evidence, but the faith of the religious is fundamentally faith-based, lacking knowledge or proof. Terms like “blind faith” or “a leap of faith” just add credence to the atheists when used in a way that implies faith covers what we don’t know. Science does not have a monopoly on knowledge and evidence, and to imply Christianity only has faith that is based on ignorance is absurd. 1 John 5:4-5

“I finally came to the point where I realized that to maintain my atheism I would have to believe that nothing produces everything, that nonlife produces life, that randomness produces fine-tuning, that chaos produces information, that unconsciousness produces consciousness and that non-reason produces reason, and frankly I just didn’t have enough faith to continue to believe that. To me, the most logical and rational thing that I could do was to take a step of faith not against the evidence, but in the same direction the evidence is pointing. Which is a logical thing that we do every day in various ways and put my faith in Jesus Christ.” – Lee Strobel

Faith vs Knowledge © 2025 by James Glazier is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International