What is faith?

Faith is a word that a lot of people, religious and not, use to mean believing something without evidence. On that definition, faith and rationality are opposites: the more evidence you have, the less faith you need; the less evidence you have, the more faith it takes to hold on to a claim. If that is what the word means, it is hard to see why anyone should want it.

But that is not what Christianity actually means by faith, and pulling apart the popular sense from the Christian sense is worth doing before deciding anything.

You do not have to be religious to follow what comes next. The page will lay out, in plain language, what the Christian tradition has actually meant by faith, how the word differs from "believing hard enough," and how it relates to evidence and doubt.

A few terms first

For readers without the background:

• Jesus of Nazareth was a Jewish religious teacher who lived in first-century Palestine. The Christian claim is that he was also God in human form. He was executed by the Roman government around 30 AD by a method called crucifixion.
• The cross is the Christian shorthand for that execution — the public Roman killing of Jesus around 30 AD.
• The resurrection is the Christian claim that Jesus, after his execution, was seen alive three days later by multiple named witnesses.
• Christ (Greek Christos) is a title, not a last name. It is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Mashiach (Messiah) — meaning the anointed one, the long-promised figure in the Jewish tradition.
• The gospels are four short biographies of Jesus' life — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — written by his followers within decades of his death and now part of the New Testament.
• Paul was an early Christian leader who wrote about a third of the New Testament — the second part of the Christian Bible.
• Grace is the Christian word for unearned favor — God treating someone with goodness they did not earn and could not earn.
• The Bible is the collection of Jewish and Christian sacred texts. It has two parts: the Old Testament (older, also the Jewish scriptures) and the New Testament (first-century writings about Jesus).

A short, honest answer

Faith, in Christian writing, is not the same as believing without evidence. It is trust — the specific kind of trust that a person extends when they act on what they have good reason to think is true. Christianity's claim is that God has made himself known publicly, historically, and specifically, and that faith is the response of trust to what has been shown. It is a stance toward a person, not a bet on a proposition.

Two things called faith that are actually different

Most of the confusion about faith comes from a single word being used for two different mental acts.

Belief-that. Intellectual assent to a proposition. "I believe that the earth is round." "I believe that there is a God." This is the kind of belief you can have about anything — including things you are indifferent to.

Belief-in. Trust in a person. "I believe in my surgeon." "I believe in my spouse." This is different from belief-that, though it usually presupposes some of it. Trust is a stance toward someone, not a stance toward a proposition.

The Christian concept of faith is much more the second than the first. When Christianity says a person is saved "by faith," it does not mean the person aces a theology exam. It means the person actually trusts Jesus — takes him at his word, entrusts themselves to him, acts on what he is said to have done. Belief-that is present in it (you cannot trust someone you do not think exists), but belief-in is the heart.

The definition the New Testament actually gives

The most-quoted line about faith in the whole Bible comes from an anonymous first-century letter now called Hebrews:

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Two things worth noticing in that sentence.

Confidence and assurance — not gambling, not leaping, not shutting your eyes and jumping. The words are what you would use of a person walking on a bridge they trust: they act on it because they have reason to think it will hold.

What we do not see — not what we have no reason to believe, but what is not yet directly visible. The Christian claim is not that faith operates without evidence. It is that faith operates in advance of full sight. The distinction is central.

The same letter later says: "without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." Notice the two-part structure: believe he exists (belief-that) and seek him (belief-in). Both are present. Neither is enough alone.

What faith is not

The definition rules a few things out.

Faith is not the opposite of evidence. Christianity's own historic claim is that God has left an unusual amount of evidence — a specific man, a specific set of writings, a specific pattern in the natural world, a specific set of witnesses to a specific event. Faith responds to that evidence rather than pretending it does not exist.

Faith is not believing hard enough. A recurring pastoral abuse of the word is "if your prayer did not work, your faith was too weak; if you doubt, you do not really believe." The New Testament does not use the word this way. Faith is trust in the character of God, not psychological pressure applied to your own brain.

Faith is not certainty. A person who trusts a doctor is not necessarily certain the doctor is right. They are acting on what they judge to be the best available reason. Faith, in the Christian sense, is compatible with unresolved questions — which is why doubt does not disqualify a person from having faith.

Faith is not credulity. The New Testament repeatedly commends people who ask hard questions and does not commend people who accept everything unexamined. Paul's own letters presuppose an audience that is expected to weigh what he says. The Bereans, a group described in the New Testament book Acts, are praised because they "examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."

The Thomas story

One of the clearest scenes for pulling faith apart from anti-evidence belief comes from a moment in the gospel accounts of Jesus' life. After Jesus' execution and the event Christians call the resurrection, one of his followers — a man named Thomas — is not present when the others report seeing Jesus alive. He announces:

Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.

Modern readers often expect the story to end with Jesus rebuking Thomas for wanting evidence. The scene does not go that way. According to the gospel of John, Jesus shows up a week later, invites Thomas to inspect the wounds, and says: "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." Jesus provides the evidence.

The line Jesus then adds — "blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" — is sometimes misread as "the ideal faith is faith without any evidence at all." In context, it does not say that. Thomas got direct physical evidence; later followers would not get the same physical opportunity but would have the eyewitness reports. The blessing is on people who trust the witnesses without needing the same immediate access Thomas got. Not on people who trust with no basis at all.

How faith and doubt relate

A common assumption is that doubt is the enemy of faith. On the Christian view, that is not quite right.

Doubt is more like the friction of faith — the mental resistance that comes from taking something seriously enough to test it. A person who never wonders whether Christianity is true is either serenely convinced or serenely indifferent. Faith, in the sense the New Testament uses it, is the active stance of trust that operates in the presence of unresolved questions, not in their absence.

Jesus, in the gospel accounts, is patient with honest doubters. He is impatient with performers. The father of a sick child, in the gospel of Mark, famously says: "I believe; help my overcome my unbelief." Jesus responds by helping. Doubt held honestly, and brought to God rather than hidden from him, is closer to the New Testament picture of faith than pretended certainty is.

Faith as the response, not the accomplishment

One last piece is worth naming clearly. Christianity does not claim that faith is a spiritual achievement that earns a person's standing with God. Paul, in a letter to Christians in the city of Ephesus around 60 AD, put it: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God."

Notice the ordering. Grace does the work. Faith receives what grace has already done. The Christian model is not believe hard enough and God will act; it is God has acted, and faith is the hand that receives.

What this changes

If you have been carrying a version of faith as believing without evidence, and either resenting it (because it feels dishonest) or straining under it (because your evidence keeps changing), it may be worth trying the concept the New Testament actually uses. Trust in a person, given on the basis of what has been shown, held onto in the presence of unresolved questions. That is a much more human — and much more evaluable — concept than the caricature.

What about right now

If you are wrestling with doubts, or trying to work out whether the concept of faith is even something you can honestly hold, our chat is free, private, and in your language.

Where this comes from in the Bible

• Hebrews 11:1 — "confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see"
• Hebrews 11:6 — faith as belief-that plus belief-in
• Romans 10:17 — faith comes from what is heard
• James 2:19 — even the demons believe-that; belief-in is the real question
• John 20:24-29 — the Thomas scene
• Ephesians 2:8-9 — faith as response, grace as ground