Are faith and certainty the same thing? Is faith only “true” when it radiates unshakeable certainty? This is not a minor question, because although one can be certain in one’s convictions, faith and certainty are two entirely different things.

What we believe is a construct, an idea. Such an idea can be accepted or rejected for oneself. Everyone colors this judgment with whatever palette they have available. So what we believe in detail is probably different for each person. We may agree in broad strokes with others in our faith community, but that is far from meaning that everyone believes, feels, or understands the same thing.

Faith is neither knowledge nor certainty but essentially trust. Faith does not stand for things that are “true”, any more than unbelief can be linked to “untrue”. Even if these occasionally overlap, that does not establish that they are the same in essence.

Trust and faith are not convictions but ways of living. It is more about an act of trusting and believing than a list of convictions one would have to affirm. Whoever trusts aligns their heart. That is the essence of trust. In the languages of the Bible there are no separate words for “to trust” and “to believe”. They are one and the same. Someone who hesitates at the idea of “believing in God”, but can say without difficulty that they have “trust in God”, has grasped what matters.

A reluctance to say one “believes” something may then be aimed at a particular form of faith convictions. Perhaps one has seen or experienced it somewhere, in a way one cannot claim for oneself. The rejection or caution then applies to a culture or a conception, not to faith itself.

In communities and personal conversations, I have repeatedly heard how people experience “certainty” in faith. They even point to a Bible verse:

“Faith is (the confident) acceptance (of what one) awaits, (a) conviction (of) facts that (one) does not see.”
Heb 11:1

Faith is an acceptance. That is certainly true. Being able to accept something is a human capacity. What matters, though, is what follows from it. It is an acceptance of what one awaits, a conviction of facts one does not see. Faith, then, has to do with expectation, encouragement, and reassurance, and that speaks of things still to come. This expectation does not build faith on visible things but on things one does not see. We do this every day, with or without faith convictions. Here, though, the concern is with acceptances mentioned in the testimony of the Bible. Expectation, encouragement, and reassurance are human responses, and they show what living faith can lead to. Faith “gives wings”.

Are you looking for a description of how faith works in life? Then perhaps this: faith is the confident acceptance of what one awaits, an inner certainty of that expectation, drawn not from visible things but from encouragement. Faith is human, but it can be touched and aligned, for instance, by good news (gospel). People believe in many ways, experiencing and practicing this in everyday things, but the same capacity can also lead to trust in God.

Faith, then, is not certainty, even though many people confuse faith with it. Faith is an acceptance. It is something one takes as a starting point for thinking and for everyday life. Believing, if we draw this further from the verse, is a conviction of unseen things. If we think, for instance, of terms like “confidence” or “spiritual horizon”, these arise as faith convictions through what one hears, not through what one sees.

Faith is powerful because it gives confidence. With confidence comes an alignment of the mind. This alignment is carried by a confidence that can also be felt. The breath grows calmer, the spirit settles, because one looks ahead with confidence. Faith has this power not because it concerns visible things, but because it draws encouragement from things unseen.
Consider, for instance, the words of Jesus:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be.”
Matt 6:19-21

Faith is the alignment of the heart, the reassured development of trust.

Words can move us. Faith comes through proclamation, Paul wrote to the Romans (Rom 10:17). That is undoubtedly the point: words touch us and inspire trust. The word “inspire” is a deliberate choice here, because in the same letter to the Romans the apostle writes that “God’s Spirit testifies with our spirit” (Rom 8:16).

Elsewhere Paul testifies that “all Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tim 3:16), that is, carried by God’s Spirit. This is not explained any further, except in its effect. The words of the Bible have this quality, as many Christians attest. It is often assumed that Paul is  referring to the Bible as we know it today. He was not, of course, because that Bible did not yet exist. When Paul spoke of “all Scripture”, he meant the writings known to him, not, say, his own letters (!).

Here is the connection within this experience, which can be viewed from different angles:

• The Bible brings about faith, and through it encouragement, outlook, and trust (hooray!)
• God’s Spirit works within this Scripture, which can have a corresponding effect on people (striking!).

Different angles trigger different reactions. What matters is that something is brought about in the alignment of our lives. It is not about “believing in the Bible” or cultivating other strange notions. In every case, it is about encouragement, alignment, and trust, and about what we do with them in everyday life. Or, in Paul’s words, “that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17).

Faith, then, is not static or rigid in its convictions, but the living development of people who cultivate trust in God, carried by the encouragement of the Scriptures:

“For whatever was written beforehand was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have confidence.”
Rom 15:4

No one is perfect. No one is justified by their own “effort of faith”, as it is understood in many places. Rather, the truth is that there is much we do not understand. Faith is not knowledge, not certainty, but simply a position on a slider. Picture it this way: a slider between the two extremes of “faith” and “doubt”.

Here, then, is the exercise: set the slider somewhere on this scale, wherever you feel comfortable. One person doubts more, another trusts more. Hardly anyone will sit at the extremes of “100% faith” or “100% doubt”. If you do this in a group, you can see how differently people assess themselves.

Doubt is not the same as unbelief, just as faith and certainty are not the same. It is only in the views of some Christians that uncertainty and doubt are equated and set against a faith conviction that appears to run on pure certainty. This is problematic above all because doubt is judged by a community, or by individuals, as “dangerous”. In such communities, one is not allowed to doubt, not allowed to ask questions that would endanger the supposed certainty.

Faith and doubt belong together. Faith can only develop if not everything is 100% certain. Doubt allows questions to be asked that can lead to an authentic engagement. Doubt is, so to speak, the engine of healthy development. If no one in a community doubts anymore, the community loses the liveliness of its faith. If everything radiates “certainty and assurance”, there is no longer any incentive to engage with the reality of this world.

Once a community has reached such a rigid point, there are two ways forward: its convictions harden into an ideology, or the community dies because the life has gone out of it.

This is what doubters mean for a community: a lifeline for preserving its vitality. Certainty in faith is overrated.