Q007
What is the difference between knowledge and faith?
There is a difference between faith and knowledge, as the Scriptures indicate (Phm 6). Knowledge commonly has for its object things visible and comprehensible and is founded on experience and examination; faith relates to things invisible and even beyond human comprehension and comes from accepting and embracing the testimony of the Truth: “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ” (Rom 10:17; see Q003). Yet, the two are not enemies: rightly ordered, faith opens the way to true understanding, as the prophet says in the Septuagint reading beloved of the Fathers: “If you will not believe, neither will you understand” (Isa 7:9 LXX).
