It is a typical lament that we live in a post-Christian era. This fact raises challenges to our witness to the world. Most of our audience thinks that, in G. K. Chesterton’s words, Christianity has been tried and located wanting (reasonably than found wanting and left untried). It isn’t considered a live option. How will we bear witness well on this cultural context? We might do well to reconsider probably the most enigmatic thinkers in Christian history, Blaise Pascal.
Pascal suffers from a public relations problem. As the source of Pascal’s wager, he is usually considered a gambling man. He urges the non-believer to bet that God exists. What does one should lose? In Beyond the Wager: The Christian Brilliance of Blaise Pascal, philosopher Douglas Groothuis shows that there’s more to Pascal’s life and thought than his most famous argument. Groothuis demonstrates that now we have much to learn from this good thinker. Pascal, he argues, is an important thinker for our time.
Essential writings
Pascal got here on the scene within the seventeenth century, through the early years of the Scientific Revolution. Several of his works contributed to this movement, including treatises on the geometry of conic sections, theories of probability, and conclusions to extensive experiments he had done to check the opportunity of a vacuum. He invented the primary functional calculator, which he had built to assist his father along with his work of assessing taxes.
His best-known works, nonetheless, give attention to Christianity. In the Provincial Letters, Pascal defends the Jansenist movement, which was condemned by the Catholic church, against the Jesuits. The Jansenists emphasized that the depth of human sinfulness required a piece of God for our salvation. The Christian life required sincere faith and obedience. His commitment to the Jansenists reveals the depth of his devotion to Christ.
The Pensées consisted in notes that were left unpublished at Pascal’s death. He was aiming to write down a book on the defense of Christianity. These fragments include his criticisms of natural theology, reflections on other religions, insights concerning the condition of the human soul, and his famous wager.
Groothuis unpacks the breadth of Pascal’s work in 13 chapters. He adds a conclusion and an appendix with a pleasant fictional dialogue between Pascal and Descartes (often credited as the daddy of recent philosophy) that takes place as they meet in heaven.
As one would expect, Groothuis devotes a chapter to Pascal’s wager. He places the wager within the context of Pascal’s broader project and answers a wide range of objections. He also devotes chapters to Pascal’s thoughts on Judaism and Islam, political and social matters, and skepticism of religion. Central to Pascal’s thought, and to this book, is the “excellence of Christ.” Although this phrase is the title of chapter 10, the theme permeates all the book. Groothuis has provided a wonderful introduction to Pascal the person, his world and thought, and his importance for today.
Three sorts of knowing
Three themes in Groothuis’s presentation are worthy of specific mention. The first is the “three orders of being and knowing.” Each of those orders concerns what we will know and the way. Pascal agreed with Descartes that the mind is distinct from the body. While Descartes thought that every one knowing was due ultimately to the mind, Pascal held that we all know physical things through the senses, and the senses are physical capacities. Thus, the body is the primary order.
The second, the order of the mind, “concerns rational principles and calculations,” writes Groothuis. This order focuses on rational calculation that is usually expressed in deductive arguments. The third order is that of the guts. There are things that can’t be grasped by reason and senses alone. According to one in all Pascal’s better-known sayings, which comes from the Pensées, “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”
The order of the guts isn’t against reason or experience. It is a reliable path to knowledge. It is in this manner that we all know the primary principles of things like arithmetic, space, and time. In addition, it aids our knowledge of God. Groothuis makes clear that the apologetical approach to Pascal involves each of the orders of existence. Reason, experience, and the guts all have roles to play in displaying the compelling nature of the gospel.
The three orders result in a second theme that the book develops well: Pascal’s criticisms of natural theology. This branch of theology involves attempting to ascertain the existence of God through rational arguments. Most such arguments begin with observations from the world around us.
Pascal rejected this project for a wide range of reasons. First, the conclusions of the absolute best arguments in natural theology leave one removed from the type of information that brings saving faith. The God of the philosophers seems to be something lower than the God revealed in Scripture. In a poem sewn into the liner of his jacket and located after his death, Pascal wrote, “‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,’ not of the philosophers and students.”
Another concern with natural theology is that the knowledge it produces may produce pride. In Groothuis’s words, even a successful theistic argument could “lead one to think that a sufficient knowledge of God is obtainable aside from the work of the mediator.” It is a dangerous thing to try to achieve God on our own terms without an awareness of our need for repentance and forgiveness.
Pascal’s rejection of natural theology results in a 3rd major theme in Beyond the Wager. Pascal’s own apologetic method focused largely on what Groothuis calls “the anthropological argument.” This argument highlights the plight of human beings. We are each wonderful and wretched. We are, to cite one in all Groothuis’s chapter titles, “deposed royalty.”
The state of humanity is one in all paradox. Even a fast skim through the Pensées shows Pascal juxtaposing our exalted status as divine image bearers and our miserable condition as fallen rebels. This paradox cries out for a proof. Only the Christian story, with its beginnings in Creation and the Fall, has the resources to make sense of the human condition. Only the work of Christ within the Incarnation and Atonement can rescue human beings from this predicament. Once an individual embraces her own condition, she is ripe to experience her need for a savior.
Throughout the Pensées, one finds passages reflecting on the futility of life. Some commentators have taken these passages to point that Pascal was actually a type of a skeptical existentialist. Groothuis argues, properly for my part, that Pascal was developing dialogues for his apologetic work. These passages, then, were likely being prepared to issue from the mouth of a skeptic. Apart from the saving work of Christ, the human condition is one in all futility.
A thinker for our time
Groothuis isn’t afraid to part ways with Pascal along the way in which. One area of disagreement is with Pascal’s wholesale rejection of natural theology. I agree with Groothuis that there’s a place for the usage of traditional arguments for God’s existence. I also agree that Pascal teaches us that there’s way more to our defense of the gospel than establishing the proven fact that God is real.
Pascal is a thinker for our time. A latest horizon in apologetics is emerging that reflects the distinctives of Pascal’s own methodology. This horizon begins with the human condition. It goals to boost questions on the place of goodness, truth, and wonder in human life and to point to the Christian story as probably the most compelling answer. This approach takes up Pascal’s notion that the guts, too, has its reasons.
Beyond the Wager is just a wonderful book. It is a well-written, compelling introduction to an impressive, but often ignored, thinker.
Gregory E. Ganssle is professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology. He is the creator of Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspiration.
