Salem Press

Masterplots II: Christian Literature
Pensées

Author: Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
First Published: 1670
Edition Used: Pascal, Blaise. Pensées. Translated by W. F. Trotter.
Introduction by T. S. Eliot. New York: Dutton, 1958.
Genre: Nonfiction
Subgenres: Meditation and contemplation; theology
Core Issues: Conversion; faith; God; reason

Human beings seek happiness but cannot find it fully apart from a faithful relation to God. God's existence cannot be proved by human thought. It is reasonable, however, to wager that God does exist. The God who redeems human beings is not the God of "the philosophers and scholars" but the biblical God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus.

Overview
During the night of November 23, 1654, the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal experienced a profound religious conversion. Thereafter he always carried with him a description of the event: "From about 10:30 at night, until about 12:30. FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and of the learned. Certitude, certitude, feeling, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ . . . Jesus Christ. . . . Let me never be separated from Him." Pascal went on to write his Pensées and thereby became one of the most passionate defenders of the Christian faith.

Pascal's best-known contribution to religious philosophy is called "Pascal's Wager." In the section of his Pensées devoted to it, he speaks about the search for God. For Pascal, that search is the quest for meaning in life, not least of all because God provides the hope that we can be redeemed from misery and death. The question of one's immortality is of particularly great consequence. If only death awaits even the noblest lives, we will possess no lasting satisfaction.

To have only doubt is a great burden where such questions are concerned, but even worse is a failure to try moving beyond that condition. As Pascal's conversion experience suggests, he thought that religious experience could convey a kind of certitude, at least in the moment of its happening. But he recognized, too, that life goes on and is never completely immune to doubt and uncertainty. Where the meaning of life is at stake, Pascal understood, we are dealing with faith, which means that the risk of making and sustaining a commitment is always present.

Pascal argues that we ought to bet religiously that life does make sense. That wager, he underscored, is about God's existence and purposes. For if God does not exist, life's meaning will at best be tragic and at worst simply annihilated. We ought to wager that God exists, asserts Pascal, and live accordingly. To do so, he contends, is not irrational but exactly the opposite. In our human situation it is not given to us to demonstrate that God exists, and yet an analysis of our predicament suggests that faith in God is sensible.

The importance of the latter claim is clarified when Pascal writes that ". . . man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. . . . Thought constitutes the greatness of man." Pascal believes that reason is limited, but it must not be disparaged, for "all our dignity consists . . . in thought." For Pascal, religious faith is a further expression of human dignity. The thoughtful person, Pascal believes, will see that the wager makes sense: "Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is."

The clincher in this argument, Pascal believes, is that this wager is forced. Not to choose is also a choice, for a decision is made by refusing to try, to enter in, to venture. Lack of belief excludes one from the benefits of faith. This situation has an either/or quality. We have to choose.

Christian Themes
Having distinguished between the God of philosophers and scholars and the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus, Pascal elaborates his convictions about God and God's relation to humankind. As a Christian, Pascal affirms that his religion teaches two essential truths: There is a God we can know; there is also a corruption in human nature that renders us unworthy. But God is "a God of love," adds Pascal, and God will "fill the soul and heart of those whom He possesses." Such claims, however, are not rationally demonstrable. On the contrary, religion often places us in a precarious position, saying that people are in "darkness and estranged from God." Religion pushes reason to its limits, but, Pascal asserts in one of his most famous lines, "the heart has its reasons, which reason does not know." He goes on to argue that primarily the heart, not reason, experiences God. Indeed faith is characterized by heartfelt experience of God.

As Pascal saw it, one's decision as to whether life makes sense does not depend ultimately on reason alone but at least as much on one's willingness to act when confronted by a forced wager. This is Pascal's fundamental spiritual point. He argues that this situation need not offend reason. Indeed, defining life as meaningful is no greater affront to reason than the opposite decision. One has everything to gain and nothing to lose, at least in the long run, by believing. An eternity of happiness is at stake.

In fact, when forced to gamble, the paradox is that the reasonable action is to let choice transcend reason in order to allow oneself to be possessed by God. According to Pascal, those who demand certainty prior to commitment fail to understand the human situation. If one objects that religion is too uncertain and God too difficult, while sufficient meaning can be found without entanglement in the vagaries of either, Pascal thinks the issue of life beyond death is crucial where life's significance is concerned. He finds it hard to conceive that death is not the end for us unless a loving God exists.

"To deny, to believe, and to doubt well," Pascal thought, "are to a man what the race is to a horse." Pascal likens life to a game, but one that should be played out earnestly. To do so takes one beyond reason, for "the last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things beyond it." Played well, the game of life teaches reason to trust the heart. Yet that result can occur only when we give reason its due as well. Each has its own order. In searching for meaning in life, Pascal recommends that we must be careful not to confuse the two or try to reduce one to the other. Life might be simpler if we could do the latter, but Pascal insists that this is impossible. There are two levels, two ways of proceeding. They can supplement each other, but they do not always blend. We must learn to live with both and discount neither. It is this complexity that forces us to wager where the meaning of life is concerned.

When we ask, "Does life make sense?" Pascal's first reply is: "Not of itself and not on its own." Life does not come with built-in answers for our questions, in spite of hopes that it will. But for Pascal this outcome does not mean that life has no meaning in itself. Nor does it follow, as some philosophers assert, that all meaning is dependent on us and varies with each person. Pascal thinks life has meaning in itself, but our awareness of and participation in it are not assured unless we gamble. We must make the wager. Then the purpose of life may become clear.

Sources for Further Study
Hammond, Nicholas, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Pascal. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. This volume contains interpretive and critical essays by leading scholars who assess Pascal's philosophical and religious views.

Morris, Thomas V. Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1992. Provides a lucid introduction to the key themes and issues in Pascal's thought.

Natoli, Charles M. Fire in the Dark: Essays on Pascal's Pensées and Provinciales. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2005. This book probes Pascal's reflections on salvation and the mystery and revelation of God.

O'Connell, Marvin R. Blaise Pascal: Reasons of the Heart. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1997. An important biography that situates Pascal's life and thought in the religious and political context of his time and place.

Pascal, Blaise. The Provincial Letters. 1656-1657. Reprint. Translated by A. J. Krailsheimer. New York: Penguin Books, 1967. Widely read and controversial when they appeared in 1656-1657, Pascal's letters satirize Jesuit theology and defend the Jansenists against heresy charges. The book was placed on the Index of Prohibited Works in 1657.

John K. Roth