Petter Ottness
Blaise Pascal was very much a man ahead of his time. His brilliant mind covered such issues as physics, mathematics and probability, theology, the first public transport system and the invention of the first calculating machine* to name but a few. He also lived his life in constant pain, from his early childhood until his dying day. It was both his brilliance and pain which shaped Pascal’s life and his relationship and understanding of God, Jesus, grace and the state of humanity. His was a mystical, experiential faith. A faith and knowledge of God not dry and dead but rather very much alive.
A Brief Account of the Life of Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal was born on the 19th of June, 1623 in Clermont, France, the son of Etienne and Antoinette Pascal*. At the age of two, Blaise fell seriously ill. The cause at the time was not known, however later researchers have identified malnutrition and rickets as the most probable cause*. Illness, pain and constant, debilitating headaches would plague Pascal almost everyday for the rest of his life*.
Etienne, Blaise’s father, though not wealthy was a part of the minor nobility of France*. When his wife Antoinette, Blaise’s mother, died in 1626 Etienne dedicated himself to the education of his three children; Gilbert, Blaise and Jacqueline, while at the same time working as a government bureaucrat*.
In 1646 Etienne slipped and fell on an icy street in Rouen, breaking his hip*. This would have great implications for the future as the specialists who set his hip and lived with the Pascal family for the next three months, Monsieur Deslandes and Monsieur de La Bouteillerie were both Jansenists*. The Pascal family was profoundly influenced by the faith of these two doctors.
On the 24th of September 1651, at the age of 64, Etienne Pascal passed away*. The following year his sister, Jacqueline, entered the Jansenist convent in Port-Royal de Paris*. This was a very difficult time for Blaise. He now found himself very much alone in the world. For the next three or so years Blaise looked to the world for his fulfilment*. It was during this time that Blaise discovered and developed the science of probability and risk in a series of letters between himself and his friend Pierre Fermat*. However, his pursuit of the society life soon left him jaded and disgusted with the world and desperate within himself. He felt abandoned by God and family*.
On the night of the 23rd of November, 1654, Blaise’s life was to change forever. This would be known as his ‘Night of Fire’* On This night he had a mystical encounter with God which changed him forever. No longer was he a man of dry religion fraught with confusion. The event was so profound and so powerful that Blaise wrote everything down, then sowed it into every jacket he owned so as to have it near at all times*. Now he was free of all confusion and full of zeal for the defence of Christianity and Jansenism.
Jansenism
Jansenism takes its name from its founder Cornelius Jansen, the Bishop of Ypres*. It was a 17th century movement against the leniency of Catholicism at the time towards sin. This leniency was especially true of the Jesuits, who seemed happy to make allowances for sinful human nature*. Jansen and his good friend Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, the abbe de Saint-Cyrian, popularised their views of humanity and Grace around the early 17th century*.
Nowhere was Jansenism more popular than in the Convent of Port-Royal, where Saint-Cyrian was appointed Father Confessor to the nuns in 1633*. It is also worth noting that Saint-Cyrian had also been a disciple of Pierre de Bruille, who believed that the only way to conform to Gods will was to burn out all instances of self love and a strict adherence to Jesus in the Eucharist*.
The Jansenist movement took a deeply pessimistic view of human nature. They believed that humans were incapable of choosing good, and that human nature should be disciplined to annihilation*. Without God’s grace humans could only do evil, and God’s grace was only given to some. This grace was irresistible and always produced the desired result. The Jansenists called this “efficient grace” and was only given to those pre-ordained by God. Jansenists were therefore radical Augustinians, and interpreted Augustine in much the same way as Calvinists*. They also believed that Mass should only be taken infrequently following a thorough self examination and confession*.
Humanity
Pascal held the belief that humans were created with ‘Two loves’. He first set out his idea of the ‘Two Loves’ in a letter to his sister Jacqueline upon the death of their father in 1651. In this letter he states that all humans have the love of God and the love of Self. When sin entered it took away the love of God, and the love of self filled the void. In order to regain the love of God, it must first give up the love of self in order to make room for the love of God. He goes on to state that once one has died in the soul, death to the body is easy*. This theme of ‘Two Loves’ he would pick up again later in his uncompleted apologetic work Pensees. Pascal held tightly to the Augustinian view that the fundamental nature of sin is self love, and the cure for sin is the grace given though faith in Jesus Christ*.
So Pascal began to remove all worldly pleasures from his life during his last few years. He turned his living quarters into somewhat of a monastic cell by removing anything superfluous and vain. He also refused to eat anything but broth and he encouraged people to follow his example and abandon all desire for worldly things. Although pain was his constant companion, he nevertheless forced himself to go out among the poor and give his money away*.
Pascal also adopted the Jansenist doctrines of human depravity and divine predestination, which were essentially Augustinian*. Augustine believed that humans had completely lost the ability to do good when sin entered, and therefore also lack the ability to take the first steps toward salvation. This is humanity’s depravity*. This is illustrated for the Jansenists by the misery, suffering and helplessness of humanity. As a man who had known pain, suffering and helplessness almost everyday of his life, this must have been abundantly clear to Blaise Pascal*.
Grace
In order to understand grace, one must first understand sin. Pascal followed the Augustinian tradition of the wretchedness of humanity. Sin has made the human race incapable of doing the good required by God, and therefore humanity is unable to take the first steps toward reconciliation with God*. This sin was passed on from Adam to every human through the act, and pleasure, of sex. Therefore the sin of Adam rested on every human. A life of penance was required, if not for your own sins then at least for the inherited sin of Adam*. Although created much higher than the animals, proven by humanity’s moral and religious status, humankind needs God’s grace in order to be saved*.
This grace given by God is irresistible* and efficacious*. The two concepts of irresistible grace and efficacious grace are closely tied. Efficacious simply means to be fully effective*. Efficacious grace is that which effects the purpose for which it is given, what God purposes never fails or comes to naught*. Therefore, if the grace of God always fulfils the purpose for which it was given it is necessarily irresistible. For Pascal the redemptive grace of God through Jesus Christ was more powerful than any of the senses or any reason, both of which may be deceptive*. Taken to its fullest extent this turns humans into puppets, without any free will.
The Jesuits held the view that humans were in fact able to exercise free will to choose grace. This set the Jansenist and Jesuits onto a collision course. The Jesuits accused the Jansenists of heresy and of being closet Calvinists*. Pascal responded with the ‘Provincial Letters’. In them he not only attacked the Jesuits theology, he also openly mocked them and reinforced the stereotype of the sly and crafty Jesuit*.
The Jesuits tried to explain away and rationalise sins committed, assuring the sinner that God was on their side*, whereas Pascal saw sinners as already abandoned and sin everywhere. One must seek sin out and destroy it though penance*. This penance was something Blaise took very seriously. He wore iron prickles under his clothes and every time he had a prideful or diversionary thought he would press them into his flesh*.
Christ
For Blaise Pascal, an understanding of the cross of Christ was essential for an understanding of God and humanity. The cross demonstrates that there is a God, that humanity is in a fallen state and can no longer see God clearly, and that God has sent a redeemer to rescue it*. Before knowledge in Christ, we are blind to God. Christ is the only one who can reveal God to us. He is the only one who pulls back the veil of obscurity to reveal God. The failure to see God is not because he is not there, but rather due the blindness of fallen humanity which can only see partial truth*.
The faith which we put in Christ, the only way through which we can know God, is given itself by God. Faith is in the heart, not from reason. Christ is therefore the only way to know God*. By uniting the will, feeling and knowledge one can bring about a life-giving personal and mystical relationship with Christ. Only by this means God can be discerned by the heart*.
Pascal also saw the cross as a representation of Christian life. The indication of God’s grace is the readiness for moral and spiritual reorientation toward God. This, according to Pascal, is a crucifixion of self will*. It was therefore impossible to become a true follower of Christ without a profound moral change*.
God
Pascal held to the view that God was not absent from this world, but rather that humanity is blind to him. As humanity is blind due to its fallen nature, God appears to be hidden from us*. Once faith in Christ has been given, God can be revealed. The heart of humanity is the only means by which we can recognize God. This was a reaction against Descartes, who held the view that belief in God must be reasoned*. For Pascal reason is continually blinded by passion and is therefore a useless means of discovering God and truth*. Reason is therefore an ineffective means of discovering God*.
Out of his mystical ‘Night of Fire’ experience Pascal realised his insignificance and meaninglessness when compared to the eternity of time and space. For most this would lead to Atheism, but for Pascal it lead to “… a deep, abiding faith in … God”*. Outside of God, therefore, there was no meaning or purpose to life and certainly no point to any study or any science. Meaning can therefore only be found in God, as meaning cannot be produced from nothing*.
For a man of Pascal’s capability it was a natural progression to apply probability theory to God. This became famously known as ‘Pascal’s Wager’. This wager not the result of rationalism but rather a reasonable conclusion. As we are limited and finite, we cannot begin to grasp God’s infinite and unlimited nature. It is therefore impossible to prove God rationally*.
His wager begins with the premise that a choice must be made to either believe or reject God. To refuse to make a choice is not to abdicate choice but rather it is, in effect, to reject God. The prize in the wager is eternal life. If you believe in God and are proven right, then you gain eternal life. If you are proven wrong then you have lost nothing. If you choose not to believe in God and are proven right, then you have again lost nothing. If your disbelief in God is proven wrong you have then lost everything. It is therefore both sensible and reasonable to believe in God as the risk is small and prize immeasurable*.
Conclusion
Blaise Pascal was a man who came to eventually oppose the society into which he was born. He not only separated himself from this fallen world, he also took umbrage against the economically comfortable and morally permissive theology of the Jesuits, who took minor notice of the poor and intimated that conversion to Christ made few demands for ethical or economic change*.
His pain filled life proved to him the total helplessness of mankind and its need for God. The only way to see God was through the cross of Christ. Without God, he could see only meaninglessness. With God, and the grace received from God, he could see life and meaning. God cannot be seen or perceived by rationalism, but only through the heart.
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