The Fiery Mind
Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées
It is fair to say that the “new age of reason” has launched an assault on people of faith. There is a renewed freedom to ridicule people of religious conviction, portraying them as ignorant, uneducated, and antiscientific. Those without a sense of history might think this is new, that rationalism is the new kid on the block and faith-based thinking is being moved to a retirement home where it belongs. But history says otherwise.
Many great people of faith have spent their lives in scientific pursuits. The blending of science and faith found a perfect match in a seventeenth-century Frenchman: Blaise Pascal. Pascal was one of the brightest minds in the history of scientific accomplishment. He also possessed a brilliant spiritual mind. He, Isaac Newton, and many other brilliant figures did not see faith and scientific inquiry as diametrically opposed.
Pascal was a child prodigy with a lightning-fast mind, a dedication to science, and a hunger for God. His life exemplifies the struggle of the individual to better know God and find peace in this world.
An Early Start
Blaise Pascal was born in 1623 to a father who was a lawyer and skilled mathematician. His was not an easy life. At the age of three Pascal’s mother, Antoinette Begon, died, leaving his father to rear Pascal and his two sisters. His father, Étienne, moved the family from Clermont-Ferrand to Paris to provide a better cultural experience for his children. There he homeschooled them. On occasion he would take young Pascal with him to the Academy of Science, where his son developed a love for science.
By age ten, Pascal was mastering mathematics and conducting experiments in the physical sciences. Étienne Pascal had become a tax collector and struggled under the weight of calculations his job required. At nineteen, to lessen the burden on his father, young Pascal invented the first calculator, a mechanical device whose principles would be used for many decades.
He was one of those people whose interest and imagination bounced from one area of study to another. In the course of his short life, he not only invented the first calculator but also tested the theories of great scientists like Galileo and Torricelli (who discovered the principles of the barometer). He formulated laws of hydraulics and hydrostatics; wrote papers on the vacuum in nature; calculated the density of air, invented the syringe, the hydraulic lift, and the hydraulic press; founded the theory of probabilities; and developed a form of integral calculus. It is also said that Pascal invented the first wristwatch, and he is credited with mapping the first Paris bus route.
His studies and accomplishments, however, did not satisfy his soul. He had a keen interest in spiritual matters. Christianity in the seventeenth century was undergoing change. There was the Piety Movement in Germany, and the teaching of Wesley was making its way through England, but France remained staunchly Roman Catholic.
Still, changes were brewing within the Roman Catholic Church in France. To many, the church was becoming far too centered on free will and the belief that works were necessary for salvation. A reformation group formed to challenge what they saw as a doctrinal problem: a reliance on good works that cheapened the redeeming work of Christ. The Jansenists, named after their founder Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), were in some ways a Protestant movement within the Roman Church. Jansenism called on the church to embrace the principles of Augustine, bishop of Hippo, specifically predestination and the inability of individuals to save themselves through good works.
Pascal first encountered the teachings of Jansen when two physicians came to the aid of his father, who had fallen on hard, icy ground, dislocating his hip. The doctors, both Jansenists, cared for Blaise Pascal’s father and answered the young man’s many questions about suffering. What they said made sense, and he and his family converted to the sect. His sister Jacqueline would later enter a Jansenist convent at Port-Royal, south of Versailles.
Vision
On November 23, 1654, Pascal had a strange, life-changing experience. That night, beginning about 10:30 and lasting for two hours, Blaise Pascal had a vision of the cross. In some ways it broke him; in others it empowered him. He wrote an emotional response on parchment and sewed it to the interior of his coat, where he carried it for the rest of his short life. After his death at the age of thirty-nine, a servant found the parchment while cleaning out a few of Pascal’s things. Pascal had written:
The year of grace, 1654
Monday, November 23rd . . . from about half past ten in the evening until about half past twelve . . .
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
not of the philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, certainty, feeling, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ . . .
I have separated myself from Him, I have fled from Him,
Renounced Him, crucified Him.
May I never be separated from . . .
Renunciation, total and sweet.1
This was his conversion experience, heartrending but joyful.
Before his death he wrote eighteen Provincial Letters, which were widely read in France. The letters were an attempt to expose the weaknesses in Jesuit thinking and their emphasis on good works. He wrote with eloquence and at times sarcasm. His skill with prose makes him one of the most admired French writers of all time. The pope condemned the letters, but they were still widely read.
Pascal then turned his attention to what he hoped would be a book defending Christianity, a book offering evidences for faith. Pascal lived in the Age of Enlightenment, when tossing off old beliefs was fashionable and considered a sign of intelligence. France was becoming more secular and many were beginning to see Christianity as something that had outlived its usefulness. Pascal could not accept that premise or conclusion. He remained committed to defending the faith.
He would never finish his book. For most of his life Pascal had suffered from a variety of ailments, and in the summer of 1662 he became gravely ill. He died on August 19 without seeing his fortieth birthday. The cause of his death is unknown but an autopsy showed problems with some of his internal organs and his brain. Stomach cancer has been suggested as the cause of death and a brain lesion as the cause of his many headaches. Regardless of the cause, science and faith lost a champion when he died.
Eight years later, friends gathered his notes and had them published. Pensées (Thoughts) is a collection of notes Pascal meant to include in his next book. In it he describes what has become known as “Pascal’s Wager” or “Pascal’s Gambit.” It can be paraphrased like this:
Pascal’s point is simple: you can’t lose betting on God, but you can lose much betting against him.
Pascal’s genius played in many fields: math, physics, invention, writing, and faith. He saw more than his share of troubles in the world and lived at a time when being a person of faith often brought more ridicule than praise, but he remained unmoved by irrational rationalists. To Pascal, science was no enemy of God. Faithful living, he believed, could change the world.
Pascal shaped the church through his emphasis on faith without sacrificing reason. He was a man who saw the individual’s need for salvation, a need he couldn’t accomplish on his own. He needed God.