Pascal’s Pensees

Pascal, the brilliant mathematician, physicist, and engineer, presents in his posthumously titled Pensees, his philosophy of religion and a paradox rich and challenging defense of Christian faith. Says Pascal, “Knowledge has two extremes which meet, one is the pure natural ignorance of every man at birth, the other is the extreme reached by great minds who run through the whole range of human knowledge, only to find that they know nothing… but it is a wise ignorance which knows itself. Those who stand half-way… pretend to understand everything… they get everything wrong.” The book is a collection of unfinished writings, arguments and ideas which he had scribbled, intending to then develop and elaborate. As such, the text is disjointed and even mysterious, statements are abrupt, incomplete, dogmatic. Yet, out of respect for the intellectual accomplishments of the great French mathematician, these notes were published essentially as he had left them. They contain many gems, profound statements which stand like islands in a sea of sometimes jumbled thoughts. Pascal’s themes are: the nature of human knowledge, the affliction of pride, the blindness and tyranny of self, the boundaries of reason, the hiddenness of God, and his own argument for “wagering” not only on God, but on the Christian faith. Two things are obvious, (1.) the arguments are not in the form in which Pascal intended to offer them, therefore, (2.) this is not a definitive apologetic. However, Pascal’s arguments are rather unique and as such they are interesting even in their [often] crude form. Read this book in conjunction with the writings of C.S. Lewis, Augustine, or Sundar Singh.