Quote of the Week: Alister McGrath, 2

Christianity is a strongly ethical faith. This does not, however, mean that Christianity is about a set of rules, in which Christians mechanically conform to a set of instructions. Rather, it is about a set of values which arises from being redeemed.

– Alister E. McGrath, An Introduction to Christianity (Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 1997), xix–xx.

Blaise’s Best Bet, Part 4: Pascal for Today

For the last several weeks, I’ve been reflecting on French thinker Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). I’ve discussed his life, his achievements in science and mathematics, and his conversion to Christianity and work as an apologist. Though Pascal lived centuries ago, I believe his writings on theology and apologetics remain important for Christians of the twenty-first century.

While serving as more of book outline than a complete book, Pensées (Pascal’s unfinished apologetic work) is so profound that it remains a perennial bestseller. Two uniquely Pascalian themes introduced in Pensées seem especially relevant today: the Christian solution to humanity’s paradoxical nature and the importance of intuition in human thinking.

On the human enigma and Christ

As an experimental scientist, Pascal had a deep appreciation for the need to provide an acceptable explanatory theory. He believed that for a religion or philosophy to be worthy of belief it must account for the meaningful realities we encounter in life. One of those central realities is the enigma of man. Blaise wrote of humanity (including himself):

What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe!¹

According to Pascal, humans are a strange and freakish mixture of “greatness and wretchedness.” Our greatness is exhibited in our unique ability as a reflective thinker to recognize our wretchedness. Christian philosopher Thomas V. Morris explains:

One of the greatest mysteries is in us. How is the naked ape capable of grasping the mathematical structure of matter? How can one species produce both unspeakable wickedness and nearly inexplicable goodness?

How can we be responsible for the most disgusting squalor and for the most breathtaking beauty? How can grand aspirations and self-destructive impulses, kindness and cruelty, be interwoven in one life? The human enigma cries out for explanation. Pascal believed that only the tenets of the Christian faith can adequately account for both the greatness and wretchedness of humanity. And he was convinced that this in itself is an important piece of evidence that Christianity embraces truth.²

Just how does Christianity explain our paradoxical nature? The Christian theistic worldview asserts that humanity’s greatness is a direct result of the imago Dei (the image of God). As a creature made in the image and likeness of God, humans reflect the glory of their Maker. Though certainly finite in our expression, people nevertheless exhibit certain godlike characteristics.

The wretchedness, on the other hand, can be traced to the first human beings’ fall into sin (Genesis 3). Original sin is the biblical doctrine that the entire human race has inherited guilt and moral corruption from Adam (Psalms 51:5; 58:3; Romans 5:12; 18–19; 1 Corinthians 15:22).

Pascal believed that the ultimate solution to humanity’s contradictory predicament rests in finding redemption through the person of Jesus Christ. In his own words:

Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.³

For Pascal, it is in the redemptive encounter with Jesus Christ that man finds both himself and God. Therefore Christianity not only explains the puzzle of human nature, but also provides the solution for our existential estrangement from God and from ourselves. Again from Pensées:

Not only do we only know God through Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ; we only know life and death through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ we cannot know the meaning of our life or our death, of God or of ourselves.⁴

On the “reasons of the heart”

Scholars disagree about how Pascal’s views concerning the relationship of faith and reason should be classified. Some have even called Pascal a fideist (negatively defined as someone believing that faith has no rational foundation).⁵

Many would say that Pascal’s position, though certainly not systematic, is more complicated than simple fideism. He strongly asserted that “religion is not contrary to reason,” and he even argued that there are various evidences for the truth of the Christian faith.

He lists such evidences as biblical prophecy, miracles (especially Christ’s resurrection), the continued existence of the Jews, the Christian church’s historical witness in the world, and, as discussed above, Christianity’s unique explanatory power. However, Pascal did believe that reason and scientific investigation have limits, and that reason does stand in need of the illumination of faith and divine revelation.

For Pascal, the traditional proofs (e. g., cosmological and teleological arguments) for God are religiously inadequate (unlike geometry, they are not deductively certain). He viewed them as too complicated and remote for most people, and though they may provide knowledge of God, they do not provide knowledge of Christ. Pascal strongly asserted that “the knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.” Thus the proofs, at best, have limited value. They may convince the “mind,” but not the “heart.”⁶

Pascal’s metaphor of the heart is quite provocative. He wrote, “The heart has reasons that reason does not know” and “God is perceived by the heart, not by the reason.” For Pascal, the heart refers to an “instinctive, immediate, and unreasoned apprehension of truth.”⁷ Pascal believed that the heart has an intuitive and immediate knowledge of first principles (including God).

Rather than being a center of mere emotion, the heart instead conveys a sense of intuition (suggesting immediacy, spontaneity, and directness). Frederick Copleston defines Pascal’s understanding of the heart concisely: “In general, ‘the heart’ is a kind of intellectual instinct, rooted in the inmost nature of the soul.”⁸

It appears that for Pascal, the mind and the heart both play an important role in a person coming to faith. The heart provides the basic intuition in the process of forming our most basic beliefs, whereas the mind provides the complimentary discursive reasoning. (Goodbye Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind by Keith Devlin even suggests that the latest scientific research actually tends to support Pascal’s view of the importance of intuition in human thinking.⁹)

A unique Christian thinker

It is easy to appreciate the precision and clarity of Pascal’s brilliant and creative mind when observing its application in both science and the Christian faith. His genius clearly worked at both his scientific and his religious reflections. For Pascal, ultimately, the Christian faith’s best argument is how it ties faith and reason together. Here’s how he aptly described the balance: “If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious and supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.”

Over the next two weeks, I’ll wrap up this series with a discussion of Pascal’s famous wager.

Endnotes:
1. Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin Books, 1995), 34.
2. Thomas V. Morris, Making Sense of It All (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992), 129.
3. Pensées, 57.
4. Ibid., 121.
5. Fideism can also be defined in more positive terms as a view that recognizes the limits of human reason and emphasizes the importance of faith. If Pascal was a fideist, his fideism was quite moderate and balanced. See William J. Wainwright, Philosophy of Religion (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1988), 132–36.
6. Wainwright, 132–33.
7. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 4 (New York: Image Books-Doubleday, 1994), 165.
8. Copleston, 165–66.
9. Keith Devlin, Goodbye Descartes (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1997), 183.

Quote of the Week: Walter Martin, 2

No amount of argument or evidence conjured or amassed by the human mind can convince a skeptic that God has spoken, until God has been permitted to speak to him.

– Walter Martin, Essential Christianity (Santa Ana, CA: Vision House, 1975), 12.

Blaise’s Best Bet, Part 3: a Bold Apologist

Last week, I highlighted the remarkable mathematical and scientific accomplishments that distinguished the short life of French thinker Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). His ideas and inventions rightly earned him the title of “the first modern man.” But science and math weren’t the only fields Pascal impacted—his writings on theology and apologetics remain a treasure of historic Christian literature. In this post, I’ll describe Pascal’s conversion experience and involvement in the church. (See part 1 for an introduction to Pascal.)

A view of River Seine from the Eiffel Tower.

Whole-hearted convert to Christ
While Pascal was raised in what could probably be called a nominal Roman Catholic family, at age 31 he underwent a profound religious experience. He had his spiritual encounter while crossing the Seine River in Paris, reportedly during a storm. The nature of this encounter is unknown as Pascal apparently never described the specifics of the experience.

However, though Pascal told no one of this event, he did write a memorial to it. He carried this testimony with him the rest of his life—he even had the words sewn into his clothes! The memorial was discovered only after his death; a portion of it reads as follows:

Night of Fire
God of Abraham, God of Isaac,
God of Jacob, not
of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, certainty, heartfelt,
Joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ…
He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels…
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ…
Let me not be cut off
From him for ever!¹

From that night onward, Pascal devoted his life principally to his philosophical and religious writings. Some critics of religion claim that Pascal turned his back on science after his religious conversion and even repudiated his scientific accomplishments. They charge that religion always inhibits science.

Yet both of these assertions are incorrect, as pointed out by eminent historian of philosophy Frederick Copleston:

…in abandoning himself to God he [Pascal] did not renounce all scientific and mathematical interests as ‘worldly’; rather did he come to look on his scientific interests in a new light, as part of his service of God.²

Eventually Pascal became associated with the controversial Jansenist movement, centered in Port-Royal, France. While never actually identifying himself as a Jansenist, Pascal was sympathetic to at least some of their theological teachings.³ For example, he agreed that man’s fall into sin affected human nature radically and disabled man from doing anything pleasing to God, apart from God’s special grace. Pascal also believed that it is God who imparts the light of faith to mankind.

Pascal defended the Jansenist movement from its critics within the Catholic Church. In fact, Pascal’s The Provincial Letters, consisting of a witty and satirical polemic against the moral theology of the Jesuits (Society of Jesus), is renowned for its writing style; today The Provincial Letters is considered a literary masterpiece of French prose. Indeed, as the Encyclopedia Britannica says: “Pascal was embarrassed by the very abundance of his talents.”⁴

Christian apologist to the end
Pascal was preparing a book on Christian apologetics (Apologie de la religion chrétienne) for his skeptical friends when he became seriously ill. The affliction (possibly carcinomatosa meningitis stemming from a malignant ulcer of the stomach) was lengthy and caused Pascal terrible pain.⁵

Unable to work, he dedicated himself to helping the poor and to his devotional life. He died August 19, 1662, just 10 months shy of his 40th birthday—thus ended the life of one of the great pioneers of modern science and one of the most original Christian thinkers in history.

Pascal’s unfinished apologetic work (consisting mainly of organized and unorganized notes, outlines, and fragments) was subsequently published under the French title Pensées (pronounced “Pon-SAYZ” and roughly translated as “reflections”).⁶ While actually more of an outline of a book than a complete book, Pensées’ content is so profound that it remains a perennial bestseller. Two uniquely Pascalian themes introduced in the Pensées seem especially relevant today: the Christian solution to humanity’s paradoxical nature and the importance of intuition in human thinking.

Next week I’ll discuss what we in the twenty-first century can learn from Pascal’s views on these two themes.

Endnotes:
1. All direct Pascal quotations in this article are taken from the Pensées, trans. A.J. Krailsheimer, revised (New York: Penguin Books, 1995).
2. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 4 (New York: Image Books-Doubleday, 1994), 155.
3. Copleston, 156.
4. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., s.v. “Pascal.”
5. Ibid.
6. Thomas V. Morris, Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 2.

Quote of the Week: Kenneth Samples, 4

You may have an:
iPod,
iPhone,
iPad,
iTunes,
But only Jesus is the I Am (John 8:58).

–Kenneth Samples, Sunday school class, Christ Reformed Church

Blaise’s Best Bet, Part 2: Pioneering Physicist

Despite dying in 1662 at age 39, French philosopher Blaise Pascal left a mark on mathematics and science still present to this day. Part 2 of this series on Pascal’s intellectual legacy focuses not only on his practical contributions to math and science, but also on his influence on the philosophy of science. (See part 1 for an introduction to Pascal.)

Mathematician, physicist, inventor

Throughout his adult life, Pascal made important contributions to the field of mathematics. His fertile mind succeeded in laying the foundations for infinitesimal calculus, integral calculus, and the calculus of probabilities.¹ In fact, a major developer of calculus, German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), credited Pascal’s infinitesimal analysis with inspiring his own breakthroughs in calculus.² Pascal also contributed to the disciplines of geometry and number theory.

Pascal's triangle. Source: Extracted from Image:PascalSimetria.svg by User:drini with minor alterations by User:Conrad.Irwin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pascal%27s_triangle_5.svg)

Philosopher Richard H. Popkin says of Pascal, “[His] analysis of the nature of mathematical systems seems to be closer to 20th-century mathematical logic than that of any of his contemporaries.”³

Pascal was also considered a first-rate experimental scientist. He diligently practiced the then-emerging scientific method by rigorously testing, and verifying or falsifying his observations and conclusions. His most important scientific achievement may have come in his work as a physicist. Many credit his original experiments with air pressure and the nature of vacuums as laying the foundation for hydrodynamics and hydrostatics.⁴

Like all truly great inventors, Pascal’s technological intuition and productive imagination made him a man far ahead of his times. His creative technological experimentation resulted in the invention of the syringe, the vacuum cleaner, the hydraulic press, and in the development of the first public transportation system in Europe. His most famous invention, however, resulted from his attempt to help his father avoid the arduous task of calculating taxes.

Pascal became convinced that if a clock could calculate the hour, then a machine could also successfully perform mathematical calculations. He then proceeded to invent a mechanical adding device that was, essentially, the first digital calculator. Today Pascal’s calculator is considered one of the first applied achievements of the early scientific revolution and the precursor to the modern computer⁵ (hence, the reasons a computer-programming language was named after him).

Philosopher of science

Pascal possessed an astute understanding of and appreciation for the new science born and nurtured in seventeenth-century Europe.⁶ An avid supporter of Copernicus and Galileo’s views (still considered radical at that time), Pascal argued that respect for authority should not take precedence over analytic reasoning and scientific experimentation.

He explored the nature of the scientific method and of scientific progress, specifically addressing the importance of experimental data and the need to develop sound explanatory hypotheses. He asserted that as scientists continued to explore nature’s mysteries, newer and more updated hypotheses would and should replace presently accepted ones.

Pascal also recognized the limits of science. He believed that while scientific theories can be confirmed or falsified, they can never be absolutely established. This, as Popkin points out, is a position quite similar to the one advocated by Karl Popper, an eminent twentieth-century philosopher of science.⁷ Pascal was also aware that scientific progress had not changed human nature; he knew that the process by which human beings form their basic beliefs is never purely rational or empirical.

Contemporary Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft has said of Pascal, “He knew the power of science, but also its impotence to make us wise or happy or good.”⁸ Because of his forward thinking, some have called Pascal “the first modern man.”

But his innovative thinking extended beyond the empirical realm. In the forthcoming editions of this series, we’ll look at Pascal’s conversion to Christianity and his profound impact on apologetics and theology.

Endnotes:

1. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 4 (New York: Image Books-Doubleday, 1994), 154–55.

2. Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, s.v. “Blaise Pascal.”

3. Ian P. McGreal, ed., Great Thinkers of the Western World (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1992), s.v. “Blaise Pascal.”

4. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, reprint ed. (1972), s.v. “Blaise Pascal.”

5. McGreal, Great Thinkers of the Western World, s.v. “Blaise Pascal.”

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensées Edited, Outlined and Explained (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 9.

Quote of the Week: T. V. Morris

Ockham on the razor – ‘I would much rather have had a good after-shave named for me.’

– T. V. Morris, The Bluffer’s Guide to Philosophy (South Bend, Indiana: Diamond Communications, 1989), 45.

Blaise’s Best Bet, Part 1: an Introduction to Blaise Pascal

How many seventeenth-century Christians have modern-day computer languages named after them? Only one—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662).¹

Inventor of the first digital calculator, Pascal is described by many historians as one of the founding fathers of modern science. He is widely known as one of science’s most creative and intuitive thinkers, an intellectual pioneer who helped achieve major breakthroughs in theoretical mathematics and physics, as well as in practical invention.

What makes Blaise Pascal even more outstanding, for our purposes, is the vast amount of work he did as a Christian philosopher, prose writer, and above all as an imaginative and controversial defender of the Christian faith.

Pascal’s scientific achievements mark him as one of the most advanced thinkers of his time.² As a Christian thinker and writer, Pascal provided a penetrating and provocative analysis of Christianity’s broader world-and life-view.³ And he did this all within a brief earthly lifespan of 39 years.

Even in the twenty-first century, we have much to gain from surveying Pascal’s extraordinary life, scientific accomplishments, and his major philosophical, theological, and apologetics ideas. This six-part series (originally published as an article in RTB’s former magazine Facts for Faith) aims to provide just such a survey, starting with a brief history of Pascal’s formative years.

Homeschooled prodigy

Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont in Auvergne, France, on June 19, 1623. Blaise’s mother, Antoinette Begon, died when he was three years old, leaving him and his two sisters in the sole care of their father, Étienne.

At that time, Étienne was a gifted mathematician who served as a royal treasurer and tax official for the French government. But Étienne, a loving and wise man, soon resigned his position in order to stay home and educate his children. Thus, one of the great thinkers of Western civilization was educated exclusively at home by his father.⁴

Hoping to expose his offspring to as much cultural and intellectual stimulation as possible, Étienne moved his family to Paris. There, he created an intellectual incubator for his children by putting them into social situations with many of France’s leading intellectuals. Blaise, in particular, was taken to a weekly discussion group that featured many of the foremost scientists and mathematicians of the time.

While Blaise studied Latin and Greek as a child, he quickly invested his mental powers in mathematics. At age 16, he published an essay on the projective geometry of the cone. Young though he was, his intellectual genius was soon widely recognized—even the great French rationalist philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) acknowledged Blaise’s precocious accomplishments.⁵

This youthful achievement was just the beginning of Blaise Pascal’s extraordinary career. Next week I will delve into his mathematical and scientific accomplishments.

Endnotes:

1. Good introductory articles on Pascal’s life and thoughts can be found in New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., s.v. “Pascal”; and Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, s.v. “Blaise Pascal.”

2. An excellent analysis of Pascal’s mathematical and scientific achievements can be found in two of Richard H. Popkins’ articles in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, reprint ed. (1972), s.v. “Blaise Pascal”; and Great Thinkers of the Western World, ed. Ian P. McGreal (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1992), s.v. “Blaise Pascal.”

3. Two excellent works by contemporary Christian philosophers that have taken Pascalian themes and developed them into book-length apologetics treatments are Thomas V. Morris, Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992); and Peter Kreeft, Christianity For Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensées Edited, Outlined and Explained (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993).

4. Morris, Making Sense of It All, 3–14.

5. New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 452.

Quote of the Week: Robert M. Bowman Jr.

To say that the Trinity cannot be understood likewise is imprecise, or at least open to misinterpretation. Trinitarian theologians do not mean to imply that the Trinity is unintelligible nonsense. Rather, the point they are making is that the Trinity cannot be fully fathomed, or comprehended, by the finite mind of man.

– Robert M. Bowman, Jr., Why You Should Believe in the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989), 16.

 

My Daughter’s Brain-Mind

When my oldest child, Sarah (now 24 years old), was a toddler she loved to push the buttons on the keyboard of my very first computer. While I was working on the computer, she would come up to me and ask: “Daddy, push one button?” I would acquiesce to her wishes and then watch as her little fingers pecked away at the keys.

I had no idea then that my daughter was actually engaging in early vocational training. Today she works as a professional court reporter-closed captioner.

Sarah’s occupational tasks boggle my mind. She must listen to the spoken word and then translate it instantaneously into readable text on a screen via her shorthand steno machine—which looks more like a piano than a computer keyboard! (But, then again, I must remember that I nicknamed her “Sarah-Bellum” during her elementary school days.)

But it’s more than just Sarah’s proud father who is amazed by what goes on in the brain-mind of a court reporter-closed captioner. On the Neeson & Associates blog, court reporter Kimberley Neeson refers to a neuropsychologist’s testimony in a U.S. federal court.

Using stenography as an example, the neuropsychologist explains the complexity of the human brain, “Our brains are a miracle….And if you look at the court reporter right now, as an example, okay, this is a miracle in progress happening right before your eyes.”

According to the neuropsychologist, the information to be recorded must come through the stenographer’s ear into the temporal lobe, log itself into the language center, and get rerouted to the prefrontal cortex where it has to “hold” (because new information continues to come in). From there, the stenographer has to analyze, integrate, and synthesize the information then convert it into a different language (shorthand).

Considering all that a stenographer must do, it’s no wonder the neuropsychologist insists, that “no technology could replace the beauty of that brain and the miracle of that brain.”¹

Abductive Reasoning: Inference to the Best Explanation of the Human Brain-Mind

So what is the best explanation for the origin of the “miracle” human brain-mind as illustrated in the amazing work of the court reporter?

If we adopt the worldview of atheistic naturalism, then we must conclude that the conscious mind of human beings (with capacities such as those happening in the stenographer’s brain-mind) ultimately came from a source that is, in and of itself, mindless and nonconscious. So, given naturalism, the natural cause of a human’s mind, personhood, reason, and conscious awareness itself lacked all of these profound qualities. In other words, we, the personally conscious, can reflect back upon the nonpersonal, nonconscious universe, but it cannot reflect upon us. We can know the cosmos in a way that it cannot know us—making the effect exponentially greater than its cause.

One can see why the attempt to explain personal self-awareness from a naturalistic perspective has been called “the intractable problem of consciousness.” Naturalistic philosophers of the mind admit candidly they have no idea how personal consciousness emerged from nonconscious matter.² It is safe to say that consciousness is not an easy fit in the world of naturalism.

Does the Christian theistic worldview better account for consciousness? Philosopher Gregory Ganssle explains:

If God exists, then the primary thing that exists is itself a conscious mind of unlimited power and intellect. This mind has its own first-person perspective, and it can think about things. The notion that such a mind, if it creates anything, would create other conscious minds that have their own first-person perspectives and can think about things is not a great mystery.³

While naturalism faces “the hard problem of consciousness,”⁴ theism anticipates self-conscious awareness as a common feature. (This reasoning constitutes something more substantial than a god-of-the-gaps conclusion. Rather, it is an inference drawn from the worldview that fits better with the available and sufficient data, and, thus, the greater explanatory power.)

A Proud and Thankful Father

My daughter’s amazing skill as a stenographer makes me both proud and thankful. I’m proud of my daughter’s diligence and effort in accomplishing her career goal and also thankful to our Creator for gifting her mind in the first place.

Endnotes:
1. Neeson and Associates: Court Reporting and Captioning, Inc., “How Do They Do That?,” blog entry by Kimberley Neeson, November 18, 2011,  http://blog.neesoncourtreporting.com/2011/11/that/.

2. See Paul Copan, Loving Wisdom: Christian Philosophy of Religion (St. Louis: Chalice, 2007) 105.

3. Gregory E. Ganssle, “Dawkins’s Best Argument against God’s Existence” in Contending with Christianity’s Critics, eds. Paul Copan and William Lane Craig (Nashville: B&H Publishing), 81.

4. Ibid., 82.