Blaise Pascal

Review: Beyond the Wager

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Cover image of "Beyond the Wager" by Douglas Groothuis

Beyond the Wager: The Christian Brilliance of Blaise Pascal, Douglas Groothuis. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514001783) 2024.

Summary: Argues that Pascal’s brilliance extends beyond his famous “wager” to his scientific, philosophic, and Christian insights.

Justly or unjustly, Blaise Pascal is often most known for his “Wager.” He argues that faith in God is in one’s best interest. If indeed God exists and rewards belief in him, this is of infinite gain while unbelief entails infinite loss. By contrast if one believes and God does not exist, the losses are relatively minimal. In Beyond the Wager, Douglas Groothuis not only defends the Wager but argues for the brilliance of Pascal, particularly as a Christian thinker, as revealed in Pensees.

Groothuis, a noted Christian apologist, has been reading Pensees since 1977. This work is a revision and expansion on an earlier work, On Pascal, published in 2003. Specifically, he adds chapters on miracles and prophecy pertaining to Christ, the excellence of Christ, “Christianity, Muhammad, and the Jews,” and on Pascals critique of politics. In addition, he includes a delightful imagined dialogue between Pascal and Descartes.

In introducing his subject, Groothuis proposes that Pascal is both well-known and unknown. He made contributions in math and science (as well as inventing the first prototype of mass transit, the omnibus). What is less understood is his brilliance as a Christian thinker. Pascal, without jettisoning reason, recognized that belief “involved submitting the core of one’s being to a supernatural being who calls one into a transformational encounter and ongoing engagement” in response to the heart’s perception of God. This is what is behind his statement that “the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” He understands Pascal as one who lived between the Medieval Age and the Enlightenment, both a devout Catholic and yet reformer in sympathy with the Jansenists. And he was both a philosopher who endorsed much of the Cartesian world, yet never separated science from God.

After a brief biography of Pascal, who died at 39, he explores how Pascal developed our understanding of both the nature and limits of science. Then he turns to the theological controversy he engaged on behalf of the Jansenists against the Jesuits. The Jesuits argued that divine choice and human freedom were incompatible and emphasized human choice. Pascal, anticipating the Protestant Reformers, argued for compatibilism, that external determination and personal choice were compatible.

Following this discussion, Groothuis turns to the Pensees, which will occupy the remainder of the book. Noting its fragmentary and incomplete nature, Groothuis calls attention to Pascal’s basic plan for the work. Pascal divided it in two parts: the wretchedness of man without God and the happiness of man with God. He defends it as an apologetic and delineates Pascal’s three orders of being: the body, the mind, and the heart. Each are essential to knowledge of God.

Subsequently, Groothuis deals first with Pascal’s arguments for God, including his sense of the limits of natural theology. Instead he shows how our human condition as “magnificent wretches” points us not only toward God but toward our need. He explores Pascal’s ideas in the light of skepticism about the hiddenness of God and how this relates to our fallenness. Groothuis show how Pascal argues from the human condition to our need for divine revelation and redemption. He then discusses Pascal’s treatment of miracles and prophecy to attest to the uniqueness of Christ as the Savior who atoned through the cross, addressing the human condition. All of this culminates in a chapter on the excellence of Christ, captured in Pascal’s description of Christ’s “offices” in 106 words. Groothuis discusses what this means for our spiritual life, our experience of suffering and for a thinking body of Christ.

Given the contemporary challenge of Islam, Groothuis shows how Pascal argued for the superiority of Christ and the Bible. Interestingly, he outlines Pascal’s argument for Christianity from Judaism and against Islam, that Jesus, not Muhammad, is the prophet foreseen by Moses. Then, Groothuis comes to the Wager, expositing Pascal’s framing of the Wager, showing how one must wager and addressing objections to the Wager. This is followed by a chapter summarizing Pascal’s critiques of culture and politics. Pascal had a penetrating view of the pomps and pretenses of politics and culture. He argues that Christ offers the only sane point in an insane world.

Groothuis concludes by commending Pascal as a guide. He is a mentor who exemplifies ardent love for Christ. Pascal’s grasp of the human condition helps us understand both ourselves and others. His literary gifts across multiple disciplines may motivate writers to excellence. As an innovative scientist, he models a philosophy of science reflecting a biblical worldview. His biting wit as he considers culture and politics challenges us to forsake worldly embraces of pomp and power for godliness. And Pensees is a goldmine of insight for apologists.

Douglas Groothuis makes a strong case for renewed attention to the life and writing of Blaise Pascal as a Christian thinker. He brings a framework to our reading of the fragmented and unfinished Pensees, helping us to recognize the intellectual as well as devotional brilliance of this work. He defends Pascal against his detractors, including the arguments against Pascal’s Wager. But beyond all this, his discussion of the thought of Pascal shows the far-reaching character of his brilliance. Now to find my copy of Pensees….

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

In a Quiet Room Alone

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Blaise_Pascal_Versailles

“Blaise Pascal Versailles” by unknown; a copy of the painture of François II Quesnel, which was made for Gérard Edelinck en 1691. – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.–Blaise Pascal

I’ve come across this quote several times recently. I suspect for many of us, Pascal sounds like a real downer. At first glance this statement seems to say we only have two alternatives: misery or sitting in a quiet room alone.

I wonder if part of what makes this hard is the sitting in quiet. What does it say that if we cannot sit for any length of time without sound or the visual cacophony of images and text that bombard us on phones, tablets, computers and flatscreens. Now even our cars have touch screens and blue tooth connections to our phones. I’m guilty of this as the next as I see the steady stream on twitter of natural disasters, human-made crises, and unspeakably horrible things that people do to each other. And I wonder at times if it makes us miserable–or at least miserably heavy with bearing a load of terrible knowledge that in other times only the God of the universe carried.

Then there is the challenge of just sitting. What is it in us that makes us so restless that we must always be doing something? In our restlessness are we running to or running from something? I can’t help but wonder if for many if it is the latter–running from the fear of our own insignificance, running from the fear of our own mortality. We are miserable in driven lives, and we often haven’t stopped long enough to even name what is driving us.

We don’t want to be alone. I suspect it is not just a fear of loneliness, which may sometimes be at its greatest in a crowd, but rather of who we will meet when we are alone. We are afraid to be alone with our thoughts and ourselves. Will we like and will we love what we find. Yet we are miserable to know that we alone, each of us, are indeed beloved.

We are not only miserable because we cannot sit in a quiet room alone. We inflict great misery on others in our own restlessness. We consume more than we need. We demand what others cannot give us. Sometimes our frustration flairs into destructive anger. Our restlessness turns into insatiable ambition that relentlessly drives others struggling under the burden of “never good enough.”

Would it be different if we spent some time sitting in quiet rooms alone? I don’t know, but it does make sense that miserable people cannot bring peace and wholeness and wellness into the broken places of the world. Psalm 46:10 says, “be still and know that I am God.” Some of my richest moments sitting alone have been when I’ve realized there is a God and it is not me and that I don’t have to manage the universe, invent my own significance, or wonder about my belovedness.

Sometimes, I’ve led others into stillness with these words, removing a word or phrase each time I say it until I simply say “be”. It can be a wonderful thing to connect with the being of my humanness. We aren’t human doings! It is really OK to take time just “to be”.

What I said in the beginning does indeed suggest two alternatives: misery or sitting in a quiet room alone. Except these are not equally dismal alternatives. The quiet room can be the gateway to joy and connectedness and belovedness. And that’s not so bad!