Certainty and Pascal
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) has been a faithful companion from the “cloud of witnesses” for 26 years of my life. In many difficult and quiet moments I have thought of him. He was the voice from the past that ushered me out of a difficult chapter of my life and gave me a vision for what a living faith could be.
On this day after Pascal’s birthday, I wanted to share a couple of things that Pascal taught me about “certainty” and how it has made a difference in my life.
On November 23, 1654, when he was 31 years old, Pascal experienced what has come to be known as his “Night of Fire.” I quote the beginning here, but the whole thing Is worth reading (I’ll include a link in the comments):
“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob! not of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, certainty, heartfelt joy, peace.”
At the time of my life when I started reading Pascal in earnest, I had already had my “Night of Fire” – a moment when I experienced God’s overwhelming peace. It was a moment of transcendent certainty that He was there and that I knew Him much in the way that Pascal described Him – not as a God who was a theological idea, but the living God who had been faithful through the ages.
That time for me (which I talked about in a blog posting last year) became a moment to remember, but in the seven years from then until my time of studying Pascal, I came to realize its limitations. I could try to recall or even recreate that feeling of certainty. I even memorialized it with a stone that I picked up that day. Pascal did the same by keeping a copy of what he wrote sewn in his jacket pocket until his untimely death in 1662. But thinking back on an event does not duplicate the experience, much as we sometimes try.
What my study of Pascal’s life and writings taught me was that, despite these fleeting openings to the transcendent, the attempt to achieve a lasting certainty is an illusion. Living as a human being means living without guarantees. Every step we take, every decision we make, takes place under conditions of uncertainty. I had been convinced through my reading of the work of Christian apologists that I should be able to achieve certain knowledge about God and the reality of who Jesus was. Even now, there is a long train of arguments that seem to communicate that if we use our reason properly and investigate the evidence without preconceived notions (as if that could be achieved!) then we will unfailingly arrive at the truth – at certain knowledge. It never seemed to work that way for me. There was never enough evidence to make me feel as certain as I felt like people were saying that a Christian should be. And at times it made me despair.
Pascal helped me see things in a new way. For while he talked of certainty, his sense certainty has a different feel to it. He made clear that our use of reason falls short of the kind of certainty we want. As a mathematician, he knew the ways that geometry constructed proofs, which could contain a sense of certainty because it refused anything that was not built on clear definitions and previously demonstrated (proven) propositions. However, he also recognized that our world was not like this. The actions, interaction, the principles and evidence that one must sort through to come to a decision are not capable of being exhaustively cataloged. We cannot attain to intellectual certainty with our feeble, finite minds.
And so Pascal said, in one of his famous lines:
“The last proceeding of reason is to recognise that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. It is but feeble if it does not see so far as to know this.”
And thus, he says, in another place:
“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”
Pascal gave me the freedom to know that the ultimate goal is not certainty. If I am interested in a relationship with the living God, He is the Truth that i seek, not the mental assuredness of some set of statements or propositions.
On this day after Pascal’s birthday, I wanted to share a couple of things that Pascal taught me about “certainty” and how it has made a difference in my life.
On November 23, 1654, when he was 31 years old, Pascal experienced what has come to be known as his “Night of Fire.” I quote the beginning here, but the whole thing Is worth reading (I’ll include a link in the comments):
“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob! not of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, certainty, heartfelt joy, peace.”
At the time of my life when I started reading Pascal in earnest, I had already had my “Night of Fire” – a moment when I experienced God’s overwhelming peace. It was a moment of transcendent certainty that He was there and that I knew Him much in the way that Pascal described Him – not as a God who was a theological idea, but the living God who had been faithful through the ages.
That time for me (which I talked about in a blog posting last year) became a moment to remember, but in the seven years from then until my time of studying Pascal, I came to realize its limitations. I could try to recall or even recreate that feeling of certainty. I even memorialized it with a stone that I picked up that day. Pascal did the same by keeping a copy of what he wrote sewn in his jacket pocket until his untimely death in 1662. But thinking back on an event does not duplicate the experience, much as we sometimes try.
What my study of Pascal’s life and writings taught me was that, despite these fleeting openings to the transcendent, the attempt to achieve a lasting certainty is an illusion. Living as a human being means living without guarantees. Every step we take, every decision we make, takes place under conditions of uncertainty. I had been convinced through my reading of the work of Christian apologists that I should be able to achieve certain knowledge about God and the reality of who Jesus was. Even now, there is a long train of arguments that seem to communicate that if we use our reason properly and investigate the evidence without preconceived notions (as if that could be achieved!) then we will unfailingly arrive at the truth – at certain knowledge. It never seemed to work that way for me. There was never enough evidence to make me feel as certain as I felt like people were saying that a Christian should be. And at times it made me despair.
Pascal helped me see things in a new way. For while he talked of certainty, his sense certainty has a different feel to it. He made clear that our use of reason falls short of the kind of certainty we want. As a mathematician, he knew the ways that geometry constructed proofs, which could contain a sense of certainty because it refused anything that was not built on clear definitions and previously demonstrated (proven) propositions. However, he also recognized that our world was not like this. The actions, interaction, the principles and evidence that one must sort through to come to a decision are not capable of being exhaustively cataloged. We cannot attain to intellectual certainty with our feeble, finite minds.
And so Pascal said, in one of his famous lines:
“The last proceeding of reason is to recognise that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. It is but feeble if it does not see so far as to know this.”
And thus, he says, in another place:
“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”
Pascal gave me the freedom to know that the ultimate goal is not certainty. If I am interested in a relationship with the living God, He is the Truth that i seek, not the mental assuredness of some set of statements or propositions.
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