462 BLAISEPASCAL
under the influence of the Jansenists, a group of devout Catholics, Pascal still found
himself without direction. On the night of November 23, 1654, Pascal had a
remarkable second conversion experience, the description of which he sewed inside
his coat:
...From about half past ten in the evening until about half past midnight.
Fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, joy, certainty, emotion, sight, joy
God of Jesus Christ....
Oblivious to the world and to everything except GOD....
This is life eternal, that they might know you,
the only true God, and him whom you sent,
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ
I have cut myself off from him for ever. I have fled from him, denied
him, crucified him.
Let me never be cut off from him.
He can only be kept by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Sweet and total renunciation.
Total submission to Jesus Christ and my director.
Everlasting joy for one day’s tribulation on earth.
I will not forget thy word.Amen.*
Pascal committed himself to living out his faith by doing good works. He wrote a
remarkable series of Provincial Lettersdefending the Jansenists against the Jesuits.
Pascal also worked on one of the first regularly scheduled public transit services,
with profits for the poor; the line became operational shortly before Pascal’s death in
- But Pascal’s most important mature work was his Apology for the Christian
Religion,the completed portion of which is now known as the Pensées(Thoughts).
Collected and published after Pascal’s death at age 39, the Penséesis considered a
French classic—despite its fragmentary character. Touching on numerous areas of
religious and philosophical thought, the Penséesportray humanity “engulfed in
the infinite immensity” of the universe. Unlike Descartes, Pascal claims that
reason is insufficient to find certainty. Although the cogito(“I think”) is indeed
one of God’s greatest gift to humanity and “all our dignity consists...in thought,”
there is nevertheless something more important than thought and reason: the heart.
As Pascal put it, “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”
As for knowledge of God, Pascal claims that reason is utterly insufficient for the
enterprise. Against Descartes, St. Thomas Aquinas, and others, proofs for God’s
existence and the Christian truth “are not of such a nature that they can be said to be
absolutely convincing.” There is always “both evidence and obscurity [enough] to
enlighten some and [to] confuse others.” Given that one can never knowif there is a
God, how can one liveone’s life? According to Pascal, one can never have true
knowledge of anythinguntil one has submitted to it—and so there can be no true
knowledge of God until one has submitted to God as revealed in Jesus Christ. Is
*“The Memorial,” Blaise Pascal,Pensées and Other Writings,translated by Honor Levi (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 178.
