Blaise Pascal Part 2

I thought I could lay out Pascal's thought in two posts but it is not possible. The following is then the second installment exerpted from the First Things article by Edward T. Oakes. the entire article can be found at http://www.firstthings.com/article/1999/08/pascal-the-first-modern-christian.

Continuing on from the previous post:

Pride tells us we can know God without Jesus Christ, in effect that we can communicate with God without a mediator. But this only means that we are communicating with a God who is the [prideful] result that comes from being known without a mediator. Whereas those who have known God through a mediator know their own wretchedness. Not only is it impossible to know God without Jesus Christ, it is also useless . . . . [For] knowing God without knowing our wretchedness leads to pride. Knowing our wretchedness without knowing God leads to despair. Knowing Jesus Christ is the middle course, because in Him we find both God and our wretchedness.

  

Because he wants the Incarnation to be a cure appropriate to the disease and because the death of Christ on the cross is indeed a most radical cure, implying a serious illness, Pascal is usually categorized as a “pessimistic” thinker” he wants his readers to see how far advanced the disease infecting them really is. And certainly he can be unsparing in his portrayal of the fleshly corruption and frail constitution of that “bruised and crushed reed” that is the human body…. But in depicting human wretchedness Pascal never wallows in scenes of grim despair but simply faces the human condition as it is, universally. In fact … the real issue comes down not to the sheer immensity of human suffering but more crucially to the fact that human suffering only has to occur once for the issue of man’s predicament to be raised.

  

…. What Pascal would say, in other words, is that as long as we take the spectator’s part and view human suffering from the outside, then, no matter how happy our circumstances are at the moment, we must know ourselves fundamentally as wretched beings. “Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, …some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.”

  

Especially in this era of terrorists parading their hostages in front of the world’s television screens, or hijackers holding a pistol to the head of an airline pilot for all the world to behold, or high school students hiding under cafeteria tables while their friends are being murdered by their own peers, we immediately recognize the truth of what Pascal is saying. But Pascal does not intend to force his readers to wallow in this misery. Rather, his depiction of the human condition is meant only to create the first opening through which we hear God’s response to that misery. … Pascal firmly believed that “God owes us nothing” …. And yet … God’s answer is not nothing. But that answer cannot even be heard if we do not admit the realities of the human condition in all their bleakness. Even as spectators, we suffer what we are forced to see. Television screens force us to become spectators of appalling suffering, but the situation they reveal is rooted in everyone’s nature. There is no escape from its pathos, only balm for our wounds if we are willing to accept the astringency of the ointment.

  

Of course, not many want that kind of painful healing, making it well “nigh inevitable that we will avail ourselves of distractions from our woes". Few words, in fact, are more crucial to Pascal than divertissement , usually translated as “diversion” or “distraction.” One of Pascal’s most famous observations, found in nearly every anthology of quotations, holds that “all the misfortunes of men derive from one single thing, their inability to remain at repose in a room.” …Pascal’s remark actually forms the opening gambit of his Christian apologetics, for he knows that “being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance,” and being not too fond of the medicine of Christ on offer either, “men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.” “Pessimist” that he is, however, Pascal refuses to let us evade God’s answer to our plight just because we would rather not advert to our distress in the first place. “That is why men are so fond of hustle and bustle,” he says. “That is why prison is such a fearful punishment; that is why the pleasures of solitude are so incomprehensible.”

  

This craving for distraction is so overriding and exigent that for Pascal it actually constitutes the driving force of ambition…. We crave distractions because we do not want to face the realities of the human condition. And because we are unwilling to admit our despair, we perforce cannot face the thought of applying the appropriate balm to heal these unacknowledged wounds. Consequently we hurl ourselves into an endless round of diversions, jobs, hobbies, etc., all to avoid our nature as thinking reeds:

   "Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our Author and our end. But what does the world think about? Never about that, but about dancing, playing the lute, singing, writing verse, jousting and fighting, becoming a king, without ever thinking what it means to be a king or to be a man."