Pascal Quote
Posted by Bryce on March 29th, 2007As Ashley mentioned, I preached on Ecclesiastes the last 4 weeks. It’s a difficult book and it would be too depressing to spend much more than a month on it. In my preparation I read a bit of Pascal’s Pensees, which, I think, is an interesting companion volume to Ecclesiastes. I came across this quote from Pascal that I thought was worth sharing. Enjoy!
The Christian religion consists in two points. It is of equal concern to men to know them, and it is equally dangerous to not know them. And it is equally merciful of God to have given signs of both.
And yet they [unbelievers] take occasion to conclude that one of these points is not true from facts which should lead them to conclude the other…
And on this basis they take occasion to blaspheme against the Christian religion, because they know so little about it. They imagine that it simply consists in worshipping a God considered to be great and mighty and eternal; which is properly speaking deism, almost as remote from the Christian religion as atheism, its complete opposite…
But let them conclude what they like against deism, their conclusions will not apply to Christianity, which properly consists in the mystery of the Redeemer, who, uniting in Himself the two natures, human and divine, saved men from the corruption of sin in order to reconcile them with God in His divine person.
The Christian religion, then, teaches men these two truths; that there is a God whom men can know, and that there is a corruption in their nature which renders them unworthy of Him. It is equally important to men to know both these points; and it is equally dangerous for man to know God without knowing his own wretchedness, and to know his own wretchedness without knowing the Redeemer who can free him from it. The knowledge of only one of these points gives rise either to the pride of philosophers, who have known God, and not their own wretchedness, or to the despair of atheists, who know their own wretchedness, but not the Redeemer…
Let us herein examine the order of the world and see if all things do not tend to establish these two chief points of this religion: Jesus Christ is end of all, and the centre to which all tends. Whoever knows Him knows the reason of everything.
Those who fall into error err only through failure to see one of these two things. We can, then, have an excellent knowledge of God without that of our own wretchedness and of our own wretchedness without that of God. But we cannot know Jesus Christ without knowing at the same time both God and our own wretchedness.Therefore I shall not undertake here to prove by natural reasons either the existence of God, or the Trinity, or the immortality of the soul, or anything of that nature; not only because I should not feel myself sufficiently able to find in nature arguments to convince hardened atheists, but also because such knowledge without Jesus Christ is useless and barren. Though a man should be convinced that numerical proportions are immaterial truths, eternal and dependent on a first truth, in which they subsist and which is called God, I should not think him far advanced towards his own salvation.
The God of Christians is not a God who is simply the author of mathematical truths, or of the order of the elements; that is the view of heathens and Epicureans. He is not merely a God who exercises His providence over the life and fortunes of men, to bestow on those who worship Him a long and happy life. That was the portion of the Jews. But the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Christians, is a God of love and of comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom He possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and His infinite mercy, who unites Himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than Himself.
All who seek God without Jesus Christ, and who rest in nature, either find no light to satisfy them, or come to form for themselves a means of knowing God and serving Him without a mediator. Thereby they fall either into atheism, or into deism, two things which the Christian religion abhors almost equally.
Without Jesus Christ the world would not exist; for it would either have to be destroyed or be a kind of hell.
If the world existed to instruct man of God, His divinity would shine through every part in it in an indisputable manner; but as it exists only by Jesus Christ, and for Jesus Christ, and to teach men both their corruption and their redemption, everything in it blazes with proofs of these two truths.
What can be seen on earth indicates neither a total exclusion nor a manifest presence of divinity, but the presence of a God who hides himself. Everything bears this character…
He must not see nothing at all, nor must he see enough for him to believe he possesses God; but he must see enough to know that he has lost him. For, to know that one has lost something one must see and not see; and that is exactly the state in which he naturally is.