Graham Tomlin - What can we learn from Blaise Pascal?

And uh okay, by that time. morning maybe you've been up for two, three hours. Everything you've done that day has been touched by the

Hello and welcome to Talking Theology, the podcast of Cranmer Hall in Durham. My name's Nick Moore, and in this episode we are speaking with Graham Tomlin, formerly Bishop of Kensington. and uh we're talking with him about his new book on Blaise Pascal, The Man Who Made the Modern World. I've got it here. I've been enjoying reading this uh recently. Graeme, welcome to Talking Theology.

Hell, thank you very much for inviting me. I'm looking forward to the conversation. Thanks very much. Graham, could you uh introduce yourself, tell us a bit about you, your your editor in chief at Seen and Unseen. Tell us a bit more about what that'd be. Yeah, well just a bit about me. I um I've spent most of my ministry in academic life. Um I was um teaching at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford for many years, went on to head up to um

Rydw i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i'i wedi'i wedi'i'i wedi'i wedi'i'i wedi'i wedi'i wedi'i wedi'i wedi'i And um a big part of what I what I do it uh over the last three years has been to set up this new

initiative this new kind of based on a website called seenandunseen.com um which in a way is trying to trying to bring the wisdom of two thousand years of Christian thinking about life and God and society and humanity and all of that. And and and showing how that can interpret what's going on in our world today. So seen and unseen.

has um I don't know, five, ten articles every week, all looking at some aspects of contemporary culture or what's happening in the news or stories that that that everyone's talking about and trying to bring a Christian wisdom to that. Uh we also run a number of podcasts where we're interviewing sort of interesting people about faith, spirituality and um we have one called Reenchanting, which is a really good podcast which tries to think how how might a Christian faith re enchant or other

sort of jaded secular world as it were. And so um so yeah, it's been a really fun project to be part of and um and just trying to to to to articulate that kind of rich Christian vision of the world and give a bit of a commentary on what's happening in our world from a Christian perspective. That's great. And today we're focusing on your biography of Blaise Pascal, which was released uh just a short one.

Byddwch chi'n gwybod sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut sut Yeah, well I I I think I first read the Pensee of Pascal when I was a teenager is the kind of thing that you know, angst ridden teenagers do and you know I kinda did. And I remember it made a bit of an impression on me at the time. And then I read it again later on when I was in the process of trying to work out. I'd just done a theology degree, was thinking about doing postgraduate

uh an M Phil which became a PhD and I think well what do I do it on? And um I I'd focused on a theme which was the theology of the cross, particularly in Martin Luther and and bl and um St. Paul. The idea that the cross not doesn't just

show us how we are reconciled to God but also says something about the nature of God. And uh I was kinda looking for another conversation partner and I I was reading the Ponse at the time and it suddenly struck me that actually Pascal had quite a lot to say about the cross and about Jesus Christ and about this as a means and a way of of uh of of kind of knowing who God was, God is. And so, um so I I I started I wrote part of my P PhD on on Pascal.

that one day I'd love to come back to to write a biography of him. Now, in one sense I had to kind of put put Pascal to one side'cause I needed a job, um, and basically within theological curricula there's much more demand for Luther than there is for Pascal. So I ended up teaching a lot on Luther in the Reformation period. Um, but um and I remember a couple of years ago, uh um suddenly suddenly dawning on me that

twenty twenty three was the four hundredth anniversary of of Pascal's birth and I thought, Oh gosh, I've got to write this book now. Uh this was a bit in about twenty twenty one. Then I suddenly thought, hang on, there's no way I'm gonna write a and publish a book in eighteen months, but it sort of seeded the idea in my mind.

So I approached a publisher, they seemed to like the idea and so I kind of um went back to Pascal and did a lot more work and reading around it and um said the product is this book today.

That's great. And the you've first encountered Pascal the theologian, but the subtitle of the book is The Man Who Made the Modern World. Um tell us a bit more about that broader sense of which Pascal contributed to the world as we

As you say, it's a bit of a maybe controversial claim that Pascal is the man who made the modern world. And I suppose what I mean by that is that Um, uh you know, he he's not just a theologian, he's not just a philosopher, but actually his fingerprints are all over so many of the things that we

We kind of assume today. So if you think I mean, just for example, you you may you imagine you you get up in the morning and y you maybe look at your watch, see what time it is, you go downstairs, you get your breakfast and while you're having your breakfast you open your laptop, you you know, check the weather, you check the news, do a few emails, maybe you get a letter through the post about your

your insurance premiums for your life insurance or your car insurance or whatever it might be. Um, you know, you y you go out and you get a bus to go into work and you sit down at your desk and uh okay, by that time, nine o'clock in the morning, you maybe have been up for two, three hours. Now everything you've done that day has been touched by Pascal. And that's because, um, so for example he was one of the first people in Europe to wear his timepiece on his wrist as opposed to in his pocket.

Um he uh w the computer, well he he built this extraordinary calculating machine when he was around nineteen to help his father who was a tax official and trying to get to g to help him do these calc these complicated calculations and it was one of the first

functioning m mechanical calculating machines in Europe and very often when the story of the c modern computer is told, uh Pascal's the the Pascaline is often mentioned in that story. In fact there was a computer language of the nineteen seventies called Pascal.

Um some people may remember. So you know he has a hand in that story, you know, weather. Um, you know, he did a lot of experiments on air pressure and uh when people tell the story of the emergence of the barometer, uh Pascal's name often comes into that. Um, insurance, he basically was in invented along with Pierre de Fermat, of Fermat's last theorem fame.

um probability theory. And of course, insurance is based on probability. It's based on, you know, how probable it is that you're going to live a certain length of time or how how how up how probable it might be that you crashed your car or whatever. And basically he invented Probability theory. Then the last thing is he invented buses.

Mm-hmm. Um little known fact about Pascal. He was one of the first he uh towards the end of his life he i in he uh came up with this scheme to help particularly the poor people of Paris to um to to get across the city. And he set up a company, got his friends to invest in it, um, had this idea that, you know, i that uh okay, the rich could get across Paris fine'cause they had their carriages, but what about poor people?

And so we had this idea that if you had a carriage that went from point A to point B and stopped at various points along the way, people could get on and get off, pay a small amount of money, and that would transport them across the city. So it really is the first

proper urban transportation system in Europe. So buses. So it was just just just that. So and there's many more you could say as well, but he had his fingerprints over so many of the things that we uh we just assume as part of life today.

Mae'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'r hynny. Yeah. So you've introduced us to to Pascal, the scientist and the mathematician, as well as the theologian. Um, tell us a bit about how he held those things together. Yeah, no, you're right. He's say he and it was always a bit of a struggle for him, I think, because he

Uh in his early days he was seen as a bit of a genius when it came to mathematics and geometry and emerging into sort of physics and and science. And in fact during his lifetime that's primarily what he was known for. He wasn't really known as a theologian or a philosopher.

Uh in fact many of his buts of the Ponsee was really only published after he died. Um, even the works that he did do, the Provincial Letters, which were a kind of series of letters, but were a kind of satire on the Jesuits that was done uh anonymously. Um so he was really known as a scientist. He was known as a mathematician. But he had a

um a a profound Christian faith. He was brought up within a fairly conventional Catholic family. His family was influenced quite early on in his sort of teenage years by A movement known as Jansenism, which was a kind of um kind of austere Rwy'n meddwl yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r.

uh form of Christian faith that his family was sort of sort of converted to, his sister particularly was very strongly attracted to it. Um and uh he was too. And and that was a bit of a tussle for him because the Jansenists always said, Well you must leave the world behind. you must sort of shun the world and l you know, go into the spiritual light

and there was a kind of convent in Paris, so it had a house just outside to the the West called Port Royal, which his sister had joined and many of his friends were part of it. And many people kind of expected him to kinda go in that direction. But he also had this sense of calling too the the life of a scientist, the life of a mathematician. And it was always a little bit of a struggle for him throughout his life. Now I think the way eventually I think he he um

He holds these things together. He's he's not one of these people who thinks that by looking at science, science will lead you to God. He doesn't really think that. He doesn't think that by looking at the world you can find all kinds of evidence for God in the natural world. those kind of evidentialist apologetics people who, you know, look into Pascal, they'd be quite disappointed. They don't find many arguments that Pascal says

Well just look at the wonder of the world. You know, you you will see this sense of design and therefore g it leads you to God. So he's not really a great fan of intelligent design. In fact he says says something really quite different from that. He says Actually when you when you look at the world Um he says basically what you see is, when he says this, he says, you know, what can be seen on Earth?

indicates neither the total absence nor the manifest presence of divinity, but the presence of a hidden God. That's a big theme for Pascal, the idea of a hidden God. So when you look at science, when you look at the world, you don't actually see God on the f surface of things. If there is a god there, he must be a hidden god. So that's what science tells you. It tells you if there is a God there is a hi there is a hidden god.

But then he makes the move of thinking, Well, w what what religion or philosophy talks about a hidden God? And he says, Well, actually Christianity does because when you think of the way in which Christianity presents God, it says, Well God is God's primary revelation is in the person of Jesus Christ. But even with Jesus Christ, God is hidden.

It's quite possible to meet Jesus and shake him by the hand and entirely miss the fact that you were talking to God. So in other words, within Jesus, within the prime revelation of God in Jesus Christ, God is hidden. Uh he's also a good Catholic, he believes that God

makes himself available to us in the bread and wine of the Mass and he says, even there God is hidden. It looks like bread and wine, tastes like bread and wine, but, you know, God is really present in it. So he sort of sees these two bits of the jigsaw fit together, what science tells you

Which is not that there's obviously a God there, he doesn't think that, but there's a th if there is a God he must be a hidden God. But he also says that's actually what Christian faith proclaims and that that those two sort of fit together. So I think that's really how he how he marries the two in his thinking.

So he challenges that science versus faith conflict narrative that we're very familiar with today. Um in his work and his thinking, he also challenges it very clearly in his life. Um at the same time there's there's something in the biography as as you uh uh tell it that as he went on in his life, his the seriousness of his Christian faith did in some ways lead him to distance himself from his scientific or or mathematical. Could you tell us a bit more about about that? Yeah and and

I mean his sister Gilbert is a is an older sister who was kind of deeply influenced by the Jansenist movement. When she wrote a kind of Life of Her Brother. And she tends to emphasise she tends to kind of view it through the lens of thinking, well, you know, when when Pascal became much more serious about his Christian faith, which happened after sixteen fifty four, after an event which we'll probably talk about in a moment, Um, you know, he gave up science altogether.

But I see that's not actually the case. There's all kinds of things that he does after that. There's experiments that he does on on you know so geometry and and um and mathematical works that he does. He does a lot of his work on probability with um Pierre de Ferma after that date. So it's not actually true that he gave up all his scientific and his mathematical work. I think what it did do is it changed his priorities.

And so from as he became more serious as a Christian, he found two particular new things came onto his horizon. One was uh a an intense desire to communicate with his kind of sophisticated urban, you know, urbane friends in Paris. Uh how how how might I convince them that they will find their true happiness in God? Not in playing tennis and gambling and womanising.

being a sort of witty man about town, all that kind of thing. You know how how can I how can I persuade them to take God seriously? So he that's when he begins to write the the what became the Ponsee, this great apology for Christian faith. Um the other thing he gets very fascinated by is the poor. Uh he finds as his Christian faith takes more deep root in himself

Uh he he wants to serve the poor. And he says, you know, I love poverty because Jesus loved it. I love wealth because it affords me the possibility of helping the poor. And th actually th the buses experiment basically came out of his desire to to to think how can I help the poor of Paris? Paris had doubled in size during the first half of the seventeenth century, which was fine for the rich. But it was a problem for the poor, and that's precisely why he

was thinking up uh, you know, innovative solutions as to how to help the poor. So in some ways you can see there the kind of marrying of the two, the entrepreneurial kind of you know, problem solving kind of mathematician working alongside the deeply, profoundly grace affected Christian and it led to buses, putting it that way.

So um I think that's right. It so it's not that he'd gave up his his worldly uh well supposedly sort of worldly sort of scientific career, but I think they just found a different it found a different place in his life. It was still there, but it wasn't really the most important thing for him.

Um from that. Yes, yes. And a related uh tension in his writing is the tension between faith and reason. Uh he famously has this phrase the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing Uh I've seen that on social media profiles, perhaps j justifying the latest love interest or something. That's not quite what Pascal meant by it. How did he understand that faith-reason relationship?

Yeah, well you're absolutely right. It's it's a it's a common phrase. Pascal has a lot of common phrases that we all kinda know about, you know, the god of the philosophers The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing. And what he doesn't mean is romantic love. He's not really contrasting the emotion and reason at that point. Mm. What he means by the heart is a kinda deep

kind of instinct that we have that certain things are true that we cannot prove. So he thinks he s he s he says things like concepts like number or time or space or God. These are things you cannot prove, you can't logically argue your way towards them. You simply have to kind of assume that they're there. If you assume there is such a thing as number, you can start doing mathematics. If you s assume there is such a thing as space and matter you can start doing physics.

if you s assume there's such a thing as God, uh you can start doing theology. You can start living your life. And so he he puts in this this category, these these certain things that are only grasped by the heart. He says, you know, God God is a be God is is such that can only be grasped by the heart, not by reason.

And so when, you know, his contemporary Rene Descartes comes up with a kind of argument for the existence of God, which he does within the discourse of method and with his meditations, Pascal is not really convinced at all. Um he just thinks that that that is sort of

You know, cutting across categories. And so Pascal has this um on the one side he's a scientist, he believes in reason, he believes in uh argumentation, he believes in experiments and how experiments can really get you to the truth of the way things are in the world. Uh he thinks that reason, experimentation really is really valuable within the world of physics. He just doesn't think it's much use when it comes to metaphysics.

Because God is a different kind of being. God is not a an object within the world that you can put into a test tube and you can analyze. you can't do an experiment on God in the way that you could about air pressure or about the existence of a vacuum. Mm. And so um so he makes this quite strict distinction between, if you like, physics and metaphysics, between theology and

and um geometry and mathematics. And he says reason has a real place in one, but not so much in the other. Now, it's worth just adding one caveat to Um Pascal is sometimes accused of being a fideist. In other words, you just have to believe that there's no reason behind Christian faith. He does actually think there are good reasons for believing in God.

He thinks there are good reasons that push you in that direction. But the other thing he wants to say about reason is that our reason is compromised. Uh we are fallen beings, and our f the fallenness of humanity touches our reason. And therefore we're not able to reason straight because our reason is twisted by our desires, by our hearts. And that's another w sense in which he uses the word heart.

Uh in other words our our desire we know we tend to reason ourselves towards conclusions that we want to be true. You know, we believe what we want. We rationalise. We use the word, don't we? Yeah. Precisely, that's right. Yeah. And so he you know, he's deeply Augustinian in his anthropology. You know, he gets that from St. Augustine, which is his great theological hero. You know, that our desires Um unless grace begins to f kindle in us a a true desire for God and what is it.

um, you know, w the the things of God, then our our desires will always twist our reason in the wrong direction. So I think those are the sort of things he says about faith and reason. He has a real space for faith and for reason, but he configures them in a particularly important way.

And just to pick up there, you mentioned Rene Descartes, who's sometimes known as the father of modern philosophy. It's incredible to think of these two figures walking around Paris at the same time and they did actually meet, didn't they? I don't know if you want to say any more about their relationship or Yeah, that's right. I mean Descartes was uh a little bit older than than Pascal and um uh

Pascal came to Descartes' attention kind of early on. Pascal's father was a bit of a figure in the kind of intellectual circles of Paris at the time. He wrote a uh bit of a critique of Descartes's um discourse in method, which didn't endear Descartes to the Pascal family. Uh he also then heard about this young upstart physicist Pascal, who was writing um in doing the experiments and doing proofs and mathematical and geom geometrical proofs. And um

In fact, they're quite similar, Descartes and Pascal. They're quite proud. They're both quite there's a touch of arrogance in both of them. They're both brilliant and they kinda knew it. And so you when they when they met it probably wasn't gonna go well. Not just because their characters were quite too similar, but also because they did have very different approaches to to things. So they didn't meet at one time, as you say. He um

Uh there's a particular weekend when Descartes in P in in uh in Paris he goes to visit Pascal. Pascal was ill at the time. In fact, Pascal was was ill for most of his life. Uh he once said he never had a day's a day in his adult life without some kind of pain, um which led to his early death. But so he goes to visit Pascal. Pascal's ill, he's lying in bed, and Descartes visits twice over the weekend.

And uh they kinda talk about some things as one or two with their friends nearby who report the conversation, but it was a bit awkward. And Descartes starts to lecture Pascal on what he should do to get better. And you know what it's like when you're ill and someone comes along and tells you what to be doing. It's not not a great bedside manner. So

Uh but it didn't go that well. Um so there was an awkward in the relationship and but they had a very different approach to things. So there's one point in the Ponsee where Pascal says of Descartes And I think that summarizes what Pascal thinks about Descartes. So um Descartes in the Discourse and Method is that um you know the reason why he's thought of as the founder of modern philosophy is because of his sort of great

Statement Cogito ergo som je pense donc je suis, I think, therefore I am. Which is what he came to through a process of radical. So Descos Descartes, you know, at one particular time um does this mental experiment where he can he tries to doubt everything that comes into his mind until he finds something he can't doubt. And the thing he can't doubt is the fact that he's done. In other words the fact that he's thinking, so he said, That's who I am, I'm a thinking self, the thinking thing.

And then he he he's then he does a a bit of a kinda complicated argument which is a version of Anselm's ontological argument which says, Well the first thing that the thinking self perceives outside itself is God. Um and there he he comes to a kind of i uh uh an idea of the existence of God at that point. But it's a kind of Descartes doesn't talk about Jesus very much. Um it's a kind of God who is a philosophical argument.

And um uh and he he thinks he's found a again a proof for God. Now and what Pascal says is no one number one, uncertain. He actually thinks that kind of uncerta sort of certainty is impossible. He thinks it's fine for a while but psychologically it doesn't really work because, you know, it's okay today, but then tomorrow you might think of a different argument. Or you're you know, you might have a bad stomach or your fly buzzing around your ears and your reason goes out of your window.

So he thinks it's uns that sort of certainty is impossible to find, that kind of rational certainty. But also he says it's useless, in the sense that that kind of belief in the God of the philosophers, as he talks to it, doesn't really doesn't really affect you, it doesn't change your life.

It's like a kind of box you tick, yes, I believe in there as a single God and get on with the rest of your life. And Pascal's not interested in that kind of belief in God. For him, God is a much more kind of visceral live presence, you know, approaching you, demanding allegiance, and um bringing a kind of depth of happiness and joy that you could never find in any other way.

And so uh really that's what I think he thinks of uh of Descartes. He thinks, you know, you can't have that kind of certainty and actually even if you did, it's not much use'cause it doesn't change your heart. It doesn't change you. And so he's not that interested in that kind of religion.

Hmm. That's a wonderful little note from him. Uh and I remember another one where he says, Luther, everything except for the truth and you think what would what would happen if people discovered our little notes to self and published them after our death? Um so if Descartes is a kind of father of the um analytical philosophy a father of modernity. You suggest that Pascal is perhaps a father of postmodernity. Could you unpack what you mean by that?

Yeah, I think um I think it's partly because Pascal I think speaks to the the kind of postmodern condition probably better than Descartes. Mm-hmm. I think, you know, where we are in culture today, we're not well, I mean, you know, you do get the kind of Richard Dawkins of this world who think that Science is the only only way of really knowing anything.

Um and you can master the world, you can understand the world through the scientific method. And that's kind of like Descartes in some way. And so there are those sort of Cartesian you know, followers in of the present. But there are many people I think today who kind of feel like that sort of certainty isn't possible. And the postmodern um instinct is one that actually says um you know that um that

uh you know, we don't have that sort of certainty. Um i you know, the Enlightenment was a very situated thing. There are many different perspectives, many different truths that are there. Not not that's not what Pascal thinks. But he does but there's that kind of that sense of we cannot find that sort of logical certainty I think is true of Pascal and that's true of the uh of of postmodernism as well. Second thing I think is that Pascal is quite he he's aware of the of the

the ambiguity of human life and the frailty of it. Uh one of the differences I think between Descartes and Pascal is that um um Descartes doesn't really take on board the um the kind of strangeness of what it is to be human. He's very confident about the greatness of humanity, you know, this extraordinary capacity we have to understand the world and to master it through human reason. And Pascal gets that.

But Pascal also emphasizes the other side of the equation, which is that we yes we are created with these extraordinary abilities to understand the world, but we're also deeply fallen, we're flawed, we're We're broken. In fact, he he says at one point, you know, humanity is the glory and the refuse of the universe. And you kinda have to understand both of those things. If you're to understand humankind.

He says, you know, we are kind of freaks of nature. Um he th thinks that we are we're kind of displaced. We don't really belong in the world in the quite the way that we that Descartes probably thinks we do. We actually we kind of feel uncertain here.

There's the other thing about Pascal I think is that he's he's writing you know s fairly soon after both the microscope and the telescope have been invented. And so the telescope in particular, and you know, now And in the in the mid seventeenth century, you know, people could look into the skies and see how tiny this planet was within the vastness of space and how minutely We as human beings are as tiny specks of life on a very obscure planet in one little corner of the solar system.

And that solar system is one part of a vast great um reality beyond that. And um and you know, and Pascal writes about that. He says, you know, the um The eternal silence of infinite space terrifies me. As he looks into the star the stars and the skies, that's not a comforting thing for him, as it might have been for sort of Luther and Calvin and Aquinas before him. For him this is a slightly terrifying thing. Um you know the smallness, the insignificance of humanity.

And so he gets that in a way that I think m very m is a kind of very modern or perhaps postmodern thing. So I I think he he appeals to the kind of modern or postmodern

experience probably better than Descartes does. But I think the other thing to say about that is that yes, he is in some ways the father of probably one of the fathers of postmodern thinking, but it's also true he's not just that. And I think by this device that he talks about both the greatness And the frailty of humanity, the grandeur and the miser, the the greatness and the kind of wretchedness of humanity.

Um he actually tries to tread a a careful line between these two s two philosophical um kind of traditions, the rational rationalist and the sceptical tradition, which are w exemplifies in his own line by you know Descartes on the rationalist side and Montaigne, the uh kind of sixteenth century French moralists on the other side, great sceptic of European history.

And he says, Well actually well, Christian faith shows you a way through that, that it's not just about our greatness, as Pascal would s as as Descartes would say, it's not just about our frailty and our weakness. As Mont Montaigne would say, both are true, and they're explained by this Christian doctrine that we are created and fallen at the same time, and redeemed by Christ.

Wonderful. Um now in the book you give a whole chapter. To uh what's called the Night of Fire, one of the most significant events of Pascal's life, and you refer forward and back to it throughout. Tell us a bit about what happened, how do we know about it, and how do you think it shaped Pascal? Yeah. Well it happened on November the twenty third, sixteen fifty four. This was a time in Pascal's life where he had been he'd become quite famous as a

Scientist, mathematician, he was kind of celebrated amongst the salons of Paris. He was going around, had all these very sort of, you know, sophisticated friends and

In some one one sense life was going pretty well in kind of worldly terms for him. Um but at the other hand side he had his sisters who were both more devoted to this Jansenist movement, involved in the the the communities of Port Royal, which is the kind of center of of Jansenism, which was a sort of deeply spiritual movement, all about austerity and about seriousness in the Christian life.

And so he's kinda torn a little bit between these two worlds and in does he goes through this time of um wondering what what what's the future gonna be. And anyway. What seems to have happened is that on on this particular night, September the twenty third, fifty sixteen fifty four, he was alone in his room in Paris. And uh he would he started to pray and suddenly had this extraordinary, overwhelming experience of the presence of God.

And this experience lasted about two hours, um from ten thirty in the evening till half past midnight. And um he he never told anybody about it at the time. Uh you kept it secret. And the only reason we know about it is because he actually wrote at the time a kind of poem a description of this um this experience, and he folded it up in a bit of paper, he then wrote out another version, something more some tidy version, and put them both into his In in a l in the lining of his jacket.

And every time he changed his jacket he would put it into the new jacket and so on. And when he died, uh the servant who was preparing his body for burial was um cutting open the jacket and suddenly thought, Oh, there's something something there, what is it? And opened it up and out came this bit of paper.

And when his family and friends read it they thought, Oh well, uh that kind of makes sense because something shifted around that time in Pascal's life. And so um so th th so this was an e extraordinary experience of of of his. And um Uh I think the the the effect that it had upon him was to kind of radically I mean it as I said earlier on, it didn't mean he shut down entirely his scientific and mathematical work, but it put them into a different perspective.

That they were still important to him, but they weren't the most important thing. I think he sensed there was a an element of intellectual pride in him, um and that this encounter with Christ Um uh in with the God of Jesus Christ, was very significant in in shifting his the centre of gravity of his life from himself as like this sort of great celebrated figure.

um towards the God of Jesus Christ. In fact one of the things that you notice about the p the the uh the memorial which is this poem that describes it is the is the focus upon this is the God of Jesus not the God of the philosophers, not Descartes' God. This is not the God he's encountered. He hasn't just come to some logical belief in the existence of God. He's met this God of Jesus Christ who has come to

and has addressed him. And um and so I think what what what what happens is that he does shift his priorities from that twin up time onwards. Um he has this particular focus on how does he how is he going to convince his sceptical friends about Christian faith. And so he starts writing um what he intended to become a great apology for the Christian faith. And he never finished it.

And so what he would do is he would write little notes, um, on bits of paper. Some of them are a line, some of them are a paragraph, some of them are like like longer essays. Uh he died age thirty nine in sixteen sixty two, just eight years later, um, without being able to finish this thing. And so when his family gathered these bits of paper together they thought, Well what what do we do? and they said, Well, we'd better publish them and so they published them as the

the Ponsee, the thoughts of Monsieur Pascal on religion and various other subjects. And so when you buy a copy of the Ponsee today, you buy this sort of collection of notes that he's written. And scholars, as you can imagine, are great fun in working

order they would have come up come come up with. So I think that's one of the great i um results of the Night of Fire is the Ponse. Um there's also he gets involved in the debates between the Jansenists and the Jesuits, and he writes these things called the Provincial Letters, which are still he discovered a a real

real um ability for comedy. There are not many scientists who are who are c comedians and philosophers and so he writes this this satire on the Jesuits, which is still genuinely funny today, even if the And, you know, this this passion for the poor became a really s big thing for him. So um so it just changes the the landscape for him. And um those I think are some of the effects of this this particularly important experience for him.

And that that sense of public engagement is really significant, isn't it? That he was writing the provincial letters into a church controversy, the apology for people he could could could see, he who he knew, who he thought really needed to be convinced fully into practicing Christian faith, as well as as well as Um

So with with the uh the pulse, um he didn't finish it, but he left some indications of what he was trying to do, not just in the actual writing, but also the kind of structure of it. Could you tell us about his approach to trying to convince someone of Christianity? Well in a way I think what's interesting about Pascal is he kinda starts from human experience. He kinda star I think well

This is what I think he would have done. Obviously, different people would read the ponse in a different way. But I think he would have started with saying something and what there's one ponse that says basically, everybody wants to be happy, without exception. This is a universal thing. Everybody wants to be happy. Nobody sets out in life to be miserable. But he says, we have this sense of happiness.

Um, but whenever we experience it, it just slips through our fingers. We have a moment of joy. Um, but it doesn't last very long. Um and he says, well, why why would we have an idea of happiness? if we don't really know what it is, if we can hardly even grasp it. And he says, well, we only mourn the loss of something which we once had.

yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw In other words, you know, we we we we mourn the loss of sight'cause we know that sight is something we were kind of meant to have, but nobody ever had three eyes, so you don't You know, wake up thinking, why haven't I got a third eye? So in other words, we only mourn the loss of something which we once had. And so he then goes to say, Well why maybe the maybe the reason why we have this idea of happiness, even though it's so

um elusive and so difficult to find is because we once knew happiness. We were once in relationship with with God, face to face, where we knew joy, where we knew certainty, where we knew happiness.

Uh it goes into the theme of distraction. It's very fascinating. Big theme in Pascal is how distracted we are, how we spend all our time on trivial things like well, in his day, games of tennis or billiards or gambling or whatever else it might be, to try and avoid thinking about the more serious things in life

thinking about the fact that we will die one day, um, thinking about the kind of frailty and weakness of humanity and so on. We we avoid those things by filling our life with trivial things. We're distracted and that's speaks very powerfully to our day with the body.

of uh generations. So anyway he he he these are the kind of arguments he comes up with, starting from human experience and beginning to say, well, you know, he he drives people to think, Why why are we such a strange thing? Why are we why are we this Glory and refuse of the universe. What a freak is humanity. He what gets us to sort of think about the strangeness of the human experience. Um and then he tries to say, Well maybe the way to understand this is because

You know, why are we both great and weak and frail at the same time? Because we're both created and fallen, but we have the possibility of redemption by um, by Christ. And um and that's when I think he begins to move towards what I think probably would have been quite close to the heart of the argument, which is his great argument of the wager.

Um and um which is a kind of argument that's trying to help people to kinda make that step of faith. So, um yeah. So that's that's not roughly where where he would go. Um, I think he would lead towards um He doesn't think again you can prove God? He doesn't think you can um uh you know, like Descartes does, strong arm people into belief in God. He can all he thinks you can do is to put people in a position where they might be able to be open.

So you've mentioned the wager. Let's just talk a little bit about that because some people it's it's the one thing about Pascal that almost every And some people think that he is doing exactly that. He's trying to strong arm you'cause he's got you in a logical conundrum and you've got therefore to believe in God. But that's not quite how the wager is is framed or how it works, is it? Tell tell us how how you

That's right, so the wager is a is a long passage within the Ponse. In fact it's not actually called the Wager, he doesn't call it that. He calls it um Infinity Nothing. That's the title of it, Alfiniria.

And um it's basically an argument which I I think has been la very often misunderstood. As you said, Nick, it was it was something which people often think it's is a kinda logical argument to make you believe in God, which I don't think it is at all. And I think the way it works is is like this. Um In the wages, it's like it's like he's having a conversation. With uh a friend.

Uh maybe this friend is has been following the argument of the the post of the apology so far, has got to the point of thinking, Well, th there may be a god, but I'm not sure there may not be a god. Um uh and um Uh so that's that's kind of the person he's talking to. And Pascal, as I say, had done a lot of work on probability. He'd already done this work on probability theory and so on.

Uh and one of the one of the things that he'd done with uh fur Firma uh is work at a particular problem which was the the problem of the points. In other words it was a Um you know what happens if you're playing a game? Maybe you're it's a game of cards or a game of, you know, coin tossing or something like that, and halfway and people have bet on the outcome. They bet on player one or player two, uh and halfway through the game you have to stop for some reason.

Uh how do you allocate the stake? And some people say well you can't because it's just chart. But Pascal and Fermat both thought well she know you could actually work out, based on what's happened so far, the probability of the result in the future, therefore you could work out mathematically how to do that probability. Anyway, it It occurs to Pascal in this conversation he said, Well kinda life is a bit like that.

He says we are sort of on we're on a on a journey. And if you like, we don't know the end of the game. And we're halfway through. Um we don't know where it is. At the end of the the game, um the result will be revealed. He says there's there's a coin will be tossed at the far edge of the universe. Either God exists or God doesn't. And he says to his friend, Okay, w what are you gonna bet?

And then the guy says, Well do I have to bet? You know, can't I just be agnostic about this? And Pascal says, No, no, you have you have to bet. In fact you've already bet. You know, Vutet Embarque, you've already embarked on the journey. He says um yeah, because you're already living your life either as if God exists exists or God doesn't exist. So you've already bet the question is are you going to change your change your sight?

And so the guy then says, Um, okay, well is there any evidence to push me one way or the other? And Pascal says, Well there kind of is, but it's not ma it's hugely clear. uh convincing that's not enough to really force you hundred percent into one side or the other. There are good arguments for believing in God, but we all know that the heart is twisted and and our reason is not straightforward and so on.

So there'sn't there isn't a hard and fast argument that can lead you in this direction. So the guy then says, Well what do I do then? And then Pascal says, Okay, well let's do the probability. Let's work out the probability of these two points. And he says, Well, if you if you don't believe in God And you're right. Well you haven't lost that much. Uh but if you're wrong, you stand to lose quite a bit, eternal damnation and all of that. Uh if you bet on God existing

And you're wrong, well again you haven't lost a great deal, a bit of sacrifice in this life, but then you go into nothingness and that's basically it. Whereas if you're right, you stand to gain a huge reward, which is Eternal salvation, eternal bliss in in heaven with God forever evermore. So he says if you were really being rational about this, if you were doing the probability, you'd always bet on belief. And then the guy says, Well, okay, but I can't make myself believe something.

That I don't. And that's when Pascal says, Yeah, I get that, I get that. But then comes the key line where Pascal says, But at least get it into your head that the reason you do not believe is not because of your reason, but because of your passion.

In other words, what he says is if you were really being rational, you'd always bet on God because that's where the probability pushes you. But you don't. And the reason you don't is not because you're being rational, it's because there's something else going on. It's about And so what the what wager is really about is uncovering the real reasons for unbelief. Um it's not an argument strong arming you into belief in God. It's just revealing w what's really going on in that decision about

Um and then the guy says, Well, okay, well what do I do then? That's when Pascal comes up with this really I think brilliant bit of advice. He says, Well Wha why don't you try and live as if it's true? Even before you think it is. He says, you know, take holy water, go to mass. We might say, you know, go about your day

Start praying as if God really is there to listen to you. Start reading the Bible as if it's God's word to you. Start going to the church as if it's a place where you can really learn how to live well. um, you know, treat each person you meet each day as if they are sacred, made in God's image and the the object of divine love and so on. So start living as if it's true. And then he says

you'll find that it is because you open yourself to the touch of grace, which is what needs to happen for true faith to be born. So that I think is how the wager works. That's fantastic. And just that sense of the the conversation that's going on between him

Felly, rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd Yeah.

Yeah, I think there's a number of things we can learn though I think I've I've learnt from him. I mean w one I think is to It's to kinda grasp the strangeness of the human condition and to kind of ask questions that make people realise how how odd it is to be human and to begin to wonder at what what humanity means and how do you square our our greatness and our brokenness at the same time? I think that's what he says. Um I think he would say Be aware of taking sides in the culture war.

Mm-hmm. Uh you know, he's got this culture war going on in his own time between the rationalists, the followers of Descartes and the skeptics, those followers of Montaine from and others who think Mae'n rhywbeth sy'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu, mae'n credu.

We can't really know anything for good uh at all. Everything's up for grabs, everything can be changed, um there's no order within the world. And Pascal sort of says, Well, he doesn't take sides on that, but he says

what Christian faith can do is to show you why there's a culture war in the first place. Because The in it's neither the c you know, the rational sense of, you know, our capacity to to understand the world comes from our createdness and the image of God, but our but the kind of brokenness, our scepticism

uh invention that and and and therefore flawed, uh that comes from our fallenness. And so I think he would say don't take sides in the culture wars. I think he'd also say, um, keep Christianity strange. Um he says at one point, Christianity is strange. That's right. One of the chapters of the book is called just that again. Keep Christianity is strange. It's not obvious. And how that he glories in the paradoxes of Christian faith. That it proclaims a hidden God, not an obvious God.

Um and that idea I think has got so much power behind it. It kind of takes it takes on board the kind of atheist critique. Well where's where's God? You know, where's the evidence? Where's the kind of you know, sh show me God? And Pascal says, Well well you can't because this is the nature of the God we're talking about, a hidden God.

um who hides himself in creation and in Christ and in the sacraments and so on, but is there to be found if you if you look for him. Um, you know, he delights in original sin, you know, this idea that

you know, we are sort of flawed and tainted a he as a human race from the very beginning, you know, in in Adam, which seems very unfair. But actually it makes so much sense of human experience, you know, and and the way the human being worked. And I think the other thing I I think he would he would say to us is to kind of recognize the that there's always a touch of sadness and tragedy in the human condition.

It's one of the things that P Pascal says all the time, which again Descartes doesn't say. He kind of always notices, and I think it maybe it comes out of his own experience, his own sickness throughout his life, you know, some of the tragedies that he'd experienced. Um, he knows there's always a touch of sadness and tragedy in the human experience, which comes from our fallenness.

And that many of our sort of political and philosophical systems are trying to kinda overcome that sense of sadness and get rid of it. But he says this side of the new heavens and the new earth, we will never get rid of that sense of sadness and tragedy. Uh what we can find is redemption and hope and life within that through Christ who goes to a cross and dies for us so that we might be

forgiven and reconciled to God so redemption is possible. So sadness is not the only thing that's true, but you can never eradicate that. But in the presence of that we find Christ as the Redeemer who brings us back to God. So I think those are some of the things we learn from him.

And final question, is there one way that you would highlight that reading Pascal, thinking with this great man of faith and of so many other abilities has shaped? Prayer life or are you writing?

Yeah. Well I I think I think that that last point about this sort of clear eyed recognition that, you know, yes, there is you know,'cause I guess as you go on in life, y y you do encounter so many stories of real sadness and and tragedy and illness and and pain of people dying young or tragedies around the world and and it can seem like in our modern world we think, you know, we can fix everything.

You know, we can come up with an algorithm, we can come up with a machine that can fix everything, but we can never quite fix that. And Pascal's insistence that this is just part of the human condition. Now he doesn't say you just sort of si s lie there and accept it. You know, he thinks it's a good thing to come up with solutions that will try and address some of those issues. That's why he invented buses to try and

alleviate th th the situation of the poor in Paris. Um but he does say that there you you can never quite eliminate that sense. And I I I I've actually found that a quite a helpful thing that when I when I pray for people going through sort of tough times or difficulty when you know, when someone falls ill very young and, you know, death is on the horizon.

um it kinda helps to to to realise well this is part of the age in which we live, but that's not the final reality, um, for for for Pascal. And I think the other thing I think I I would say is that he you know he with the Knights of Fire, he encourages us to t to have that openness. to the approach of God. Um, to place ourselves in the position where God might touch our hearts with grace and overwhelm us in the same way that He did for Pascal. No

stayed with him forever. It was a two hour experience, but it was tr transformative and that's what we Uh you know, you can't manufacture those experiences, you can't predict them, but you can open yourselves for them. And that's I think one of the things that we as Christians need to do is to be constantly open to that possibility. of the kind of visceral presence of God and the transformation that can bring in in in our lives and the lives of others around us.

a poignant note on which to end a real note, but also a hopeful note. Graham, thank you very much for your work uh with seen and unseen. Thank you for writing this book and thank you for speaking with us today. Thank you for that. It's been great to chat and um thanks very much. Thank you for listening to Talking Theology, a podcast of Cranmer Hall, Durham, where we explore the best of academic theology and think creatively about how. Ministry administer.

Subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. Follow us on X or Instagram. Cramer Hall is a vibrant and diverse Christmas. Forming Christ like leader. Yeah. Full time and And we are home to students. Thank you.