Ann Blair, CB20
Lecture 15: Blaise Pascal (1623-62) and a religion of the heart I. Pascal’s biography: • Worldly science phase: calculating machine; barometer; math • Conversion exp 1654 +1657 miraculous cure of his niece Letter to Fermat (1660): geometry is the “highest exercise of the mind” but also “so useless that I can make little difference between a skilled geometer and an able artisan.” II. Jansenism, developed in 17th ct France: • Bishop Jansen’s Augustinus (1640): return to rigorism in response to the pelagianism associated with Jesuit Molina (1588) • Ag. Jesuit casuistry (Jesuit probabilism as risking moral laxity) • Reemphasize divine gift of grace (cf. Prot) • Pope condemns 5 propositions attributed to Jansen; Jansenists make some retractions: no religious schism • Pascal’s Provinciales mock Jesuits Re Galileo: “It will take more than that condemnation to prove that the earth keeps still and if there were consistent observations proving that it is the earth that goes around, all the men in the world put together could not keep it from turning or themselves turning with it.” (Provincial Letters #18, 1657) III. Pensées: against natural theology, fideism instead • Complex transmission: from manuscript notes toward a book on a defense of Chnity (apologetics), left in bundles (how to organize them?) • Wretchedness of man + God the redeemer • Prophecies, miracles, not reason to prove Chnity; wager • Deus absconditus (hidden God): against natural theology “I cannot forgive Descartes. In his whole philosophy he would like to do without God. But he could not help allowing him a flick of the fingers to set the world in motion. After which he had no further use for God.” from a letter to his sister quoted in Adamson, 187. V. Reception in 18th century: • Disliked by Voltaire and French Enlightenment • Well received by religious movements “of the heart”: e.g. John Wesley (founder of Methodism, 1744) and German pietism which mark the beginning of evangelical Protestantism =emphasis on a spiritually transformed life, preaching, and the real historical character of God's saving work described in Bible (conversionism, activism, biblicism, crucicentrism)
Terms to retain: Jansenism; Port-Royal; casuistry; pelagianism; probabilism; deus absconditus (=hidden God); apologetics; fideism; wager; methodism; John Wesley; pietism, evangelical movements.