BLAISE PASCAL:
The Man Who Made the Modern World
By Graham Tomlin
Hodder & Stoughton. 448 pages. £25
ISBN 978 1 399 807 647
Everyone has heard of Blaise Pascal. Perhaps it is through his Pensées (Thoughts) that so brilliantly speak of the importance of Christianity. Maybe it is from Pascal’s idea that (in a world of distraction) the best thing a person can do is to sit quietly in his room.
What this book does so successfully is to set the life of Blaise Pascal into historical context, painting a picture of the social, political, religious and philosophical scene in which he lived. Tomlin provides a detailed account of the people and places that shaped Pascal, the importance of his family and the church.
Family life was an important part of Pascal’s development as a person. It gave him a secure space to explore a world of ideas and the resources to put those ideas into action.
Tomlin describes the social and political ferment of his life that included the Thirty Years’ War and the reign of Louis XIV and Cardinal Richelieu. This was the time of Counter-Reformation movements like the Jesuits. Tomlin’s account of this period is illuminating, especially concerning the influence of the Jansenists (who were advocates of an Augustinian concept of grace) in 17th-century French society. Tomlin traces the strong influence they had on Pascal, as well as the distinctive path he chose to walk that demonstrated his power of independent thought.
Those who think of Pascal as a Christian apologist will not be surprised that he was interested in everything. Pascal was a polymath: a brilliant mathematician, credited with inventing a calculating device that anticipates the computer; an inventor who devised a five-route public transportation system in Paris that anticipated the metro; a scientist who performed experiments to demonstrate that a vacuum is not weightless. In this sense the subtitle of this book, “The Man Who Made the Modern World”, is justified.
He was a man who was fizzing with ideas. Before he turned his attention to apologetics he had been the author of the anonymous Provincial Letters; these letters were the talk of France.
Tomlin’s aim is this book is to see the greatness of Pascal in the round so that we can appreciate his unique contribution to Christian apologetics. The author explores the implications for Pascal of the “Night of Fire,” in which he had a life-changing experience of God, which he kept secret (the document containing the testimony concerning that evening was found stitched into his clothes after he died)!
This document and the other unordered fragments that were to become Pensées were all rearranged and published after his death. Tomlin assesses the different editions of this work.
Tomlin beautifully relates how Pascal the apologist advocated both the strangeness and hiddenness of Christianity and the compelling beauty of Christianity as it focuses on Christ.
One of the most interesting sections of the book is the consideration of Pascal’s famous “Wager”, which Tomlin suggests is “more commonly recognised than misunderstood”. Tomlin counters some of the objections to Pascal’s method and explains that method and why it is so effective (and why it has limitations, particularly when dealing with hardened atheists): “The wager is not an argument designed to strong-arm someone into faith. It is designed to get people to the point where they are likely to make a good decision about the most important question of all.” The wager cannot compel belief or be decided by reason, but it does seek to appeal to people’s instincts that a bet against God has very poor odds. He wants to help unbelievers have doubts about their unbelief.
Pascal is an indispensable Christian figure but, like Augustine and C.S. Lewis, enigmatic. He may not wear all the badges that allows entry into our club, but he is a vital conversation partner in the cultural moment we inhabit. Tomlin writes that “Blaise Pascal’s life was as bright and brief as a comet flashing across the sky on a dark night.”
Here is an opportunity to see what made him shine so brightly as a man who loved the Lord his God with heart, soul, mind and strength.
