Program / Course 13: Foundations of Apologetics / Lesson 6.3
What you will learn
- Describe Pascal’s view that the heart knows things reason does not, and his wager argument.
- Explain Kierkegaard’s claim that faith is a personal commitment and not the conclusion of a proof.
- State the strongest objections to each thinker, including the charge of irrationalism.
- Say what these thinkers contribute to a balanced view of what apologetic argument can do.
The big idea
Not every Christian thinker has trusted argument to carry the weight of faith. Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth-century French mathematician and writer, held that reason has real but limited power, and that the heart grasps truths beyond it. Søren Kierkegaard, a nineteenth-century Danish thinker, held that faith is a passionate personal commitment that no amount of evidence can produce. Both were serious thinkers who used argument skillfully. Their warnings are that argument alone cannot supply faith, and that treating faith as a mere conclusion misunderstands it.
Key terms
- Pensées
- A French word meaning thoughts. The title given to Pascal’s unfinished notes for a defense of Christianity, published after his death.
- The heart
- In Pascal, the faculty by which a person knows first principles and the things of God by intuition and love, as distinct from step-by-step reasoning.
- Pascal’s wager
- An argument that, since reason cannot settle whether God exists, and the possible gain from belief is infinite while the cost is small, wagering on God is the prudent choice.
- Leap of faith
- A phrase associated with Kierkegaard for the decisive step of commitment that goes beyond what evidence alone can justify. He used the word leap, and the full phrase is a later summary.
- Subjectivity
- In Kierkegaard, the inward, personal way of relating to truth that matters most in questions of how to live.
- Paradox
- A claim that seems to contradict common sense or logic. Kierkegaard held that the Incarnation is a paradox at the heart of Christianity.
- Pseudonym
- A false name. Kierkegaard published many works under invented authors, so statements in them cannot be assumed to be his own views.
- Fideism
- The view that faith does not rest on reasons, or that reason has no right to judge it. Many scholars dispute whether Pascal or Kierkegaard held it.
Background
Blaise Pascal lived from 1623 to 1662. He made discoveries in mathematics and physics, invented a mechanical calculator and wrote the Provincial Letters in defense of the Jansenist movement within French Catholicism. After a religious experience on the night of November 23, 1654, he wrote a short note, called the Memorial, which he sewed into his coat. It speaks of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and not of the philosophers.
Søren Kierkegaard lived from 1813 to 1855 in Copenhagen. He wrote on faith, anxiety, despair and the individual before God, mostly in reaction to what he saw as a comfortable state church and to the grand systems of Hegel. He wrote under many pseudonyms, and scholars debate how to read them. This lesson reports the main ideas associated with each thinker without claiming to settle the debates.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: Pascal on reason and the heart
In the Pensées Pascal writes that the heart has its reasons which reason does not know. By heart he does not mean mere feeling. He means the power by which a person grasps basic truths directly, such as that space has three dimensions, and by which a person knows God through love. Reason then has a role in clearing away obstacles and in showing the limits of its own reach.
Pascal was impatient with abstract proofs for God. He thought they could move a person briefly but not lastingly, and that they say little about the God of the Bible. He wanted to show first that human beings are a mixture of greatness and misery that only the Christian account explains, and then to point to Christ. His approach combines observation of human nature with an appeal to the person’s own experience.
Step 2: The wager
The best known passage in the Pensées is the wager. Pascal says that reason cannot decide whether God exists, and that everyone must wager one way or the other. If God exists and the person believes, the gain is infinite. If God does not exist, the loss is small. So the sensible choice is to bet on God. He adds that a person who cannot yet believe should live as believers do, and attend Mass, because habits can shape the will.
Critics have raised many objections. If it is so easy to bet, why not on another god, as the many gods objection puts it? Can one decide to believe? Would God be pleased by belief taken up for gain? Defenders reply that Pascal addresses a person already persuaded that religion matters and that reason is stuck, that he does not claim belief is a matter of will alone, and that the argument is meant to move a hesitating person to look seriously. Scholars disagree about whether the wager stands as an independent argument or as one step within a larger strategy.
Step 3: Kierkegaard on subjective truth
Kierkegaard held that the most important questions are not questions of objective knowledge but of how a person lives. In a work published under the name Johannes Climacus, he argues that objective inquiry into Christianity, however thorough, can only yield approximations, and that faith requires a personal commitment made with passion and risk. He wrote that subjectivity is truth, meaning that what matters is the way a person relates to the truth, not just what the truth is.
He also stressed the Incarnation as a paradox: that the eternal God became a particular man in history. Reason cannot make this appear natural. He called the step of believing it a leap. He did not mean that faith is irrational in the sense of being against evidence, but that evidence alone never produces the trust of faith.
Step 4: Kierkegaard on Abraham and offense
In Fear and Trembling, published under the name Johannes de silentio, Kierkegaard retells the story of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22). The book asks how a man could be willing to sacrifice his son on God’s command and yet be honored as a father of faith. The author insists that Abraham’s act cannot be justified by general moral reasoning. Interpreters disagree whether Kierkegaard approves or is drawing out the difficulty of faith, and whether the pseudonym speaks for him.
Elsewhere Kierkegaard wrote of offense: the claim of Christ is a stumbling block, and people take offense at it. He warned Christians in a comfortable society not to treat Christianity as a set of agreeable ideas. In this he was close to Paul’s remark that the message of the cross is foolishness to the world (1 Corinthians 1:18).
Step 5: Objections and the lessons for apologetics
Critics of both writers ask whether they leave faith without rational guard. If the heart or the leap decides, how can a person tell a true commitment from a delusion? Does this make religion a matter of taste? Defenders reply that Pascal gave many arguments and that Kierkegaard’s writings take care to describe false forms of faith. Others, such as Catholic and Orthodox writers, add that faith lives in a community and a tradition that give it shape and correction.
For apologetics, the lesson is to be aware of what argument can and cannot do. Argument can clear away obstacles and show reasons, but cannot compel trust. The apologist should therefore speak to the whole person, including conscience and longing, and should not treat the listener as a mind alone. This fits the themes of the earlier lesson on the limits of apologetics.
- What does Pascal mean by the heart, and how does it differ from mere feeling?
- What is the wager, and what are two strong objections to it?
- Why does Kierkegaard say that objective evidence cannot produce faith?
- What does it mean to call the Incarnation a paradox?
- How can a person tell the difference between a leap of faith and a leap into delusion?
- What do Pascal and Kierkegaard add to the way an apologist should speak?
Examples
The heart’s reasoning
A man cannot prove that other people have minds like his own, yet he does not doubt it. Pascal would say that some of what is most certain is known directly and not by proof. The man’s trust in his friend’s love is another example. Pascal applies this to the knowledge of God through love, while still giving reasons.
The wager restated
A student sets out the wager in a table with columns for God exists and God does not exist, and rows for believe and do not believe. She enters the possible gains and losses. She then lists objections, including the question of which god to bet on, and finds that the argument depends on assumptions she can examine. The exercise shows what the wager can and cannot do.
Comfortable Christianity
Kierkegaard lived in a society where nearly everyone was baptized into the state church. He argued that this made it easy to be a Christian in name and hard to be one in fact. A modern reader may ask whether the same risk exists in any culture where faith is taken for granted. This invites self-examination without settling doctrine.
Different perspectives
Roman Catholic (Jansenist background for Pascal)
Pascal remained a Catholic and was influenced by Jansenism, a movement stressing grace and moral rigor that the Church later condemned in some forms. Catholic readers often value his psychological depth and his wager while holding to the Church’s teaching that reason can know God.
Lutheran and Protestant (Kierkegaard)
Kierkegaard was a Danish Lutheran who criticized his state church. Many Protestants admire his stress on personal faith and on the cross. Others, especially those who defend rational apologetics, worry that his language can seem to cut faith loose from reasons.
Reformed epistemology
Philosophers like Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff accept that belief in God can be reasonable without being the conclusion of an argument. They read Pascal and Kierkegaard with interest but argue that faith can be rational without proof. The next lesson explores this.
Eastern Orthodox
Orthodox writers share Pascal’s emphasis on knowing God through the heart and through prayer, and have often admired Kierkegaard’s sharpness about nominal Christianity. They differ with his individualism, since Orthodox life is communal and liturgical.
Secular and philosophical critics
Many philosophers think the wager fails and that the leap of faith removes belief from evaluation. Others admire Pascal’s and Kierkegaard’s analysis of human existence even when they reject their conclusion. Existentialist writers of the twentieth century drew on Kierkegaard in non-religious ways.
Why it matters
These thinkers remind apologists that human beings are more than reasoning machines. People hold their deepest beliefs through trust, desire, habit and love as well as argument. A student who has read Pascal and Kierkegaard will be less likely to expect too much from a syllogism and more likely to attend to the person in front of them. They also pose questions that any serious reader of apologetics should be ready to meet.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: Pascal despised reason.
Correction: Pascal was a great mathematician and an exacting writer. He thought reason was valuable but limited, and he sought to use it to show its own limits.
Misunderstanding: The wager is Pascal’s only argument for faith.
Correction: It is one passage among many in notes for an unfinished work. Pascal also argued from human nature, from prophecy and from the history of Israel and the church.
Misunderstanding: Kierkegaard taught that faith is irrational.
Correction: He taught that faith cannot be derived from objective proof and involves a paradox. Scholars debate whether this makes it irrational or simply not reducible to proof.
Misunderstanding: Everything in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works states his own views.
Correction: He published them under invented authors with different standpoints. Readers must be careful before attributing a statement to Kierkegaard himself.
Knowledge check
What did Pascal mean by saying the heart has reasons that reason does not know?
He meant that people know some basic truths, and know God, by direct intuition and love and not by step-by-step proof. The heart is not mere feeling but a way of grasping first principles. Reason still has a role in clearing obstacles and showing its own limits.
State the wager in brief and give one objection.
Pascal argued that since reason cannot settle whether God exists, one must wager, and because belief offers an infinite gain at small cost, betting on God is prudent. One objection is that many gods are possible, so the wager does not say which to choose. Another is that belief cannot simply be chosen.
Why does Kierkegaard say objective evidence cannot produce faith?
He held that faith is a personal commitment made in passion and risk, while objective inquiry yields only approximations. No amount of evidence could make a person trust Christ. He also called the Incarnation a paradox that reason cannot make seem natural.
Why must Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms be read with caution?
He published many works under invented authors, such as Johannes Climacus and Johannes de silentio, each with a standpoint. Their statements may not be Kierkegaard’s own, and scholars debate how to read them. Care is needed before attributing claims to him.
What do these thinkers teach apologists?
They teach that arguments cannot compel trust and that people believe with their whole selves, including heart and will. The apologist should therefore speak to the whole person, and should not expect more from argument than it can give.
Think it through
- What do you know to be true that you could not prove?
- Is the wager a good reason to believe, or a reason to look more closely? What difference does it make?
- Has your faith, or your lack of it, ever depended on something other than arguments?
- Could a society where everyone is a nominal Christian be harder for faith than one where it is costly?
Independent assignment
Read Pascal
In your own notebook, write 500 to 700 words. Read the section of the Pensées on the wager and one other passage of your choice in the library selection. Summarize the wager in your own words. Then write a paragraph on the strongest objection and a paragraph on how Pascal might reply. End with a short note on what you think the wager can and cannot do. Keep this for yourself.
Further study
- Blaise Pascal, Pensées Read the passages on the wager and on the limits of reason.
- Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief A contemporary view that belief in God can be reasonable without proof.
- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain An example of an apologist who also writes of the heart and of suffering.
- Genesis 22 Read the account of Abraham and Isaac that Kierkegaard discusses.
- 1 Corinthians 1 Read verses 18 to 25 on the foolishness of the cross.
- Hebrews 11 Read verse 1 and the examples of faith that follow.