The Mind on Fire: A Faith for the Skeptical and Indifferent

by Blaise Pascal, James M. Houston (Editor)

Blaise Pascal, the remarkable seventeenth-century mathematician, physicist, and religious thinker, rigorously refutes the belief that to become a Christian you must first commit intellectual suicide. He wrote to communicate the Christian faith to the skeptical, to the indifferent, to the hostile. Many regard him as the greatest of French prose writers. After his conversion at the age of thirty-one, Pascal records how his mind blazed with the burning conviction of being overwhelmed with light. For many years he had examined God merely as a series of concepts. Now he stood before God's presence and the reality of God Himself, the same God who had appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was this that now gave him "joy, joy, joy, tears of joy." The Mind on Fire contains Pascals' Pensées, a systematic and uncompromising defense of Christian belief, along with selections from his Letters to a Provincial, his own description of his conversion, and a prayer for the proper use of pain in his life. Dr. James M. Houston, editor of the Classics of Faith and Devotion series, is a highly acclaimed scholar and pioneer in the field of evangelical spirituality. He came to North America from England in 1968 to lead Regent College in Vancouver, Canada, a worldwide center of spiritual formation.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, Christian, Christianity, Nonfiction, Religion, Classics

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Early work of Blaise Pascal of France included the invention of the adding machine and syringe and the co-development with Pierre de Fermat of the mathematical theory of probability; later, he, a Jansenist, wrote on philosophy and theology, notably as collected in the posthumous Pensées (1670).

This contemporary of René Descartes attained ten years of age in 1633, when people forced Galileo Galilei to recant his belief that Earth circled the Sun. He lived in Paris at the same time, when Thomas Hobbes in 1640 published his famous Leviathan (1651). Together, Pascal created the calculus.

A near-fatal carriage accident in November 1654 persuaded him to turn his intellect finally toward religion. The story goes that on the proverbial dark and stormy night, while Pascal rode in a carriage across a bridge in a suburb of Paris, a fright caused the horses to bolt, sending them over the edge. The carriage, bearing Pascal, survived. Pascal took the incident as a sign and devoted. At this time, he began a series, called the Provincial Letters , against the Jesuits in 1657.

Pascal perhaps most famously wagered not as clearly in his language as this summary: "If Jesus does not exist, the non Christian loses little by believing in him and gains little by not believing. If Jesus does exist, the non Christian gains eternal life by believing and loses an infinite good by not believing.”

Sick throughout life, Pascal died in Paris from a combination of tuberculosis and stomach cancer at 39 years of age. At the last, he confessed Catholicism.

Reviews

[Creed Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book of Christian apolegetics and commentary on human nature. Pascal's humor and intelligence is clearly displayed in this translated collection of essays by him.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is subtitled Faith for the Skeptical & Indifferent. What an audacious aim. To sway the minds of those who carry heavy doubts & those who are apathetic to such a plight. The text itself is quite contradictory, as Christianity itself is, but it makes no apologies about this. It simply asks the reader to submit to faith. Faith is where the diverging viewpoints of humankind should converge. Faith can ameliorate the chasms between all of the vast discrepancies. When all else fails, faith is the answer, the base tool. And of course if the solution is faith, we might ask, how did we arrive at such a place. God. God is the ultimate integer within this equation. If any voids should ever manifest themselves within the grand scale of life’s infinite equation, we must unequivocally fill it with God. What a simplistic answer. What a cop out. This man, whose mind is supposed to be one of the most supreme throughout history, is diseased with such a delusion. He is diseased by a faith which suggests that man is nothing but a lustful, wicked, wretched, prideful, helpless, distracted, excrement of a creature which, without God, are completely unworthy of existence itself. That we only become worthy when completely surrendering the wholeness of our life to servitude. He suggests that when we become a slave to our faith, then & only then, will we rejoice in the holiness of our true meaning of existence. I find his thoughts on this matter, appalling. I find his utter lack for human capacity & the potential of its grace, unacceptable. I find his shrewd & cynical viewpoints, excrement in their own right. I find he is lost beyond belief. It is not lost on me that he would surely find me the same. What is truly tragic is that this type of thought is housed in the same mind that has projected such unwaivering brilliance. Never have I read such a contradictory character as this. His mathematical & scientific accomplishments fly in the face of geniuses throughout history. His use of language & argument, I find quite supreme, though he chose to be inextricably wrong. Perhaps he could not escape, as many intellectuals of any era, the throes of fear. The fear of dying as an unholy heretic intellectual (irrevocably condemned to hell) who chose to advance the earthly lives of man but never the human spirit, & perhaps this is where he saw his calling, no matter how faulty it was. He seemed driven & impassioned. This attribute fueled his genius in science & math & proved him foolish in his Christian endeavors. The contradiction in the will of the man makes him very interesting. I found his arguments at times appalling but also fascinating & enjoyed some of its cleverness as I have not encountered many Christians with the wizardry of his arguments. He speaks of the necessitation of proof, reason & truth, constantly, but in the end says they are dwarfed by the holiness of faith instilled by God. This just does not satisfy or resonate well with me at all. I found many quote-worthy statements within the texts, being that he is no doubt brilliant in many capacities, yet the fact that he subscribes to blindness & this beyond drab view of man, seems to irk me beyond retribution. His mind is a jewel & a waste all the same. A truly interesting man. The end of the book includes a correspondence Pascal had apparently with a consortium of Christian elders of sorts, those that dictated how Christian doctrine should be interpreted. This section is entitled, Letters Written to a Provincial by One of His Friends. In these letters Pascal displays his discontent with the way Jesuits are interpreting & ameliorating the laws for newcomers of the faith to disintegrate the very basis of his religion. In all of these cases he becomes rather irritated & irate with how the religion he loves is eroding right before his eyes. The purist, the idealist & in fact, the man of common sense cannot bear to see the erroneous dismantling of his beloved faith. It is in this that Pascal & I join forces. It is in this that I can sympathize with the man towards his plight. For the men of his time had the purest intentions but in their aspirations of seizing of power in which they sought to include all peoples despite their adherence to the very religion they were supposedly devoting their faith to, gave complete laxity towards the very guidelines meant to secure salvation of the soul, that it became a shell of itself, & in fact, immoral. It is in this context that Pascal rebukes this form of Christianity. It is in this context that I rebuke Christianity. It is not the sole reason, but, for me, the seizing of power is not a valid excuse to compromise the very belief by which you have sworn your soul. It is in this context that Pascal & I become disgusted with the religion. I will leave the review with a quote from Pascal as he is gravely ill. This section of the book is entitled, A Prayer of Pascal Asking God to Use Sickness in His Life Appropriately. “You gave me health to use in Your service, but I misused it to a wholly secular use. Now You have sent me a sickness for my correction. O let me not use this likewise to provoke You by my impatience. I abused my health, & You have rightly dealt with me. O keep me now from abusing that also. And since the corruption of my nature distorts Your favors to me, grant, O my God, that Your all-prevailing grace may render Your chastenings to be beneficial. If my heart has been in love with the world when I was in robust health, destroy my vigor to promote my salvation. Whether it be by weakness of body or by zeal for Your love, render me incapable of enjoying the worldly idols, that my delight may be only in You.” It is this mindset that I find truly terrifying. The Christian mind is content to pander towards a God which is supposedly the epitome of love but also with the god of the darkest & blood-thirsty vengeance. They are completely subservient like pious powerless worms. They whole-heartedly love a God that will sever their life for what amounts to a dog shitting on the rug, even if the dog was never trained to do otherwise. They are as the battered wife that immediately begins to apologize to the malevolent & violent husband. It is mind-boggling. I will continue to try to find his secular writings & perhaps some of his scientific & mathematical theories, but I think I am done with the Christian Pascal for all of his Christian eternity.

[Cathie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"This present life is momentary, but the state of death is eternal.How terribly important it is, then, to live in the light of the eternal, since it ultimately affects all that we do or think! Since nothing is more obvious than this observation, how absurd it is to behave differently."

The Pensees (thoughts) of Blaise Pascal are organized topically in this edition. The Pensees were written in the seventeenth century in bits and pieces as Pascal suffered sickness and faced death at the age of 39. These fragment were his apologetic of the Christian Faith.

I was once again reminded that "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Some of the topics he wrote on were:
Man's Natural Condition
"Man's sensitivity to trivia, and his insensitivity to matters of major importance, reveal he has a strange disorder."
Man's Unhappy Condition
"Adulation spoils everything from our earliest youth. 'Well spoken! Well done! How good he is!' The children of our community who are not egged on by envy and glory become indifferent."
The Philosopher's Quest for Happiness
"If man was not made for God, why is it that he is only happy in God? If man was made for God, why is he so opposed to God?"

And there is much, much more that I highlighted in my book!

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This modernized presentation of Pascal's "Pensees" is a collection of thoughts organized as an apologetic of his faith in Christ. This volume also contains a series of letters he wrote in response to the condemnation of the Jansenist position by a Scholastic.

Pascal provides many proofs of faith including everything from traditional proofs, such as Scripture and prophecy, to less conventional ones, such as the boredom and dissatisfaction of man. Many of his thoughts still connect in our own culture. Just a 17th century France was looking to the ability of Reason alone to discover truth, so our society seeks to find truth in its own version of Reason alone.

The book also has an interesting appendix with many suggestions and tips for "devotional" reading. I think I found a few more books to read as I worked through the appendix.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pascal was a great mind of the Renaissance era, i.e. a scholar in numerous fields.
His insights (theological, Christian life, anthropolocial, ...) will blow your mind! How could one man say so many brilliant things. Throw away all your quote books and feed on the bread of Pascal.
This book takes "Pensees" and organizes the collected thoughts from it into a more organized form. (Pascal died before he could do it.)

[cocav]

I've started this book several times - Pascal is really intense. You have to be in the right mood for this book.

[Jared Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was wholesomely edified by Pascal’s pensées. His fusion of epistemological humility and fervor helped me to actually see what I feel much doctrine on human depravity seeks to express. The beauty though of this realization is that it was not taught, but felt throughout - and the problem of depravity is rendered hopeful through Pascal’s communication of Christ in all His historical and philosophical splendor.
Regarding an audience, I think it is suited well for those who think in common sense terms and enjoy condensed and insightful nuggets of truth. As a conservative Anabaptist, this checks both boxes. It is unfortunate that Pascal died before compiling all of his thoughts, but in this case, that is what makes him so well suited for myself and people like me (whatever that means).
Now, Pascal’s letters on the other hand were more of a slog. They treat highly contextual theological issues and groups, and therefore I struggled to find them meaningful. I’m glad they were included in this publication, but I’m not in quite the right place for them.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

For November 2021, our book club book was the book that has been on our TBR list the longest. This was my book, and I am sad for myself that it took me this long to read Pascal.

[Wes F · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm giving this a 2.5 stars, partly because it isn't really a book--it's a "book" that's been edited together from various writings of Pascal's. I really did like the several letters at the end of the book, which in a very humorous and insightful way pointed out some of the ridiculous theological tenets of the Jesuits (and possibly Catholicism in general). And Pascal's prayers at the end in regards to the sicknesses he was experiencing/fighting towards the end of his life were excellent.

[Jason St. Clair · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't find all of Pascal's arguments convincing, however I like his concept of the hidden nature of God. His point is that God does not reveal himself obviously but only partially so that those who wish to find God can do so. The idea presents the search for God as a type of test; those who successfully pass discover the true nature of God while those who do not are left in darkness.

[Atrona Grizel (Sov8840)]

I found a fragment of a smile in a room no one entered—a brittle thing, half-remembered and barely alive, like a ghost trying to hold onto breath.

[Justin Ruszkiewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic readings from a fantastic mind!

Rating: 9/10, five stars!

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

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