The Centrality of Jesus Christ

Greetings,

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a mathematical prodigy, physicist, religious thinker, inventor, and literary stylist.  His discovery, known as Pascal’s Law, about the distribution of pressure exerted on any part of an enclosed liquid is the principle which makes possible all modern hydraulic operations.  After his conversion in 1654 following a miraculous vision, Pascal produces a number of significant Christian apologies.  This excerpt is from Pensées.

The God of Christians is not a God who is simply the author of mathematical truths, or of the order of the elements, as is the god of the pagans and of Epicureans.  Nor is He merely a God who providentially disposes the life and fortunes of men, to crown His worshippers with length of happy years.  Such was the portion of the Jews.  But the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Christians, is a God of love and consolation, a God who fills the souls and hearts of His own, a God who makes them feel their inward wretchedness and His infinite mercy, who united Himself to their inmost spirit, filling it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, rendering them incapable of any end other than Himself.

All who seek God apart from Jesus Christ, and who rest in nature, either find no light to satisfy them, or form for themselves a means of knowing God and serving Him without a Mediator.  Thus they fall either into atheism or into deism, two things which the Christian religion almost equally abhors.

The God of Christians is a God who makes the soul perceive that He is her only good, that her only rest is in Him, her only joy in loving Him; who makes her at the same time abhor the obstacles which withhold her from loving Him with all her strength.  Her two hindrances, self-love and lust, are unsupportable to her.  This God makes her perceive that the root of self-love destroys her, and that He alone can heal.

The knowledge of God without that of our wretchedness creates pride.  The knowledge of our wretchedness without that of God creates despair.  The knowledge of Jesus Christ is the middle way, because in Him we find both God and our wretchedness.

Yours & His,

DED