Ok, I’ve been told I jumped in too fast with Pensee #1.  I’ll give a bit more explanation on the Pensees and a more straightforward one this week.  Obviously, the real business we’re about this week is Don’s trip.  If you’re here for Don’s posts this week from Swaziland, just scroll on past this.  But humor me while we wait for Don to post something new.  These are really fun - they make me think.

Pascal intended to compile his Pensees (thoughts) into an argument supporting God’s existence and Christianity as the religion that accurately reveals God to the world.  He died before compiling the Pensees into the form of a book, but categorized them into broad groups with the intend of attempting to formulate his argument by making observations about the nature of man and the world.  Major themes are:  order (structure) in the natural world, man’s lost state apart from God (especially vanity, wretchedness, and boredom), the potential for greatness in man, contradictions in man’s nature, and finally a transition from knowing man’s nature to knowing God.

Thus many of his thoughts are very dark and seem despairing… remember that in these thoughts he is attempting to show our frailty and wretchedness apart from God.  He has an equal number of thoughts about our potential for greatness through God’s redemption.  In fact, this contradiction in our nature – wretchedness, with the potential for greatness – is probably the most important theme in the Pensees.  So don’t write off the bleak and despairing thoughts too quickly, but consider them in light of the contrast with our redeemed state as a part of the body of Christ.

So, with that explanation fresh in our minds, let’s think about one that highlights Pascal’s thoughts on this contradiction in our nature… here it is:

Is it not clear that man’s condition is dual? The point is that if man had never been corrupted, he would, in his innocence, confidently enjoy both truth and happiness, and if man had never been anything but corrupt, he would have no idea of either truth or bliss.  But unhappy as we are (and we should be less so if there were no element of greatness in our condition) we have an idea of happiness but we cannot obtain it.  We perceive an image of the truth yet possess nothing but falsehood, being equally incapable of absolute ignorance and certain knowledge; so obvious is it that we once enjoyed a degree of perfection from which we have unhappily fallen.

This one will help you know where he’s going when I get into the darker ones highlighting our fallen condition apart from God.  Comments?  Questions?  Disagreements?  This one is out of order and I’m violating the genius of Pascal’s approach; which is to studiously avoid stating the argument or giving any idea where he is even going until he’s made enough insightful observations and thoughts that you agree with his conclusion before you even know he’s making an argument.  This is fun for me, so I’m going to keep posting these – you’ll start to get the feel for them but I really would like your thoughts on them over time, even if those thoughts are: “what in the world does that mean?”

Clear as mud!  I wouldn’t say that, the duality of mans condition is among the things I call clear.  However, after reading BP’s thoughts I have to say, “I kind of get it…kind of.” 

How does this apply to our being “the righteousness of God in Christ”?

Ok, with all your coddling and helps, I think I sort of get this one.  Thanks, I think! 
No, really. 
I think Don would tell you this DOES apply to what he is seeing and finding out about these neighbors across the world, as well as, to us.

You’re just a bit ahead of me… we’ll get to man’s “exalted” state in union with God.  Just not yet… Keeping these thoughts short and thus more easily accepted is part of Pascal’s strategy.  Potential critics could look at this and not feel threatened by it and accept it.  Once that goes through many iterations, they may find themselves accepting a complete argument that they would have rejected immediately if made in one fell swoop.

Okay, I’ll say it.  What in the world does that mean? That because we understand how imperfect we are, it proves we were once perfect? And the whole “But unhappy as we are (and we should be less so if there were no element of greatness in our condition)” - is that where ‘ignorance is bliss’ comes from? And what is his definition of happiness?  Isn’t happiness circumstantial? Or does he mean contentment?

I do know one thing - we might be “equally incapable of absolute ignorance and certain knowledge,” but I think I’m closer to the former than the latter!

The dual nature of man is clear, we are a spirit, (eternal and perfect) with a soul(that gives us world consciousness) in a body. From you last post and our discussion on Sunday, I have been researching the idea of self evident truths.  This lead me to John Locke and Thomas Aquinas.  These are, I believe the source of Jefferson’s ideas penned in the Declaration.  Now we are focusing on Happiness, another phrase in that document.  If it’s pursuit is an inalienable right of all Americans, yet we are told by BP that we ‘cannot obtain it’, how are we as a nation to go forward?  Is this why we find ourselves seeking out happiness in all the wrong places? What is BP’s definition of happiness?  Is this why we find we need ever increasing amounts of external governmental controls on our lives?  Is this why the founders said that for our system of government to succeed, it requires a ‘religious’ people?  By religious I understand it to mean those who understand we are fallen and are working our way back to perfection.  I certainly hope you don’t need to be perfect to make a jolly good stab at happiness.

I’m glad that you mentioned the purpose of his “style”...presenting his observations first before the “argument” (which does it really end up being an argument if you agree the whole way?)

If I was not a believer, I would ABSOLUTELY agree with the notion of “no obtaining happiness”, and follow along with his thought process.  And even as a believer (in my heart of hearts) I think there would’ve been a time in my life I would also agree with the inability to obtain happiness. 

So, I googled “obtain”...in the Latin it describes obtain as “to hold onto” (Webster…defines it as “to gain by planned action or effort).  So… can we “hold onto happiness”?  First question using the Latin.

Second question is happiness something that can be gotten thru man’s planned action or effort?  Or is happiness received from God’s action or effort?  So…that brings the verse in Ephesians 2:8-9 to my mind…For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. 

Obtaining may be like works? 

Not sure my mind can handle the depth…could get a bit lost in the undertow, but I’m trying to “swim out here” with the big kids.
At least you can enjoy a good laugh at my effort!

Thanks Leanne for asking the question held by many. 
Dave - I think there is a “Jolly good stab” personality type and I am not sure BP had it.  Poor guy.  He come around though.
Melanie - You go girl!  I think you represent well.  “Yeah.  I meant to say what Melanie said.”

Jen

Leanne,  one of the keys to getting the benefit of the Pensees for me was to allow myself to not understand what Pascal was thinking, but to read it like a good poem or lyric and take truth from it in the context where it speaks to me.  So… this may not be your highest and best interpretation, but my effort to answer your questions is:

Happiness should be interpreted as “true contentment” in this context.  Pascal uses the term “diversion” for circumstantial “happiness” and paints it as unfulfilling.  Remeber that there is an interpretation issue from classical French to English here also.

The overall theme here (for me) is that we are broken, corrputed from birth (i.e. born as sinners, original sin, etc.).  But if there was no God, if we our lot was simply to forever be broken sinners, there would be nothing in us that yearns for something more.  Yet we have a shadow of a memory, a spirit that longs for union with God.  I’ll flesh this out over the coming weeks.  His point is simply that our natural state is conflicted.  If we were not made to know God, we would be content in our natural state.  If we already knew God well enough in our natural state, we would not be broken and unfulfilled.

Dave, I think you hit it on the head - although you are taking it in a bit of a different direction than I did.  Really good questions… and if these make you ask really good questions, that is enough in my opinion.

But as I responded earlier, I believe “happiness” means “true contentment” throughout the Pensees.  The term he uses for circumstantial or momentary “happiness” is “diversion”, which is acually a very significant theme in the Pensees.

“Can not obtain it” means that we can not obtain it through our own human and natural efforts.  Remember the catchy 80’s phrase about a “god-shaped hole” in our lives that only he can fill.  Pascal, writing from a physicist’s persepective, actually coined that phrase 400 years earlier, but called it the “God-shaped vacuum”.

My next several Pensees will be on mankind’s brokeness, boredom, and fears - which lead us (in Pascal’s opinion) to seek security in false places and “diversion” to avoid dealing with the core issue of our heart/spirit.  So yes… absolutely, this is why we seek happiness and security in all the wrong places.  Something is missing.  We know that in the core of our being.  That’s the end of the the argument.  Thus the genius in the approach.  Just about anyone who is honest with themselves (and who is not in Christ) will agree that we all feel a longing that goes unfulfilled in life.  That’s all… nothing more than that… yet.

Gee, I told you this was fun!

Melanie, I think you got it 110%! (Which means, of course, that I agree with you, so we must be right)

Remember that what we’ll see in these Pensees for a long while is Pascal’s observations about the nature and struggle of man apart from God - so don’t be put off by the negative tone.  Here, he’s describing our efforts to obtain true contentment apart from God - impossible.  Yet, despite it being impossible (by our own efforts), we long for that contentment like nothing else.  So, to presume that there is NOTHING that can fulfill that longing flies in the face of logic - which tells us the longing would not exist in the first place unless we (mankind) once fell from a position where that longing WAS fulfilled as a natural part of our being.  That’s it.  No more than that.

You’re jsut completing Pascal’s argument with the rest of your thoughts.  The Latin is perfect.  We CAN’T get or hold onto contentment through our own planned efforts.  That’s Pascal’s point.  Yet we long for it.  Why?  He simply stops short of that but of course you nail it: it is the gift of God through grace.  He (and only He) fills the “God-shaped vaccum” that Pascal spoke of.  Pascal’s approach to the Pensees is to make arguments without making arguments.  That is, to make observations that any thinking, logical person would agree with (at least most of the time).  That are non-threatening… just observations.  By the time you’ve agreed with the body of his observations overall, you’re “trapped”.  He then puts together the entire conclusion and viola - you realize that you’ve already agreed with it.  Even if you would have rejected it out of hand if intially presented in full (as most non-beleivers would if you argue that God exists and we all need him).