Pascal and Jansenism...

[Carl Emerson]

Hi there,

Has anyone studied this topic and why the movement was considered heretical.

Further - would a similar movement within the RC Church be treated as heretical today?

Thanks for your input.

 

[GOD Shines Forth!]

Hi there,

Has anyone studied this topic and why the movement was considered heretical.

Further - would a similar movement within the RC Church be treated as heretical today?

Thanks for your input.

No wonder why I like Pascal, he’s a Catholic heretic! From various of his "Thoughts", he was pro Scripture and that led to butting of the head over certain Catholic doctrines.

741:
"The Gospel only speaks of the virginity of the Virgin up to the time of the birth of Jesus Christ. All with reference to Jesus Christ."

547:
"Thus without the Scripture, which has Jesus Christ alone for its object, we know nothing, and see only darkness and confusion in the nature of God, and in our own nature."

899:
"He who will give the meaning of Scripture, and does not take it from Scripture, is an enemy of Scripture. (Aug., De Doct. Christ.)

 

[Bob Crowley]

I hadn't taken any interest in the topic of Jansenism, and only looked this up because it mentioned Blaise Pascal, who was a very effective Christian.

It think the following paragraph encapsulates the reason it was condemned as a heresy, in that it denies "the role of free will in the acceptance and use of grace." I suppose it was seen as a form of Calvinism trying to sneak in via the Catholic Church's back door during the turmoil of the post-Reformation years.

Jansenism - Wikipedia

The heresy of Jansenism, as stated by subsequent Roman Catholic doctrine, lay in denying the role of free will in the acceptance and use of grace. Jansenism asserts that God's role in the infusion of grace cannot be resisted and does not require human assent. Catholic doctrine, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is that "God's free initiative demands man's free response"[5]—that is, humans freely assent or refuse God's gift of grace.

Pascal had an attraction towards Jansenism at one stage (in his younger years) starting in 1646 when he was 23, but he turned away from it a couple of years later, followed by what others have termed his "secular period".

Just a few years after that, in 1654, he had his notable religious experience as recorded on a brief note sewn into his coat.

On the 23 of November, 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious experience and immediately wrote a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars..."

What makes this notable is the fact Pascal was himself very much into the philosophy of religion.

He regained his religious enthusiasm after this event. However he always suffered from ill health, and died in 1662, at the age of 39.

I think I read somewhere that Malcolm Muggeridge, the acerbic journalist who in his early days had dabbled with Communism, then became protestant Christian, and finally Catholic (influenced by Mother Teresa whom he helped introduce to the West), wrote somewhere that he thought Blaise Pascal lived one of the most victorious Christian lives of all time, despite his chronic ill health.

But I'm relying on my memory there from an article I read quite some time ago.

PS - Yes, I think it would be regarded as "heretical" today because it denies the role of our free will in accepting or rejecting God's grace. We have a choice.

 

[Carl Emerson]

I hadn't taken any interest in the topic of Jansenism, and only looked this up because it mentioned Blaise Pascal, who was a very effective Christian.

It think the following paragraph encapsulates the reason it was condemned as a heresy, in that it denies "the role of free will in the acceptance and use of grace." I suppose it was seen as a form of Calvinism trying to sneak in via the Catholic Church's back door during the turmoil of the post-Reformation years.

Jansenism - Wikipedia



Pascal had an attraction towards Jansenism at one stage (in his younger years) starting in 1646 when he was 23, but he turned away from it a couple of years later, followed by what others have termed his "secular period".

Just a few years after that, in 1654, he had his notable religious experience as recorded on a brief note sewn into his coat.

On the 23 of November, 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious experience and immediately wrote a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars..."

What makes this notable is the fact Pascal was himself very much into the philosophy of religion.

He regained his religious enthusiasm after this event. However he always suffered from ill health, and died in 1662, at the age of 39.

I think I read somewhere that Malcolm Muggeridge, the acerbic journalist who in his early days had dabbled with Communism, then became protestant Christian, and finally Catholic (influenced by Mother Teresa whom he helped introduce to the West), wrote somewhere that he thought Blaise Pascal lived one of the most victorious Christian lives of all time, despite his chronic ill health.

But I'm relying on my memory there from an article I read quite some time ago.

PS - Yes, I think it would be regarded as "heretical" today because it denies the role of our free will in accepting or rejecting God's grace. We have a choice.

Thanks Bob,

I note that often theology is linked to experience.

Paul hardly willed his encounter on the road.

Pascal also had an epiphany that rather blew Him away, so one could understand his conclusion that the sovereignty of God can override the will of man.

 

[Bob Crowley]

I could claim the same I suppose. I've often said that the night my father died, he appeared in my room, along with other details I won't go into now.

I was an atheist at the time, but that event didn't convince me to do anything about my spiritual state. It took nearly four years more before I became Christian, and that was after the most disastrous four years of my life. An image of the church where I'd had a bit of Sunday School years before kept cropping up in my mind and it was quite insistent.

I still had to make the decision. But like you said I didn't will either of those events.

In the case of Saul / Paul and Pascal, they both had a religious mindset already. So their wills were involved. They still had to say "yes", although it would have been absolute stupidity in both cases to deny it.

It's a tricky question.

I will say this much. When my father appeared, we had a conversation most of which I remember today over 40 years later. At one point he blurted out "I always was doomed! I didn't really have any choice!!'

I was an atheist like I said, but I answered back "That can't be right!" (making an appeal to a moral order which at the time I didn't believe in!). He replied "Oh, it's right, all right! You can see that from here".

The "Here" at that time being where he was standing - I presume in front of the judgement seat. Most of the time he was looking over my head at something behind me, which seemed to fill him with awe, or guilt and shame, because some of the time he'd try to hide his face behind his hands and his face had an anguished look. I think then he was seeing some of the less salubrious aspects of his life being played back to him.

When I looked around to see what he was looking at, all I could see was the wall. I wasn't allowed to see it. Nor when he screamed at the end of the episode was I allowed to see what was coming for him, but whatever it was, it filled him with absolute terror.

I've always had trouble coming to grips with that point of that peculiar event.

I should point out that sometime later in the same conversation, he said "I was WILLING" (to act in the cruel stupid way he did, and to keep acting that way).

So I still think there were times in his life when God was trying to get through to him. If not, it makes a mockery of the claim we have guardian angels whose job it is to try to get us to move towards God and stay there.

I think we have a guardian demon too eg. a Screwtape or Wormwood whose job it is to get us into their father's house Down Under, and keep us there.

One of them will prevail, but I still think our wills are involved - somehow.

 

[zippy2006]

Hi there,

Has anyone studied this topic and why the movement was considered heretical.

Further - would a similar movement within the RC Church be treated as heretical today?

Thanks for your input.

I wrote a bit on this topic here, including providing some sources. You might think of Jansenists as Catholic Calvinists or soft Calvinists.

Jansenism is, like many things, the result of internecine battles in the Catholic Church. One of the theological centers of Jansenism was the convent of Port Royal des Champs. Pascal came under the influence of Jansenism through contact with some theologians there, and his sister eventually entered that convent. When Jansenism and the convent came under the attack of Jesuits at the Sorbonne Pascal came to its defense through his pseudonymous Provincial Letters.

@Bob Crowley is mistaken when he claims that Pascal abandoned Jansenism early on. The letters were written in 1656-7, and Pascal very likely died a Jansenist, though he became less involved in the affairs of the convent after the death of his sister.

 

[Bob Crowley]

@Bob Crowley is mistaken when he claims that Pascal abandoned Jansenism early on. The letters were written in 1656-7, and Pascal very likely died a Jansenist, though he became less involved in the affairs of the convent after the death of his sister.

Perhaps "abandoned" might be too strong a word, but I get a strong sense he was turning away from it towards existentialism, even if the term hadn't been coined at that time.

The Tragedy of Blaise Pascal ~ The Imaginative Conservative

For Pascal, as for Kierkegaard and other, later existentialist philosophers and theologians, unending dread may well have been the cost of existence. “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me,” he proclaimed. [8] There is at times the echo of a terrible nihilism that reverberates though the otherwise silent spaces of Pascal’s infinite universe, as he gazed into the abyss. T. S. Eliot wrote that Pascal’s despair is “perfectly objective,” corresponding “exactly to the facts” and so “cannot be dismissed as mental disease.”[9] In the end, Pascal concluded, the rational proof of God’s existence, such as Descartes had tried to construct with the ontological argument, was useless and unconvincing to those disinclined to believe. Essential questions about the meaning and purpose of human existence could never be resolved through the application of reason or logic. In fact, for Pascal, they could not be resolved at all. They could only be felt in all of their contradiction and paradox. The experience of such utter confusion and despair alone made faith possible and necessary, but offered no assurance that it would come.

I also note that he sometimes indulged in gambling, which sounds a bit suspect for a Jansenist. Indeed he was involved in devising the formal study of probability in collusion with Pierre de Fermat, mainly due to the gambling woes of one Antoine Gombaud, Chevalier de Méré (1607 – 29 December 1684)who appealed to Pascal to help him solve a gambling problem which was costing him a lot of money. Pascal got Pierre de Fermat involved, and the rest is history.

That time when Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat helped a gambler

He even invented the roulette wheel, to prove aspects of probability theory.

Pascal was also a first-rate mathematician whose fascination with, and success at, the gaming table enabled him to contribute to the development of probability theory. To test his hypotheses, he devised the roulette wheel.

His indulgence in gambling might help explain his oft quoted comment about gambling on the existence of God.

Pascal's wager - Wikipedia

The Pensées passage on Pascal's wager is as follows:

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is....

..."God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.

Do not, then, reprove for error those who have made a choice; for you know nothing about it. "No, but I blame them for having made, not this choice, but a choice; for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to wager at all."

Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

"That is very fine. Yes, I must wager; but I may perhaps wager too much." Let us see. Since there is an equal risk of gain and of loss, if you had only to gain two lives, instead of one, you might still wager. But if there were three lives to gain, you would have to play (since you are under the necessity of playing), and you would be imprudent, when you are forced to play, not to chance your life to gain three at a game where there is an equal risk of loss and gain. But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And this being so, if there were an infinity of chances, of which one only would be for you, you would still be right in wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly, being obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there is one for you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain. But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite.[12]