11/10/2022 0 Comments Pascals wager![]() ![]() It is not selfish to desire this: indeed, pride is the primary impediment to trusting in that mercy. Moreover, from the orthodox Christian vantage point it is no small matter to avoid the punishment each has rightly earned and instead receive the unmerited grace of a merciful God. This is part-and-parcel of Christianity, and to omit this promise and its power is to ignore or deny the essence of the faith. The Christian life is one of sacrifice: in Bonhoeffer’s famous words “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” But the Christian faith is not a dark and morose one: it is one that promises life eternal that begins now, life that carries with it the hope of infinite joy and love, through which one’s life and relationships and ultimately creation itself is set right. Even Christ’s admonition about taking up a cross daily and following him appeals to the desire of the Christian to save his life (Luke 9:23-25). Moreover, having benefits that flow from belief, and being joyful in such benefits, is entirely in accord with Scripture. Rather, it is addressed to the non-Christian skeptic, who has yet to absorb this Christianly manner of thinking. The response to this is that of course a Christian should be thinking selflessly, and will do so, but the Wager is not addressed to the Christian. This, to critics, seems quite at odds with Christianity, which is supposed to be about thinking not of oneself but of God and others. ![]() Second, critics charge, the Wager appeals to self-interest: to minimizing one’s risks, cutting one’s losses, and saving one’s skin. It is the equivalent of getting an injured person to get into an ambulance so to be brought to a place of healing and restoration and hope. These charges of corruption, however, ignore that the Wager is not an abandonment of the truth, but an appeal to prudence so to bring the enquirer to the truth. ![]() Abandoning the truth, it is asserted, essentially abandons seeking to know God. Clifford in 1879 quoted Coleridge: “He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and in the end loving himself better than all.” Richard Dawkins, who has suggested that the Wager was nothing more than some sort of joke, has even charged it is less than honest because it encourages feigned belief. The pragmatic nature of the argument-appealing to common sense as it does-suggests to some that Pascal was more interested in bringing in new adherents to Christianity than he was in finding and proving and broadcasting the truth. This distinguishes it from most classical arguments for God’s existence, arguments that harness evidence enabling one to discard falsehood and distractors and arrive at what is true about God and creation and humankind. Four seem-at least at first glance-to be particularly compelling.įirst, it is said, Pascal shows himself unconcerned with what is true, as his argument is a pragmatic one rather than one driven by fealty to truth. Nonetheless, the Wager has been criticized harshly on many grounds. The argument is often misunderstood as an attempt to prove God, when in actual fact it is a prudential argument, and one focused on the interlocutor who is already open to the possibility of Christian conversion.Įven Pascal, then, recognized inherent limitations of the Wager. In that Wager, 17 th-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal argued that the choice between Christian belief, with its potential for infinite benefits (and implied lack of cost), and nonbelief, with its potentially infinite costs and penalties, made choosing Christian belief always the more reasonable of the two. ![]() In “The Pop Star and the Mathematician” I gave an overview of the apologetic approach commonly called Pascal’s Wager. This is the second of two essays introducing Pascal’s Wager. Click HERE for Part 1. ![]()
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