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Pondering Pascal’s Wager 171
leading. It gives the impression that you might actually have an eternal
happiness in God by simply choosing to believe he exists, when
you have neither tasted nor seen his convincing and enthralling glory.
But according to the Scriptures, that is not saving faith. As we saw in
chapter 8, groundless faith does not display the trustworthiness of the
one trusted. The “faith” of the wager does not embrace God as true or
beautiful. God is an unknown risk. But that is no honor to God and,
therefore, is no saving faith, because saving faith glorifies the reliability
of God to keep his promises (Rom. 4:20). The only faith of eternal value
is well-grounded faith. But Pascal’s Wager, in its popular form, gives the
impression that one can have eternal life on a venture.
The Wager as Complex and Challenging
But, in fact, Pascal was aware of this problem with his wager, though
most popular uses of the wager do not take note of this. To be fair to
him, we need to make this clear. He pictures his listener responding to
the wager,
“I confess it, I admit it. But, still, is there no means of seeing the
faces of the cards?”—Yes, Scripture and the rest, etc. “Yes, but I
have my hands tied and my mouth closed; I am forced to wager,
and am not free. I am not released, and am so made that I cannot
believe. What, then, would you have me do?” (emphasis added)
Pascal answers,
True. But at least learn your inability to believe, since reason brings
you to this, and yet you cannot believe. Endeavour then to convince
yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement
of your passions. You would like to attain faith, and do not know
the way; you would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and ask the
remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound like you, and
who now stake all their possessions. These are people who know the
way which you would follow, and who are cured of an ill of which
you would be cured.
It is not easy to know from the brevity of Pensées precisely how Pascal
conceives of this “cure” for unbelief. His basic answer is: Set out on