Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal's Pensees (Paperback)

~ (Author, Editor), (Author) "Pascal made quite clear in his notes that his book was to begin, not with my first points, Order and Method, but with a much..." (more)
Key Phrases: own wretchedness, modern pagans, Jesus Christ, Middle Ages, Word of God (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Peter Kreeft believes that Blaise Pascal is the first post-medieval apologist. No writer in history, claims Kreeft, is a more effective Christian apologist and evangelist to today's uprooted, confused, secularized pagans (inside and outside the Church) than Pascal. He was a brilliant man--a great scientist who did major work in physics and mathematics, as well as an inventor--whom Kreeft thinks was three centuries ahead of his time. His apologetics found in his Pensées are ideal for the modern, sophisticated skeptic.

Kreeft has selected the parts of Pascal's Pensées which best respond to the needs of modern man, and offers his own comments on applying Pascal's wisdom to today's problems. Addressed to modern skeptics and unbelievers, as well as to modern Christians for apologetics and self-examination, Pascal and Kreeft combine to provide a powerful witness to Christian truth.

Product Details

• Paperback: 341 pages
• Publisher: Ignatius Press (October 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898704529
• ISBN-13: 978-0898704525
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #35,364 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #6 in	Books > Religion & Spirituality > Earth-Based Religions > Paganism

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent discussion of the basic problem of man, July 17, 1999

By A Customer

I struggled on my own with my existential crisis and frustration with our greatness/wretchedness and rediscovered the faith I had shelved. I read this book much later and it was an eloquent treatment of my path through the dark night! Pascal is great and Peter Kreeft adds much, with his elegant and illuminating comments. I use a lot of material from this book when talking with secular optimists and pessimists. I really like all the Kreeft books that I have read and he is a good speaker, too. I could not put down this book and have re-read it several times, in whole or parts. Highly recommended!

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My "Thoughts" exactly..., July 31, 2005

By	Corum Seth Smith (Hendersonville, NC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am a fan of both Kreeft and Pascal. I think some other reviewers have hit on many of the same reasons I like this book, but here's my own take.

First of all, there was a philosophical movement in Europe at the turn of the 18th century called the Enlightenment. No single wave of thought can take as much credit for influencing the modern world as the Enlightenment. That movement was a tidal wave that swept up every major philosopher for the last three hundred years. Pascal was one of the only thinkers not swept up in the powerful riptides of that "revolution." One of my favorite quotes in the book is that Enlightenment tries to do "life itself as a science." Yet Pascal knew that man was not the measure of all things, but a twisted contradiction of greatness and wretchedness. Herein I believe, lies much of his insight; he is not a strict Enlightenment idealist.

Rather, Pascal is a philsophical and theological realist who brought his bluntness and passion to the fields not only of philosophy, but science and math. Pascal was fortunate enough to brandish insights in all of these disciplines. My favorite parts of his thought, however, correspond to his philosophy.

These insights were the "Pensees," his thoughts. I think every Christian should know "The Wager" argument by heart. It is brilliant. Everything to lose and everything to gain; life often revolves around the choices we make and the corresponding benefits or harms that result.

Pascal is almost what you get when you try to blend the strengths of Augustine and Aquinas; a passionate minister (Augustine) mixed with the masterful logic of the Summa (Aquinas) rolled into one neat package. He was not a Cartesian dualist who saw mind and body as separate. Rather, Pascal realized that heart and soul live in the same body, at odds with one another, yet neither ever totally conquering the other.

Also, Pascal is what I would have called in my college days as a philosopher a "non-dry" thinker. That is, Pensees goes down a lot easier than Nichomachean Ethics because it is more accessible and heartfelt. Argument is shrouded in vernacular expression, passion is not seen as antithetical to the cause of strengthening an already sound position.

I highly recommend this book, Kreeft has some good commentary that helps simplify the very complex "Thoughts/Pensees" of one of the most brilliant thinkers ever.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent cure for atheism/agnosticism/skepticism, February 27, 2004

By	Kevin Davis (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Dr. Peter Kreeft (Philosopher at Boston College) has created another fine addition to his exstensive list of orthodox Christian philosophy, theology, and apologetics books. Here, Kreeft takes Pascal's Pensees (which he deems as the greatest work in apologetics), edits, outlines, and explains them with much focus on the modern world that was just beginning in Pascal's day (17th century) and has culminated in our "late modern" world of atheism, nihilism, existentialism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, neo-Marxism, and, in general, confusion. It can be argued that Pascal was the first Christian to really engage with the materialist-rationalist turn in Western thought (via Descartes, Hume, Hobbes, and others) that gave us the epistemological crisis of current discourse (that Kant tried to solve and Nietzsche embraced).

I thought it would be helpful to give a rather random example of how Kreeft takes one of the Pensees and expounds on it:

Pascal: Nothing presented to the soul is simple, and the soul never applies itself simply to any subject. That is why the same thing makes us laugh and cry.
Kreeft: This is why life is neither a tragedy nor a comedy but a tragicomedy. If we do not both laugh and cry at life, we do not understand it. ...People are never simple. They are good-and-evil, happy-and-wretched. We are also flesh-and-spirit. God is not simply either. He is one-and-three, person-and-nature, just-and-merciful, eternal-and-dynamic, transcendent-and-immanent. Only abstractions are simple. The only language with no ambiguity, no analogy and no poetry is mathematics. That's why it's the only language computers can "understand": it doesn't require understanding at all.