Blaise Pascal #1 (His History)

Oliver Woods discusses the impact of classical authors on the history of the West. He explains how the legal system of Alfred the Great was replaced by the Normans and the Papal Revolution. This led to a variety of legal substitutes for the law of God. Woods emphasizes the need to return to the Mosaic Covenant and highlights the influence of the scientific revolution and the Reformation. He mentions the opposition from the papal hierarchy to scientific proposals. He acknowledges the contributions of Christian pastors and scientists, but also the rift between science and the Bible. Woods discusses Blaise Pascal's contributions to science and his belief in the compatibility of science and faith. He talks about the secular revolution of the 17th century and the implications for subsequent history. He concludes by promoting his website and offering free resources. Welcome, everybody, to TheGreatBibleReset.com. This is Oliver Woods and our joint efforts to trace the impact of the classical authors on the history of the West. So we've spoken often on how the biblical restitutional legal system of Alfred the Great was replaced by a retributory legal system of the Normans at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the Papal Revolution of 1075. Now as we've noted over the recent weeks, this is quite complex, but it has led to a vast repertoire of legal substitutes for the law of God in our modern legal system. So the need of the hour is a return to the law of God as summarized in the Mosaic Covenant of Exodus 20-24, which is the Ten Commandments and their case law illustrations. These are bound together inseparably by God in the Book of the Covenant of Exodus 24, to which God's people are called to swear an oath of allegiance. The ramifications of this 10th century, actually 11th century, legal revolution are felt to this very day. It was interrupted briefly, at least, by the Age of Reformation, inaugurated by Martin Luther in 1570. The scientific revolution was overlaid on this period of reformation during the 1500s and 1600s, the 16th and 17th centuries. It intersected the wars of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in Europe and the Puritan Revolution in England, in 17th century England. The scientific revolution is multifaceted, and it's not an easy thing to capture in a sound bite. I watched a lecture recently where the professor praised his audience for gathering together to learn about the roots of the scientific revolution, which he confessed was a thing he'd been trying to figure out for 40 years. So such humility is admirable, and we shall strive to emulate that in our attempts to sort things out historically. But some assert that the correspondence of scientific revolution with the reformation of Luther and Calvin was merely coincidental. But others will push back that it was a byproduct of the biblical worldview of an orderly universe. It's ironic that it seemed to be the papal hierarchy and the inquisition that offered the most religious opposition to the scientific proposals of men like Copernicus and Galileo, for example. Yet, we must offer a tip of the hat to the Jesuits for their scientific accomplishments. Many early achievements in science were, in fact, due to the part-time labors of Christian pastors working at home or in the backyard. Cotton Mather was an American example in the late 1600s, striving mightily to prove the veracity of the Bible by Newtonian physics. All such efforts tended to backfire, elevating the authority of science above that of the Bible and creating an artificial rift between science and the Bible in the popular mind that haunts us to this very day. But Blaise Pascal was one of the few who did not make science a stand-alone source of truth apart from the Bible. He was a math prodigy who made many practical discoveries before age 30. After his mid-life conversion to Christ, he became an active apologist, though he tended toward mysticism. In his famous wager, for example, he challenged skeptics to accept Christ, betting against the awful consequences, if it were true. Pascal lived from 1623 to 1662, barely 40 years, a latecomer to the scientific revolution in a French scientist, philosopher, and Christian apologist. He pioneered understanding of fluid equilibrium, vacuum, probability, and calculus. Pascal was a child prodigy in math. At age 9, he asked his father about geometry. His father replied simply that it was a study of shape and form. The boy began to study entirely on his own, and in short order he came up with Euclid's first 32 theorems, all in the correct order. The course of his life was set. Pascal went on to invent the barometer, the altimeter, the hydraulic press, and other practical devices. Pensy's, which is French for thoughts, was published posthumously in 1670. It contains his religious meditations from scattered notes. What a shimmerer than is man, said Pascal. What a novelty. What a monster. What a chaos. What a contradiction. What a prodigy. Judge of all things. Feeble earthworm. Depository of truth. A sink of uncertainty and error. The glory and the shame of the universe. Well, in historical context, holiness implies saints, notes historian James Turner, and the cult of science read them in job lots. There were the Desert Fathers, Roger Bacon and Copernicus, toiling alone in the barrens of medieval superstition. The founders of scientific monasticism, Francis Bacon and John Locke, laying down the rules of investigation and knowledge. The great evangelists, Newton and Darwin, transcribing the gospel of nature, and above all, the role of martyrs scattered by the church. Giordano Bruno at the stake, Galileo before the Inquisition, Joseph Priestley hounded from England. Here, where paragons of holiness a free mind could venerate, a communion of saints and believers could aspire to enter. Thus, the cult of scientism emerged as an imposter during this period, as the belief that the scientific method alone is the source of truth. Waning Christian influence was due in part to the reformers' resistance to the new science. Newton, for example, rejected Copernicus' conclusions, perhaps rightly so, if we step back and try to view things from God's perspective outside the goldfish bowl, so to speak. It's true that most early modern scientists were at least Christian in name, and they worked in a Christian social milieu. Apart from the Christian view of an orderly universe, modern science could not have developed, but the Bible base was often brushed aside by a view of science at war with God in the Bible, and indeed science itself, and this view is called scientism. Pascal lived during the era of peace under the Edict of Nantes, which lasted from 1598 to 1685, but it proved to be an era of much heresy, notably that of the Parisian freethinkers against which Pascal directs much of his writing. So in what ways did Pascal represent a departure from the general current of thought in his era? The 1600s have been described by some as a century of revolution, because of two military uprisings that shook the foundations of England. The first at mid-century was violent, and the second in 1689 is known as the bloodless revolution or the glorious revolution. However, much more significant than its military upheavals was the revolution of secularism that swept not only England, but all of Europe. At the beginning of the century, belief in God was nearly universal, but by the end of the century, men thought in terms of secular categories, and the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment was in place, the Age of Reason. The Parisian freethinkers were the representatives of this trend in France. Writing against this tide of secularism, Pascal was something of an oddity. So what are the implications for subsequent history? Pascal proves that science and faith do in fact mix, but science must be pursued in context of Bible truth, or it loses touch with reality. Modern quantum mechanics, for example, has proposed such oddities as the theory of parallel universes. Another is that the act of observation itself creates reality. Ironically, Pascal's mystical forays created the illusion that philosophy may operate apart from theology. Thanks for your participation today, your attendance, and your attention. 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