If you haven’t read Blaise Pascal’s famous Pensees, you need to put it on your to do list. It is essential reading for any thoughtful Christian who wants to reflect on the truth. Larry Hurtado has recently been mulling over some of Pascal’s famous sayings, and here is a little meditation on one of them, which still rings true today.
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Hurtado says….
My posting on scholarship and personal stakes drew some attention, and so I dare to make another foray into cognitive matters, this time with a quote from one of my favorites: Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). He died sadly before completing his grand project of a full defense of Christian faith, leaving only the several hundred “Pensees“, notes for that grand work. But he had a native eloquence and a memorable way of expressing things. Here’s one of my favorites (#739, citing the Penguin English translation by A. J. Krailsheimer):
“Truth is so obscured nowadays and lies so well established that unless we love the truth we shall never recognize it.”
Loving truth as a means to know it: That’s a cognitive approach you don’t often hear about in university courses, but I think it’s terribly important.
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