Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, knowing he had terminal cancer, said that even though he was an agnostic he was going to convert to Christianity before he died, citing Pascal’s Wager:
Once critical of organised religion and sceptical of faith, Adams shared his decision on the January 1 episode of his podcast Real Coffee with Scott Adams. “I’ve not been a believer, but I have respect for any Christian who goes out of their way to try to convert me,” he said. “It is my plan to convert. I still have time, but you’re never too late.”
Adams cited Pascal’s Wager, the 17th-century philosophical argument that choosing to believe in God carries little risk but potentially eternal reward. He explained, “If it turns out there’s nothing there, I’ve lost nothing… If it turns out there is something there and the Christian model is the closest to it, I win.”
Sure enough, his last statement before his death said this:
“Many of my Christian friends have asked me to find Jesus before I go. I’m not a believer, but I have to admit the risk-reward calculation for doing so looks so attractive to me, so here I go. I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior and look forward to spending an eternity with Him. The part about me not being a believer should be quickly resolved if I wake up in heaven. I won’t need any more convincing than that. I hope I’m still qualified for entry.”
Is this a valid conversion?
Let’s not presume to come to a definitive conclusion about whether Adams is in Heaven or not. Let’s hope that he had a grain of faith at least the size of a mustard seed. Somewhere he heard the Word that Jesus is savior and perhaps in the extremity of his dying the Holy Spirit did His work. But let’s consider this statement and the apologetic argument known as Pascal’s Wager.
As Adams frames it in his statement, he has no belief, but he is making a decision.
I suspect that evangelicals who believe in “decision theology” would say that Adams’ conversion is valid. The altar call is “make a decision for Christ!” I have known evangelicals who ask baptized, catechized, confirmed, Bible-believing, Christ-believing Lutherans, “but have you made a decision for Christ?” and if the answer is “no”–or “what’s that?”–the evangelicals claim that the Lutherans are not Christians. I have known evangelicals who treat those words–“I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior”–or their equivalent in almost sacramental terms, like Lutherans think of baptism. When they made that decision, when they said those words, that was the moment when they became a Christian.
I do think evangelicals who think in those terms usually have faith in Christ and what He has done for them. But the decision is not faith.
I suspect that Lutherans as well as Calvinists and others who emphasize justification by faith–including many evangelicals–would say that Adams’ statement would not describe an actual conversion. Faith entails “belief.” And yet, faith is not simply the same as belief in factual information.
Adams shows a tragic misunderstanding that is common among agnostics: Insisting on certainty. If he wakes up in Heaven then he can believe. Many nonbelievers say that “if I could only know for sure that God exists, then I could be a Christian.” And “why doesn’t God reveal Himself clearly, so that I could know?” But faith isn’t like that. “We walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Faith includes a sense of trust and dependence. And this kind of faith is a gift: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). The Holy Spirit creates this faith by means of God’s Word. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). (See my post on what Hamann said about certainty, that reason itself cannot give us certainty, that the rationalist’s demand for certainty always ends in uncertainty, and that actually faith is necessary for all knowledge.)
I love Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French mathematician, physicist, and inventor of the first mechanical calculator, a precursor to today’s computers. He was a genius and, in my opinion, one of the greatest apologists for Christianity. His Penseés (that is, “Thoughts” ) are his notes for a defense of the Christian faith that he never completed, but they are brilliant and stimulating. They don’t just give abstract arguments for an abstract philosophical deity; rather, they raise the issues of the human heart. As such, they make powerful devotional reading. Pascal was a Jansenist, a Catholic who embraced teachings of the Reformation such as justification by faith, so he proclaims the gospel. (The Catholic church soon branded Jansenism a heresy.)
Today’s Christians would do well to read Pascal, and at some point I’d like to blog about some of his insights. But I have always thought his “wager” (Penseés, note 233) to be the weakest of his arguments. You can’t just choose to believe! And yet, in researching this post, I see that there is more to the argument than I had realized. He says that in making the wager that Christianity is true, live as if you believe–go to church, do good works, pray, etc.–and belief will come. I think that is good advice for a nonbeliever who wants to believe. Prolonged exposure to the Word is indeed likely to create faith. God will be active in undoing your unbelief (Mark 9:24).
But what do you think?
Illustration: Blaise Pascal by Clermont Auvergne Métropole, Musée d’Art Roger Quilliot, inv. 999.3.1, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=116075351
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