Lecture 21, The Path of Life, Brother Lawrence, and Blaze Pascale. Let me begin with a question. I want to list some people and have you tell me what all these people have in common. So you listen to the list here and see what these people have in common. Maybe several things, but there's one thing I'm thinking about. The first Blaze Pascale in France is Taroton and Brad Street, the New England poet, Rembrandt, Samuel Rutherford, Richard Baxter, Jeremy Taylor. And you think, what all of those people may have in common from different countries, in some sense, all Christians, different parts of the Christian tradition, but I'm thinking of something else. What are they having in common? Well, they probably did. Yes. Capricorn? Capricorn? Well, today, maybe I'll give you the answer. Today, we're going to talk about Blaze Pascale. Number one, and Brad Street from lecture 19, Francis Taroton, lecture 20, Rembrandt, lecture 17, Samuel Rutherford came up twice in lecture 16, lecture 18, Richard Baxter, lecture 15, Jeremy Taylor, lecture 14. So quite a few lectures here, but all of these people are from the 17th century. They were all born and died within the 17th century. So I wanted to make that point, because we've been going on and on with different topics, but just to remind us that we're staying basically at the same time in history. We're going to make some movement pretty soon into the 18th century, but another lecture today in the 17th century. All of these people lived at the same time, and your timeline, if you're doing a timeline, would reflect this, all lived in the 17th century, all born near the beginning of the 17th century, Samuel Rutherford first in the year 1600, and Pascale and Taroton interestingly born the same year, 1623. This lecture is going to focus on the Roman Catholic Church. We haven't looked at the Roman Church in some time with our focus on other topics in this post-reformation period. There's so much we could look at and talk about in Roman Catholic history. It's a little overwhelming, but I have chosen to focus on two men, Roman Catholics who lived in Paris. At the same time, one was a very simple man who had a very simple message and lived a very simple life. The other was one of the most brilliant minds in all of human history. One was Brother Lawrence, and the other was Blaze Pascale. Brother Lawrence was born in 1610 and lived to a ripe old age of 81, dying in 1691. Pascale was born in 1623 and had a very short life, dying at 39 years of age in the year 1662. As we think about Roman Catholic history in the 17th century, focusing on these two important people, I'd like to just mention one other important matter related to 17th century church history. Just to remind us of what's going on beyond Europe. Half a world away from Paris, Hangzhou Cathedral, was built in the 1660s, 150 miles from Shanghai, Roman Catholic Cathedral in China, which is interestingly still in use today. We'll come later to look at missionary history, but it's not only interesting but important to recognize that as we focus on these two men living in Paris, the Christian message in the Roman Catholic tradition had already reached China. There are two prayers that I've included in the syllabus. I'm going to begin with the prayer from Brother Lawrence and we'll end with the prayer from Blaze Pascale. One of Brother Lawrence's most constant sayings was this, pray to him for me. As I pray to him for you, I hope to see him quickly. He would say that to friends that he would meet over and over again. The one burden of Brother Lawrence's life is expressed in this prayer that we will use now as we begin to study Lawrence and Blaze Pascale. Let us pray. Oh my God, since thou art with me, and I must now in obedience to thy commands, supply my mind to these outward things. I beseech thee to grant me the grace to continue in thy presence. And to this end, do thou prosper me with thy assistance. Receive all my works and possess all my affections. Amen. The 17th century, especially in France, was a time of the flowering of Roman Catholic piety. There is a quotation from a book that summarizes this nicely. It says, never was there such a multitude of theologians, casuistress, contemplatives and spiritual masters, opening by voice or by ink, by flesh or spirit, so many windows towards heaven. Quite a few that we could look at. We could look at Francis DeSales, who died in 1622. He was the Catholic Bishop of Geneva, and it was through the work of Francis DeSales, the author of a book called Introduction to the About Life, that many people in Geneva, who had been converted to Calvinism from Catholicism, were now reconverted to Catholicism. They were converted originally from Catholicism to Calvinism, and now back to Catholicism, or at least their children or grandchildren. I remember the first time I went to Geneva, the shock and disappointment that I felt when I saw a great church and thought, well, this is Calvin's church, and found that it was a Catholic church. Calvin's church was somewhere else. In the counter-reformation period, many Protestant territories, such as Geneva, were reconverted, at least many people in those areas, to the Catholic faith. Francis DeSales said, love alone will shake the walls of Geneva. So he set out to reconvert Geneva to Catholicism by a life of love to people. St. Vincent de Paul, died in 1660, was shepherd that God spoke to in his own testimony, he tells about this, and who then devoted his life to the poor, a mystic and an organizer of charitable and missionary enterprises. Madame Dion lived later in the century, and then died in the next century, in 1717, a woman who was very much characterized by a deep prayer life. She was called a quietist because some of her emphasis tend to lead away from activity to an inner life. She had a very lengthy correspondence with Archbishop Finnellon, Francis Finnellon, Roman Catholic Archbishop of the 17th and 18th centuries. There is a book called Talking with God that I'm reading now as part of my devotions, selections from the lectures and letters of Finnellon. J.I. Packer, in his introduction to that book, he writes introductions to almost all books, and in his introduction to this particular book, he talks about the searching gentleness of this Roman Catholic Archbishop. Madame Dion, his friend, had great influence on John Wesley and on the German pietus. So there are many names there and many topics that we could look at, but I want to focus on Brother Lawrence to me, he's one of the most attractive and impressive of these spiritual guides from Catholic France in the 17th century. His name was Nicholas Herman, who came known as Brother Lawrence later when he joined a monastery. He was a soldier, and he had other jobs, a kind of aimless life for a while. He described himself as a big awkward fellow who broke things. But when he was 50, he entered the Convalide Order in Paris as a laborer, became Brother Lawrence, and was put to work in the kitchen. Brother Lawrence's message was a simple one, that is, we must do everything we do, including working in the kitchen, which Brother Lawrence really did not care for. We must do it, though, for God. So that the presence of God is as real in the kitchen as it is at prayer and in the chapel. That's really the message of Brother Lawrence. It can be summarized that simply. He said, to someone, you keep saying that I'm always saying just one thing. And you're right, I'm always just saying one thing. And it was the fact that we must practice the presence of God wherever we are in whatever we're doing. After his death, a few letters, and the record of some conversations with a friend were published together in a little book called The Practice of the Presence of God. Did Brother Lawrence, this Convalide monk, depend on God's grace, or his own good works for his salvation? Well, let's ask him, Brother Lawrence, what do you depend on for your salvation? And he replies, all possible kinds of mortification, if they were void of the love of God, could not have faced a single sin. We ought without anxiety to expect the pardon of our sins from the blood of Jesus Christ, only endeavoring to love him with all our hearts. Well, the first sentence is a little puzzling to us, perhaps tainted a bit by Roman Catholic semi-pologianism. But in the second sentence, Brother Lawrence seems to break free from that and expresses his confidence in the blood of Jesus as the source for his salvation. As far as I know, Lace Pascal never met Brother Lawrence, even though they lived in the same town at the same time. But what would the brilliant Pascal have said about this simple, caramelite, lay brother? And we have these words from Pascal, from his famous thoughts, or poem says, not directed toward Brother Lawrence, as far as I know. But I think this would be the answer from Pascal to a question like that. Pascal wrote, do not be surprised at the sight of simple people who believe without argument. This is the word of the, one of the most famous Christian apologists in history. Don't be surprised at simple people who believe without argument. God inclines their hearts to believe. We shall never believe with a vigorous and unquestioning faith unless God touches our hearts. And we shall believe as soon as he does so. Sounds like a Calvinist, or an Augustinian. Pascal was a Janssonist, as we'll see, and Janssonist recovered the teaching of Augustin in a time when in the Catholic Church so much of that was lost. So when we come to Pascal, we are clearly in the presence of a 17th century Roman Catholic who believes in grace, a full Augustinian doctrine of grace. Who was Pascal? And how did he come to these convictions? When Brother Lawrence was in his early teens, plays Pascal was born in France in 1623. And it wasn't long before his family and then other people recognized that he was a brilliant child. And he became a brilliant man, mathematician and a scientist. He did work in geometry and physics and calculus, which made his name famous to people who study mathematics. We know that he built more than 50 models of a calculating machine, probably the first in history, which became a kind of prototype of the modern computer. And he did a lot of other interesting things, too, is even said that plays Pascal invented the wristwatch so that people did not have to reach into their pockets and pull out a watch to see what time it was. Pascal was so in earnest to use his time that he did not want to take the time to pull a watch out of his pocket, so he made one that would fit on his wrist. Whether he did that or not, I don't know, but he certainly was a man who was thinking of how to improve life and how to advance human thought. For the early part of his life, he was a conventional Catholic, not in a sense denying or rejecting the Catholic faith, but at the same time, apparently not taking it all that seriously either. He went through a few years in his life that is called the worldly period in which this brilliant young Frenchman was devoted to social life and to moving among the intelligentsia and the wealthy and the glittering life of Paris. That time in his life was not wasted because as he lived in these circles, he began to observe how people think and live and act in these circles. And he kept all that in his mind, the insights that he gained there played a very important role in his diagnosis of the human condition, particularly as it affected now so called modern people. The 17th century was also the time of Descartes, so we'll see next lecture. And with Descartes, we have the rise of skepticism, not only are people praying to God at this time, but some, soon quite a few, eventually most people are beginning to question God and to doubt God. And then to eventually deny God. That's a new phenomenon in human history that we will look at in our next lecture and more detail. Like Esther in the Old Testament, Pascal had come to the kingdom for such a time as this, but before he could do his work in apologetics, he had to come to the Lord in a more definite and forceful, and determined way. That happened in Pascal's life when he became acquainted with the Janssenist. This was a group of French Catholics going their inspiration originally from a Dutch theologian, Catholic theologian named Cornelius Janssen, whose greatest contribution was to write a book called Augustine. It said that Janssen read all of Augustine's writings through 10 times and read all of the anti-Polagian writings of Augustine through 30 times and then wrote his book. But we know that a medieval theologian once said in desperation, if anybody says he has read all of Augustine, he's a liar. But maybe Janssen did read all of Augustine through all of these times if he did, that is a life's work in itself. But his book on Augustine is of great interest and significance because in the Catholic Church now largely dominated by Jesuit theologians and anti-Augustinian attitude toward grace, people began to hear again the authentic message of Augustine. It has been pointed out and I think it is quite interesting and significant that this big book by Janssen in some ways is best summarized by the five points of Calvinism which Dutch theologians had produced about 20 years before Janssen wrote his book. Janssen and the Janssenists would always deny vehemently that they were Calvinists but as soon as they had denied that and started saying what they did believe, they sure sounded like Calvinists. Of course they wanted to stay in the Catholic Church and to admit that they were Calvinists would bring a charge of the Pharisee upon them. They were charged with heresy anyway but it was not as easy for their opponents to do that as it would have been if they could have been identified with Calvinism. Janssenism became a theological movement, a reforming movement, theological in that it tried to bring the doctrine of grace back into Catholic teaching, a reforming movement because it tried to insist on greater diligence in the Christian life and concern for the church and for the way people lived. One of Janssen supporters was a reformer who tried to put Janssen's ideas into practice and this man said there has not been a real church in five or six hundred years thinking of Catholic church in France. Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones in one of his lectures speaks of the Janssenist as Calvinistic Methodist before their time. So something of the reform that comes to England later through the Wesley's and Whitfield is represented by the same spirit that motivated the Janssenist in the 17th century. It's debated whether Pascal was ever a pure and true Janssenist whether he considered himself a Janssenist or not but I think it's without debate that he was very much influenced by this movement and for all practical purposes was part of the Janssenist movement. He became involved with this earnest reform movement and certainly he became an Augustinian. There was another step in the spiritual life of Pascal first his conversion to Janssenism and secondly something that happened to him on the night of November 23rd, 1654 when he was 31 years old. It's called the night of fire. Pascal had a prevailing experience, spiritual experience that night which lasted for about two hours he tells us from about 1030 to 1230 that dramatically turned his life around and reoriented all his priorities and said him on the path that he would follow for the rest of his life as a Christian. He did tell people about this experience at the time that it happened but after he died a servant discovered a record of this event sewn into the lining of his coat. I had quoted in the syllabus about a third of what he wrote from about half past 10 in the evening until about half past 12 and then he wrote the word fire in large letters. And then he wrote God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars and you can read the other words that he wrote. Something happened to him a time of spiritual struggle and victory perhaps as one way we could express it because he stayed awake that night thinking about all kinds of things that suddenly came to him that the work that he was to do was to set forth the Christian message as he understood it in the Bible. And not as the philosophers and intellectuals were presenting it actually Pascal said he from that point on had a much more difficult task he said compared with apologetics mathematics calculus geometry all of these things are simple now he was dealing with something that was going to tax him to the utmost. And through God's grace he did produce some wonderful writings that have helped Christians down to the present. The whole life of Pascal was a life of sickness and suffering he died when he was only 39 some time before he had composed a prayer asking God to use illness to a good end. The prayer begins with these words Lord whose spirit is so good and so gentle and all things and who are so compassionate that not only all prosperity but even all afflictions that come to the intellect or the results of the compassion grant me grace that I may not do as the pagans do in the condition to which the justice has reduced me. And as a true Christian I may recognize Lee as my father and as my God in whatever a state I find myself since the change in my condition brings no change in my own he goes on to pray a very long prayer and write a very long prayer which we will come back to at the end of the lecture. Pascal was dying in the year 1662 at the age of 39 in a room in Paris where he could look out his window and see people walking on the streets below. He thought how sad it is that the poor people don't have carriages they don't have ways to get about the city they have to walk carrying burdens walk on foot and as he died he conceived of and designed a system of public transportation for the city of Paris which was then put into effect after his death. And those poor people who probably never heard of blaze Pascal were then by paying a small amount were able to ride on a public transportation system. But before he died he wrote two important books and that's why I'm lecturing on Pascal today if he had not written these books we probably would not have remembered him as interesting a man as he was. He wrote the brilliant provincial letters to answer Jesuit attacks on Janssenism the two extremes I suppose people in France would have believed in this time where the Janssenist on the one side that sounded very much like Calvinist and the Jesuits on the other side. He sounded much more like Pelagius or certainly semi-Polagianism was there teaching with fighting sarcasm and devastating wit Pascal wrote provincial letters to expose the semi-Polagian views of the Jesuits and their questionable ethics. But by far the greater book is the ponseys or the thoughts we really can't say that Pascal wrote that book because he left 900 fragments sometimes two or three pages sometimes just a sentence sometimes just a word or two on bits of paper in a box. And when he died people found all of these fragments or thoughts and the tasks that editors of the ponseys have had from that day down to the present is to try to put those together like a jigsaw puzzle in some sort of way that would represent the apologetical approach to Christianity that Pascal held and would have written about if he had lived longer to produce that book. Peter Creeft and Christianity for modern pagans puts it this way in 1662. God in his infinite mercy struck Pascal dead at the tender age of 39 before he could complete the greatest book of Christian apologetics ever written. It was a very true sentence but it strikes us with how strange that is that God would have done that but God has his own purpose and plan in everything including taking this man before he could finish a work that would have been outstanding and of great use in the Christian church. But what he left behind is a great significance and great use as well. Let me talk a moment about Pascal's audience and then I'll come to the message in the ponseys. Pascal is really attempting to reach in his thoughts comfortable members of the new secular intelligentsia. Before this interchistry we have seen plenty of hypocrites and heretics and assorted scoundrels of all guns but there's something new now. A new person only horizon person that we could call the modern pagan and it's this person that Pascal is particularly addressing. The rise of the modern pagan came about for a lot of reasons but there were two Frenchmen who's works contributed to this new skepticism one was montagne in the other day card. Montagne lived in the 16th century like Pascal a very brilliant man. In fact his parents taught him Latin as his first language and then he learned the other European languages as other languages but he was at home in Latin. He went to college he entered college when he was six years old and then spent a life of scholarship and writing. He's famous for his essays perhaps you have read some of montagne's essays in college or university art sometime in your studies. In fact it is thought that he invented the essay he was the person that first came up with the idea of writing something that we could call an essay. He was a committed Roman Catholic but what came through in his writings was not his Catholicism but his skepticism. His motto was what do I know question mark and he stressed the folly of certitude in matters essentially uncertain. The question mark is what's going to live on after montagne. He introduces the question mark into the thinking and minds of people in Europe who are used to the period or the exclamation point of the Protestant scholastics and theologians of the earlier period. Montagne died before Pascal was born but Descartes lived at the same time that Pascal did. Descartes changed montagne's what do I know into a more famous statement I think therefore I am and he might have added I doubt therefore I am and it's from Descartes as we'll see in the next lecture that we get that hard questioning frame of mine. Not the Descartes wanted to reject Christianity but he wanted to start all over again and from his own mind questioning everything come up with God and the external world. He does end up with God he doesn't become an atheist but to find God in your own human processes of thinking is not the same thing as finding God in the Bible. I expect when Pascal and his knight of fire wrote God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob not of the philosophers and not of the intellectuals and not of the scholars he was thinking of Descartes. Well what is the message of the ponseys fortunately my time is up so I can't tell you because I don't know and yet I can recommend three books that help us a great deal in trying to sort out these 900 fragments. The best commentaries that I have seen on the ponseys or three outsiders by Allen making sense of it all by Morris and Christianity for modern pagans by creed in those books are described in the syllabus. Let me just say this and I have also given quotations on a kind of outline in the syllabus of the ponseys which I don't have time to go through. As heads or suggestions as to what Pascal is really up to let me say this just to get you started in thinking along this line Pascal doesn't begin his apology with something like there is a God or the Bible is true or Jesus Christ is the son of God. But he starts or he would have started I think with a simple and undeniable fact we are unhappy so he starts what he wants to say to modern people he talks about man's condition being one of inconstancy boredom and anxiety. And when he's made that point he wants to make another point and that is we're all going to die hard to argue with these starting points in Pascal and then he moves from that beginning point to the common solution that human beings have devised in order to avoid really looking seriously at those points. One is diversion just keep busy keep doing things travel place boards read books do anything except don't think that's the way modern people try to escape the seriousness of the problem and the second is indifference we can't know anyway nobody really knows so we don't have to decide. Well Pascal says you do have to decide he talks about passionate truth seeking there are only two classes of persons who can be called reasonable those who serve God with all their heart because they know him and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him. And I think of all the writers in the history of Christian theology and apologetics Pascal is the most helpful in distinguishing between what we do with our hearts and what we do with reason. You can read the quotations from the ponseys on reason including the famous wager number 387 is called the wager and a nutshell I should be much more afraid of being mistaken and then finding out the Christianity is true than of being mistaken and believing it to be true. I remember when my son was in French class at Wallford College in South Carolina had a professor find young teacher of French and they read some of Pascal and this man who was not a Christian that quite a outspoken non Christian the French teacher said many times in that class I am scared to death of this wager. Well what happens if I wake up someday and find out that there really is a God and the wager of Pascal that got into his mind and he couldn't get it out. The hiddenness of God is another theme that Pascal deals with if God is really God wise he's so hard to find. And why is there so much unbelief and why is it so easy not to believe well you want to read Pascal to get an answer to that because it's a brilliant answer. And finally as a Janssenist he comes to the grace of God and then to the Christian life. Let me read the last of the thoughts that I've included in the syllabus number 553. Do small things as if they were great because of the majesty of Christ who does them in us and lives our life and do great things as if they were small and easy because of his almighty power to hear somebody say amen when I read the first part of that do small things as if they were great. Well that was brother Lawrence who was washing the dishes in his monastery and he did the small things as if they were great. Let me end with the conclusion of Pascal's prayer asking God to use illness to a good end. The last eight years that I have struggled with cancer this prayer has been a very important prayer in my life. And I would like to end this lecture with it. Let's pray. Oh Lord let me not henceforth desire health or life except to spend them for you with you and in you. You alone know what is good for me do therefore what seems best to you give to me or take from me conform my will to yours and grant that with humble and perfect submission and in holy confidence. I may receive the orders of your eternal providence and may equally adore all that comes to me from you through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Okay we've got few minutes. Yes question is did the Janssen is come to the scriptures directly or was a gust in their great teacher. I think I would say they really get it from a gust in but by getting it from a gust in they get all the scripture because the gust in his on the predestination of the saints and on perseverance and his other great semi-pologian writings really is just constantly exiting scripture. So the the way in to it was a gust in and what they found there was scripture. Yes. What were the grounds for heresy against the Janssenist. This becomes a very complicated history because what the Janssenist keeps saying is we're saying what a gust in said and a gust in was not a heretic in the Catholic church in fact he was a hero but by this time a gust in was honored more than he was followed in his teaching. So teachings like irresistible grace and limited atonement and election based purely on the sovereign choice of God which either a gust in explicitly teaches or which can be derived from his teaching were viewed as heretical teachings even though the Janssenist could constantly quote a gust in on these points. I think the if I could summarize the charge of heresy that the church brought against the Janssenist it was really you sound too much like the Calvinist and the Janssenist constantly denied as I said earlier that they were Calvinist but when they got back to saying what they did believe it did sound a lot like the Calvinist.
What was behind the skepticism I'm going to try to next time look at that in more detail the enlightenment and romanticism and why we get this massive shift all of a sudden because we're coming next time to the biggest break that we've had in this course since the first century. It's not 16th century between the Catholics and the Protestants it's in the 18th century between the Enlightened and the traditionalists in religion and there are a number of things that we can say there one one thing I would say anticipation of that is that it looked like the religious question would never be solved. After the Reformation splintered the church we have a hundred years hundred and fifty years of religious wars and people finally got exhausted with that and maintain you is saying maybe we really can't know and because we really can't know we shouldn't be killing each other because we say that we do know. He makes the point that all the world's problems are a matter of grammar by that he means you know one person says it this way one person says it that way just a word or two different so we engage in warfare and by holding this up to levity perhaps or skepticism there is a kind of eroding of confidence in what we can know. And when it becomes then fashionable and possible to question authority like the scripture and the church fathers and the professors of medieval universities Thomas Aquinas and all of that then the ground is cleared for you beginning and that's what they cart does. You're going to forget it all he says it hasn't solved anything it's just added to our problems so forget it all scripture theology philosophy everything start with an absolute new beginning he thought and out everything and then see what I can come up with just by thinking it out but he came up with something Cartesianism which is with us all the way down to the present and people were. Ready to hear something like that well we'll see next time how that worked out.