CHAPTER ONE

1.0 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study

During the periods before recent decades, intellectuals focus interest mostly on
the subjects such as Economics, Sciences, Agriculture and Political Science among
others. As of today however, the global interest in religious issues have been
overwhelmingly emphasized, especially since after the 9/11.
In this work, effort would be made to explore the study of religious faith in the
works of Soren Kierkegaard and Blaise Pascal, giving a detailed account of their
teachings and making a comparative analysis of their works from the Christian
perspective.
Faith is confidence or trust in a person, deity or in the doctrines or teachings of a
religion or view.1 In religion, faith often involves accepting claims about the character of
a deity, nature, or the universe. While some have argued that faith is opposed to reason,
proponents of faith argue that the proper domain of faith concerns questions which
cannot be settled by evidence. However, to a Christian, faith is not static but causes one
to learn more of God and grow, and has its origin in God. In Christianity, faith causes
change as it seeks a greater understanding of God. Faith is not fideism or simple
obedience to a set of rules or statements. 2 Traditionally, faith and reason have each been
considered to be sources of justification for religious belief, because both can purportedly
serve the same epistemic function.
The research demonstrates that Kierkegaard prioritizes faith even to the point that
it becomes positively irrational. And also, we shall see how Pascal’s work focus on the
way one should act by claiming that reason can neither affirm nor deny God’s existence.
He argues that since the negative consequences of believing are few (diminution of the
passions, some pious actions) but the gain of believing is infinite (eternal life), it is more
rational to believe than to disbelieve in God’s existence. 3 This assumes, of course, both
that God would not grant eternal life to a non-believer and that sincerity in one’s belief in
God is not a requirement for salvation. As such, Pascal introduced an original form of
rational voluntarism into the analysis of faith.

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1.2 Aims and Objectives of the Study.

The purpose of this research work is to investigate and understand the

interpretative framework given to the concept of faith, in the works of Soren Kierkegaard
and Blaise Pascal. Carefully studying how each has understood and explained the concept
of faith in his own domain. Effort would also be made in giving a detailed account of the
life and works of the two writers, as well as their influence and receptions.
Furthermore, a comparative analysis of the works of Kierkegaard and Pascal on
faith, extracting their similarities and differences and finally, an appraisal. In a nutshell,
this work is an attempt at unveiling the basic teachings and even notions as regards the
concept of faith in works of Kierkegaard and Pascal.

1.3 Scope and Limitations of the Study

This research work focuses on the concept of faith, in works of Kierkegaard and
Pascal. We shall not be emphasizing much on the theological and philosophical
understanding of faith by other scholars. Rather, the emphasis is on the works of
Kierkegaard and Pascal as relates to the concept of faith.

1.4 Research Methodology

In the course of documenting this research work, we are relying on available

library materials, published books, journal articles, and internet resources among many
other contributive channels.
Secondary sources are adequately used in this research work, being as a result of
the people involved in this discuss. The people in persons of Soren Kierkegaard and
Blaise Pascal, who lived in 19th and 17th century respectively. So, primary sources would
not be considered. However, provision has been made for books and journal articles. The
encyclopedia would not be left out also, the internet would also serve as a source, and
finally, books written by both writers would be sufficiently used.

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1.5 Literature Review

The book titled Pensées written by Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), it’s simply the
compelling thoughts of the religious thinker and philosopher. Originally intending to
publish a book defending Christianity, Pascal died before he could complete it. The
thoughts and ideas for his book were collected and compiled, posthumously and then
published as the Pensées. He discusses with great wonder and beauty the human
condition, the incarnation, God, the meaning of life, revelation and the paradoxes of
Christianity. His ideas and arguments are sometimes developed and intricate, at other
times, abrupt and mysterious.
He passionately argues for the Christian faith, using both argumentation and his
famous “wager”, popularly known as the “necessity of the wager”, which would be our
primary focus in the Pensées. The wager was set out in section 233 of the Pensées. The
wager is described in Pensées this way:
If there is a God, he is infinitely incomprehensible, since,
having neither parts nor limits… God is, or He is not. But
to which side shall we incline… Let us see. You have two
things to lose, the true and the good; the two things to
stake, your reason and your will… your reason is no more
shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you
must of necessity choose… if there were an infinite of
chance, of which one only would be for you, you would
still be right in wagering one to win two, and you would
act stupidly, being obliged to play… But there is here an
infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a
finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is
finite.4
Pascal begins by painting a situation where both the existence and non-existence
of God are impossible to prove by human reason. He points out that if a wager was
between the equal chances of gaining two lifetimes of happiness and gaining nothing,

3
then a person would be a fool to bet in the latter. The wise decision is to wager that God
exists, since “if you gain, you gain all, if you lose, you lose nothing” 5, meaning one gain
eternal life if God exists, but if not one will be no worse off in death than if one had not
believed.
It is important to contrast Pascal’s argument with various proofs of the existence
of God that had come before it. Anselm’s ontological and Aquinas’ five ways, Descartes’
ontological and cosmological arguments, and so on, purports that God exists. 6 Pascal is
apparently unimpressed by such attempted justifications of theism. Pascal, then, is
radically different: he seeks to provide prudential reasons for believing in God. To put it
crudely, we should wager that God exists because it is the best bet.7
Criticism of Pascal’s wager began in his own day, and came from both staunch
atheists (who question the benefits of a deity whose realm is beyond reason), and the
religious orthodox (who primarily take issue with the wager’s deistic and agnostic
language). It is criticized for not proving God’s existence, encouragement of false belief
and the problem of which religion and which God should be worshipped.8
Somewhat fascinating also, is the work of Paul Helm in the book titled Faith with
Reason. He analyzed certain questions such as; what does it mean to trust God? Is
religious trust different from other kinds of trust? Should the strength of our religious
trust be proportioned to the strength of our corresponding beliefs, or are we rather to be
praised for the more strongly trusting God when having only weak evidential beliefs?
Paul Helm succeeds in giving a remarkably fresh ring to some of them. Analyzing
the concept of faith, Helm distinguishes between an epistemic and a fiducial component. 9
Many philosophers and theologians have often hoisted up the banner of faith. For
Tertullian, it appears a welcome absurdity,10 for Pascal, it seems a matter of prudence, 11
for Kierkegaard, it seems contrary to reason. As for Helm, faith is not simply belief, it is
also trust.
In this work, he raises the issue of faith and foundationalism. On the other hand,
he defends Plantinga’s view that belief in God may be in the foundations of one’s noetic
structure against some criticisms of Anthony Kenny.12 On the other hand, Helm defends a
coherentist view of faith, replacing the picture of a building with a foundation by the
metaphor of the web: the propositions (but also experiences, promises, etc.) of faith form

4
an intricate texture consisting of more central and more peripheral beliefs, mutually
supporting each other.13
Helm further discusses the interesting distinction between “thin belief”, which is a
merely theoretical belief in God of the philosophers, and “thick belief”, which has
fiducial elements and does justice to the practical demands of faith. 14 Here, Helm
highlights what he calls the instability of thick belief, which always tends to collapse
either into thin belief or into sheer fideism. Next, Helm shifts his attention to an analysis
of the fiducial element of faith, arguing over against personalist modes of theology that
trusting God does not involve a different kind of trust than anything else.
Likewise, the book Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical
Fragments written by Soren Kierkegaard, is an inquiry into the subjectivity of truth, and
into the truth of subjectivity. Kierkegaard explains how objective truth may differ from
subjective truth, and how objectivity differs from subjectivity. He describes how
objective may be an inner truth. He also distinguishes between speculative philosophy as
a mode of reasoning which seeks objective truth, and religious faith as a mode of being
which seeks subjective truth.15 According to Kierkegaard;
The objective thinker is interested in objective truth, while
the subjective thinker is interested in subjective truth.
Objective truth includes historical truth and philosophical
truth. Subjective truth includes religious truth. The
objective thinker is indifferent to the truth of subjectivity,
while the subjective finds an eternal happiness in
subjectivity. For the subjective thinker, eternal happiness
is an absolute good which is attained by faith. Faith is a
passionate inwardness which affirm the truth of
subjectivity.16
For Kierkegaard, objective truth is characterized by outwardness, while subjective
truth is characterized by inwardness. The objective thinker does not find an eternal
happiness in subjective truth, and is disinterested in the truth of subjectivity. The
objective thinker is interested in what defines existence, while the subjective thinker is
interested in how existence is defined.17

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 In this book, Kierkegaard posits that faith cannot be attained by approximation, or
by an effort to quantify deliberation into a higher degree of certainty, rather faith can only
be attained by an appropriation or acceptance of the condition of uncertainty. Thus, faith
requires a leap from disbelief to belief.18 Faith is a state of objective uncertainty in which
the individual affirms his or her own subjectivity.
Another documentation of faith in the work of Soren Kierkegaard could also be
found in his work titled Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. David F. Swenson first
translated the works in the 1940s and titled them the Edifying Discourses, however, in
1990; Howard V. and Edna H. Hong translated the works again but called them the
Upbuilding Discourses. The word “upbuilding” was more in line with Kierkegaard’s
thought after 1864, he said: “Although this little book (which is called “discourses”, not
sermons, because its author does not have authority to preach, “upbuilding discourses”,
not discourses for upbuilding, because by no means claims to be a teacher) wishes to be
only what it is, a superfluity and desires only to remain in hiding”. 19 These discourses
were more in form of sermon, although he was careful to insist that they were not
sermons. Through these he communicated his underlying religious commitments in a
more direct fashion.
In this book, Kierkegaard points to faith as the highest expectancy, because faith
is something that everyone has, or can have. He says: “the person who wishes it for
another person wishes it for himself; the person who wishes it for himself wishes it for
every human being, because that by which another person has faith is not that by which
he is like him; that by which he possesses it is not that by which he is different from
others but that by which he is altogether like all”. 20 He went further to say no one has to
struggle with another to gain faith, one must struggle only with oneself and with God. 21
He also examined how different reactions to life’s conditions are affected by whether an
individual has faith or not.
He went on to stress the importance of patience in Expectancy, he says;
Is Anna not patient in her expectancy? Even though in the
world we hear at times of someone who expects nothing at
all, even though such a person is sometimes thought to
have attained the proper assurance, because he craftily

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 made it impossible for himself to discern the loss, yet it is
also admitted that this wisdom is of later origin, and that
no one has it in early youth. Originally, like every other
human being he was expectant. With a smile or with tears,
one confesses that expectancy is in the soul originally.22
Now, he brings out a real person, just as he did in some of his other works. He
brings out Anna and focuses primarily on her and her expectancy. What he drives home
is that God is the constant that remains the same, whereas everything else changes. What
he exhorts us to is to love God in such a way that our nature might be like his, that we
might gain God in constancy and rescue our soul in patience.23

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 Notes and References:

1. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith
2. Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian
Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich: WB Ferdmans, 2004), p3.
3. Louis Pojman, Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology (Belmont CA:
Wadsworth, 1994), p.59.
4. Blaise Pascal, Pensées (London: Dent, 1910), pp. 47-50.
5. Ibid.
6. Alan Hajek, “Pascal’s Wager” in Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy,
2012.
7. Ibid.
8. http://robertnielsen21.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/theflaws-of-pascals-wager/
9. Paul Helm, Faith with Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 4-7.
10. “Tertullian”. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Ultimate
Reference Suite. (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2013).
11. Alan Hajek, “Pascal’s Wager” in Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy, 2012.
12. Paul Helm, Faith with Reason…, p. 9.
13. Ibid…, pp.17-19.
14. Ibid…, pp.79-81.
15. Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical
Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 131.
16. Ibid…, pp.348-350.
17. George Pattison, The Philosophy of Kierkegaard (Montréal: McGill-
Queen’s Press, 2005), p. 24.
18. Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific…, p. 335.
19. Soren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1990), p. 5.
20. Ibid…, pp. 9-12.
21. Ibid…, pp. 17-18.
22. Ibid…, p. 220.
23. Ibid…, p. 40.

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 CHAPTER TWO
2.0 Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) on Faith

2.1 Early Years of Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard was born on 5th May 1813 in Copenhagen and lived his
whole life there until his death on November 4, 1855. He was a Danish philosopher,
theologian and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist
philosopher.1 His theological work focuses on Christian ethics, the institution of the
church, the differences between purely objective proofs of Christianity, the infinite
qualitative distinction between man and God, and the individual’s subjective relationship
with Jesus Christ,2 the God-man, which came through faith. Much of his work deals with
the art of Christian love. His psychological work explores the emotions and feelings of
individuals when faced with life choices.
Soren Kierkegaard was born to an affluent family in Copenhagen. In 1830,
Kierkegaard attended the school of civic virtue, Ostre Borgerdyd Gymnasium, when the
school was situated in Klarebodeme, where he studied Latin and history among other
subjects. He went on to study theology at the University of Copenhagen. He had little
interest in historical works, philosophy dissatisfied him, and he couldn’t see dedicating
himself to speculation. He said, “What I really need to do is to get clear about “what am I
to do”, not “what I must know”. He wanted to “lead a completely human life and not
merely one of knowledge”.3 Kierkegaard didn’t want to be a philosopher in the traditional
or Hegelian sense and he didn’t want to preach a Christianity that was an illusion. But he
had learned from his father that one can do what one wills, and his father’s life had not
described this theory. He became a spy for God. In 1848, Kierkegaard wrote:
Supposing that I had been free to use my talents as I
pleased, I might from the first moment have converted my
whole productivity into the channel of the interests of age,
it would have been in my power to become what the age
demands, and so would have been (Goetheo-Hegelian) one
more testimony to the proposition that the world is good…
For by this reason I should have attained extraordinary

9
 success in the world. Instead of this I became (under
compulsion) a spy.4
An important aspect of Kierkegaard’s life-generally considered to have had a
major influence on his work was his broken engagement to Regine Olsen (1822-1904).
Kierkegaard and Olsen met on 8th May 1837 and were instantly attracted to each other,
but sometimes around 11th August 1838 he had second thoughts. On 8th September 1840,
Kierkegaard formally proposed to Olsen. He soon felt disillusioned about his prospects.
He broke off the engagement on 11th August 1841, though it is generally believed that the
two were deeply in love. In his journals, Kierkegaard mentions his belief that his
“melancholy” made him unsuitable for marriage, but his precise motive for ending the
engagement remains unclear.5
On 29th September 1841, Kierkegaard wrote and defended his dissertation, “On
the concept of Irony with continual Reference to Socrates”. The thesis dealt with irony
and Schelling’s 1841 lectures; each had come away with a different perspective.
Kierkegaard graduated from university of 20th October 1841 with a Magister Artium. He
was able to fund his education, his living, and several publications of his early works with
his family’s inheritance of approximately 31000 rigsdaler.6

2.2 Philosophy and Theology of Kierkegaard

Soren Kierkegaard’s philosophy has been a major influence in the development of

20th century philosophy, especially existentialism and post modernism. Kierkegaard has
been called a philosopher, a theologian, the father of Existentialism, both atheistic and
theistic variation.7 Two of his influential ideas are subjectivity, 8 and the notion popular
referred to as “Leap of Faith”.
The leap of Faith is his conception of how an individual would believe in God or
how a person would act in love. Faith is not a decision based on evidence could ever be
enough to completely justify the kind of total commitment involved in true religious faith
or romantic love. Faith involves making that commitment anyway. Kierkegaard thought
that to have faith is at the same time to have doubt. So, for example, one to truly have
faith in God, one would also have to doubt one’s belief about God, the doubt is the

10
rational part of a person’s thought involved in weighing evidence, without which the faith
would have no real substance. Someone who does not realize that Christian doctrine is
inherently doubtful and that there can be no objective certainty about its truth does not
have faith but is merely credulous. For example, it takes no faith to believe that a pencil
or table exists, when one is looking at it and touching it. In the same way to believe or
have faith in God is to know that one has no perpetual or any other access to God, and yet
still have faith in God.9 Kierkegaard writes, “Doubt is conquered by faith, just as it is
faith which has brought doubt into the world”.10
One of Kierkegaard’s recurrent themes is the importance of subjectivity, which
has to do with the way people relate themselves to (objective) truth. In Concluding
Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, he argues that “subjectivity is truth
and truth is subjectivity”. What he means by this is that most essentially, truth is not just a
matter of discovering objective facts. While objective facts are important, there is a
second and more crucial element of truth, which involves how one relates oneself to those
matters of facts. Since how one acts is, from the ethical perspective, more important than
any matter of fact, truth is to be found in subjectivity rather than objectivity. 11
Kierkegaard primarily discusses subjectivity with regards to religious matters. As already
noted, he argues that doubt is an element of faith and that it is impossible to gain any
objective certainty about religious doctrine such as the existence of God or the life of
Christ. The most one could hope for would be the conclusion that it is probable that the
Christian doctrine are true, but if a person were to believe such doctrines only to the
degree they seemed likely to be true, he or she would not be genuinely religious at all.
Faith consists in a subjective relation to absolute commitment to these doctrines. 12
Subjectivity could refer to be what is personal to the individual-what makes the
individual who he is in distinction from others. It is what is inside-what the individual can
see, feel, think, imagine, dream, etc. It is often opposed to objectivity-that which is
outside the individual and others around can see, feel, measure, and think about. Another
way to interpret subjectivity is the unique relationship between the subject and the object.
Another theme in Kierkegaard’s philosophy is Ethics.13 Many philosophers who
initially read Kierkegaard, especially Fear and Trembling, often come to the conclusion
that Kierkegaard supports a divine command law of ethics. The divine command theory

11
is a meta-ethical theory which claims moral values are whatever is commanded by a god
or gods. However, Kierkegaard is not arguing that morality is created by God; instead, he
would argue that a divine command from God transcend ethics. This distinction means
that God does not necessarily create human morality: it is up to us as individuals to create
our own morals and values. But any religious person must be prepared for the event of a
divine command from God that would take precedence over all moral and rational
obligations. Kierkegaard called this event the teleological suspension of the ethical.
Abraham, the knight of faith, chose to obey God unconditionally, and was rewarded with
his son, his faith, and the title of the father of faith.
Also, Kierkegaard’s theology has been a major influence in the development of
20th century theology. During his later years (1848-1855), most of his writings shifted
from being philosophical in nature to being religious.
Kierkegaard theology focuses on the single individual in relation to an
unprovable, yet known God. Many of his writings were a directed assault against all of
Christendom, Christianity as a political and social entity. His target was the Danish state
church, which represented Christendom in Denmark. Christendom, in Kierkegaard’s
view, made individuals lazy in their religion. Many of the citizens were officially
Christians, without having any idea of what it means to be a Christian. Kierkegaard
attempted to awaken Christians to the need of unconditional religious commitment.
The hallmark of Kierkegaard philosophical and religious thought is faith. Two of
his key ideas are based on faith: the leap to faith and the knight of faith. Kierkegaard was
a Christian Universalist, writing in his journals, “If others go to hell, I will go too. But I
do not believe that; on the contrary, I believe that all will be saved, myself with them-
something which arouses my deepest amazement”. However, this view is not always
consistent with Kierkegaard’s own writings. He presupposes the individual who has
decided to become a Christian has an interest in becoming that, is interested enough to
attempt to develop a relationship with Christ, and has enough faith to believe that the
possibility extends to all individuals equally.
Faith, for Kierkegaard, was more than intellectual understanding. He began his
great book Either/Or with a quotation from Edward young, “is reason then alone
baptized, are the passion pagans?” and later explained what he meant in his Unscientific

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Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. Intellect is important but not all inclusive in the
realm of religion. “A” in Either/Or wanted to use the arts to teach Christianity. “B”
wanted to use science of ethics to teach Christianity. Both can lead to an intellectual
understanding devoid of passionate involvement in the act of becoming a Christian.

2.3 Works of Kierkegaard on Faith

Kierkegaard’s early work was written under various pseudonyms which he used to
present distinctive viewpoints and interacts with each other in complex dialogue. He
assigned pseudonyms to explore particular viewpoints in-depths, which required several
nooks in some instances. Kierkegaard published various books on faith, some of which
are Fear and Trembling, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical
Fragments among others.
Kierkegaard brings forth a seemingly radical conception of faith in his passionate
analysis of the Abraham story. For Kierkegaard, faith is not something we reach after all
rational inquiry about the divine has been satisfied. Rather, faith is a leap into the absurd.
The act of faith is an act in which the individual places his absolute trust upon something,
even though that something cannot possibly be. Herein lies Kierkegaard’s paradox of
faith. There is certainly no lack of enthusiasm in Kierkegaard’s exposition of faith. As an
existentialist, the personal aspect of faith is crucial for him. Fighting against the lack of
personal involvement in the Hegelian conception of religion, Kierkegaard does not fail to
emphasize the need for a passionate personal involvement with the divine.
Kierkegaard argues that there is something about faith that requires absurdity. In
the Abraham story, he sees Abraham as someone going against a universal ethical
principle to fulfill an unwavering devotion to God. Abraham’s faith led him to go against
the universal principle that fathers at all times should nurture, not murder, their children.
For Kierkegaard, Abraham had to choose absurd.
Kierkegaard describes the faith of Abraham, the extreme nature of willingness to
follow God in the face of testing. Abraham was promised a son, but to wait decades for
the revelation of that promise. Now God would command Abraham to sacrifice that very
son. Yet Abraham believed in God.

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 All was lost! Seventy years of trusting expectancy, the
brief joy over the fulfillment of faith… And yet Abraham
was God’s chosen one, and it was the Lord who imposed
the ordeal. Now everything would be lost... but Abraham
had faith and did not doubt; If Abraham had doubted, then
he would have done something else… He would have
gone to Moriah, he would have split the firewood, drawn
the knife… and thrust it into his breast. He would have
been admired in the world, and his name would never be
forgotten; but it is one thing to be admired and another to
become a guiding star that saves the anguished.14
Kierkegaard presents the above situation from both the ethical and religious
viewpoints. He said, “the ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he meant to
murder Isaac; the religious expression is that he meant to sacrifice Isaac- but precisely in
this contradiction is the anxiety that can make a person sleepless, and yet without this
anxiety, Abraham is not who he is”.15
It is here that Kierkegaard introduces his concept of faith by virtue of the absurd.
According to Kierkegaard, the person who gives up the thing he most desires is the
knight of infinite resignation. He further said two things characterized such knight: the
first which he called concentration, he says, “the knight will have power to concentrate
the whole content of life and the whole significance of reality in one single wish.” 16 This
means the knight will have the power to concentrate the whole result of the operations of
thought in one act of consciousness directed towards his desire. Thus, the desire is
sufficiently strong and focused to shape the very movement of his existence. The second
is that when he sees that he cannot obtain his desire, the knight does not abandon it but
rather translates it into the eternal, into the next world.
The knight does not become other than he is. He retains his motion of existence,
but without the hope of obtaining in this world his desire. In Kierkegaard’s word,
The knight remembers everything, but precisely this
remembrance is pain and yet by the infinite resignation, he
is reconciled with existence. Love for that princess

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 became for him the expression for an eternal love,
assumed a religious character was transfigured into a love
for the Eternal Being, which did, to be sure, deny him the
fulfillment of his love, yet reconciled him again (to his
loss) by the eternal consciousness of its validity in the
form of eternity, which no reality can take from him.17
Kierkegaard claim is that this holds not just for the love of a person, but for every
other object of passionate attachment that determine the motion of one’s existence.
Kierkegaard also stresses the need of passion in becoming a knight of infinite resignation.
For Kierkegaard, to be an individual, you must have passion. What makes individual is
not the reflection on truths. To the point that you think a truth, you are identical to
everyone who thinks this truth. Passion, however, which concerns you and your
individual desire is one makes you individual. But you must be an individual to have a
one to one relation. True love for an individual requires passion. So does the one on one
relation of faith. Beyond resignation, which makes the move of infinity, faith makes the
movement of finitude. It believes that it will get back precisely what the knight of
resignation has given up as impossible. Kierkegaard believes in absurdity, one must
really engage in resignation. You must abandon the possibility of getting your heart’s
desire in this world and translate it into the next. In Kierkegaard’s words,
The infinite resignation is the last stage prior to faith, so
that one has not made this movement has no faith; for only
in the infinite resignation do I become clear to myself with
respect to my eternal validity, and only then can there be
any question of grasping existence by virtue of faith (as
opposed to calculation).18
Faith, according to Kierkegaard, involves the suspension of the ethical: “faith is
just this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal”. 19 (the universal
according to Kierkegaard is what he termed as the ethical stage of life in his work The
Stages of Life’s Way). This means that the single individual by means of the universal
becomes that individual who has the particular stands in an absolute relation to the
absolute.20 the paradox of faith is that it suspends the ethical. In his words, “if faith does

15
not make it a holy act to be willing to murder one’s son, then let the same condemnation
be pronounced upon Abraham as upon every other man”.
The “paradox of faith”, as Kierkegaard calls it, is that a relation with the absolute
(God) is higher than the ethical. Through faith, Kierkegaard writes, “the individual
determines his relation to the universal (or the ethical) by his relation to the absolute (or
God), not his relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal”, thus, through faith,
“the ethical relation is reduce to a relative position in contrast with the absolute relation to
God”.21 Kierkegaard’s emphasis is that mankind needs the ethical, but needs more the
relation to god who imparted the ethical code. Thus the ethical code applies to all since it
is universal, but the one who gave it- the absolute, who possesses law, who is holy and
sinless- he relates himself to the individual (providing he has faith). In Kierkegaard’s
words,
The paradox of faith is this, that the individual is higher
than the universal, that the individual (to recall a dogmatic
distinction now rather seldom heard) determines his
relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not
his relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal.
The paradox can also be expressed by saying that there is
an absolute duty toward God; for in this relationship of
duty the individual as an individual stands related
absolutely to the absolute.22
Here the duty to love God is not a duty to love duty (understood as the universal).
It is a one to one relation. The above explains Kierkegaard’s thought when he defines
faith as the individual in an absolute relation to the Absolute. Kierkegaard went on to
give a succinct definition of faith in relation to the absurd. He says,
Faith is the objective uncertainty with the repulsion of the
absurd, held fast in the passion of inwardness, which is the
relation of inwardness intensified to its highest… faith
must not be satisfied with incomprehensibility, because
the very relation to or repulsion from the

16
 incomprehensible, the absurd, is the expression for the
passion of faith.23
From the above, Kierkegaard develops his conception of truth as inwardness. It is
a conception that is meant to apply to the truth of faith, faith being the result of a
subjective decision. Kierkegaard believes that for objective thought, the answer is to
ignore the existing subject. He puts it that “to objective reflection, the truth becomes
something objective, an object, and the point is to disregard the subject,” “subjective
reflection takes the opposite tack, for it, truth becomes appropriation, inwardness,
subjectivity, and the point is to immerse oneself, existing, in subjectivity.” 24 For
Kierkegaard, only the second has a possibility of understanding our relation to God, this
is because God is a subject and hence (is) only for subjectivity in inwardness.
For a better understanding for what he meant, Kierkegaard drew a contrast
between objective and subjective thought. According to Kierkegaard, “the way of
objective reflection turns the subjective individual into something accidental and thereby
turns existence into an indifferent vanishing something… it leads to abstract thinking, to
mathematics, to historical knowledge of various kinds, and always lead away from the
subjective individual, whose existence or non-existence becomes infinitely indifferent.”25
As for the subjective reflection, here he says, “here it is not, even for a single
moment, that the subject is existing, and that existing is a becoming.” This means “that
truth as the identity of thought and being is therefore a chimera of abstraction.” 26
Kierkegaard further put that one is unable to apprehend God objectively; therefore, one
must have faith.
Finally, Kierkegaard introduced the word “leap” in his works, in which case he
said the leap assumes two main forms: first, there is a leap from sinlessness into sin, this
he described in his work The Concept of Anxiety as,
When sin is posited in the particular individual by the
qualitative leap, the difference between good and evil is
also posited. We have nowhere been guilty of the
foolishness that holds that man must sin; on the contrary,
we have always protested against all merely imaginatively
constructed knowledge...that can choose good just as well

17
 as evil inevitably makes every explanation impossible. To
speak of good and evil as the objects of freedom finitizes
both freedom and the concepts of good and evil. Freedom
is infinite and arises out of nothing. Therefore, to want to
say that man sins by necessity makes the circle of the leap
into a straight line.27 

The second is assumed by Kierkegaard as the qualitative leap of faith. This is not
a blind leap as is often thought. Kierkegaard’s concern was that faith is never easy or
probable. Faith in God is an agonistic and often fearful struggle to cast one’s entire
person into relation to God. There is no gradual accumulation of sensory data or rational
proofs for God’s existence or for the resurrection of Christ. One performs a willed act of
faith despite fear, doubt, and sin. The leap is not out of thoughtlessness, but out of
volition. The leap is sheer and unmediated and is not made by quantitative movements,
stages or changes. Conversely, the leap of faith has no gradations or movements. It
cannot be mediated by proofs or reason. It is a sheer leap from doubt, or more
specifically, from the doubt that exists by virtue of the paradoxical (the absurd), or in
reaction to the offense of Christ, by faith to God. The leap of faith is that which brings
one to awareness of his subjectivity and of God’s inward presence within this subject.

18
 Notes and References:

1. David F. Swenson, Something about Kierkegaard (Mercer university

Press, 2000).
2. Soren Kierkegaard, Point of View of My Work as an Author, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1939), p.41.
3. _______________, Either/Or Vol 2 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1843), pp.361-362.
4. _______________, Point of View…, p. 89.
5. _______________, Stages on Life’s Way (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1845),
p.195.
6. Alexander Dru, The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1938), p.42.
7. Alister E. McGrath, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Modern Christian
Thought (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1993), p.202.
8. Kierkegaard is not an extreme subjectivist; he would not reject the importance of
objective truths.
9. Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical
Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp.21-32.
10. _______________, Journals and Papers (Indiana: Indiana University
Press, 1976), p.399.
11. Ibid…, p.712.
12. Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific…, p.34.
13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ethics.
14. Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983),
p.20.
15. Ibid…, p.30.
16. Ibid…, p.72.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid…, p.75.
19. Ibid…, p.84.
20. Ibid…, p.85.

19
21. Ibid…, p.81.
22. Ibid…, p.98.
23. Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific…, p.194.
24. Ibid…, p.192.
25. Ibid…, p.193.
26. Ibid…, p.196.
27. Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1980), p.112.

20
 CHAPTER THREE

3.0 Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) on Faith

3.1 Early Years of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Blaise Pascal was born on 19 th June 1623 in Clermont, France, and died thirty-nine
years later in Paris on 19th August 1662. He was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor,
writer and Christian philosopher. Pascal lost his mother at a tender age of three. His father,
Etienne Pascal, who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and
member of the “Noblesse de Robe” (in 17th-and 18th-century France, a class of hereditary
nobles who acquired their rank through holding a high state office).1 Pascal had two sisters
the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
In 1631, five years after the death of his mother, his father Etienne Pascal moved the
rest of the family to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who
eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Etienne, who never remarried,
decided that he alone would educate his children, for they showed extraordinary intellectual
ability, particularly his son Blaise. In the early years of Blaise Pascal, the young Pascal
showed some amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. He was never trained in
theology or the philosopher of the schools, and his exclusively domestic education focused
initially on classical languages and mathematics. The decision to educate Pascal at home was
motivated by the fact that he suffered from very poor health for most of his life, beginning at
the age of two.2
As a child prodigy who was educated by his father, Pascal’s earliest work was in the
natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids,
and clarified the concept of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista
Torricelli.3 In 1642, while still a teenager; he started some pioneering work on calculating
machines. After three years of effort and fifty prototypes, he invented the mechanical
calculator. Pascal was an important mathematician, helping to create two major new areas of
research: he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of
16, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing
the development of modern economic and social science.

21
 Pascal had poor health, especially after his 18 th year, and his death came just two
month after his 39th birthday. Although his sister, Gilberte, may have exaggerated in her
hagiographical biography, La vie de M. Pascal, she reported Pascal as claiming that “from
the age of eighteen, he never passed a day without pain”. He continued to be so ill that, at the
age of twenty-four, he could tolerate no food other than in liquid form, which his sisters or
his nurses warmed and fed to him drop by drop. Gilberte’s biography also confirms that, as
his sisters matured, they assumed many of the nursing responsibilities for their infirm brother
that would otherwise have been by his mother had she not died prematurely.4
Pascal continued to influence Mathematics and Physical sciences throughout his life.
His Traite du triangle Arithmetique (“Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle”) of 1653
described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal’s
triangle. In 1654, prompted by a friend interested in gambling problems, he corresponded
with Fermat on the subject, and form that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of
probabilities. The friend was the Chevalier de Mere, and the specific problem was that of two
players who want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game,
want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance each has of winning the game from that
point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the
Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal’s wager, to justify belief in God and a
virtuous life. Also, Pascal’s work in the field of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics
centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press and
the syringe. He proved that hydrostatic pressure depends not on the weight of the fluid but on
the elevation difference. He demonstrated this principle by attaching a thin tube to a barrel
full of water and filling the tube with water up to the level of the third floor of a building. 5
After a religious experience in 1954, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics and
physical sciences.

22
3.2 Religion of Blaise Pascal

In the winter of 1646, Pascal’s 58 year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and
fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man’s age and state of medicine in the 17 th century, a
broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Following the accident, the
Deschamps brothers, who had bone-setting and nursing skills, came to live in the Pascal
household at Rouen for three months. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, which
became his initial encounter with Jansenism. The doctors introduced the family to the strict
observance of Christianity inspired by the Dutch theologian, Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638). 6
Jansenism is a religious movement that emerged from Roman Catholicism, and it arose out
of the theological problem of reconciling divine grace and human freedom. 7 Jansen
recommended that Christians should turn aside from the pride and concupiscence of human
knowledge and scientific investigations, and that they should concentrate exclusively on
knowledge of God.8 While this encounter with Jansenist theology is sometimes described as
Pascal’s first conversion, it is unlikely that he had already made the definitive choice about
the insignificance of mathematics and scientific work that characterised his change of heart
in the 1650s. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of “first conversion” and began to
write on theological subjects in the course of the following year. Jansen’s short treatise, the
Discours Sur la Reformation le l’homme Intérieur, which was based on the text of 1 John
2:16,9 would have influenced the work of Pascal in the Pensées when he talked about man’s
disproportion. He said,
For in fact, what is man in nature? A nothing in comparison
with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a
mean between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely
removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things
and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an
impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the
nothing from which he was made, and the infinite in which he
is swallowed up.10
During the night of 23 November 1654, Pascal had a dreamlike or ecstatic experience
which he interpreted as a religious conversion and immediately recorded the experience in a
brief note to himself which began: “Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not

23
of philosophers and the scholars…” and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16 “I will not
forget thy word. Amen.”11 The summary of this experience was written in a brief document
entitled the Memorial. The intensity of this experience resulted in a definite change in
Pascal’ lifestyle, in his intellectual interests, and in his personal ambitions. Pascal had
entered the final period of his life, which was dominated by religious controversy, continual
illness, and loneliness. This was also the period in which he assumed the challenge of
defending Arnauld and, more generally, Jansenist theology in the Provincial Letters.

3.3 Works and Literature of Pascal on Faith

Blaise Pascal presented an apologetic philosophy which was titled Pascal’s wager.
Pascal formulated the wager within a Christian framework. The wager was set out in section
233 of Pascal’s posthumously published Pensées. Pensées meaning thoughts was the name
given to the collection of unpublished notes which, after Pascal’s death, were assembled to
form an incomplete treatise on Christian apologetics. Pascal’s apologetics does not counter
reason with reason, but rather it is the protest of faith against philosophy, arguing that faith
occupies a domain that human reason cannot reach even in principle.
Pascal maintains that we are incapable of knowing whether God exists or not, yet we
must “wager” one way or the other. Reason cannot settle which way we should incline, but a
consideration of the relevant outcomes supposedly can. Pascal put it this way,
God is, or He is not. But to which side shall we incline?
Reason can decide nothing here... Let us see. Since you must
choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two
things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake,
your reason and your will, your knowledge and your
happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and
misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one
rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose...
But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in
wagering that God is... If you gain, you gain all; if you lose,
you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.12

24
 At this point, Pascal challenges us to accept his wager. Simply put, the wager says we
should bet on the existence of God because the rewards are infinite if it’s true, while the
losses will be insignificant if it’s false. If it’s true and one has rejected it, one lost everything.
However, if it’s false but one has believed it, at least one has led a good life and one has not
lost anything. Of course, the best outcome is if one believes that God exists to be true and it
turns out that it is. Therefore, wagering for God super dominates wagering against God in
Pascal’s thought.
Pascal argues that God exists though He is not corporeal and thus has no extension.
God’s existence, therefore, is as inconceivable to us as his essence. We may believe and
assert that God exists, but we cannot really understand what it means, except by a higher
improper analogy with corporeal beings. He went on to describe reason as impotent in
bringing us to knowledge of God’s existence or essence, “by faith we know his existence; in
glory we shall know his nature.”13 This means that God’s existence can only be known
through faith, though we do not know what God is. There is no contradiction in knowing that
something exists without what it is. Pascal explain this by saying, “we that the infinite exists
without knowing its nature, just as we know that it is untrue that numbers are infinite…
therefore we may well know that God exists without knowing what he is.” 14 Given the
presuppositions that God’s existence and essence are unknowable through reason, Pascal
now argues “according to natural light,”15  that is, abstracting from supernatural faith. Since
God has neither parts nor limits, He is infinitely incomprehensible to us, so we cannot know
what He is or if He is.
Pascal further addressed the difficulty that reason and rationality pose to genuine
belief by proposing that acting as if one believed could cure one of unbelief. He says,
But at least learn your inability to believe, since reason brings
you to this, and yet you cannot believe. Endeavour then to
convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by
the abatement of your passions. You would like to attain faith,
and do not know the way; you would like to cure yourself of
unbelief, and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have
been bound like you, and who now stake all their possessions.
Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they

25
 believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even
this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your
acuteness.16
The thrust of Pascal’s writing is that there is evidence that any one should be able to
see clearly and believe. When a person does not come to this same conclusion, there must be
a problem within them. This Pascal name as one’s passions or concupiscence, which is more
commonly referred to as sin. He went on to say that the nature of the person is so corrupted
by sin that they will not recognize what is obvious. Pascal then went on to point out two
classes of people who can be called reasonable: those who serve God with all their hearts
because they know him and those who seek him with all their hearts because they do not
know Him. Yet Pascal goes further to say “it should be apparent that those who follow it
(believe in God’s existence) are prompted to do so by grace and not by reason, and those
who evade it are prompted by concupiscence and not by reason.”17
The main substance of Pascal’s argument involves his evaluation of the possible
outcomes implied from accepting or rejecting the existence of God. The magnitude of
potential gain or loss, together with the odds, determines how much we should wager, as in
any game of chance. “If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.” It is obvious
that we should bet on God’s existence. Pascal expresses it in his words saying,
But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And this being
so, if there were an infinity of chances, of which one only
would be for you, you would still be right in wagering one to
win two, and you would act stupidly, being obliged to play,
by refusing to stake one life against three at a game in which
out of an infinity of chances there is one for you, if there were
an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain… It is all
divided; wherever the infinite is and there is not an infinity of
chances of loss against that of gain, there is no time to
hesitate, you must give all. And thus, when one is forced to
play, he must renounce reason to preserve his life, rather than
risk it for infinite gain, as likely to happen as the loss of
nothingness.18

26
 From the above, Pascal articulates the stakes and the rewards. What we wager is our
life, that is, our happiness, as discussed earlier. Our potential for gain is an infinite, infinitely
happy life. If it turns out we chose wrong by betting on God’s existence, we lose only the life
we would have lost anyway, so we lose nothing. Therefore, it is foolish to bet against God’s
existence as long as we acknowledge there is a finite probability of this infinite gain.
In conclusion, Pascal urges one not to fear the sacrifice of his natural passions, for
this will do no ethical harm to him; quite the contrary, he will grow in virtue. Pascal puts it
this way,
You will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, and full of
good works, a sincere, true friend... It is true you will not
enjoy noxious pleasures, glory and good living, but will you
not have others? 'I tell you that you will gain even in this life,
and that at every step you take along this road you will see
that your gain is so certain and your risk so negligible that in
the end you will realize that you have wagered on something
certain and infinite for which you have paid nothing.19
In other words, the proof of the wisdom of his wager is found in the life of faith, the
experience of which causes us to evaluate things rightly. As we progress in faith, the
experience of which causes us to evaluate things rightly. As we progress in faith, we more
clearly realize how the worldly life we have sacrificed was worth so very little to what we
have gained.

27
 Notes and References

1. “Noblesse de robe”. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica

Ultimate Reference Suite. (Chicago: Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 2013).
2. Vincent Carraud, Pascal et La Philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1992), p.28.
3. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/blaise_pascal.
4. Desmond Clarke, “Blaise Pascal” in The Stanford Encyclopaedia of
Philosophy, 2014.
5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/blaise_pascal.
6. “Jansenism”. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Ultimate Reference Suite. (Chicago: Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 2013).
7. Ibid.
8. Desmond Clarke, “Blaise Pascal” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy, 2014
9. Ibid.
10. Blaise Pascal, Pensées (London: Dent, 1910), p.13.
11. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/blaise_pascal.
12. Blaise Pascal, Pensées…, pp.47-49.
13. Ibid…, p.47.
14. Ibid…, p.27.
15. Ibid…, p.47.
16. Ibid…, p.49.
17. Ibid…, p.55.
18. Ibid…, p.48.
19. Ibid…, p.49.

28
 CHAPTER FOUR

4.0 Kierkegaard and Pascal on Faith

4.1 A Comparative Analysis of the Teachings of Kierkegaard and Pascal

Pascal and Kierkegaard belong to those most outstanding Christian philosophers, for
whom explaining what the essence of faith is constitutes a fundamental problem. Pascal and
Kierkegaard are often labeled “tragic philosophers” and that both formulate an ethics of risk
and the aleatory: Pascal with his wager of God’s existence, Kierkegaard with his leap of
faith. Pascal and Kierkegaard are poets of the “ascetic ideal”, who oppose conventional
morality and reason, but only via “interiority, anguish, culpability, and all the forms of
discontent”.1
Arising from the discussions in previous chapters, this chapter tends to carefully
study the themes in the teaching of both philosophers, extracting their similarities and as well
as their differences. It is evidently clear that some of Pascal’s work would have influenced
the thinking of Kierkegaard, which would lead us to the similarities in their works, and also,
the difference in their works would also be noted.

4.2 Similarities in their Teachings

Many similarities abound in the works of both philosophers, which has led to the
comparison of both in past years. As earlier noted, there exist some Pascalian themes in the
teachings of Kierkegaard, which points directly to the similarities in their work. These
similarities are noted as follows;
The conviction that suffering is a natural state for a Christian because it is the best
way to imitate Christ was what Pascal and the Dane had in common. The fact that after the
resurrection He allowed to touch his wounds was, for Pascal, equal to showing that man’s
duty was to integrate oneself with His suffering. 2 Accepting one’s own suffering is therefore
the most perfect form of human obedience. Kierkegaard also noted this theme when he
writes, “Only suffering prepares us for eternity, because the essence of eternity is faith, faith
consists in obedience, and we learn obedience through suffering. There is no obedience

29
without suffering, no faith without obedience nor is there eternity without faith. In suffering -
obedience is obedience, in obedience - faith is faith, in faith - eternity is eternity.”3
For both philosophers suffering is the only way to perfection for man and the
character which best embodies this road to self-improvement is the biblical Job. “Solomon
and Job knew and expressed human misery better than anybody else: one being the happiest,
the other the most miserable of men: the former knowing the emptiness of sensual bliss, the
latter the truth of suffering” 4- wrote Pascal. Kierkegaard added that “suffering takes place in
the solemnity of silence because silence hides suffering within itself like a mystery which
nobody dares to disclose.”5
For Kierkegaard, Job is a man of trial. Trial, in this sense, is God’s obverse, that is, a
sort of way of discouraging the believer, of making him disappointed in relation to God.
According to Kierkegaard, trial occurs every time “when someone decides to exist in a
religious manner, as an actual, definite, concrete man”.6 Job receives his misfortunes with a
religious acceptance expressed in the words The Lord gave, The Lord took away, may His
name be blessed, at the same time through his lamentations he demands of God the returning
of what he has lost. Job takes up a crazy struggle to achieve what seems impossible because
he is convinced that nothing is impossible to God. And it happens that everything is returned
to him, against all rational judgments of his friends.
Since suffering is a factor furthering mental concentration, it allows man to achieve
spiritual depth, which is a condition of discovering his true nature. Lack of thoughtful
deliberation leads nowhere, outwards, towards what is objective, whereas what comes from
faith is mysterious, directed to that which is internal, what makes man more himself. This
“being oneself” is oftentimes called “pessimistic” realism, renouncing the shallow joys of
this world in return for the depth of Christianity. That is why for both philosophers suffering
is a necessary condition of being a Christian. Achieving spiritual depth allows man to
discover his true nature which is tantamount to reaching the state of authentic existence, this
being the main task of man.
One as well as the other philosopher realized that truth is found in subjectivity,
which, through suffering and despair becomes refined spirituality. This spirituality is
characterized by a specific duality which is a result of revolt and humility coexisting, since
only such an attitude can accept faith. Particularly since faith is not a conviction but a mode

30
of existence and life in faith suspends moral norms, as well as norms of rational thinking
because it accepts paradox. That is so since paradox is born always from the link between the
one who exists and the eternal truth. Therefore, the highest form of paradox is the absolute
paradox of God-man, which goes beyond human understanding and so one can only believe
in it.
When trying to define paradox Kierkegaard writes: “Paradox is not a concession but
a category - an ontological statement which expresses the relation between the existing,
knowing spirit and the eternal truth”.7 Paradoxical thinking is present in Pascal’s thought,
even though the expression “paradox” is not used by the philosopher. He describes it as a
situation of two extremes attracting each other or a concordance of two contradictory truths.
Inability to think of reality as contradictory, according to him, is the root of all heresies.
Pascal wrote: “Therefore there exists a large number of truths of faith and of morality which
seem to be repulsive to each other and which in fact continue to exist together in perfect
order”.8 For both philosophers, being “above reason” does not mean complete cutting of
connections with rationality. Truth defined as paradox does not stop to be truth; it does,
though, go beyond the border of reason and only as such can it be given to man. That is why
only by way of the category of paradox could one describe human condition full of
contradictions and only this way through the intermediary of God-man similar to people in
His subjectivity could man receive the fullness of truth. The category of paradox applies also
to knowing God, who, for both philosophers, is a reality going beyond human understanding
since the infinity of His nature is difficult to grasp for the mind, which, being finite, is
limited in its capacity.
Another similarity is the understanding of the concept of humility. Kierkegaard wrote
in his Journal: “Pascal says: it is so difficult to believe because it is so difficult to be
obedient”.9
Humility is here not only an affirmation of one’s own self, the I in confrontation with
the greatness of God’s Thou, but also a response to the value which the other, another man,
constitutes for us. Referring to the Pascal, Kierkegaard describes humility in the following
way: “Pascal says, at some point, that it would be ridiculous to be shocked by Christ’s
humility, as if that humility was of the same kind as the Majesty which He reveals. One
could also say that it would be ridiculous indeed had Christ come in earthly splendor and

31
majesty, since the Majesty that He was to express was in fact the opposite. Existential
transparency requires that one be what one teaches”.10 The philosopher warns, however,
against false humility, typical of lay mentality, present in protestant thinking, which we find
in the attitude: “I am too humble and modest to aspire to being extraordinary”.11
In order to understand well the concept of humility one should see it through the
model of Christ, who shows us fully what transparency identical with the truth of existence
is. That is why Pascal wrote: “True religion shows us our duties, our weaknesses - pride and
covetousness, it also indicates the medicine - humility and mortification”.12 
The realism of man consists in seeing himself as he is. His natural state is misery and
greatness. Knowing the former brings despair, knowing the latter brings pride. Despite the
awareness of his misery man has instinct which lifts him up. He suffers from a lack of power
to learn the truth, yet he has an indestructible consciousness of what the truth is. He seeks
truth, but finds uncertainty. His rational self fights an endless battle with his emotions and
passions. We possess truth and goodness only partially, always mingled with evil and
falsehood. For Pascal there is no liberation from theses contradictions in any other way than
through faith, since, according to him “all contradictions come together and are united in
God and through God alone”.13 That is why humility is a way of existence for man
confronted with the mystery of God who is a reality beyond human understanding. Infinity,
being an attribute of His nature, is difficult to grasp for a finite mind limited in its capacities.
Being aware of the human mind’s limitations is, for both philosophers, a trait of man’s
wisdom.

4.3 Differences in their Teachings

The major difference in the teachings of both philosophers lies in the way their
thoughts are set up. Although, their arguments is emotional based rather than reasoning or
scientific. In the teachings of Pascal, he posed a somewhat logical argument in the belief in
God when he says, “if you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing”. Pascal expressed
his thought by saying,
And this being so, if there were an infinity of chances, of
which one only would be for you, you would still be right in

32
 wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly, being
obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three at a
game in which out of an infinity of chances there is one for
you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to
gain. But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to
gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of
loss, and what you stake is finite. It is all divided; wherever
the infinite is and there is not an infinity of chances of loss
against that of gain, there is no time to hesitate, you must give
all. And thus, when one is forced to play, he must renounce
reason to preserve his life, rather than risk it for infinite gain,
as likely to happen as the loss of nothingness.14
In this compact passage, Pascal goes over the range of scenarios that would require
us, as a matter of prudence, to bet on the existence of God. In the process, he articulates the
stakes and the rewards. What we wager is our very life, that is, our happiness, as discussed
earlier. Our potential for gain is an infinite, infinitely happy life. If it turns out we chose
wrong by betting on God’s existence, we lose only the life we would have lost anyway, so
we lose nothing. Therefore, it is foolish to bet against God’s existence as long as we
acknowledge there is a finite probability of this infinite gain.
For Kierkegaard, faith in God is completely irrational; it must always be an absolute
leap into faith, a qualitative shift of being and not. Kierkegaard view faith as a fundamentally
different process from objective reasoning, a matter of passion rather than reflection. He
opposed the notion of proof to that of faith, arguing that faith is only possible when faced
with uncertainty: “Without risk, no faith... If I am able to apprehend God objectively, I do
not have faith; but because I cannot do this, I must have faith”. 15 Faith is therefore a
commitment in the face of uncertainty: and the greater that uncertainty, the greater the faith
that is demanded. The greatest faith of all is belief in the impossible and that is exactly how
Kierkegaard saw the Christian faith. Christianity, he argued, is a paradox and absurd in its
claims of God becoming Man. To believe therefore in this absurd God requires a
monumental act of will, a passionate commitment, a leap of faith. Kierkegaard embraced the
absurdity of religious claims as a demonstration of the strength of his commitment. Such a

33
faith does not depend upon facts or reasons and is therefore immune to argument and
uncertainty.
As an example of this type of passionate commitment, Kierkegaard offers the story of
Abraham who was told by God to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. This level of commitment and
obedience to God transcends even ethical considerations: for Abraham it is not a question of
right and wrong, but only of God’s will. Kierkegaard goes on to note that up until the last
minute Abraham believed that Isaac would be saved, even though it was God’s will that he
be sacrificed. This, of course, is irrational and absurd: but that, for Kierkegaard, is the nature
of religious faith.

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 Notes and References:

1. Gilles Deleuze, Nietzche and Philosophy (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1983), p.42.
2. Blaise Pascal, Pensées (London: Dent, 1910), p.163.
3. Soren Kierkegaard, Dissertations (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1992), pp.108-109.
4. Blaise Pascal, Pensées…, p.36.
5. Soren Kierkegaard, Repetition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992),
p.117.
6. Alexander Dru, The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1938), p.392.
7. ibid…, p.240.
8. Blaise Pascal, Pensées…, p.188.
9. Alexander Dru, The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard…, p.461.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid…, p.359.
12. Blaise Pascal, Pensées…, p.96.
13. Ibid…, p.14.
14. Ibid…, p.48.
15. Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to philosophical
Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992),
p.204.

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 CHAPTER FIVE

5.0 Summary and Conclusion

5.1 Summary of Findings

So far so good, this research work has been able to focus on the understanding or
concept of faith in the thinking of Soren Kierkegaard and Blaise Pascal. In the first chapter, I
gave an introduction to what faith is, where it was noted that faith generally refers to a belief
that is held with lack of reason or evidence. I went on to draw a meeting point between faith
and reason, and reported that both are sources upon which beliefs can rest. It was then noted
that reason is understood as principle for a methodological inquiry; thus it is simply the rules
of logical inference or the embodied wisdom of a tradition or authority. While faith in
relation to reason is described as involving a stance toward some claim that is not, at least
presently, demonstrable by reason. In the process of formulating the background of study, it
was discovered that faith is opposed to reason, although faith and reason have each been
considered to be sources of justification for religious belief, because both can purportedly
serve the same epistemic function. Meanwhile, proponents of faith argue that the proper
domain of faith concerns questions which cannot be settled by evidence.
In accordance with the aims and objectives of the research work, a comparative
analysis of the concept of faith in thinking of Soren Kierkegaard and Blaise Pascal was
examined. In order to look into the in-depth study of the concept of faith, humility, suffering,
and God-man paradox was explain as in the thinking of both philosophers. Also, the scope of
the research work was fashioned out in such a way as to cover the discourse of the concept of
faith in the teachings of both philosophers. I went further to review a number of works
written by both scholars which are of relevance to this discourse, and also, works from other
scholars which serve as a useful tool. The method applied was descriptive and explanation of
what faith is according to Kierkegaard and Pascal.
In chapter two, an exposure was made into the concept of faith in the works of
Kierkegaard. It was noted that Kierkegaard prioritized faith even to the point that it becomes
positively irrational. At first, the formation of the life of Kierkegaard was discussed, and how

36
he described himself as a spy for God under compulsion. 1 The philosophy and theology of
Kierkegaard was then discussed, where it was noted that his most influential ideas includes
subjectivity and the notion which he described as leap of faith. It was also noted that
Kierkegaard stresses the importance of doubt, in which he referred to the doubt in one’s
belief about God as the only rational part of a person’s thought in the belief in God.
Kierkegaard views faith as the objective uncertainty with the repulsion of the absurd, held
fast in the passion of inwardness. In the final analysis of the work of Kierkegaard, he posited
that one must take a qualitative leap of faith from disbelief to belief.
In chapter three of this research work, the concept of faith in the teachings of Blaise
Pascal was discussed. Pascal introduced an original form of rational voluntarism into the
analysis of faith. As earlier observed, it was noted that in the early years of Pascal’s life, he
showed interest in mathematics and physical sciences but as a result of a religious conversion
which he had in 1654, he immediately abandoned his mathematical works and embarked on
religious discourses. Pascal concept of faith has been noted somewhat rational, as it gives
man an evaluation of what to gain if he believes in God. “if you gain, you gain all; if you
lose, you lose nothing”.2 He went further to say it is foolish to bet against God’s existence as
long as we acknowledge there is an finite probability of this infinite gain.
In chapter four, we examined basically a comparative analytical study of the concept
of faith in the thinking of Kierkegaard and Pascal. To begin with, it was discovered that to
both philosophers, humility consists of feeling one’s own nonentity in relation to the
greatness of God and the awareness of sin as being the constitutive principle of life. In yet a
different meaning, humility is accepting one’s own suffering. The attitude towards suffering
was a theme linking the two philosophers. Also, the God-man paradox was noted in the
thought of both philosophers. The category of paradox applies also to knowing God, who, for
both philosophers, is a reality going beyond human understanding since the infinity of His
nature is difficult to grasp for the mind, which, being finite, is limited in its capacity.
And lastly, it was realized that the major differences in the work of both philosophers
is based upon the settings of their thought. For Kierkegaard, faith is a leap into the absurd.
The act of faith is an act in which the individual places his absolute trust upon something,
even though that something cannot possibly be. Kierkegaard offers the story of Abraham
who was told by God to sacrifice his only son, Isaac to express his thought. Pascal on the

37
other hand, gave a considerable rational argument in the believe in God with his probabilistic
argument, when he said, “if you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing”. 3 This
argument lies on the basis that if one believe in God and God exists, one would have an
infinite gain, and if one believe in God and He does not exist, one would have nothing to lose
after life; but if one does not believe in God and He does exist, one would have everything to
lose, and if one does not believe in God and He does not exist, one would lose nothing also.
Pascal here feels wagering for God super dominates wagering against God, for at least the
worst outcome associated with wagering for God is the same as the best outcome associated
with wagering against God, in which one loses nothing.

5.2 Contributions to Knowledge

This research work has been able to establish a knowledge on the works of
Kierkegaard and Pascal concerning faith, and also giving a comparative analysis for both.
Pascal’s wager which tried to give a convincing ground on wagering for God (that is, having
faith in God) is seen as inciting a desire for the things of the Lord within people who called
themselves Christian yet had no conversion experience. Pascal’s method is simply to
encourage them to make a wager for God that he knows they cannot lose and whose results
are infinite in value. The wager not an argument for God’s existence, but yet it could be
given a rightful place in a cumulative group of arguments for God’s existence. Pascal’s
Wager may along with other arguments have an apologetic appeal in establishing a belief in
the existence of God. For Kierkegaard Christian faith is not a matter of being overwhelmed
by church dogma. It is a matter of individual subjective passion, which cannot be mediated
by the clergy or by human artefacts. Faith is the most important task to be achieved by a
human being, because only on the basis of faith does an individual have a chance to become
a true self. This self is the life-work which God judges for eternity.

5.3 Conclusion
The research work so far has revealed the argument posited by Kierkegaard and
Pascal on how to have a God-man relation that is, having faith in God. The argument of the
wager which was the thinking of Blaise Pascal has been noted not to be an attempt to prove
the existence of God, as though it were a demonstrable philosophical thesis, but rather it is
psychological argument, adopting the assumption of unbelievers of his time, in order to show
38
that their own epistemological and ethical principles would make it far wiser to believe in
God than to deny His existence. This research work recommends however, that it certainly
requires some philosophical knowledge to be able to interpret Pascal’s argument rigorously,
just as surely as Pascal shows in its construction much familiarity with the philosophical
discipline he scorns. This requires some knowledge of the intellectual culture of the time. We
cannot treat Pascal’s wager as an abstract demonstration, since it is in fact an argument of
persuasion that presupposes certain assumptions in the listener.
On the part of Kierkegaard however, his point is not that it is somehow permissible to
neglect one’s epistemic duties where belief in God is concerned, but that one cannot separate
the question of “what” is believed from the question of “how” it is believed. Here the “how”
refers to the relationship sustained by the existing individual, in his own existence, to the
content of his utterance. Religion, for Kierkegaard, is a matter of what one does with one's
life, a matter of “inwardness.” In this context, to observe that religious believers lack
evidence for their beliefs is not to render a negative verdict on their entitlement but to
comment conceptually on the kind of beliefs they are.
Kierkegaard and Pascal offer two distinct but complimentary insights into the
concept of faith in God. They denied that reason was able to confirm or deny the existence of
God. For both philosophers, the dialectical opposite of faith is despair, without which one
cannot understand the human condition as it is. One should add that the concept of dialectics
constitutes a method allowing discovering the truth about man and provides them with a
category necessary for the description of human personality in relation to God. They both see
God as not a God of philosophers understood as an abstract, universal law.
For Pascal, God is “a God of love and consolation: a God who fills the hearts and
souls of those He possesses; it is the God who makes them feel their misery and His endless
mercy; who becomes part of their souls interior, who fills their souls with humility, joy, trust,
love who makes them incapable of having any other goal than Himself”. 4 Kierkegaard also
made a remark to such love when he wrote in his journal saying, “according to Pascal, the
knowledge about what is divine remains in a reverse relation to the knowledge about human.
One has to first know what is human in order to, as the next step, start loving. One should
first start loving what is divine and then know it. What Pascal means by this is that the

39
knowledge about what is divine is in fact a transformation of human personality: he must
become another man in order to know what pertains to God.”5
According to both philosophers, as a result of the love God shows towards mankind,
it is the duty of man to reciprocate this love. On the part of man, there can be only a great
thirst for God and such a deepening of one’s own personality which will lay the ground for
resolutions having eternal significance.

40
 Notes and References:

1. Soren Kierkegaard, Point of view of My Life as an Author (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1939), p.89.
2. Blaise Pascal, Pensées (London: Dent, 1910), p.48.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid…, p.110.
5. Alexander Dru, The Journals of Kierkegaard (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1938), p.462.

41
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Kierkegaard Soren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1992.

Kierkegaard Soren, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1990.

Kierkegaard Soren, Either/Or Vol 2, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1843.

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