I have just read Ronald Hendel’s piece in Biblical Archaeology Review, "Biblical Views: Farewell to SBL: Faith and Reason in Biblical Studies" (July/August 2010). Hendel laments that the Society of Biblical Literature appears to be pandering or catering to "evangelical" and "fundamentalist" groups.As Hendel sees it, the SBL has dropped the word "critical" from its motto in order to attract more conservative biblical scholars. Traditionally, SBL’s motto included the language, "founded in 1860 to foster critical biblical scholarship."  Recently the language which appears is ". . . to foster biblical scholarship"—"critical" has dropped out. This displeases Hendel. The word "critical" should be reinstated—on Hendel’s view—for the SBL should be committed to "reason" not "faith."  I do not really have a dog in the hunt over whether to include the word "critical."  But Hendel's piece is interesting because it is as sterling an example of modernist and dogmatic enlightenment thought that one is likely to find.

There are many things that could be said about Hendel’s piece, but let us note his use of Blaise Pascal.  Hendel quotes Pascal: "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”  Hendel comments: "Pascal's Pensées draws a wise distinction between religious faith and intellectual inquiry. The two have different motivations and pertain to different domains of experience. They are like oil and water, things that do not mix and should not be confused. Pascal was a brilliant mathematician, and he did not allow his Catholic beliefs to interfere with his scholarly investigations." He continues: "...facts are facts, and faith has no business dealing in the world of facts. Faith resides in the heart and in one’s way of living in the world."

This is a wonderful example of the mindset of modernist and dogmatic enlightenment thinking.  It is, in short, dogmatism parading as free-thinking.  It is classic pietism, the type of pietism that sometimes follows a trajectory to an anti-intellectualism and sometimes follows a trajectory to old-school liberalism.  For Hendel, faith has to do with what goes on in the human heart while reason or intellectual inquiry has to do with what goes on in the human mind.  Classic pietism.

Pascal might be read in this way at points.  But a fuller reading of Pascal will likely point us in another direction.

For Pascal, our intellectual inquiry and deliberation is shaped all the way down by the state of our hearts.  That is, our intellectual abilities are always thoroughly shaped by our relationship to Jesus himself, and whether we are in submission to him.

Indeed, intellectual error is directly related to our moral character.  Pascal would write: “Those who do not love truth excuse themselves on the ground that it is disputed and that very many people deny it.  Thus their error is due to the fact that they love neither truth nor charity, so they have no excuse.”[1]  Indeed, writes Pascal: “The greatness of wisdom, which is nothing if it does not come from God, is invisible to carnal and intellectual people.  They are three orders differing in kind."[2]   What is needed, contended Pascal, is to see all things through Jesus Christ.  Apart from this, we would have no true knowledge. Hence, Pascal is a true Augustinian when he wrote:

"Not only do we only know God through Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ; we only know life and death through Jesus Christ.  Apart from Jesus Christ we cannot know the meaning of our life or our death, of God or of ourselves.

Thus without Scripture, whose only object is Christ, we know nothing, and can see nothing but obscurity and confusion in the nature of God and in nature itself".[3]

Indeed, we know nothing truly if we do not know it in the light of Christ and Scripture.

Friedrich Nietzsche understood Pascal quite well when he summarized Pascal, even though Nietzsche disagreed with Pascal.  Nietzsche summarizes Pascal as follows: “Our inability to know the truth is the consequence of our corruption, our moral decay.”[4]

There is much more which could be said of Hendel’s piece.  But one thing should be said: Pascal and many like him did not drive a wedge between faith andreason.  On the contrary: our intellectual lives are inextricably linked to one’s relationship to Christ, and true knowledge requires that one bows to the risen Jesus.

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