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Pascal today means a unit of pressure, a computer language, a law in fluid mechanics, and an array of numbers with certain properties.

Few who use his name in these ways know that Blaise Pascal was also a devout Christian and a profound apologist for his faith.

In 1623, Pascal was born into a world that had recently seen the Reformation, the Counter Reformation, and the beginnings of modern science. The Thirty Years War began five years before Pascal's birth, and he was ten when Galileo was forced to recant his teaching of the Copernican system.

Studying under his father, a civil servant, the precocious Pascal first displayed his talents at 16 with his "mystic hexagon" theorem, noting special qualities of a hexagon inscribed in a circle. This he followed with a book on geometry that some contemporary mathematicians refused to believe a teenager could have written.

At 19, he invented the distant ancestor of the modern computer—a calculating machine. Later, as he worked out answers to some friends' questions about gambling, the young genius founded probability theory.

Pascal added the physical sciences to his repertoire with experiments that expanded human knowledge of atmospheric pressure and the equilibrium of fluids. He was inspired to investigate these things by the invention of the barometer by a student of Galileo.

Pascal observed that mercury rises only thirty inches in a closed tube and saw that the space above the mercury challenged the old Aristotelian idea that "nature abhors a vacuum." His experiments on this phenomenon led him to conclude that a vacuum really did exist.

In defending this idea, he distinguished between the methods of science and those of theology. In the latter, said Pascal, tradition is the appropriate route to knowledge: we can't discover God scientifically. But neither can we learn from tradition how high a fluid will rise.

Indeed, he concluded, we should pity the blindness of those who bring authority alone as proof in physical matters, instead of reasoning or experiments; and we should abhor the wickedness of others who make use of reasoning alone in theology, instead of the authority of Scripture and the Fathers.

Pascal was on his way to a brilliant career as a mathematician and scientist when something more important intervened.

In 1646, after his father Etienne suffered a fall and was healed by the medical ministrations of two devout doctors, Blaise joined other members of his family in identifying with the Jansenist movement.

Cornelius Jansen, Bishop of Ypres, had written a book on the theology of St. Augustine, which presented a rigorous view of Christianity. Its emphasis on predestination, the severity of sin, and complete dependence on God's grace seem at first glance close to Calvinism.

Nevertheless, the Jansenists intended to be loyal members of the Roman Catholic Church, and they followed Catholic teachings about church, ministry, and sacraments.

Pascal was not, however, influenced by doctrinal arguments alone. On the night of November 23, 1654, he had a powerful religious experience. He scribbled down a hasty account in what has been called "Pascal's amulet," which he carried in the lining of his coat until his death. Its words set out the heart of the faith he would defend:

FIRE

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and savants
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
God of Jesus Christ.

Forgetfulness of the world and of everything except God
He is to be found only in the ways taught in the Gospel

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