The Biblical context of Pascal’s Wager: how to look behind the most important game people play

Abstract

Pascal’s Wager is the best known and most discussed part of Pascal’s Pensées. The basic question of the wager is this: should one bet with one’s life that God exists or not. In his argumentation Pascal surveys possible combinations and the dangers connected to these bets. One of the basic critical questions concerning Pascal’s Wager is whether it is right to make belief the subject of a wager, in other words should a rational person live as though God existed just because of positive or threatening possible consequences. The paper argues that Pascal was aware of this basic question; and his argument that progresses beyond the basic Wager handles this problem in a reassuring manner. The paper focuses on one element of fragment 233^rd that sheds some new light on Pascal’s argumentation. This element introduces two aspects into Pascal’s argumentation: firstly the aspect of the possibility of realization (of consequences) and secondly the biblical context of the Wager.