What on a breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth?

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

On this day, August 19, back in 1662, French philosopher, mathematician, and apologist Blaze Pascal

died at just 39 years old. Despite his short in life, Pascal's renowned for pioneering

work and geometry and physics and probability theory and even for

inventing the first mechanical calculator.

His most powerful legacy, however, were his pensees or his thoughts about life's biggest questions, especially about God in the human condition.

Pascal's intellect garnered him great attention even at an early age.

At 16, in fact, he produced an essay on the geometry of cones that was so impressive

that René Descartes initially refused to believe that a 16-year-old child, as he put it, could

have written it.

Later, Pascal would advance the study of

vacuums and essentially invent probability theory. His life radically

changed on the evening of November the 23rd, 1654. On that evening he radically experienced God's presence in a powerful way.

So he immediately reoriented his life and his thinking toward God. He described the whole experience on a scrap of parchment

that he sewed into his jacket and carried with him the rest of his life. And I quote,

Fire, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars.

Certitude, certitude, heartfelt joy, peace, God of Jesus Christ, my God and thy God, thy God shall be my God."

From that moment Pascal dedicated his life to serving God, especially through his writing.

His ideas on apologetics were collected

and published after his death in a volume that's been entitled

...