Pensees’ # 179 There are few true Christians, I mean even as regards faith. There are plenty who believe, but out of superstition. There are plenty who do not believe, but because they are libertines, there are few in between. I do not include those who lead a really devout life, nor all those who believe by intuition of the heart.
Blaise Pascal, Pensees’, Penguin Books, 1995, p. 55.
Soren Kierkegaard (1850) must have read Blaise Pascal (1650), for they appear to be kindred spirits. They are both thinkers of the first order. What they are not is clergymen who owed their worldly existence to the church. Isn’t it strange how it seems to work that way? Thankfully, there have been men such as these in church history but sadly they have been the few.
As Pascal notes, Christian superstition has been and is a large segment of the faithful. In Kierkegaard’s time the superstitious believers were the Christian majority that just went along with the expected Lutheran faith of their fathers and the state run church. Though Pascal was always loyal to his Roman Catholic Church, he surely had in mind the superstitious rule of the church during the middle ages to include his time. Who are the superstitious believer's of our time? Who are the true Christians of our time? Any creditable clergyman will tell you that his office does not make him or her devout. It is the faithful, plain, quiet, devout widow lady in the second pew, right front. These folk have to live a religion of the heart. gg
Matthew 7:13&14 "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide, and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter by it. For the gate is small, and the way is narrow that leads to life, and few are those who find it.
