Pensees# 172 The way of God, who disposes all things with gentleness, is to instil religion into our minds with reasoned arguments and into our hearts with grace, but attempting to instil it into hearts and minds with force and threats is to instil not religion but terror.
Blaise Pascal, Pensees’, Penguin Books, 1995, p. 54.
Pascal the prophet is speaking. He comments on the church of his time (1650) and by extension to the church of our time. Could not the revivalist methodologies of the last two hundred years be an appropriate example? Threats of hell and eternal damnation have been and are used to manipulate seekers after truth. Terror is the supposed power of the pulpit. These tactics have accomplished some good but are they God's way? The church and it's pulpits fail to consider the damage done to the thinking but unbelieving adults to whom Pascal spoke. Let us define evangelism as did Pascal, as reasoned arguments and grace from God. gg
Blaise Pascal, Pensees’, Penguin Books, 1995, p. 54.
Pascal the prophet is speaking. He comments on the church of his time (1650) and by extension to the church of our time. Could not the revivalist methodologies of the last two hundred years be an appropriate example? Threats of hell and eternal damnation have been and are used to manipulate seekers after truth. Terror is the supposed power of the pulpit. These tactics have accomplished some good but are they God's way? The church and it's pulpits fail to consider the damage done to the thinking but unbelieving adults to whom Pascal spoke. Let us define evangelism as did Pascal, as reasoned arguments and grace from God. gg
