SOURCE: "Pascal and Theology," in Blaise Pascal, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House Publishers, 1989, pp. 115-22.

In the following essay, which originally appeared in Pascal and Theology in 1969, Miel emphasizes the historical nature of Pascal's vision of humanity as well as his theological basis for nearly all his thought.

The historicity of man's condition is certainly one of the most difficult of all theological principles to discuss and keep firmly in mind. Rational thought is by its nature opposed to historical truth, aiming as it does at a truth that transcends historical vicissitudes. Yet, as we have seen [elsewhere], every important element of Pascal's analysis of man must be defined historically. There is no human nature separable from the story of a mankind that was created sane, just, and free, and which lost those attributes through Adam's Fall. The attempt to define a nonhistorical human nature is the...