Reason is a set of objective necessary truths that are grasped by any willing person through the intellect. They are not the intellect, for they are true by necessity metaphysically independent of one's awareness and prior to one's knowledge of them. This is because for the laws of logic to be false, they must still be true. For example, it is not true that contradictions are possible, for if they were, this could only be the case if the law of non-contradiction was false (of course, the laws of logic and true in themselves and therefore knowable without linguistic prompting or any exposure to phrases like "the law of non-contradiction"). Thus, the truth would still require that whatever is contrary to it is false, so the law of non-contradiction is true either way, one of the self-necessary, self-evident logical axioms that cannot be or have been false. Ideas are contradictory or they are not, and when they are, at best, only one of them can possibly be true.
The proudly irrationalist philosopher Blaise Pascal denied reason in numerous ways in his work Pensées,
"Every author has a meaning which reconciles all contradictory passages, or else he has no meaning at all, and that cannot be said of Scripture and the prophets; they were certainly too sensible. We must therefore look for a meaning which reconciles all contradictions. Thus the true meaning is not that of the Jews, but in Christ all contradictions are reconciled." (77)
It does not follow logically that just because one text that features what initially appear to be contrary passages does not actually contradict itself, none of the others do. Pascal does not even try to acknowledge the nuance of this--but he is a non-rationalist, even an anti-rationalist of sorts as other parts of Pensées evidence, so he utterly denies necessary truths and absolute certainties rather than embracing reality. Really, though, it is the meaning behind the words, the philosophical ideas they refer to, that determines if a literary work contradicts itself. Language has no meaning apart from this, and it can be used quite flexibly. Someone else's wording does not mean what oneself would mean by those words, but what they intended by them.
Pascal does not stop at denying the metaphysical and epistemological necessities of rationalism elsewhere in Pensées. He certainly does say things that deny rationalism here as well! In the quoted portion, he does not merely say that passages, whether of the Bible or seemingly any other text or set of texts by an author, that seem contradictory might not truly be so. He does not even hint at the truth about what determines the meaning of a passage (authorial intent alone, not audience reception or personal preference), but he would still be in error regardless. He actually says all authors (as in, their texts) have a meaning that "reconciles" all contradictions, or else they have no meaning. It is absolutely possible, however, since it does not contradict logical axioms and since otherwise every author would be rational regardless of what they believe (though conflicting ideas cannot be simultaneously true), for an author to simply deny reason or to put forth a notion inconsistent with what they said somewhere else.
Also, philosophical concepts--and all concepts are philosophical, some being far less important than others--either contradict or do not contradict each other as necessitated by reason. They do not become compatible because someone "reconciles" them! They either are consistent, both with logic and themselves, and someone discovers this or they are contradictory and someone stupidly believes otherwise. No one makes them reconciled. They are or are not consistent due to logical necessity. As Pascal would agree with even in his stupidity, there are Biblical passages which might seem contradictory that are not truly in conflict, not that he could truly understand this because all knowledge hinges on the logical axioms that he rejects. For instance, no, 2 Corinthians 5:8 and Philippians 1:21-24, which say that to be absent from the body in this life (dead) is to be present with God and Christ, do not contradict Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, which says the dead know nothing, think nothing, and do nothing. They are entirely unconscious.
If someone was unconscious between their biological death and an eschatological resurrection (Daniel 12:2, Psalm 6:5, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), then even millions of years would seem like only a moment, and the next conscious experience would be that of being summoned back to life by God. There is no conceptual contradiction. It is just that if there was, the Old Testament, by virtue of not contradicting logical axioms in its philosophy (thus being logically possible) and also being the prerequisite for the New Testament, can be true if the gospels and apostolic writings are not, but the latter could only be false if they contradicted the Old Testament they stand on. Blaise Pascal rejects the foundations for anything to be true (logical axioms and the resulting necessary truths), and therefore could only be assuming anything he believes, including that the Bible does not contradict itself. By all appearances he would have held to both the Old and New Testament even if the latter really did contradict the former. There are ways the Bible does not ultimately contradict itself or independent rationalistic truths that the typical non-rationalist person has no idea about, but even so, what Pascal says about authors and their passages is outright false.
Pensées. Pascal, Blaise. London: Penguin Books, 1995. Print.
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