Teilhard de Chardin and our Time

The Cosmic and the Christly

The core of Teilhard's spiritual life is laid bare in its primary colour by the reminiscence he has left to us of his earliest religious experience. He¹ writes:

"I was certainly no more than six or seven when I began to feel myself drawn by Matter - or more strictly by something that 'shone' at the heart of Matter. At this age when I suppose other children feel their first 'sentiment' for a person or for art or religion, I was affectionate, well-behaved, even pious. That is, catching it from my mother, I loved 'the little lord Jesus' dearly. But in reality my genuine self was elsewhere. To find out about this you would have had to watch me as I withdrew, always secretly and without a word, without even thinking that there was anything worth saying about it to anyone, to contemplate, indeed, to possess, to savour the existence of my 'God, Iron'. Yes, just that: Iron. In the country a plough-key which I hid away carefully in a corner of the yard. In the town, the hexagonal head of a metal staple which stuck out at the level of the nursery-floor and which I took possession of. Later on, little shell-splinters which I collected lovingly on a nearby shooting range.

"I can't help smiling today when I think of these pranks. Yet at the same time I am forced to recognize that in this instinctive movement which made me truly speaking worship a little piece of metal, there was a strong sense of self-giving and a whole train of obligations all mixed up together and my whole spiritual life has merely been the development of this."

We can clearly perceive that at the start of his inner development, at the basis of his spiritual life, Teilhard's "genuine self" was elsewhere than in devotion to the historical Christ-figure. It was only afterwards that his religious

l. Quoted from Vie Heart of Matter [Le Coeur de la Matiere) in Nicolas Corte's Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: His life and Spirit, translated from the French by Martin Jarrett-Kerr (Barrie & Rockliff, London, 1960), pp. 4-5.

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being became Christocentric and led him to proclaim:² "Christ reveals Himself in each reality around us, and shines like an ultimate determinant, like a centre, one might almost say like a universal element."

Emphasising his Christocentrism, Teilhard³ writes that famous passage: "To the Christian's sensitised vision, it is true, the Creator and, more specifically, the Redeemer...have steeped themselves in all things to such a degree that, as Blessed Angela of Foligno said, 'the world is full of God' But this aggrandisement is only valuable in his eyes in so far as the light, in which everything seems to him bathed, radiates from an historical centre and is transmitted along a traditional and solidly defined axis. The immense enchantment of the divine milieu owes all its value in the long run to the human-divine contact which was revealed at the Epiphany of Jesus. If you suppress the historical reality of Christ, the divine omnipresence which intoxicates us becomes, like all the other dreams of metaphysics, uncertain, vague, conventional -lacking the decisive experimental verification by which to impose itself on our minds, and without the moral directives to assimilate our lives into it... The mystical Christ, the universal Christ of St. Paul, has neither meaning nor value in our eyes except as an expansion of the Christ who was born of Mary and who died on the Cross, The former essentially draws His fundamental quality of undeniability and concrete-ness from the latter. However far we may be drawn into the divine spaces opened up to us by Christian mysticism, we never depart from the Jesus of the Gospels."

A confession of faith could not sound more Christocentric, But the sense is rather forced. The last three sentences are mere truisms. Whatever we name as "Christ" or "Christian" is necessarily bound up with the historical Jesus whom we hail as Christ: naturally, we cannot depart from him, but our non-departure simply makes an argument in a circle. The true

2,The Divine Milieu, p. 104.

3.Ibid., pp. 94-5.

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question is whether there is or not a mystical and universal Presence which goes beyond the traditional omnipresent God of Christianity and, if there is, whether it has to be named "Christ" and nothing else. The very first sentence provides the answer, and the answer contradicts the assertion of the last three. Teilhard has actually stated that Blessed Angela's exclamation, "The world is full of God", could arise because not only the Redeemer, but also the Creator, however less "specifically"'than the Redeemer, is steeped in all things. How, then, can the universality of the Divine Presence be "only valuable" in so far as it is a radiation from the "historical centre" that is Jesus the Redeemer? If the Creator, too, constitutes "the light, in which everything seems...bathed", the God-fullness of the world predates "the Christ who was the son of Mary and who died on the Cross": "the Jesus of the Gospels" can be no more than a reinforcement of that God-fullness and not its sole origin.

In consequence, there is no call to run down non-Christian testimonies to "the divine omnipresence", which show an "aggrandisement" of vision beyond the mere omnipresence of action. They cannot become just "dreams of metaphysics, uncertain, vague, conventional": they cannot prove lacking in "the decisive experimental verification" or "moral directives". The great cry of the pre-Christian Upanishadic seers, "All this is Brahman" or "Thou art That", the pre-Christian Gita's ringing formula about Krishna, "The Son of Vasudeva is the whole world", the post-Christian Plotinus's Upanishadic leap of the human soul into the World-Soul, the similar surge of the Persian and Arabian Sufis - all these are clear and concrete realisations, experimentally verified in a decisive way and directed by deep ethical disciplines preparatory to mystical vision. To dub them "dreams of metaphysics" is arbitrary in the extreme. Even to label the pantheist philosopher Spinoza a metaphysical dreamer would be an error: what he termed "amor intellectualis Dei" was for him a powerful intuitive act and a part of living experience which have earned for him the reputation of having been "God-intoxi-

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cated". Actually, Spinoza⁴ claimed his system to be a logical working out of St. Paul's mighty experiential utterance, "In Him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts XVII28), an utterance much favoured by Teilhard but linked by St. Paul with an assertion which he declares to be a quotation from an earlier non-Christian Greek poet (Ibid.). The first utterance is itself one among several recognised by every exegete as borrowing their language from the pantheistic Stoicism of their day.⁵ The aggrandised sense and feeling of the world being full of God had been present before Christ's mystical Body was visualised, and has continued from the remote past into later ages independently of Christian mysticism. It bears no relation to "the historical reality of Christ" and "the Epiphany of Jesus".

Even the Teilhardian emphasis on that reality and that Epiphany is played down by Teilhard's own pronouncements a little later in his book. Addressing Jesus he⁶ says: "Sometimes people think that they can increase Your attraction in my eyes by stressing exclusively the charm and goodness of Your human life in the past" - and he⁷ goes on to declare: "Why should we turn to Judaea two thousand years ago? No, what I cry out for, like every being, with my whole life and all my earthly passion, is something very different from an equal to cherish: it is a God to adore." He⁸ appeals to Jesus: "Show Yourself to us as the Mighty, the Radiant, the Risen! Come to

4.Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (Pocket Books, Inc., New York, 1953), p. 172, quoting Spinoza's Epistle 21.

5.Albert Schweitzer says of Acts XVII28 that "its God-mysticism is Stoic", and continues: "that which is expressed is the Stoic pantheistic Mysticism" {The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, translated into English by William Montegomery, B.D., A. & C Black, Ltd., London, 1931, pp. 7, 8). Apropos of Corinthians XV:28, Mgr. Lucien Cerfaux speaks of "The ancient Stoic formulas, pantheist in tone..." (Le Chretien dans la Theologie Paulinienne, 1962, p. 212). Edgar Haulotte, S.J., tells us that "Paul puts the language of the Bible into words that can be understood by the Epicureans and Stoics to whom he is speaking" [L'Esprit de Yahwe dans L'Ancien Testament in the symposium L'Homme devant Dieu, 1964, I, p. 28.).

6.The Divine Milieu, p. 106.

7.Ibid., p. 105.

8.Ibid..

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us once again as the Pantocrator who filled the solitude of the cupolas in the ancient basilicas! Nothing less than this Parousia is needed to counter-balance and dominate in our hearts the glory of the world that is coming into view. And so that we should triumph over the world with You, come to us clothed in the glory of the world." The cosmic has burst upon the Teilhardian vision, particularly the infinite multitudinous unity which is the evolving cosmos of modern science. And the God whom he invokes for adoration is the Cosmic Christ, who; according to him, was anticipated in the Pantocrator -the All-Ruler, the Universal Power - pictured in the frescoes of the early Churches. Such a Christ alone can match the glory of the world from which the Roman Catholic in Teilhard shrinks as from a snare but which the pantheist in him no less than the scientist cannot help exalting and loving. To neutralise the divine-seeming charm the stupendous universe exercises to draw one away from the personality of the God-Man Jesus, Teilhard wants Jesus to appear as vast as the world's many-featured unitary immensity and make that immensity itself the glorious manifestation of his own universality. We are called beyond the God-Man to a God-World. An enormously enlarged Christianity is offered to us. And Teilhard's summing up⁹ runs: "The great mystery of Christianity is not exactly the appearance, but the transparence of God in the universe. Yes, Lord, not only the ray that strikes the surface, but the ray that penetrates, not only Your Epiphany, Jesus, but Your Diaphany."

An even more explicit and unorthodox breaking through common Christianity by the diaphanic Cosmic Christ meets us in a letter Teilhard wrote at about the same time - the end of 1926 - that he started The Divine Milieu. On October 30 of that year we find him saying:¹⁰ "I do not like the evangelism which limits itself to a glorification of the purely human or moral qualities of Jesus. If Jesus were no more than 'a father, a

9. Ibid., p.110.

10. Letters to Two Friends, 1926-1952, (Collins, The Fontana Library of Theology and Philosophy, London, 1972), p. 48.

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mother, a brother, a sister' to us, I would not have need of Him: and, in a sense, the past does not interest me. What I 'ask' of Christ is that He be a Force that is immense, present, universal, as real (more real) than Matter, which I can adore; in short, I ask Him to be for me the Universe: complete, concentrated, and capable of being adored. This is why, while acknowledging the irreplaceable value of the first three Gospels in presenting the real, historical beginnings of Christ (with a practical code of moral comparison with Him), I prefer Saint John and Saint Paul, who really present in the resurrected Christ a being as vast as the World of all time. Have you read, for example, the beginning of the Epistle to the Colossians (Chapter I, verses 12-23) and tried to give it the full, organic meaning it requires? Here Christ appears as a true soul of the World. It is only thus that I love Him."

A number of momentous points stand out. First, Teilhard has "no need" of "the purely human or moral qualities of Jesus". Secondly, whatever Jesus was - man or God or both -two thousand years ago is of no ultimate importance for Teilhard: "in a sense, the past does not interest me." Thirdly, the Jesus offered us by the first three Gospels is "irreplaceable" only as showing "the real, historical beginnings of Christ": he is not the full Christ and it is the full Christ, as revealed by Saint John and Saint Paul, who is truly irreplaceable. Fourthly, this full Christ, the one who interests Teilhard, the one whom he prefers to a past figure and whom alone he can "adore" and "love" is Christ as "a Force that is immense, present, universal", a Force comparable in its reality to Matter and surpassing the materially real along the latter's own line: that is to say, a Force that is Super-Matter. Fifthly, Teilhard wants his Christ to be a complete, concentrated, adorable "Universe" animating the material cosmos, "a being as vast as the World of all time", "a true soul of the World". Such a Christ is surely a Personal Pantheos, of whose cosmic soul, coextensive with space and time, the universe of Matter is a manifesting body. Looking on him as Super-Matter, we may even say that his cosmic soul is as a Super-body, of which an

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evolving projection is the space-time universe.

If our interpretation strikes one as ending on a rather exaggerative note, we have only to bear in mind Teilhard's own observations to the same correspondent a few months later. On January 22, 1927, he¹¹ writes apropos of The Divine Milieu on which he has been working: "If you ever read my 'pious book', you will see that there is a paragraph devoted to Holy Matter, a matter that has nothing emaciated or Franciscan about it... Spirit is not the fleshless thing, the insubstantial specter, that is sometimes presented to us. True spirit must be formed of all the vitality and all the consistency of the body: it is an extension in the same direction... I repeat: Spirit is the most violent, the most incendiary of Matters." Elsewhere too Teilhard has similarly suggestive statements: "...in the present teaching of theology and ascetics, the most prominent tendency is to give the word 'mystical' (in mystical body, mystical union) a minimum of organic or physical meaning"¹² - "the spiritual...is in fact the material carried beyond itself: it is super-material..."¹³

In the light of such a view and especially the expression about current "theology and ascetics" giving "a minimum of organic or physical meaning", we can come better equipped to a sixth momentous point which in any case would make itself felt. Teilhard asks his corrrespondent whether she has given a certain passage in St. Paul "the full, organic meaning it requires". The question implies that so far this meaning has never been given by theologians. It also suggests that St. Paul had this meaning in mind. But, if Teilhard is right here, St. Paul would run quite counter to Christianity as hitherto interpreted: he would have a genuine streak of pantheism a la Teilhard. And then both St. Paul and Teilhard would be seen as endowing their Christ with a cosmicity foreign to the

11.Ibid., pp. 55-56.

12.Christianity and Evolution, translated by Rene Hague (Collins, London, 1971), p. 68.

13.Ibid.

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Christian religion, insisting, as this religion does, that God in no way is constitutive of the universe or identical with its finite elements or effective in fusing the human soul with Him.

But, whether the Pauline Epistle be shot with pantheism or no, the Christ, who to Teilhard's eye is transparent in the universe and has an organic or physical relation with it, falls outside Christianity and, if he is the "true soul of the World" compassing all time no less than all space, he certainly cannot be rooted in the son of Marv who lived and died at a particular epoch, In short, the name "Christ" is a narrow misnomer for him. And yet, because the religious instinct driving Teilhard had nothing else than Roman Catholicism as its immediate context, he could not help Christocentring that instinct. But the Divine at all times in matter, through matter, even as matter, is his basic and primary religion. Teilhard begins his life with the divinity investing the visible tangible world-substance and it is at first explicitly dissociated from "the little lord Jesus". In "something that 'shone' at the heart of matter" we have already the "diaphany" of the Divine, but there is no link at all with the Epiphany of Mary's son. The additive character of the historical incarnate Christ in Teilhard's world-vision is borne out also by the testimony of Claude Cuenot. Cuenot,¹⁴ in La Table Ronde (June 1955), reports: "From the age of four or five - so he told us in a conversation (12 July 1950) - he already had a 'general cosmic sense (the consistency of the whole}'. And later the cosmic came to be concentrated in the human, in the Christly."

14. Quoted by Corte, op. cit., p .3.

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