TEILHARD DE CHARDIN AND OUR TIME
Teilhard de Chardin and
our Time
AMAL KIRAN (K. D. SETHNA)
Clear Ray Trust
Pondicherry
INDIA
First Published 2000
(Typeset in 10.5/13 Palatine)
© Clear Ray Trust 2000
Published by
Clear Ray Trust, Pondicherry
Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry
(J51/4.5.98/10O0)
FOREWORD
Part One "The Real Religion of Teilhard de Chardin - His Version of Christianity and Sri Aurobindo's Expose of the Ancient Vedanta" appears for the first time in print.
Part Two "The Basic Teilhard de Chardin and the Modern Religious Intuition" brings together the articles published in Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture, an organ of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, from July 1973 to May 1974.
The two parts have as their starting-points either interpretative studies of Teilhard de Chardin or his own multi-aspected writings or else both at the same time. Their aim is to consider Teilhardism from all possible sides and converge upon a number of primary insights into its authentic heart of vision.
This heart is sought to be illumined in the context of past spiritual experience and tradition, the present world-view of the aspiring Western mind, and the trend today towards a future in which the human soul shall labour to build an earth rich and dynamic with life-values, yet all uplifted into
A larger ether, a diviner air
than any known and breathed until now.
The course of our quest is finger-posted by a few outstanding issues whose resolution alone can take us to the true Teilhard through the various thickets that are to be expected in the case of a priest-palaeontologist alive to all the crosscurrents of an age when science and religion cannot help playing upon and into each other's discoveries and disclosures.
Certain themes serve as leitmotifs in the articles. They entail a little repetition here and there. But new shades are always involved with it, and the themes in themselves too bear being repeated because they are mostly off the trade-routes of Teilhardian exegesis. Some have even the look of
paradoxes requiring justification time and again. The basic Teilhard de Chardin emerges with "a sea-change" not easily recognisable and acceptable by those who are content to take him one way or another at his variously flashing word instead of plumbing the deepest, the most hidden stretches of his wide-visioned genius.
June 24,1976
K. D. Sethna
Part One
THE REAL RELIGION OF TEILHARD
DE CHARDIN
His Version of Christianity and
Sri Aurobindo's
Expose of the Ancient Vedanta
The Roman Catholic Church has shown deep concern over the real religion behind the scientific-spiritual philosophy of the Jesuit priest and palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin. Apropos of some declarations of his, a very disturbing question has arisen for it: "Was Teilhard a pantheist?"
According to pantheism, the universe is a single infinite Being manifesting all that is physical and all that is psychological as two aspects of itself, revealing to the inner sight all things as one equal stuff of divinity and absorbing into a Totality of Universal Soul all individual souls that in mystical experience unite with it, individual souls being ultimately this Totality's own partial aspects or phases.
In the eyes of Roman Catholic thought, pantheism stands sharply over against the doctrine of Christianity that a Personal God other than the universe and other than the human soul has created both, established strict distinctions between the divine, the non-divine, the anti-divine, and ensures even in the unitive life of mysticism an unqualified survival of human personality, a non-absorption of the soul of the individual. To Roman Catholicism, the individual soul unites with God in a relationship of intimate and interpenetrative love, such that it is never merged in Him but has always a separate existence of its own though this existence is due altogether to God's will. Further, in spite of pantheists speaking of beatitude and self-universalisation when the individual soul is absorbed in the divine Totality, Roman Catholic thought maintains that in pantheistic mysticism a reversal rather than a fulfilment takes place: the individual soul loses all consciousness and suffers dissolution.
Naturally, therefore, zealous efforts have been made to prove that Teilhard's pantheistic-seeming declarations were not those of a true pantheist but only of a formulator, in original terms, of two ideas of Christianity: (1) God, who is transcendent of the world, is also omnipresent in the world. His is an omnipresence of action by which He is everywhere
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as a supreme causative power that is creator of the universe and ever remains as its preserver, the ground of all its processes, and that can intervene in them at any time; (2) God is incarnate in Jesus Christ. His incarnation directly infuses divinity into the world of matter and, by virtue of Christ's resurrection after his death, it keeps a special intermediary divine presence at all places and at all times, a Holy Spirit constituting a mystical Body and unifying all believers, a Body whose nucleus is the Christ-appointed Church. This intermediary presence assures for the material universe Christ's return at the end of history, his Parousia or Reappearance, to gather up his followers completely in that Body and, uniting them with him, unite them with God.
Roman Catholic thinking, careful not to imply that God in any way constitutes the universe or has in any respect identity with its finite elements or brings about in any sense a fusion of the human soul with Him, sees no use at all in pantheism. It endeavours also to show Teilhard in the same light as itself and quotes again and again his strictures on that doctrine. But, for all his strictures, Teilhard's attitude is poles apart.
He speaks of "false pantheism" and "true pantheism". To him there is something of indispensable value which is distorted in the former, and when freed from the distortion it yields a truth lacking in Christianity as Roman Catholicism has understood it but sorely needed by every religion and actually waiting in the heart of Christianity. That is why he1 says: "The trails of false pantheism bear witness to our immense need for some revealing word to come from the mouth of Him who is." And this revealing word is what Teilhard calls the Universal Christ, the Cosmic Christ. The function of such a Christ is evidently different from whatever cosmic office Christianity has so far attributed to Jesus in extension of his nature as God-man. For, that office is inde-
1. The Divine Milieu, translated by Bernard Wall (Harper & Row, New York, 1960), p. 109.
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pendent of anything characteristic of a Pantheos, whereas the cosmic function Teilhard ascribes to his Christ is one whose absence would render a Pantheos eminently seductive. Bruno de Solages and Henri de Lubac,2 fellow-Jesuits, interpreting Teilhard, cannot help noting: "It is faith in the divine Omnipresence, completed by the doctrine of the Universal Christ, that will provide the antidote to the temptations of pantheism." We get the same conviction in another shape when Teilhard3 affirms: "The Universalised Christ takes over, correcting and completing them, the energies that un-doubtedly lie hidden in modern forms of pantheism... If Christianity is to keep its place at the head of mankind, it must make itself explicitly recognisable as a sort of 'pan-Christism'..." The implication of such statements is clear: something contained in pantheism has to be added to Christianity while something else in it is to be left out. The result is bound to be both pantheism Christianised and Christianity pantheised.
Perhaps the most concrete illustration of the two-aspected result is in one of the three stories Teilhard wrote in connection with his service as a stretcher-bearer during World War I. The stories called "Christ in the World of Matter" are told about a "friend" before an engagement at Douaument in 1916, but, as the Editor's note says, "the 'friend' is clearly himself".4 At one point the "friend" confesses: "I had always... been by temperament a 'pantheist'. I had always felt the pantheist's yearnings to be native to me and unarguable; but had never dared to give full rein to them because I could not see how to reconcile them with my faith."5 A striking way in which the reconciliation comes is when the "friend" meditates before a picture of Christ. What happens is thus related:6
2.Writings in Time of War, (Collins, Fontana Books, London, 1968), p. 121, fn. 10.
3.Science and Christ (Collins, London, 1968), p. 124.
4.The Hymn of the Universe (Harper & Row, New York, 1965), p. 42, fn. 2.
5.Ibid., pp. 53-54.
6.Ibid., 42-43.
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"...as I allowed my gaze to wander over the figure's outlines I suddenly became aware that these were melting away: they were dissolving, but in a special manner, hard to describe in words. When I tried to hold in my gaze the outline of the figure of Christ it seemed to me to be clearly defined; but then, if I let this effort relax, at once these contours, and the folds of Christ's garment, the lustre of his hair and the bloom of his flesh, all seemed to merge as it were (though without vanishing away) into the rest of the picture. It was as though the planes which marked off the figure of Christ from the world surrounding it were melting into a single vibrant surface whereon all demarcations vanished...
"I perceived that the vibrant atmosphere which surrounded Christ like an aureole was no longer confined to a narrow space about him, but radiated outwards to infinity. Through this there passed from time to time what seemed like trails of phosphorescence, indicating a Continuous gushing-forth to the outermost spheres of the realm of matter and delineating a sort of blood stream or nervous system running through the totality of life.
"The entire universe was vibrant! And yet, when I directed my gaze to particular objects, one by one, I found them still as clearly defined as ever in their undiminished individuality."
What we have here is the whole physical world vibrating as the Cosmic Christ and therefore every part of it sharing in his existence, without either its own finite character being lost or his central all-animating dominance being annulled. Inasmuch as the cosmic stuff gets subtly deified in Christ, we have Christianity pantheised, while insofar as Christ retains his sovereign personality in spite of his universal extension, we have pantheism Christianised. The essence of pantheism and the essence of Christianity are here. And no summing up of them can be more succinct and more vivid than the "friend'"s own words:7 "I live at the heart of a single, unique Element, the Centre of the universe and present in each part
7. Ibid., p. 54.
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of it: personal Love and cosmic Power."
A more elaborate expression, driving home the pantheism with which Teilhard's Cosmic Christ is instinct, may be offered by stringing together some passages from the collection entitled "Pensees" made by Fernande Tardivel from Teilhard's writings:
"Lord Jesus Christ, you truly contain within your gentleness, within your humanity, all the unyielding immensity and grandeur of the world. And it is because of this, it is because there exists in you the ineffable synthesis of what our human thought and experience would never have dared join together in order to adore them - element and totality, the one and the many, mind and matter, the infinite and the personal; it is because of the indefinable contours which this complexity gives to your appearance and to your activity, that my heart, enamoured of cosmic reality, gives itself passionately to you,
"I love you as the source, the activating and life-giving ambience, the term and consummation, of the world, even of the natural world, and of its present becoming.
"You the centre at which all things meet and which stretches out over all things so as to draw them back into itself: I love you for the extensions of your body and soul to the farthest corners of creation through grace, through life, and through matter.
"Lord Jesus, you who are as gentle as the human heart, as fiery as the forces of nature, as intimate as life itself, you in whom I can melt away and with whom I must have mastery and freedom: I love you as a world, as this world which has captivated my heart; - and it is you, I now realize, that my brother-men, even those who do not believe, sense and seek throughout the magic immensities of the cosmos."8
"In the life springing up within me, in the material elements that sustain me, it is not just your gifts that I discern: it is you yourself that I encounter."9
8.Ibid., pp. 75-76,
9.Ibid., pp. 84-85.
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"Lord, once again I ask: which is the more precious of these two beatitudes, that all things are means through which I can touch you, or that you yourself are so 'universal' that I can experience you and lay hold on you in every creature?"10
"Lord, by every innate impulse and through all the hazards of my life I have been driven ceaselessly to search for you and to set you in the heart of the universe of matter,"11
"...fire, pestilence, earthquake, storm, the unleashing of dark moral forces, all these sweep away ruthlessly, in an instant, what we had laboured with mind and heart to build up and make beautiful.
"Lord God, my dignity as a man forbids me to shut my eyes to this, like an animal or a child; therefore, lest I succumb to the temptation to curse the universe, and the Maker of the universe, teach me to adore it by seeing you hidden within it. Say once again to me, Lord, those great and liberating words, the words which are at once revealing light and effective power: hoc est Corpus meum ['This is my Body']."12
Teilhard's "pan-Christism" stands unequivocally defined by these passages. With their help we can understand the short definition he13 has given of it in direct relation to the term: "pan-Christism - which, in fact, is simply the notion of the mystical Body, taken in its fullest and most profound sense, and the extension to the universe of the attributes already accorded (particularly with reference to human society) to Christ the King." Our passages show how far beyond traditional Christianity the Christ of Teilhard goes and hence how mistaken would be the attempt, just because this Christianity has always talked of Christ's mystical Body, to read in the above definition merely this Christianity expanded along its own line. Surely, the mystical Body of tradition, be it ever so expanded, cannot make us "love" Christ as "this world" or say to him that "in the material elements that sustain me,...it
10.Ibid., p. 140.
11.Ibid.,
12.Ibid., p. 90.
13.Science and Christ, p.
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is you yourself that I encounter" or ask him to "teach" us "to adore" the "universe" by "seeing" him "hidden within it". The operative words render the very cosmos a species of Christ-stuff - no doubt inferior to the central cosmic Christ-being but all the same sharing to some measure the latter's direct divinity: Christ's mystical Body on a cosmic scale is for Teilhard both a natural and a supernatural reality - complete, perfect, plenary as supernature and developing, progressive, evolutionary as nature. Teilhard never restricts Christ to the cosmos by an exclusive identification with it but he implicitly or explicitly intends the cosmos to be considered - within whatever limits - Christie.
Roman Catholic exegetes are confused by this double vision, finding as they do that Teilhard seems to say "Yes" and "No" simultaneously. So, one of his most distinguished commentators, de Lubac,14 writes: "He tried to show in our Lord Jesus Christ 'the synthesis of the created Universe and its Creator': did he not sometimes seem to establish this synthesis at a too accessible level and thus, in spite of the qualifications and corrections we have noted, and against his unmistakable intention, to some degree naturalize Christ?" The naturalisation of Christ to some degree is undeniable and cannot be helped: it logically arises out of Teilhard's panthei-sation of Christianity, But de Lubac's confusion reflects Teilhard's own vacillations and ambivalences.
A born pantheist, deeply realising, as an eminent coreligionist, Piet Smulders,15 informs us, the two great magnets pantheism held before his soul - (1) "the possibility of finding in every thing and in every action a contact with the ultimate fountainhead of being" and (2) "the ideal of a total and universal unification" - Teilhard repeatedly let himself go towards Christifying the cosmos and cosmicising Christ. But he tried always to counterbalance this tendency because of his intellectual misconception that to unite with the Divine of
14.The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin (Collins, London, 1967), p. 262.
15.The Design of Teilhard de Chardin, An Essay in Theological Reflection, translated by Arthur Gibson (The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1967), pp. 121-22.
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pantheism spells self-loss and facile inactivity for the present peak of evolution, the human person. He sought a compromise by differentiating world and soul from God, yet affirming a physical and organic God-involvement in all concerns of cosmic history. Thus he wrote:16 "God, who cannot in any way blend and be mingled with the creation which he sustains and animates and binds together, is nonetheless present in the birth, the growth and the consummation of all things."
What Teilhard here really means is that God's presence in evolution must not be confined to evolution: he must exceed it, he must be already an eternal and self-consummated being. To blend or be mingled with evolution amounts in Teilhard's eyes to be bound down to it, debarred from a transcendent existence. Short of being so debarred, God can be concretely and intrinsically one with the evolving cosmos. And it is his concrete and intrinsic oneness with it, his physical and organic inwardness to it, that Teilhard continually celebrates and that charges with a religious passion at once for Christ and for evolution a passage like the following:17
"Since Jesus was born, and grew to his full stature, and died, everything has continued to move forward because Christ is not yet fully formed: he has not yet gathered about him the last folds of his robe of flesh and of love which is made up of his faithful followers. The mystical Christ has not yet attained to his full growth; and therefore the same is true of the cosmic Christ. Both of these are simultaneously in the state of being and becoming; and it is from the prolongation of this process of becoming that all created activity ultimately springs. Christ is the end-point of the evolution, even the natural evolution, of all beings; and therefore evolution is holy."
Here the distinction essayed in the earlier quotation tends to fade away. The same activity under two aspects appears to be there. Christ is not only a supernatural cosmic presence: he
16.Hymn of the Universe, "Pensees", p. 143.
17.Ibid., p. 133.
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is also universal nature, natural evolution itself moving towards its world-fulfilling term. He is not only present in but also himself "the birth, the growth and the consummation of all things". He both stands distinct in his own being and blends and is mingled with his creation.
A similar impression we get of Christ when Teilhard18 tells us of him: "...his directing and informing influence runs through the whole range of human works, of material determinisms and cosmic evolutions. By convention, we call these lower processes in the universe 'natural'. In reality, by virtue of Christ's establishment as head of the cosmos, they are steeped in final purpose, in supernatural life, even to what is most palpable in their reality. Everything around us is physically Christified, and everything...can become progressively more so."
After saying the above, Teilhard19 adds: "In this 'pan-Christism', it is evident, there is no false pantheism..." And he goes on to say of Christ: "his universal influence far from dissociating, consolidates; far from confusing, differentiates; far from allowing the soul to wallow in a vague, supine union, it drives it ever higher along the hard and fast paths of action. The danger of false pantheisms has been removed, and yet we retain the irreplaceable strength of the religious life that the pantheists unjustly claim as their own."
"The irreplaceable strength of the religious life", to which Teilhard refers, is, of course, the pantheists' passion for the divine All and their seeing of the divine All in each part of the cosmos. By reproducing in Christianity this strength without accepting pantheism's supposed submergence of selfhood and relaxation of effort, Teilhard hoped to bring into play one of the two means - the other being evolutionism's progressive earth-building drive - which he deemed necessary in order to counteract the "detaching mysticism" he found in the Roman Catholic religion, its stress on a supra-cosmic transcendent
18.Science and Christ, pp. 58-59,
19.Ibid., p. 59.
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goal, its neglect of the concerns of modem Humanism, its refusal to take the world and its progress as an absolute on a par with the absolute of what is beyond the world, its indifference to evolution's "God ahead" and its preoccupation with revelation's "God above". The Christ Teilhard wants is the one about whom he believes:20 "...you do more than simply stand apart from things as their master, you are more than the incomparable splendour of the universe, you are, too, the dominating influence that penetrates us, holds us, "and draws us through the inmost core of our most imperative and most deep-rooted desires; you are the cosmic being who envelops and fulfils us in the perfection of his unity." Here the Teilhard to whom pantheistic aspirations were innate finds tongue and he is not always sure that the Christ whom he wants is the Christ who has come down in tradition. That is why, soon after hailing Christ as "the cosmic being" he21 lowers his voice, as it were, and prays: "There is one thing more, Lord: just one thing, but it is the most difficult of all, and, what is worse, it is a thing that you, perhaps, have condemned. It is this: if I am to have a share in your kingdom, I must on no account reject this radiant world in the ecstatic delight of which I opened my eyes."
The concluding phrase brings up the essential, the fundamental Teilhard, the born pantheist, and we are called back to several turns of attitude in the passages we have cited from Tardivel's selections: "my heart, enamoured of cosmic reality" - "this world which has captivated my heart" - "the magic immensities of the cosmos". And it is significant of the essential and fundamental Teilhard that he22 should follow up the expression "evolution is holy" with the words: "There we have the truth that makes free, the divinely prepared cure for faithful but ardently moved minds that suffer because they
20.The Prayer of the Universe, Selections from Writings in Time of War, "Cosmic Life", p. 83.
21.Ibid., p. 84.
22.Ibid., p. 92
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cannot reconcile in themselves two almost equally imperative and vital impulses, faith in the world and faith in God." Here we see the cause of the poise and peace Teilhard achieved in himself by harmonising what his co-religionists found mutually contradictory: his Roman Catholicism and his pantheism. In those lyrical phrases where his world-intoxication breaks out, we have a pointer to the priority of his pantheism to his Roman Catholicism.
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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
Page 19
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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No doubt, "the human, the Christly" answered to an authentic need of Teilhard's soul. Yet the concentration of the "cosmic sense" in it does not ever seem to have been a complete success. For, we cannot overlook the now-notorious passage commencing Part One of How I Believe (Comment je crois) which was written in 1934 and which became the target of a grave criticism in the Vatican's mouthpiece, Osservatore Romano, in June 1962 but which has subsequentlv been interpreted by most Roman Catholics as not necessarily a slip from orthodoxy. Teilhard1 writes:
"If, as a result of some interior revolution, I were to lose in succession my faith in Christ, my faith in a personal God and my faith in Spirit, I feel that I should continue to believe invincibly in the World. The World (its value, its infallibility and its goodness) - that, when all is said and done, is the first, the last, and the only thing in which I believe. It is by this faith that I live. And it is to this faith, I feel, that at the moment of death, rising above all doubts, I shall surrender myself... I surrender myself to an ill-defined faith in a World that is one and infallible - wherever it may lead me."
De Lubac has essayed a defence of this passage against the accusation of "pantheism". According to him, the words can be justified in their context. The justification is succinctly expressed thus by a reviewer of de Lubac in The Times Literary Supplement:2 "The words are part of an apology addressed ad
1.Christianity and Evolution, pp. 99, 103. We have restored, from the French original, the capital letters wherever they were used.
2.18 November 1965, p. 1027. De Lubac's book, in the hardbound edition which was reviewed, is entitled The Faith of Teilhard de Chardin (Collins, London, 1965). The paperback is named Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning {A Mentor-Omega Book, The New American Library, New York, 1967). The version, in de Lubac, of the debated passage reads somewhat different to the one we have reproduced from the later official English translation of the entire Comment je crois, but the difference is merely in the choice and arrangement of words, except where de Lubac has an omission: "the first and the last thing" instead of "the first, the last, and the only thing".
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Gentiles, whom Teilhard wished to lead from a faith in the World to faith in the Spirit, followed by faith in immortality and faith in personality, until eventually they came to faith in Christ. They mean more than Margaret Fuller's declaration, 'I accept the universe', which led Carlyle to exclaim, 'Gad! she'd better', but the World is the beginning, not the end, of Teilhard's faith."
True, there is a series of "faiths" mentioned and expounded, but they arise from the belief in "a World that is one and infallible": the belief does not depend on them. The World is the foundational datum and desideratum, and the manner in which the faith in it is affirmed suggests its all-sufficiency. It is hardly right to say: "the World is the beginning, not the end, of Teilhard's faith." Teilhard's own asseveration to the contrary stares us in the face: "The World..., when all is said and done, is the first, the last, and the only thing in which I believe." Does not "the last, and the only thing" hold the "end" with a vengeance? And if this faith alone is mentioned as that to which he will surrender himself" at the moment of death", what other faith can remain to follow, remain to be led up to and reached? No, "the cosmic" far exceeds for Teilhard "the human, the Christly", whether he would always openly admit it or not.
To a certain extent the exceeding comes out in the very foreword to the essay, where he sets forth the two roots of his belief - two apparently contrary influences:3 - "By upbringing and intellectual training, I belong to the 'children of Heaven'; but by temperament, and by my professional studies, I am 'a child of the Earth'... I have the feeling that a synthesis has been effected naturally between the two currents that claim my allegiance... Today I believe probably more profoundly than ever in God, and certainly more than ever in the World." An author who is temperamentally "a child of the Earth" should lead us to anticipate in his essay a drive towards drawing Christians to World-faith rather than unbelievers to
3. Christianity and Evolution, pp. 96-97.
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Christianity. Also, the deliberate distinction between "probably" for increase of belief in God and "certainly" for augmentation of belief in the World betrays the trend of the man's nature and the tilt of his faith.
De Lubac makes a gallant complicated attempt to get round the difficulties of the text for a Christian, difficulties whose awareness he evinces by comments like: "We would not deny that there is something over-nice and paradoxical in the turn which Pere Teilhard gives to his thought..."4 - "His style of writing, in the opening passage of How I Believe, is philosophically unsatisfactory until it is explained by what follows..."5 - "Here, at the very beginning of his apologetic task, he finds himself obliged to use language that is still elliptical and involves a certain ambiguity."6 These very comments should expose the wrong-headedness of de Lubac's approach, which is one with that of Pere Roger Leys whose interpretation he approves. It ignores the straightforward drift of Teilhard's expression.
Its folly can be clearly seen if we look at de Lubac's quotation from Leys's French article in the Flemish review Bijdragen, "1963 (pp. 1-20) before opening fire on Teilhard's accusers, Leys7 says: "All this passage does is to state with great emphasis that with the world everything else is given. If we accept it, weigh it, and search into its depths, we must find that it depends only from on high, through the Spirit and through God. Teilhard could write the words objected to, because he knew that this fidelity to the world would give back to him what, according to the hypothesis he put forward, he had progressively lost."
Leys's gloss misses the precise point Teilhard makes. Teilhard is at pains to state emphatically that the World, even if it gives nothing that is spiritually significant in a definite way to a Christian, suffices him completely with the broad
4.Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning, p. 132.
5.Ibid., pp. 157-58.
6.Ibid., p. 158.
7.Ibid., p. 185.
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spiritual significance it does give. It is true that Teilhard will be able to find evervthing else, but what he is emphasising is, in the first place, his initial, fundamental and innate religious experience and, in the second place, the all-sufficiency, despite the ill-defined character, of the sense it brings of some universal plenitude and directive care. The hypothetical manifold loss of Christian dogma as a matter not essentially vital is seriously and genuinely meant. Pere Philippe de la Trinire,8 though his words are a little lax in one place, is substantially justified in his irony at Leys's expense:
"Consider this extraordinary interpretation: Teilhard says black - that means white...
"In other words, according to Pere Leys, if Teilhard lost his faith in Christ, in a personal God and in the Spirit - well, he has not lost it...he has simply mislaid it temporarily and no doubt will find it again. On such an exegetic principle there is no difficulty in making any author you please say the opposite of what he has written."
Of course, Teilhard does not say he has actually lost his faith in Christianity, nor is it that, relying simply on the World, he will not obtain all that Christianity stands for. He merely says: "If...I were to lose..." But the attitude of the "If" is not, as Leys and de Lubac would designate it, "unreal": it posits a possible realitv and by "lose" Teilhard does mean loss for good and not just a hiding away for the time being. Also, the finding again of Christianity is worked out in the rest of the essay: it is not in the least figured in the passage: rather Teilhard assumes that there may not be any rediscovery. These two motifs make the burden of Philippe de la Trinite's song. And de Lubac9 errs in insisting that the critic has not kept in mind "the context of How I Believe, on which Pere Leys' opinion is based". We are not concerned with all that Teilhard can Christianly get out of his concept of the World: we are concerned just with his definitive confession
8.Rome et Teilhard, quoted in Nouveltes de Chretiente (21 May 1964, p. 24) and rcquoted by de Lubac, op. cit., p. 185.
9.Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning, p. 185.
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that he can live and die as a non-Christian but can never divest himself of his confidence in the World. And such is the case not because he takes the World to be pregnant, as Leys and de Lubac make him out to do, with the truths of Christianity but because, even without Christianity, the World is felt by him in the dim depths of his consciousness as secretly a Being, perfect in Itself, who will somehow or other evolve and manifest man's perfection, man's fulfilment, in Its own plenitude.
Both Leys and de Lubac feel their argument supported by the type of work they take How I Believe to be, a work addressed ad Gentiles, to unbelievers or non-Christians, and therefore following the provisional tactics of a classical apologetics which re-arrives at a pre-adopted position through temporary denial of it. But it is untrue to say that How I Believe is avowedly a classical apologetics in a Teilhar-dian form. The procedure Teilhard has followed is plainly set forth by him:10 "...these pages make no claim to determine the theory of a general apologetics. All I am proposing to do is to describe, so far as I understand them, the developments of a personal experience. As such, what I have to say will not satisfy everybody." Here Teilhard not only disclaims "general apologetics" but, by his last sentence, implies that the provisional tactics of a classical apologetics are not there at all; for, if they were, orthodox Christians would surely be satisfied by what he had to say: his implication is that because of the absence of such an apologetics many orthodox Christians were likely to be dissatisfied. And Teilhard11 further elaborates on his procedure:
"...if I am to demonstrate my Christian faith to myself, I cannot have (nor, in fact, have I ever found) any other way of doing so than by verifying in my own self the legitimacy of a psychological evolution. In the first phase, I feel the need to descend, step by step, to ever more elementary beliefs, until I
10.Christianity and Evolution, p. 97.
11.Ibid., p. 99.
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reach a certain fundamental intuition below which I can no longer distinguish anything at all. In a second phase, I try to re-ascend the natural series (I was on the point of saying 'phylum') of my successive acts of faith in the direction of an over-all view which ultimately is found to coincide with Christianity. First one has to verify the solidity of an inevitable initial faith, and then one has to verify the organic continuity of the successive stages which the augmentations of that faith pass through. I know no other apologetics for my own self and I cannot therefore suggest any other to those for whom I wish the supreme happiness of one day finding themselves face to face with a unified universe."
No tactics of any sort are in view: "a fundamental intuition", which is the true basis of the inner life, is begun with. A genuine psychological evolution and not a manoeuvre at converting an unbeliever is the contents of the essay. The picture of such an evolution is defined as the sole Teilhardian apologetics and it rules out all classical apologetics.
The only ground de Lubac12 proffers for his ad-Gentiles proposition is Teilhard's phrase, in a letter of March 1947, that How I Believe "was intended for a very special public". De Lubac identifies the "special public" with the scientists Teilhard mixed with. And with a similar assumption the Roman Catholic editor13 prefixes a note to the English translation of Teilhard's essay: "This paper was written by Pere Teilhard in answer to a request from Mgr. Bruno de Solages, characteristic of the latter's deep concern for the apostolate." In connection with his essay, Teilhard himself nowhere singles out his fellow-scientists, nowhere refers exclusively to apostolic work among them. Passing from the personal aspect of the essay to a general one, he14 asks: "The passion for the World from which my faith springs; the dissatisfaction, too, which I experience at first when I am confronted by any of the
12.Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning, pp. 175-76.
13.christianity and Evolution, p. 96.
14.Ibid., p. 130.
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ancient forms of religion - are not both these [the]15 traces in my heart of the uneasiness and expectancy which characterize the religious state of the world today?" And he illustrates the religious state by listing three movements: "The East seems already to have forgotten the original passivity of its pantheism. The cult of progress is continually opening up its cosmogonies ever more widely to the forces of spirit and emancipation. Christianity is beginning to accept man's effort. In these three branches the same spirit which made me what I am is obscurely at work." Thus Christians are openly said to be part of his audience. And his fellow-scientists are only one out of three groups forming his "special public".
We could even pick out Christians as especially the people Teilhard had in mind. If faith in the World was his "fundamental intuition", his "inevitable initial faith" and if, in his eyes, Christianity by and large was reluctant to accept "man's effort" and was only lately beginning to do so, the hammer-ing-in of World-faith would be most effective as a blow to it. And we have actually a direct clue that writings like How I Believe were not addressed ad Gentiles but the other way around. In a letter of 29 October 1949 Teilhard again discusses "faith in Heaven" and "faith in Earth" as both leading to the same religious conclusion:
"The synthesis of the two forms of faith in Christo Jesu is not an arbitrarily chosen tactical move ad usum infidelium. It represents hic et nunc a condition of survival for an increasing number of Christians. We have to choose right now between the Christianising of neo-humanism and its condemnation. The problem is with us now, and the time is short."16
Evidently, the main audience addressed is Christian believers, not "infidels". Teilhard wants them to change, to take account of the World, accept Science whole-heartedly and realise God's concrete presence in the evolving universe
15.My insertion to prevent the mistake of reading "these" as an adjective of "traces" (K.D.S.).
16.Quoted by Cuenot, Teilhard de Chardin, A Biographical Study (Burns and Oates, London, 1965), p. 271.
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through scientific pointers and a new pantheism. A letter of 4 May 1931 discloses "the idea - very close to my heart, as you know - that in future the faith in Christ will never hold its own or be extended except through the intermediary of faith in the World."17
On the very job undertaken by How I Believe a straight light is available in Robert Speaight's biography of its author. After informing us that Teilhard acceded to de Solages' request for his credo, Speaight18 says: "He believed himself that the personal tone of the essay would disarm theological objections, and he told Bruno de Solages that he would 'never find it possible to think or to write anything other than these pages'." The essay was evidently the credo of one who was "irreducibly 'hyper-Catholic'" (to use a label Teilhard applied to himself elsewhere19), meant to be utterly candid, hiding nothing of his non-orthodoxy, hoping to be a guide ahead to his fellow-Christians and yet sufficiently Christian in spirit at the end to expect understanding and tolerance from them. He was on the defensive against orthodoxy and it was the orthodox, not the "Gentiles", who were to be converted by his essay, and for their conversion the mighty chord of faith in the World had to be struck as the key-note. What Speaight quotes from Teilhard reveals also the finality for Teilhard of this opening chord no less than of the Christian-sounding yet really radical readjustment he wanted of Roman Catholicism through his specific brand of "Universal Christ", towards which "we have no better way - no other way, even - ...than fully to accept the most modern concepts of evolution"20 and by which "my deepest 'pantheist' aspirations are satisfied, guided and reassured".21
17.Letters from a Traveller (Collins, Fontana Religious Books, London, 1967), p. 132.
18.Teilhard de Chardin: A Biography (Collins, London, 1968), p. 209.
19.Letters to Leon tine Zanta (Collins, London, 1969), p. 36 (Introduction by Henri de Lubac).
20.Christianity and Evolution, p. 126,
21.Ibid., p. 127.
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Commentators like de Lubac forget that, though the "Christly" could not be neglected by Teilhard in his whole-view, it never had such natural, early, deep and intense roots as the "cosmic". Further, the "Christly" did no more than render the "cosmic" human and intimate: without being given the universal dimension, the "Christly" meant nothing to Teilhard, whereas without being "Christlv" the "cosmic" would still make Teilhard's life worthwhile. That indeed is the core of the disputed passage.
And this truth blazes out at us in the essay not only from there. Once more - in about the middle of the piece -Teilhard22 speaks of the individual developments of his faith coming to a stop and culminating "at a point at which, were I to lose confidence in all revealed religion, I would still, I believe, be firmly anchored". Then, towards the end of the piece, we discover not only the mention23 of "the 'cosmic sense' from which germinates the whole organism of my faith" but also the comparative statement:24 "I tried to place at the head of the universe which I
Nor is How I Believe a freakish or isolated witness - except for the reminiscence in Le Coeur de la Matiere in 1950 and Cuenot's report of a talk in the same year - to the priority and sufficiency. In the essay, My Universe, written in 1923 - eleven years before - Teilhard25 lays, "directly side by side", the two corner-stones of his interior life. One of them is the belief "(a) That it is better to be conscious than not to be conscious" and
22.Ibid., p. 117
23.Ibid., p. 124.
24.Ibid., p. 128.
25.Science and Christ, pp. 40-41.
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"(b) That it is better to be more conscious than less conscious". Its companion is "Faith in life, in other words the unshakeable certainty that the universe considered as a whole
a.Has a goal.
b.Cannot take the wrong road nor come to a halt in mid-journey." Teilhard continues with the grand attestation:
"Taken in isolation, only a pathetically insignificant proportion of the elements of the world, sad to say, turns out successfully. With absolute conviction, I refuse to extend this total contingency to the elements as a collective whole. I cannot admit that the universe is a failure... Before looking for any explanation of the thing, I believe in the fact that the world, taken as a whole, is assured of attaining its end, that is to say (in virtue of our first principle) of arriving at a certain higher degree of consciousness.
"I believe by inference: because, if the universe has hitherto been successful in the unlikely task of bringing human thought to birth in what seems to us an unimaginable tangle of chances and mishaps, it means that it is fundamentally directed by a power that is eminently in control of the elements that make up the universe. I believe it, too, from necessity: because, if I thought that the solidity of the substance in which I am implicated was not proof against any test, I would feel completely lost and despairing. Finally, and perhaps most of all, I believe it from love: because I love the universe that surrounds me too dearly not to have confidence in it."
Sixteen years after this utterance and five years after How I Believe we hear the identical accents in The Phenomenon of Man. As regards man's future, as regards the problem whether a greater state of evolved being is open to us, Teilhard, in view of "the promise of a whole world" that has reached in its evolution the stage where modern man stands, asks: "How can we still speak of a simple game of chance? Have we the right to hesitate?" Quite independent of Christianity, which is not yet under discussion, and even apart from any deduction of a divine final peak of evolution from physical and biologi-
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cal data, Teilhard's answer26 rings out:
"The world is too big a concern for that. To bring us into existence it has from the beginning juggled miraculously with too many improbabilities for there to be any risk whatever in committing ourselves further and following it right to the end. If it undertook the task, it is because it can finish it, following the same methods and with the same infallibility with which it began."
Once more we have the basic vision and attitude found in those earlier words about "a world that is one and infalli-able", in which faith, however "ill-defined", is to be placed, "wherever it may lead me".
26, The Phenomenon of Man, p. 234.
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Faith in the World, the Concept of Omega,
the Vision of Christ's Parousia
Perhaps the champions of Christian Orthodoxy will bring up the confession Teilhard makes in the Phenomenon of Man when, towards the close of the book, he considers "The Christian Phenomenon", The confession is apropos of his concept of Omega.
We may first summarise this concept. According to Teilhard, evolution produces, in the course of time, systems ever more complex in the sense that a larger and larger variety of elements are organised around a more and more distinct centre: the atom, the mega-molecule, the virus, the amoeba, the plant, the animal, man. Teilhard further notes in connection with living entities that with the greater degree of centred complexity there goes a greater degree of consciousness. Evolution proceeds in the direction of increasing complexity-consciousness. Man, with his all-centring brain, is its maximum result so far. But we cannot cry a halt to evolution.
We see everywhere today a penchant for socialisation within each country and a general move for the unification of mankind and for a pooling of knowledge and resources. The biological trend towards a convergence, a synthesis, of elements in a dominating centre is evident again in that penchant and this move. Evolution is proceeding towards a sort of super-organism formed of all human individuals and possessing a unified superconsciousness. The final stage, the consummating term of history, lying in the remote future, Teilhard calls "Omega Point". Omega is the "Ultra-human", the "God Ahead", who is the goal of earthly evolution. As the highest product of evolution is the Human Person, intensely conscious of a self as well as broadly aware of the totality to which he belongs, progress cannot devalue this state but must refine and sublimate and perfect it, removing whatever limitations it still bears, whatever egoism and individualism it has carried in its train. So Omega will be a complexity, a
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convergence, a synthesis of human centres in a new supreme Centre. This supreme Centre of personal centres will be a Super-Person, by union with whom those centres will themselves be super-personalised. Omega will be the divine consummation of our universe brought about by an action of love and a co-operative pursuit of research: it will be a meeting and mingling of the Many and the One to form a single-hearted single-minded All.
But Omega is not only a divine marvel of the future: if the evolving cosmos has a direction, if it progresses towards Omega Point across its myriad travail of ages, through a forward groping amidst a diverse play of chance, then Omega must be also a divine wonder of the past and present, an already existent pole of attraction at the same time that it is in a phenomenal process of formation: it is an eternal Prime Mover from in-front, an Omega who is also an Alpha.
Now, Teilhard, basing himself on St. Paul and St. John, stresses the cosmic function of Christ. This function starts with the Incarnation which joins Christ to the material universe. It passes through his Resurrection from the dead by which he becomes the Universal Power who will gather everything together, transform everything and finally "close in upon himself and his conquests, thereby rejoining, in a final gesture, the divine focus he has never left".1 In that focus there will be complete unity and yet each element will have its own fulfilment. Looking at that ultimate result Teilhard2 writes: "The universe fulfilling itself in a synthesis of centres in perfect conformity with the laws of union. God, the Centre of centres. In that final vision the Christian dogma culminates. And so exactly, so perfectly does this coincide with the Omega Point that doubtless I should never have ventured to envisage the latter or formulate the hypothesis rationally if, in my consciousness as a believer, I had not found not only its speculative model but also its living reality."
1.The Phenomenon of Man, p. 294.
2.ibid.
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We may be asked: "Do not these words put Christianity prior to faith in the World?"
Let us examine them carefully- What Teilhard is concerned with is nothing else than Christianity and Omega Point. The proper question is: "Do they base the concept of Omega on Christianity?" Here faith in the World is not involved at all. But, as that concept crowns this faith, it is important to ascertain whether Christianity really plays a crucial mediating role between them.
The words tell us that the Omega-concept was suggested by the Christian doctrine of the Parousia, the Second Coming of Christ in the far future to collect his adherents and their universe into his mystical Body. But the actual working out of the concept took no help from Christianity. It was based entirely on Teilhard's scientific observation and insight. In the very chapter on the Christian Phenomenon he3 tells us about the need of Omega if reflective life is to continue to function and to progress: "This is the postulate to which we have been led logically by the integral application to man of the experimental laws of evolution." And the Preface to The Phenomenon of Man4 begins by saying: "If this book is to be properly understood, it must be read not as a work on metaphysics, still less as a sort of theological essay, but purely and simply as a scientific treatise." The warning means that even if Christianity set him to look for Omega Point he would never have accepted such a summit for evolution in the absence of scientific sign-posts to it. The vision in which Christian dogma culminates did no more than suggest a scientific possibility: the conviction of the truth of what had been suggested came wholly and solely from science. And the Christian Phenomenon itself is treated without religious preconceptions, as Teilhard 5 assures us in the chapter devoted to it: "As I am living at the heart of the Christian world, I might be suspected of wanting to introduce an apologia by
3.Ibid., p. 291.
4.MA., p. 29.
5.Ibid., p. 292.
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artifice. But,...so far as it is possible for a man to separate in himself the various planes of knowledge, it is not the convinced believer but the naturalist who is asking for a hearing."
In The Phenomenon of Man it is the naturalist who everywhere has priority in any significant computation. The hint for a scientific hypothesis can come from anywhere. All scientists, as Karl Popper has demonstrated, begin with a "hunch", an "intuition": the very method of theoretical science, as Einstein's General Theory of Relativity has exemplified, proceeds by way of a "free creation", an imaginative leap. Such a point de depart makes no odds to the scientific character of an inquiry, provided the steps proper to the subsequent procedure are taken: logical deduction and whatever experimental verification is proper to each field. The fact that belief in the Parousia of Christ sparked off the Omega-concept is really neither here nor there as far as the naturalist claim of Teilhard's book is concerned. In the establishment of Omega Point the naturalist has undoubted priority over the Christian.
And this priority becomes dazzlingly apparent in Teilhard if we pose a query counter to the one we commenced with. Let us ask: "Would Teilhard believe in the Parousia of Christ if he did not vision Omega Point?"
Omega Point means a total maturation of mankind - a maturation represented by the existence of a collective unit of unanimity. Without such a maturation, would Teilhard have faith in the completion of Christ's mystical Body? His own answer 6 is unmistakable: "We continue from force of habit to think of the Parousia, whereby the Kingdom of Heaven is to be consummated on Earth, as an event of a purely catastrophic nature - that is to say, liable to come about at any moment in
6. The Future of Man, translated by Norman Denny (Collins, Fontana Books, London, 1969), p. 280,
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view of Mankind in an actual state of anthropogenesis, that the parousiac spark can, of physical and organic necessity, only be kindled between Heaven and a Mankind which has biologically reached a certain critical evolutionary point of collective maturity?"
To the word "anthropogenesis" here Teilhard has the footnote: "And, it may be added, in perfect analogy with the mystery of the first Christmas which (as everyone agrees) could only have happened between Heaven and an Earth which was prepared, socially, politically and psychologically, to receive Jesus,"
There is also the categorical statement:7 "The truth is that the Kingdom of Christ, to which our allegiance is sworn, cannot be established...except upon an earth that has been taken, along the roads of technology and thought, to the extreme limit of its humanisation."
A still more positive assertion we encounter in How I Believe:" "Under the combined pressure of science and philosophy, we are being forced, experientially and intellectually, to accept the world as a co-ordinated system of activity which is gradually rising up towards freedom and consciousness. The only satisfactory way of interpreting this process...is to regard it as irreversible and convergent. Thus, ahead of us, a universal cosmic centre is taking on definition, in which everything reaches its term, in which everything is explained, is felt, and is ordered. It is, then, in this physical pole of universal evolution that we must, in my view, locate and recognise the plenitude of Christ. For in no other type of cosmos, and in no other place, can any being, no matter how divine he be, carry out the function of universal consolidation and universal animation which Christian dogma attributes to Christ."
A footnote to the end of the passage goes: "In other words, Christ needs to find a world-peak for his consummation, just as he needed to find a woman for his conception."
7 Science and Christ, p. 205.
8. Christianity and Evolution, pp. 127-28.
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The words from How I Believe mention not only the purely philosophic-scientific grounds on which the concept of Omega Point is supported but also the complete dependence of belief in the Parousia on this concept. To Teilhard, that belief, however inspired it may be by a divinity in whom he had faith, would be an empty and meaningless hope without this concept. Although the Parousiac belief is chronologically prior, the Omega-concept has a logical priority.
As for faith in the World, pure and simple - a posture antecedent to the Omega-concept - it has both a logical and a chronological priority. Teilhard's confession of his Parousiac belief is quite irrelevant to it. This faith is connected only with "the presence of the Whole"9 that he felt from his childhood, and in connection with this feeling of his we may terminate our discussion with a clinching phrase from How I Believe:10" "...it is precisely the value of this primordial intuition which seems to me to hold up the whole edifice of my belief."
And a sharp autobiographical light is cast on this primordial intuition by a passage11 which is almost as famous as the one in the first part of How I Believe though it has not provoked any comparable controversy:
"It is not that I have laboriously discovered the whole; it is the whole that has presented itself to me, imposed itself on me through a sort of 'cosmic consciousness'. It is the attraction of the whole that has set everything in motion in me, has animated and given organic form to everything. It is because I feel the whole and love it passionately that 1 believe in the primacy of being - and that 1 cannot admit that life meets a final check - and that I cannot look for a lesser reward than this whole itself
"Philosophically and psychologically,...nothing in the world is intelligible except in and starting from the whole."
As to the exact relationship between the object of Teilhard's "cosmic consciousness " - the World that was the
9. Ibid., p. 102.
10.Ibid.
11.Science and Christ, pp. 43-44.
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foundation of his religious life - and the Christianity under whose aspect he came to view the World, we have a very revealing phrase which puts his Omega-concept in its proper perspective within the context of these two faiths. It occurs in the same essay, "My Universe", as the above passage - the essay whose purpose he12 states thus: "All I wish to do is to explain how I personally understand the world to which I have been progressively more fully introduced by the inevitable development of my consciousness as a man and a Christian." The revealing phrase runs:13 "My philosophical skill may be greater or less [than that of my critics], but one fact will remain permanently unchallenged: that an ordinary man of the twentieth century, because he shared as any one else would in the ideas and cares of his own time, has been unable to find the proper balance for his interior life except in a unitary concept, based upon physics, of the world and Christ - and that therein he has found unbounded peace and room for personal development."
Absolutely unequivocal is the declaration here that the all-fulfilling harmony Teilhard has felt between his faith in the World and his faith in Christ has its basis in the grand conclusion to which physics has led him: the Omega-concept. Physics, starting with the World which for Teilhard was one and infallible and had undeniable value, gave him the vision of a progressive complexity-consciousness and a convergent evolution which would culminate in the realisation of Omega Point, in the unfolding of a Divine Plenitude. This vision alone rendered convincing and credible the Christ of the Parousia, the universal Christie expansion which he had religiously derived from his acceptance of the historical Jesus as a God-Man and which had served as an inspiring idea to his search for the implications of evolutionary physics but which would have been to him an unactualisable fantasy instead of a supernatural truth if physics had failed to
12.Ibid., p. 37.
13.Ibid., pp. 37-38.
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disclose an Omega Point for the cosmic whole primordially intuited by Teilhard. -
In no way was the Parousiac Christ palpably foundational or sufficient. It is Omegalic physics, scientifically reasoned out, that endowed him with reality and unified him with the World-Whole in which Teilhard had an inborn faith and from which his physics proceeded Omega-wards.
So we may well repeat that Teilhard's religious sense of "the cosmic" was stronger than his priestly convictions and was deeper as well as earlier than his love of "the Christly".
We may also answer the question we asked: "Did Christianity really play a crucial mediating role between his faith in the World and his concept of Omega?" Our answer is: "It did not. World-faith led to physics. Physics led to the Omega-concept. And the Omega-concept was the crucial mediator between World-faith and Christianity."
Even further we may go and say: "Faith in a World that is one and infallible and good, World-faith wherever it may lead Teilhard, implies a fulfilling destiny for the universal process, a consummating finality which can be termed Omega. The Omega-concept is significantly connected, in however embryonic a way, not with 'the Christly' but with 'the cosmic'."
All in all, Teilhardism is best seen as "the Christly" concentrated in "the cosmic" and not vice versa. Whatever endeavour Teilhard made in the opposite direction did injustice and violence to his fundamental feeling. Not that the Super-Person that is his Christ need be irreconcilable with the anterior bedrock credo. But the reconciliation is impossible in the traditional terms of the Christian religion, where the world does not itself partake of God-stuff and is not projected from God's own being. And if, following Teilhard's self-misleading trend, we insist, as most Roman Catholic exeget-ists do, on explaining him away as an orthodox in a heterodox garb, we miss the living beat of Teilhardism and falsify the deepest significance of his spiritual insights.
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Christian Pantheism, Panpsychism,
Omega Point, the Cosmic Christ
Teilhard makes no bones about his "deepest 'pantheist' aspirations"1 nor does he hesitate to speak of "the essential religious tendency which impels man towards some sort of 'pantheism'."2 In the same vein he mentions "the sense of the whole, which is the life-blood at all mysticism"3 and asks: "what in truth is the 'cosmic sense' from which germinates the whole organism of my faith but precisely this same faith in the universe which animates modern pantheisms?"4
But time and again he qualifies such statements by an assertion like: "It is only in fact the 'pantheism' of love or Christian 'pantheism' (that in which each being is super-personalised, super-centred, by union with Christ, the divine super-centre) - it is only that pantheism which correctly interprets and fully satisfies the religious aspirations of man, whose dream is ultimately to lose self consciously in unity. That pantheism alone agrees with experience, which shows us that in every instance union differentiates."5 And when, under the disguise of a "friend", he admits at the end of the three stories he wrote during the First World War: "I had always been by temperament a 'pantheist' "6 - he hurries to append a footnote in the persona propria of a Jesuit priest who has to set himself right with his Church for so dubious an admission:
"Taking 'pantheism' in a very real sense, indeed in the etymological sense of the word (En passi panta Theos, i.e.; in St. Paul's phrase, God 'all in all') but at the same time in an absolutely legitimate sense: for if in the last resort Christians become 'one with God' this unity is achieved not by way of
1.Science and Christ, p. 128. .
2.Ibid., p. 136.
3.Ibid,, p. 122.
4.Ibid., p. 124.
5.Ibid., p. 171.
6."Christ in the World of Matter", Hymn of the Universe, p. 53.
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identification, God becoming all things, but by the action - at once differentiating and unifying - of love, God being all in all, which latter concept is strictly in accord with Christian orthodoxy."7
This footnote, whose text reappears almost verbatim in The Phenomenon of Man,8 is vulnerable on more than one count. The mystical love-union actually experienced by Christian mystics, as against its description by the mere theorists of it, is not always clearly marked by a unifying that differentiates. Not only Meister Eckhart, who is never quite in good odour among his fellow-Catholics, but other Catholic mystics have themselves a non-Teilhardian suggestion. Richard of St. Victor (as far back as the 12th century) says in his treatise. Of the Four Degrees of Passionate Charity: "The third degree of love is when the mind of man is ravished into the abyss of divine Light, so that the soul, having forgotten all outward things, is altogether unaware of itself, and passes out completely into its God."9 Ruysbroeck reports: "We feel ourselves to be swallowed up in the fathomless abyss of our eternal blessedness, wherein we can never find any distinction between ourselves and God."10 He has also written: "whenever we feel this union, we are one being and one life and one blessedness with God."11 Luis de Leon affirms that "in very truth the soul not only has God dwelling in it, but is indeed God".12:
Teilhard himself is not unaware of Christian love-mysticism passing in and out of what he disapproves of as "identification" or what he elsewhere condemns as "fusion". He" has acknowledged: "...mystically speaking, it is difficult not
7.Ibid., pp. 33-54.
8.The Phenomenon of Man, pp. 309-10.
9.Mysticism in World Religion by Sidney Spencer (Pelican, Harmondsworth, 1963), p. 249.
10.Ibid., p. 250.
11.Ibid,
12.Ibid., p. 251.
13.Activation of Energy, translated by Rene Hague (Collins, London, 1970), p. 225.
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to be aware of considerable traces of fusionism in the appeals directed towards the inexpressible by an Eckhart or even a John of the Cross..." And Teilhard14 explains these traces by supposing that "for those great contemplatives" the two types of pantheism "were appreciably confused". He does not stop to think that if even so marked a love-mystic as John of the Cross could bring in "fusion", the two types of pantheism must really be two aspects of the same pantheistic truth.
Further, when we turn to St. Paul's own Epistles, do we have only a phrase like the one from I Corinthians 15:28 which characterises the Parousiac culmination and which Teilhard tries to press into the service of Christian orthodoxy and oppose to a straightforward pantheistic turn like "God is all"? Do we not have also the phrase in Colossians 3:11: "Ta panta kai en passi Christos", "Christ is all and in all"? If St. Paul is to be used in a discussion of pantheism, surely a Christo-logy with a pantheistic background or basis may be deduced here, and then Teilhard's favourite phrase merely promises in an overt realisation what is here declared as an inward truth.
The same background or basis is deducible from the Fourth Gospel where "Paul's Christ-mysticism" finds renewed expression through St. John. "Johannine mysticism, like the Pauline," comments Sidney Spencer,15 "is a corporate and not merely an individual fact. It receives its culminating expression in the prayer of Jesus in Chapter 17. Jesus prays that all who follow him may share his union with God - that all may be one, as a living and interpenetrating unity of souls, 'even as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us'. The divine destiny which Christ has attained, the divine glory which belongs to him in his perfect union with the Father, he seeks to share with ail his followers - 'that they also may be with me where I am'; 'that they may
14.Ibid.
15.Mysticism in World Religion, p. 221.
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be one even as we are one, I in them and Thou in me, that they may become perfectly one'," If the union of souls among themselves and with Christ as well as with the Father can be of the same nature as Christ's union with the Father, which has the same substance though difference of persons, there certainly must be - over and above the unifying that differentiates - an essential identification everywhere.
A relation of difference in the ultimate mystical experience need not imply difference of essence or substance: it could be no more than a certain posture assumed by the One with the Many who are Its self-expressions. And indeed, without an underlying sameness of essence, would it make any sense to define, as Teilhard16 does while again quoting St. Pauls's En passi panta Theos, "the essential aspiration of all mysticism" as: "to be united (that is, to become the other) while remaining oneself? If Teilhard knows that the heart of union is "to become the other" and that without this becoming there is only contact, interaction, intertwining but no genuine experience of being united - if he knows that short of this becoming there can merely be at the utmost an extremely intimate extrinsicality of relationship, how can he deny sameness of essence? To become, in any authentic sense, the other, the mystic's soul must previously have a secret inner oneness of being with the Divine beloved - the oneness posited by pantheism. Christian pantheism is necessarily a special development of the pantheism that is non-Christian and it must carry over the universal identity of being, which is the true substance of the latter, and, because of this carrying over, cannot help passing at times into a total union such as pantheism promises to the individual soul.
However, we should remark here on the wrong-headed-ness of Teilhard's notion,17 which is common to all Roman Catholics: "Pantheism seduces us by its vistas of perfect
16.The Divine Milieu, pp, 93-94.
17.Ibid., p. 93.
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universal union. But, ultimately, if it were true, it would give us only fusion and unconsciousness; for, at the end of the evolution it claims to reveal, the elements of the world vanish in the God they create or by which they are absorbed."
No articulation could be more packed with absurdity. If the "fusion" attained were to spell "unconsciousness', who would ever be seduced by pantheism as people are, according to Teilhard, and who would talk of "perfect universal union"? Again, when the pantheistic union means, by Teilhard's own definition in the long footnote we have quoted, "God becoming all things", how can the world's elements create God? They can only be absorbed by God. And this absorption, which from God's side would be "God becoming all things", must be, from the side of things: "all things becoming God." The two formulas are the obverse and reverse of the same mighty occurrence. And, for the individual soul, the occurrence would be, at the same time, God withdrawing into Himself the individual aspect He has put forth of His own being, and the individual aspect of Him merging in its own original universal reality. The soul grows conscious of the World-Soul that is its own secret supreme Self. What it loses is the small subjectivity which was its old life: what it gains is a vast inwardness, an infinite Selfhood, as its new existence. There is no resultant unconsciousness. The result is consciousness turning into superconsciousness.
It is not that Teilhard has no inkling of this truth. He must have more than an inkling, since he has said; "I believe that I was born with a 'naturally pantheist' soul."18 And a most positive fulfilling content is suggested for pantheism by accents like these: "the fundamental, obstinate, incurable yearning for total union, which gives life to all poetry, all pantheism, all holiness."19 Or when he visions the end of the universe in Christ's Pleroma: "Like a vast tide. Being will
18.Quoted by de Lubac in The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin, p. 155, from Teilhard's Mon Univers (1918).
19.Writings in Time of War, p. 101.
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have engulfed the shifting sands of beings. Within a now tranquil ocean, each drop of which, nevertheless, will be conscious of remaining itself, the astonishing adventure of the world will have ended. The dream of every mystic, the eternal pantheist ideal, will have found their full and legitimate satisfaction. 'Erit in omnibus deus.' ['God will be in all'.]"20
And what else than an irrepressible pantheism breaking through the Christian constraints put upon it makes de Lubac21 confess: "We believe, as Pere Rabut does, that the elliptical form and the emphasis of some of Pere Teilhard's expressions would seem to suggest a sort of natural identity of Christ and the Universe."
Perhaps the master key to Teilhard's true drive of thought and to the correct understanding of the relation between God and the physical cosmos in his philosophy is to be found if we take as our starting-point that commonplace of Teilhardian exegesis that, to the author of The Phenomenon of Man, life is co-extensive with matter. There is, for Teilhard, a "within" to every "without", just as in ourselves is an interior existence, a being of consciousness, along with our exterior existence, a being of matter. Although life seems to commence at a certain stage, Teilhard, accepting the scientific principle of the unity of Nature, sees it as latent - or, rather, as imperceptibly present - in even the apparently inorganic, down to the elementary particles. Another word for life, which he uses, is "consciousness". Thus he writes: "Refracted rearwards along the course of evolution, consciousness displays itself qualitatively as a spectrum of shifting hints whose lower terms are lost in the night."22 And "consciousness" is taken "in its widest sense to indicate every kind of psychism, from the most rudimentary forms of interior perception imaginable to
20.Science and Christ, p. 85.
21.The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin, p. 139.
22.The Phenomenon of Man, p. 59.
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the human phenomenon of reflective thought".23 The word "psyche" or "psychic" is the most general for expressing Teilhard's "within" everywhere. Thus we have the statement: "We are logically forced to assume the existence in rudimentary form...of some sort of psyche in every corpuscle..."24 And again: "...the 'psychic' shows itself subtending (at various degrees of concentration) the totality of the phenomenon."25
Yes, it is Teilhard's doctrine that life is ubiquitous and all matter is alive. But there is a further issue to be decided. Corte26 indicates the Teilhardian doctrine by the well-known philosophical label "panpsychism" and, though himself disapproving of it, takes panpsychism to be the very basis of Teilhard's vision of the world. Now, panpsychism does not only mean that life is co-extensive with matter. It has a further shade which is of central moment. And N.M. Wildiers, a prominent Roman Catholic theologian and commentator on Teilhard, comes to grips with it.
After quoting Teilhard to the effect that consciousness, in diverse modes, is a cosmic phenomenon, Wildiers27 tells us: "That is not to say - as has been said from time to time - that Teilhard is an advocate of pan-psychism - as though one and the same consciousness were present in all things: in the atom, the amoeba, plant, animal, man. That would be a total misrepresentation of what he has in mind. What he means is simply this: that if we want to arrive at a coherent account of the universe - one based on a scientific phenomenology - we must accept that, albeit in an analoguous fashion and in varying degrees, all creatures possess a certain interiority,. an interior aspect."
Wildiers's vehement protest is rather strange in the wake
23.Ibid., p. 57, fn.1.
24.Ibid., p. 301.
25.Ibid., p. 309.
26.Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: His Life and Spirit, translated from the French by Martin Jarrett-Kerr (Barrie & Rockliff, London, 1960), p. 61.
27.An Introduction to Teilhard de Chardin (Collins, A Fontana Original, Theology and Philosophy, London, 1968), pp. 78-79.
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of his definitions of Teilhard's "phenomenology". He 28 calls the tatter "a science which seeks to describe the universe as an observable phenomenon in its totality and its intrinsic coherence and to discover the meaning concealed in that totality". Once more he29 characterises it "as an endeavour, through the use of scientific expertise, to give as complete as possible expression to the world in its totality and inner orientation". Unless "one and the same consciousness were present in all things", at the back of their psychic diversity, could there be a concealed meaning, an inner orientation, in the world's totality? In the absence of a unitary all-life, could there be an overall import and drive hidden and inherent in the entire cosmos?
There is also Wildiers's summing-up30 of the Teilhardian "world-view": "...the universe presents itself to the eye of the beholder as a four-dimensional continuum, extended in space and time, an organically cohesive and evolving whole which is most completely self-manifested in man and so is best to be understood in that context and perspective." Surely, such a whole, evolubonarily manifesting itself and fully disclosing its own significance in man, cannot but be, in its fundamental nature, a phenomenon of "one and the same consciousness" at work in differing intensities and on dissimilar planes?
Even the title - "An Immense Psychic Exercise"31 - of the chapter in which Wildiers refuses panpsychism to Teilhard suggests what it refuses. And the words constituting the title are Teilhard's own and are drawn from the particular page of an article, to which, along with other places, Wildiers's fellow-theologian, de Lubac, sends us when, looking at Teilhard's not infrequent ambivalences,32 he writes: "...in spite of Teilhard's explanations, it is difficult to deny that there is a
28.Ibid., p. 48.
29.Ibid., p. 50.
30.Ibid., pp. 62-63.
31.Ibid., p. 64.
32.The Eternal Feminine - Teilhard and the Problems of Today (Collins, London, 1971), p. 73.
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certain tendency to pan-psychism in his thought." First, de Lubac33 refers us to the book, Teilhard de Chardin {p. 122) by Teilhard's friend, Mgr. de Solages, for proof of the tendency. Then he34 points to Teilhard's essay, "The Analysis of Life" (1945) in the collection Activation of Energy (p. 133) where we learn of the "psychic polarization of each elementary grain of energy". Next, he35 directs us to Teilhard's article, "The Spirit of the Earth" (1931) in Human Energy (p. 23). It is from the last-mentioned page that Wildiers's chapter-head derives. There we read:36
"No, the cosmos could not possibly be explained as a dust of unconscious elements, on which life, for some incomprehensible reason, burst into flower - as an accident or as a mould. But it is fundamentally and primarily living, and its complete history is ultimately nothing but an immense psychic exercise; the slow but progressive attaining of a diffused consciousness - a gradual escape from the 'material' conditions which, secondarily, veil it in an initial state of plurality. From this point of view man is nothing but the point of emergence in nature, at which this deep cosmic evolution culminates and declares itself."
It should be clear that "plurality" - "the atom, the amoeba, plant, animal, man", as Wildiers exemplifies it - is just a cover. Even at its "extreme" it merely hides from our sight, in the shape of "'material' conditions", a basic unitary fact of life, of consciousness, which appears in a diffused state at first but gradually evolves greater interiority until the true nature of its single cosmic psychism behind the pluralistic concealment in local limited phenomena stands revealed in the type of consciousness that is man's.
This interpretation conforms to all else that Teilhard says on the same page. He asserts, among other tilings, that the
33.Ibid., p. 219, fn. 43.
34.Ibid. p.50
35.Ibid.p.62-63
36.Human Energy (Collins, London, 1969), p. 23.
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"primal stuff" of the universe is not matter: what we have is "a universe of 'spiritual' stuff".
The all-round suggestion we catch from Teilhard when he lets his mind run on unobstructedly. is not only that there is one and the same consciousness behind the varying "wi-thins", not only that this consciousness is originally to be conceived under the highly developed aspect we find in the human phenomenon, but also that such a consciousness is secretly the real stuff of the universe.
Thus panpsychism, in a sense even fuller than what Wildiers discusses, is implied in the Teilhardian phenomenology.37 And we can also deduce from Wildiers's account that, in the form of the doctrine of a "within" to every "without", it is, as Corte holds, basic to Teilhard's world-vision. Quoting Teilhard's conclusion38 - "Spiritual perfection (or conscious 'centreity') and material synthesis (or complexity) are but the two aspects or connected parts of one and the same phenomenon" - Wildiers39 tells us: "This conclusion...brings us...to the very centre of his system."
Now let us inquire how Teilhard's indubitable and momentous panpsychism is related to his Cosmic Christ or, as he otherwise names him, Omega which is also Alpha, the God-consciousness in which the race will evolutionarily participate at the end and from which all evolution gets its primal impulse. Let us string together a number of declarations. "We are faced with a harmonised super-consciousness."40 "A new domain of physical expansion...in an interior totalisation of the world upon itself, in the unanimous construction of a spirit of the earth."41 "We have seen and admitted that evolution is an ascent towards consciousness.... Therefore it should culminate forwards in some sort of supreme consciousness."42
37.For further discussion see Supplementary Note on p. 93.
38.The Phenomenon of Man, p. 60.
39.An Introduction to Teilhard de Chardin, p. 77,
40.The Phenomenon of Man, p. 251.
41.Ibid., p. 253.
42.Ibid., p. 258.
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"In the light of our experience it is abundantly clear that what emerges in the course of evolution can only happen successively and with mechanical dependence on what precedes... And it is in the very same way that Omega itself is discovered to us at the end of the whole processus, inasmuch as in it the movement of synthesis culminates."43 No doubt, Teilhard adds: "Yet we must be careful to note that under this evolutive facet Omega still only reveals half of itself. While being the last term of its series, it is also outside all series." But this simply means that Omega is also Alpha, a pre-existent Godhead that is really a disclosure rather than a product, although seeming to be the latter and phenomenally emerging as such. The words do not deny the intimate presence of Alpha-Omega in the evolutionary process, its inwardness to the long series of evolution's products, its continuous line through the corpuscle and the mega-molecule, the cell and the multicellular organism, the human system and the superhuman collective race-body and the vast earth-being. It is obviously the all-life seen in its full original reality underlying evolution, impelling it and fulfilling it.
There appears to be no question that the "within" of panpsychism is the same as the "within" which forms "a new domain of psychical expansion", realises the unity of the world and enjoys, through an ascent towards "some sort of supreme consciousness", union with Alpha-Omega. Indeed, Alpha-Omega is the divine "within", whose diverse phenomenal expressions or manifestations are the graded psy-chisms from the most elementary form of interior perception imaginable up to man's reflective thought and beyond it to an unimaginable magnitude.
But, if that is so, the Cosmic Christ proves himself to be the full glory of panpsychism. And, since no controversy can legitimately rage over Teilhard's meaning of the "within" of panpsychism and consequently nobody can talk of orthodox Christianity as his true drift there or even of a mere omnipre-
43. Ibid., p. 270.
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sence of life's action rather than a direct life-stuff being everywhere both constitutive and operative, the Cosmic Christ is bound to be a divine name for the profoundest significance of that "within". In correspondence with panpsychism, the Cosmic Christ must represent pantheism, even if for the direct beginning of his most outer manifestation he has to wait until his birth as Jesus and his subsequent resurrection.
Perhaps there will be an attempt to avoid this consequence by saying: "Christ is Omega only in Omega's transcendent or supernatural aspect, not in its immanent or natural one. You must show him as identical with the latter to render the consequence unescapable." Well, Teilhard gives Christ himself a natural as well as a supernatural aspect, and after considering how, "under the combined influence of men's thoughts and aspirations", we have come to discern at the term of cosmogenesis a "physical pole of universal synthesis" which is "a supreme focus of personalizing personality", Teilhard44 proposes: "Just suppose that we identify (at least in his 'natural' aspect) the cosmic Christ with the Omega point of science..." In another place Teilhard45 asserts: "In future only a God who is functionally and totally 'Omega' can satisfy us." Here the immanent-natural Omega no less than the transcendent-supernatural is intended. So an immanent-natural aspect is accorded to God also. And soon after the above assertion Teilhard46 breaks down the common reluctance to let the supernatural be the natural at the same time and declares: "in a universe in which we can now see that everything is co-reflective along a single axis, Christ must no longer be offered to our worship (in consequence of a subtle and pernicious confusion between 'super-natural' and 'extra-natural') as a peak distinct from, and a rival to, that to which the biologically continued slope of anthropogenesis is leading us." Here the natural Omega is sought to be identified with a
44.Christianity and Evolution, p. 180.
45.Ibid., p. 240.
46.Ibid., p. 242.
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natural Cosmic Christ. Then we are told47 that "Christ's gradual rise in human consciousness cannot continue much longer without there being produced, in our spiritual climate, the revolutionary event of his coincidence with the definitely foreseeable centre of a terrestrial co-reflection (and, more generally, of the assumed focus of all reflection in the universe)". And the final statement48 runs: "Forced together ever more closely by the progress of hominization, and drawn together even more by a fundamental identity, the two Omegas (let me emphasize again), the Omegas of experience and of faith, are undoubtedly on the point of reacting upon one another in human consciousness, and finally of being synthesized..."
47.Ibid.
48.Ibid., pp. 242-43.
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The issue over the equation of the natural Omega with a natural Christ being settled, we may move on to the other -namely, that, like Pantheos, Teilhard's Cosmic Christ is a World-God who precedes his own particular concentrated historical manifestation known as Jesus. In short, what Teilhard is announcing is a genuine pantheism sub specie Christi. And such a thesis emerges if we rightly gauge several of his pronouncements:
"The concentration of the Multiple in the supreme organic unity of Omega represents a most arduous task. Every element, according to its degree, shares in this laborious synthesis, but the effort called for from the upper term of unification has necessarily to be the hardest of all. That is why the Incarnation of the Word was infinitely painful and mortifying - so much so that it can be symbolised by a cross.
"The first act of the Incarnation, the first appearance of the Cross, is marked by the plunging of the divine Unity into the ultimate depths of the Multiple. Nothing can enter into the universe that does not emerge from it. Nothing can be absorbed into things except through the road of matter, by ascent from plurality. For Christ to make his way into the world by any side-road would be incomprehensible. The Redeemer could penetrate into the life-blood of the universe, only by first dissolving himself in matter..."1
"It was because Christ was 'inoculated' in matter that he can no longer be dissociated from the growth of Spirit: that he is so engrained in the visible world that he could henceforth be torn away from it only by rocking the foundations of the universe.
"It is philosophically sound to ask of each element of the world whether its roots do not extend into the furthest limits of the past. We have much better reason to accord to Christ this mysterious pre-existence... The endless aeons that prece-
1. Science and Christ, "My Universe", p. 60.
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ded the first Christmas are not empty of Christ, but impregnated by his potent influx... When Christ appeared in the arms of Mary, what he had just done was to raise up the world.2
"Then there began for him a second phase of effort and suffering on the Cross... We would...be failing to understand his historical existence, we would be distorting and profaning it, if we did not see in it a vast hand to hand struggle between the principle of supreme unity and the Multiple it was engaged in unifying...
"That is the meaning of the ardent life of Christ, Christ the source of all our good, of Christ as he prays; and therein lies the unfathomable secret of his agony, and the incomparable virtue, too, of his death on the Cross...3
"And then Christ rose again. We are often too inclined to regard the Resurrection as an isolated event in time, with an apologetical significance, as some small individual triumph over the tomb won in turn by Christ. It is something quite other and much greater than that. It is a tremendous cosmic event. It marks Christ's effective assumption of his function as the universal centre. Until that time, he was present in all things as a soul that is painfully gathering together its embryonic elements. Now he radiates over the whole universe as a consciousness and activity fully in control of themselves...
"Like the Creation (of which it is the visible aspect) the Incarnation is co-extensive with the duration of the world..."4
Then Teilhard refers to the Catholic Church's rite of the Eucharist, in which bread and wine are taken to get transubstantiated into the flesh and blood of Christ and thereby "here and now...the influence of the universal Christ" is "transmit-
2.The sense of this sentence goes home better in the translation we find in the "Pensees" at the end of the volume Hymn of the Universe, p. 77: "When Christ first appeared before men in the arms of Mary he had already stirred up the world."
3.Ibid., pp. 61-62.
4.ibid., pp. 62-63.
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ted to us".5 This is the rite of the sacred "Host". Teilhard6 says:
"The Host, it is true, is in the first place, and primarily, the fragment of matter to which, through transubstantiation, the Presence of the Incarnate Word attaches itself among us, that is to say in the human zone of the universe... Can Christ, however, remain contained in this primary Body? Clearly, he cannot. Since he is above all Omega, that is, the universal 'form' of the world, he can attain his organic balance and plenitude only by mystically assimilating...all that surrounds him... The world is the final, and the real. Host into which Christ gradually descends, until his time is fulfilled. Since all time a single word and a single act have been filling the universality of things... Nothing is at work in creation except in order to assist, from near or from afar, in the consecration of the universe."
What do we have in all these quotations? From the beginning of the world, the divine Unity, that is Christ, immersed itself in the utter Multiple that is, according to Teilhard, the "creatable nothingness" from which the universe of space and time has been gradually and laboriously brought forth by the working of that divine Unity. This Unity is the "form" animating and shaping and synthesising that universe, the organising World-Soul that travails to divinise its body. Creation is secret Incarnation and slow Redemption: neither Incarnation nor Redemption are events that occur later than Creation: what occurs later is that what is secret and slow becomes visible and rapid when Christ appears in a human shape, lives, dies and resurrects. He has always been the perfect Omega, the Divine Plenitude within and behind and beyond the cosmos, but as the creative, incarnate and redemptive Omega in the cosmos's evolutionary labour his turning-point comes with his birth and death and resurrection as Jesus and he continues the building of a new universe
5.Ibid.
6.Ibid., pp. 65-66.
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as his Mystical Body through the rite of the Eucharist. We must not, however, restrict the Eucharistic rite: it merely carries on in a visible manner a process of universe-consecration that Christ as the World-Soul has always carried on.
The antecedence of Christ-Omega to Christ Jesus is plain in several words of Teilhard. He has written:7 "the supreme focus of unity is not only reflected in each element of consciousness it attracts, but also, in order to produce final unification, has had to 'materialize' itself in the form of an element of consciousness (the Christic, historical 'I'). In order to act effectively, the centre of centres reflected itself on the world in the form of a centre (Jesus Christ)." The same idea is repeated from another angle:8 "If we recognize that the true universal (the centre of the universe) cannot, by nature, but be hyperpersonal, then its historical manifestation in a personal form becomes logically comprehensible again, subject to correcting certain of our representations in detail."
A straightforward declaration too is available from as early as February 2,1918, when he9 wrote in connection with the problem of other heavenly bodies than the earth being inhabited ones: "It is astonishing that it is only two days back that I have been vividly struck by the difficulty of reconciling my doctrine of the cosmic Christ with the plurality of worlds.
-Since the Cosmos is certainly indivisible, and Christianity is not smaller than the Cosmos, one must admit a certain
7.Ibid., p. 136.
8.Ibid.
9.Teilhard de Chardin: Lettres intirnes A Auguste Valensin, Bruno de Solages, Henri de Lubac, Andre Ravier, 1919-1955. Introduction et notes par Henri de Lubac (Aubier Montaigne, Paris—IV, 1974), p. 40, note 7. The original French runs: "li est curieux que je n'ai ete vivement frappe que depuis deux jours de la difficulty de concilier ma doctrine du Christ cosmique et la Pluralite des Mondes.-Elant donne que le Cosmos est certainement inseparable, et que le Christianisme n'est pas plus petit que le Cosmos, il faut admettre une certaine manifestation 'potymorphe' du Christ cosmique sur divers mondes, suivant I'aptitude de ces mondes a etre integres dans l'Univers celeste. Le Christ humain ne serait alors qu'une face du Christ cosmique. - Autrement, le Christ (s'il ne soutenait que la Terre) serail plus petit que le Monde."
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'polymorphous' manifestation of the cosmic Christ upon various worlds, according to the aptitude of these worlds for being integrated into the celestial Universe. The human Christ then would be but one aspect of the cosmic Christ. -Otherwise, Christ (if he upheld only the earth) would be smaller than the World."
On the universal Eucharist going with a universal Incarnation and preceding Jesus as well as succeeding him we have also Teilhard's explicit pronouncement:10 "In fact, from the beginning of the Messianic preparation, up till the Parousia, passing through the historical manifestation of Jesus and the phases of growth of His Church a single event has been developing in the world: the Incarnation, realised in each individual, through the Eucharist."
There is no doubt that the Cosmic Christ with his Eucha-ristic work is both anterior and posterior to Jesus as well as passing through him. But there is a subtle point accompanying this conception, which we must note. It comes out in the following statement11 which affirms that conception: "Even before the Incarnation became a fact, the whole history of the universe (in virtue of a pre-action of the humanity of Christ, mysterious, but yet known to us through revelation) is the history of the progressive information of the universe by Christ."
Pre-action of Christ's humanity: there is the subtlety we have alluded to. Teilhard12 has written: "...timid minds...may maintain that the cosmic attributes of the Pauline Christ to the Godhead alone; ...all I need to do is to refer to the context, which is categorical: even in Col. l:15ff, St. Paul quite obviously has in mind the theandric Christ; it was in the Incarnate Christ that the universe was pre-formed." Christopher Mooney13 comments in relation to the text in the Colos-sians: "Paul seems clearly to affirm a pre-existence of Christ
10.The Divine Milieu, p. 102.
11.Prayer of the Universe, p. 102.
12.Science and Christ, pp. 54-55.
13.Teilhard de chardin and the Mystery of Christ (Collins, London, 1966), p. 170.
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and apparently it is always the concrete, historical God-Man of whom he is thinking, never the Word independent of his humanity. How this is to be explained theologically is a question for which there is as yet no satisfactory answer."
Thus the proper Teilhardian vision would be: the Cosmic Christ who precedes and exceeds the historic human Jesus is still a human Christ, a God-Man, a theandric Being, though above historicity - a non-historic universal Jesus having not only a human soul but also a human body co-extensive with all space and time. Hence Christ-Omega is Jesus-Omega too, non-historic yet with a human cosmic body no less than a human cosmic soul. It is in reference to this incarnate universal humanity of Omega, stamped from the beginning with the features of the historic Jesus Christ, that we have to understand Teilhard's frequent description of the Cosmic Christ as animating all things and not only being "organically the prime mover and controller, the 'soul' of evolution",14 but also "exerting a supreme physical influence on every cosmic reality without exception".15 The Cosmic Christ is both "organic" and "physical" because he is an Omega that is a mystery of human incarnation on a universal scale.
Keeping in view the Cosmic Christ as both anterior and posterior to Jesus as well as passing through him, the Cosmic Christ as identical with the immanent evolving Omega no less than with the transcendent evolver Omega, the Cosmic Christ as the universal Soul and Body which are perfect at the same time that he is the universal Soul and Body which are growing towards perfection, the Cosmic Christ who is Matter side by side with being Spirit because Spirit is not non-material but hyper-material - keeping in sight all these shades of the Cosmic Christ we must pierce to the true intent of expressions where Teilhard seems to drive a wedge between God and the world, Christ and the cosmos, even while holding them tightly together.
14.Christianity and Evolution, p. 180,
15,Science and Christ, p. 57.
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Thus he16 writes: "So the basic mystical intuition issues in the discovery of a supra-real unity diffused throughout the immensity of the world." The term "supra-real" does not signify a negating or contradicting opposite of the immense world: it simply connotes a higher extension or dimension of the real that we know as the physical universe. By defining the Divine as "supra-real" Teilhard wants to stress the Omega who is already existent and eternally emerged, in distinction from the Omega who is still in the process of forming and emerging. He has no intention to cut them radically apart.
Similarly have we to take that lyrical vision:17 "A Being was taking form in the totality of space; a Being with the attractive power of a soul, palpable tike a body, vast as the sky; a Being which mingled with things yet remained distinct from them; a Being of a higher order than the substance of things with which it was adorned, yet taking shape within them." What Teilhard drives at is that God must not be limited to an identity with the substance of things: he must be greater than it, he must be a "supra-real unity", a Real "of a higher order". Not to be distinct from things would prevent him from enjoying a free transcendence, an achieved perfection. But, granted this self-completeness, he can be as one with the universe as we could wish: he is interfused with the universe, developing himself in it, rendering it expressive of him, giving it his own shape. In short, we can say that God is the universe, provided we add that he is also more. To formulate this double truth is Teilhard's repeated endeavour - as when he transposes his congenital love and adoration of the universe into terms at once scientific and Christian and says18 that with "cosmogenesis being transformed into Christogenesis...it is becoming not only possible but imperative literally to love evolution".
Thus we may say about Teilhard's religion: "It exceeds in favour of pantheism the orthodox omnipresence of God as
16.Hymn of the Universe, "Pensees", p. 91.
17.ibid., "The Spiritual Power of Matter", p. 68.
18.Christianity and Evolution, p. 184.
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well as the old idea of Christ's Mystical Body and simultaneously it exceeds in favour of Christian transcendentalism as well as personalism the traditional Pantheos." But obviously the primary crucial step is the consubstantiality of God and the world, Christ and the cosmos: that is, in the pantheist direction.
And, although this direction does not quite bear us to the philosophy usually passing under the designation "pantheism", several pronouncements of Teilhard's in the course of his story of the developing "within" of panpsychism strike us even with some straightforward resemblances. According to Teilhard, as we have already noted from Wildiers, "spiritual perfection (or conscious 'centreity') and material synthesis (or complexity) are but the two aspects or connected parts of one and the same phenomenon."19 Further: "in the last analysis, somehow or other, there must be a single energy operating in the whole."20 Finally: "To avoid a fundamental dualism, at once impossible and anti-scientific, and at the same time to safeguard the natural complexity of the stuff of the universe,...we shall assume that, essentially, all energy is psychic in nature; but add that in each particular element this fundamental energy is divided into two distinct components: a tangential energy which links the elements with all others of the same order (that is to say, of the same complexity and the same centricity) as itself in the universe; and a radial energy which draws it towards ever greater complexity and centricity - in other words forwards."21 As a supplement to this formulation, we may mark, in Teilhard's system, "the primacy accorded to the psychic and to thought in the stuff of the universe, and...the 'biological' value attributed to the social fact around us",22 a value presaging a collective and co-reflective super-evolution
19.The Phenomenon of Man, p. 60.
20.Ibid., p. 63.
21.Ibid., pp. 64-65. By oversight the word "psychic" in this passage has been printed as "physical" in the 1960 edition.
22.Ibid., p.30.
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which would unfold the original plenitude acting in the welt-staff.
Here the new pantheism joins hands with the old. To shirk the pantheism of the Cosmic Christ is merely to quibble. No doubt, the Cosmic Christ is a Person or Super-Person who conserves the inmost personality, the soul, of the human being even in the union with him; but Teilhard's personalism cannot be a substitute for his pantheism: it has, by some means, to be reconciled with it. Pantheism must be accepted as basic to his scientific-spiritual world-view and we have to understand it as something irreducible to the vision of orthodox Christianity. In Teilhard's system it would need to be brought into rapport with that vision, yet it must also retain an essential shade of what is usually taken to stand sharply over against Christian theology.
It is in the light of this double truth that we have to look into the heart of a well-known passage in Teilhard where he brings the "Christian phenomenon" face to face with "the renewal of cosmic outlook characterising 'the modem mind' " and its call to "the ancient religions" to "adjust themselves" to "the precise immensities" and "the constructive requirements of space-time".23 The passage24 runs:
"Though frightened for a moment by evolution, the Christian now perceives that what it offers him is nothing but a magnificent means of feeling more at one with God and of giving himself more to him. In a pluralistic and static Nature, the universal domination of Christ could, strictly speaking, still be regarded as an extrinsic and super-imposed power. In a spiritually converging world this 'Christie' energy acquires an urgency and intensity of another order altogether. If the world is convergent and if Christ occupies its centre, then the Christogenesis of St. Paul and St. John is nothing else and nothing less than the extension, both awaited and unhoped for, of that noogenesis in which cosmogenesis - as regards our
23.Ibid., p. 296.
24.Ibid., p. 297.
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experience - culminates. Christ invests himself organically with the very majesty of his creation. And it is in no way metaphorical to say that man finds himself capable of experiencing and discovering his God in the whole length, breadth and depth of the world in movement. To be able to say literally to God that one loves him, not only with all one's body, all one's heart and all one's soul but with every fibre of the unifying universe - that is a prayer that can only be made in space-time."
The need, in Teilhardism, to accord Christian theology "literally", non-metaphorically, with what the latter has most feared in philosophies of the World-Soul like Bruno's and Spinoza's and Hegel's, is borne in upon us even by the fact that not only in Teilhard's stories but also in his direct utterances we have time and again the use of the terms "pantheistic", "pantheist" and "pantheism" as inseparable from his temperament and message, no less than from the religious or the scientific consciousness in general. We have already cited instances of them. We may adduce some more.
Thus we hear:25 "Pantheistic aspirations towards a universal communion are as old in man as his 'spiritualistic' attempts to conquer matter. But only lately, thanks to the precise data provided by science concerning the unity of matter and energy and the reality of cosmogenesis, have these desires begun to take the rational form of definite intellectual discoveries. In every realm we are beginning habitually to live in the presence of the Ail and with some attention to it. Nothing seems to me more vital, from the point of view pf human energy, than the spontaneous appearance and, eventually, the systematic cultivation of such a 'cosmic sense'." Teilhard26 also speaks of the generation, to which he belonged and whose conviction of the evolutionary process in Nature he fully shared, as "our generation, essentially pantheist, because evolutionist". Certainly, he was at pains to show that
25.Human Energy, pp. 130-31.
26.Ibid., p. 67.
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pantheism need not be what it was in a philosophy and science which he saw continuing from a completely anti-Christian past. He felt Christianity to have a deeply modifying bearing upon it and thus saving his own natural proclivities from outright heresy. He27 tells us: "Far from contradicting my own profound tendencies towards pantheism, Christianity, rightly understood, has unceasingly, precisely because it is the saviour of personality, guided, clarified and also confirmed them by supplying a precise object and a starting point for experimental verification." Teilhard28 is referring to the composite religion at which he has arrived and which has "two associated characteristics which seemed, to their mutual detriment, destined to be perpetual opposites in religious systems: personalism and pantheism".
Teilhard on several occasions attempts so to Christianise pantheism as if to exorcise the true differentia of pantheism -namely, the single God-substance of all reality. But that differentia remains unexorcised. We observe it even when he is not talking of Christ's cosmicity as such. For, the Cosmic Christ is, as Teilhard29 avers, the Christ of Evolution, and pantheism demands to be recognised when Teilhard30 lets himself declare: "Spirit and matter are contradictory if isolated and symbolised in the form of abstract fixed notions of pure plurality and pure simplicity... In a concrete sense there is not matter and spirit. All that exists is matter becoming spirit. There is neither spirit nor matter in the world: the 'stuff of the universe' is spirit-matter." The same evolutionary pantheism stares at us in Teilhard's assertion:31 "For some, heirs to almost all the spiritualist philosophies of former times, the spirit is something so special and so high that it could not possibly be confused with the earthly and material forces which it animates... For others on the contrary, more or
27.Ibid., p. 91.
28.Ibid., p. 90.
29.Christianity and Evolution, p. 95.
30.Human Energy, pp 57-58.
31.Ibid., p. 45.
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less belated representatives of nineteenth-century thought, spirit seems something so small and frail that it becomes accidental and secondary.,. I propose...to develop a third view-point towards which a new physical science and a new philosophy seem to be converging at the present day: that is to say that spirit is neither super-imposed nor accessory to the cosmos, but that it quite simply represents the higher state assumed in and around us by the primal and indefinable thing that we call for want of a better name, the 'stuff of the universe'."
Looking back to pierce the secret of this stuff that has produced man out of blind-seeming primal matter and that pushes beyond him to a super-humanity, Teilhard32 concludes: "Gladly, the 'unbelievers' of our time bow before the god 'energy'. But it is impossible to stop at this somewhat vague stage of materialistic pantheism. Under penalty of being less evolved than the ends brought about by its own action universal energy must be a thinking energy. Consequently,...the attributes of cosmic value, with which it is irradiated to our modern eyes, in no way abolish our need to recognise it as a transcendent form of personality." The same grand note33 is heard again: "If the cosmos were basically material, it would be physically incapable of containing man. Therefore, we may conclude...that it is in its inner being made of spiritual stuff." Face to face with such stuff, Teilhard34 could well say: "...humanity has reached the biological point where it must either lose all belief in the universe or quite resolutely worship it. This is where we must look for the origin of the present crisis in morality. But it is necessary also for the religions to change themselves in order to meet this new need. The time has passed in which God could simply impose Himself on us from without, as master of the estate. Henceforth the world will only kneel before the organic centre of its evolution."
32.Ibid.
33.Ibid., p. 120.
34.Ibid., pp. 109-10.
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Worship of the universe - a universe where not only is all existence regarded as "matter becoming spirit"35 but where "spirit is considered at the same time as matter",36 an evolving continuum of space-time which is primarily "a universe of 'spiritual' stuff"37 - this attitude is at its heart unashamed pantheism, imbued though it may be with personalism. And, if Teilhard's system has an unavoidably pantheistic element, it cannot be assimilated into current Christianity.
However, there are other elements - several strong links with Roman Catholic Christianity on the one hand and on the other with what we have designated the "evolutionary garb" in which Christianity's bugbear, pantheism, appears in Teilhard's worship of the universe. Unless we take both into consideration his Weltanschauung will not come into absolute focus.
Teilhard's Omega is not only Pantheos plus Super-Person: it is also the term of a process in which Godhead is being formed. As S.N. Daecke38 puts the point, "Omega is both still 'virtual' and already 'real'." Daecke39 speaks, too, of Teilhard's "dialectic of the simultaneous presentness and futurity of Omega" and, transposing this truth into religious language, he continues: "the cosmic Christ, that is, the personal unity of God's reality and the world, is for ever already realised and perfected." The latter aspect Daecke40 throws into relief by means of a quotation from Teilhard: "God is waiting for us at the end of evolution." The paradox of this aspect Teilhard enunciates by fusing the old religious doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ which will be formed by Christ's ultimate gathering together all his followers into himself and
35.Ibid., p. 57.
36.ibid., p. 162.
37.ibid., p. 23.
38."Teilhard de Chardin and Protestant Theology", translated from the German by W.E. O'Hea, in The Teilhard Review, London, Summer, 1969, Vol, 4, No. 1, p. 11.
39.Ibid.
40.Ibid., p. 12.
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the new scientific-spiritual doctrine of Christ-Omega or Cosmic Christ who is the evolutionary Super-Personal Pantheos drawing the universe forward to the collective co-reflection of a unified humanity. We may requote Teilhard:41
"Since Jesus was born and grew to his full stature, and died, everything has continued to move forward because Christ is not yet fully fanned: He has not yet gathered about him the last folds of his robe of flesh and of love which is made up of his faithful followers. The mystical Christ has not yet attained to his full growth; and therefore the same is true of the cosmic Christ, Both of these are simultaneously in the state of being and becoming; and it is from the prolongation of this process of becoming that all created activity ultimately springs. Christ is the end-point of the evolution, even the natural evolution, of all beings; and therefore evolution is holy."
"Christ", we may observe, is the refrain, the leitmotif, of all Teilhardian articulation. The name keeps recurring in the midst of all his pantheism and evolutionism. It demands that, though Roman Catholic orthodoxy cannot really accord with them, Christianity in some shape has to be assimilated into Teilhard's message. The shape will depend on what this message looks like when it is freed of its own conflicts and ambiguities and formulated as an ensemble in which its pantheistic element lying at the back of its evolutionary vision has a legitimate logical place in the very front.
Is there any religious philosophy which makes room for the essence of pantheism and even gives it prominence while yet transcending it in the direction of Super-personalism as well as allowing a possible development towards an evolutionary vision?
When we cast our eyes over the long stretch of Western thought we cannot but pause at the system of Karl C.F. Krause (1781-1832) constructed to reconcile pantheism with theism and called "panentheism", meaning "ail in God". The
41. Hymn of the Universe, "Pensees", p. 133,
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first implication of panentheism is: "God neither is the world nor stands outside the world but has the world in himself and extends beyond it."42 The second implication is: "God interpenetrates everything without cancelling the relative independent existence of the world of entities."43 This implication is the converse corollary of the first. Thus panentheism means not only that all is in God but also that God is in all and leaves the human soul unsubmerged. It is pantheistic in the sense that God is ultimately the stuff of everything: it is theistic in the sense that God is not exhausted by being this stuff and is "transcendent in the sense that though the created is dependent upon the Creator, the Creator is not dependent upon the created. God thus is held to be the highest type of Unity, viz., a Unity in Multiplicity".44
Teilhard's system can legitimately be summed up as panentheism with regard to the core we have perceived of its spiritual insight. However, panentheism a la Krause does not throw its net widely or deeply enough to catch everything of spiritual moment in Teilhardism. It has no sense of the evolutionary gradation in manifested Reality or of a future fulfilment on earth in a Kingdom of God. We have to cast our eyes farther for what we want.
And we are unmistakably directed to our wider and deeper goal by a remark of Sri Aurobindo's in criticism of a view of Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer, says Sri Aurobindo,45 has made a miscalculation, "moved by the associations of Western philosophy to read a merely pantheistic sense into the more subtle and complex thought of the ancient Vedanta". And Sri Aurobindo's remark gets an added relevance from the fact that the home of this more subtle and
42.Richard Falckenberg, History of Modern Philosophy (Calcutta, 1953), pp. 471-72.
43.The Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Dagobert D. Runes (]aico Books, Bombay, 1957), p. 223, "Panentheism".
44.Ibid.
45.The Life Divine (New York, 1949), p. 671, fn, 6.
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complex thought has been suggested - as Louis Renou46 reminds us - to have had among its various turns towards the Divine "an undeniable tendency...towards panentheism".
A brief look, therefore, at the ancient Vedanta through the eyes of Sri Aurobindo will best shape for us the Christianity which Teilhard, often at cross-purposes with himself, was striving to set forth.
The essential attitude on his part in this respect is caught in many of his statements. But it wore various faces. At its most conservatively revolutionary, if we may so put the matter, it found expression thus:47 "According to my own principles, I cannot fight against Christianity; I can only work inside it, by trying to transform and 'convert' it." A little less uninhibitedly, Teilhard48 aimed at "modernizing and giving a fresh start to Christianity". Still more outspokenly his attitude was:49 "I remain rather (with a few others) at the spearhead of the fight for a 'new' Christianity." Perhaps he was truest to himself and most encouraging to our venture when he50 wrote at some length in a letter of June 24, 1934: "What increasingly dominates my interest and my inner preoccupations, as you already know, is the effort to establish within myself, and to diffuse around me, a new religion (let's call it an improved Christianity, if you like) whose personal Cod is no longer the great 'neolithic' landowner of times gone by, but the Soul of the world - as demanded by the cultural and religious stage we have now reached.... My road ahead seems clearly marked out; it is a matter not of superimposing Christ on the world, but of 'pan-christising' the universe. The delicate point..is that, if you follow this path, you are held not only to widening your views, but to turning your perspectives upside down; evil (no longer punishment for a fault, but 'sign and effect' of progress) and matter (no longer a
46.Hinduism (A Washington Square Press Book, New York, 1963), p. 10.
47.Utters to Two Friends 1926-1952, p. 155.
48.christianity and Evolution, p. 160, fn. 4.
49.Letters to Two Friends 1926-1952, p. 171.
50.Letters to Leontine Zanta, pp. 114-15.
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guilty and lower element, but 'the stuff of the Spirit') assume a meaning diametrically opposed to the meaning customarily viewed as Christian. Christ emerges from the transformation incredibly enlarged (at least that is my opinion - and all the uneasy contemporaries with whom I have spoken about it think like me). But is this Christ really the Christ of the Gospel? And if not, on what henceforward do we base what we are trying to build? I don't know whether, among the many of my colleagues who are in front of me or behind me on' the road I am travelling, there are any (or even a single one!...that seems incredible) who realise the importance of the step that all are taking. But I'm beginning to see it very clearly. One thing reassures me: it is that, in me, the increase of light goes hand in hand with love, and with renouncement of myself in the Greater than me. This could not deceive''
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Our task of comparison will be all the more interesting because one of the cross-purposes in Teilhard's life was just that he found himself simultaneously attracted by and at variance with old Indian thought. As he has explained in his essay, How 1 Believe,1 he recognised in this thought "an abundant sense of the Whole", which chimed with his own faith, but he saw in it (1) a suppression of the individual and the rich dynamism of life in a "homogeneous unity" and (2) a vision of matter as "dead weight and illusion". If anything in the modern Orient struck him as a sign of hope, it was that it appeared "already almost to have forgotten the original passivity of its pantheism".2
Sri Aurobindo's remark on Schweitzer can therefore directly apply to Teilhard. And we may observe that Teilhard falls into an error which Sri Aurobindo has particularly warned us against. In speaking of oriental religions Teilhard3 especially mentions Buddhism. Sri Aurobindo4 - after asserting it to be "a misrepresentation to say that Indian culture denies all value to life, detaches from terrestrial interests and insists on the unimportance of the life of the moment" - says:
"To read these European comments one would imagine that in all Indian thought there was nothing but the nihilistic school of Buddhism and the monistic Illusionism of Shankara and that all Indian art, literature and social thinking were nothing but the statement of their recoil from the falsehood and vanity of things....
"Even the most extreme philosophies and religions. Buddhism and Illusionism, which held life to be an imperma-nence or ignorance that must be transcended and cast away, yet did not lose sight of the truth that man must develop
1.christianity and Evolution (Collins, London, 1971), p. 122.
2.Ibid., p. 130.
3.Ibid., p.
4.The Foundations of Indian Culture (The Sri Aurobindo Library Inc., New York, 1953), pp. 79, 203-05.
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himself under the conditions of this present ignorance or impermanence before he can attain to knowledge and to that Permanent which is the denial of temporal being. Buddhism was not solely a cloudy sublimation of Nirvana, nothingness, extinction and the tyrannous futility of Karma; it gave us a great and powerful discipline for the life of man on earth. The enormous positive effects it has on society and ethics and the creative impulse it imparted to art and thought and in a less degree to literature, are a sufficient proof of the strong vitality of its method. If this positive turn was present in the most extreme philosophy of denial, it was still more largely present in the totality of Indian culture.
"There has been indeed from early times in the Indian mind a strain, a tendency towards a lofty and austere exaggeration in the direction taken by Buddhism and Maya-vadas.... But the European critic very ordinarily labours under the idea that this exaggeration...was actually the whole of Indian thought and sentiment or the one undisputed governing idea of the culture. Nothing could be more false and inaccurate. The early Vedic religion did not deny, but laid a full emphasis on life. The Upanishads did not deny life, but held that the world is a manifestation of the Eternal, of Brahman, all here is Brahman, all is in the Spirit and the Spirit is in all, the self-existent Spirit has become all things and creatures; life too is Brahman, the life-force is the very basis of our existence, the life-spirit, Vayu, is the manifest and evident Eternal, pratyaksam brahma. But it affirmed that the present way of existence of man is not the highest or the whole; his outward mind and life are not all his being; to be fulfilled and perfect he has to grow out of his physical and mental ignorance into spiritual self-knowledge.
"Buddhism arrived at a later stage and seized on one side of these ancient teachings to make a sharp spiritual and intellectual opposition between the impermanence of life and the permanence of the Eternal which brought to a head and
5. Mayavada = Illusionism. (K.D.S.)
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made a gospel of the ascetic exaggeration. But the synthetic Hindu mind struggled against this negation and finally threw out Buddhism, though not without contracting an increased bias in this direction. That bias came to its height in the philosophy of Shankara, his theory of Maya, which put its powerful imprint on the Indian mind and, coinciding with a progressive decline in the full vitality of the race, did tend for a time to fix a pessimistic and negative view of terrestrial life and distort the larger Indian ideal. But his theory is not at all a necessary deduction from the great Vedantic authorities, the Upanishads, Brahmasutras and Gita, and was always combated by other Vedantic philosophies and religions which drew from them and from spiritual experience very different conclusions. At the present time, in spite of a temporary exaltation of Shankara's philosophy, the most vital movements of Indian thought and religion are moving again towards the synthesis of spirituality and life which was an essential part of the ancient Indian ideal."
Among other points, what is notable in Sri Aurobindo's words is the stress on the double formula - "all is in the Spirit and the Spirit is in all" - which is typical of panentheism.
Some more words from Sri Aurobindo may be cited by way of further introduction to the brief look we shall take at the ancient Vedanta, They touch directly not on the synthesis of spirituality and life but on the synthesis within spirituality itself, born of the sense that if spirituality is to be living it should have the plasticity and variety which life in its creative movement exhibits. Sri Aurobindo6 tells us:
"The religious thinking of Europe is accustomed to rigid impoverishing definitions, to strict exclusions, to a constant preoccupation with the outward idea, the organisation, the form,... The Indian mind, on the contrary, is averse to intolerant mental exclusions; for. a great force of intuition and inner experience has given it from the beginning that towards which the mind of the West is only now reaching with much
6. The Foundations of Indian Culture, pp. 151-54.
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fumbling and difficulty, - the cosmic consciousness, the cosmic vision. Even when it sees the One without a second, it still admits his duality of Spirit and Nature; it leaves room for his many trinities and million aspects. Even when it concentrates on a single limiting aspect of the Divinity and seems to see nothing but that, it still keeps instinctively at the back of its consciousness the sense of the All and the idea of the One. Even when it distributes its worship among many objects, it looks at the same time through the objects of its worship and sees' beyond the multitude of godheads the unity of the Supreme. This synthetic turn is not peculiar to the mystics or to a small literate class or to philosophic thinkers nourished on the high sublimities of the Veda and Vedanta, It permeates the popular mind nourished on the thoughts, images, traditions, and cultural symbols of the Purana and Tantra; for these things are only concrete representations or living figures of the synthetic monism, the many-sided unitarian ism, the large cosmic universalism of the Vedic scriptures.
"Indian religion founded itself on the conception of a timeless, nameless and formless Supreme, but it did not feel called upon like the narrower and more ignorant monotheisms of the younger races, to deny or abolish all intermediary forms and names and powers and personalities of the Eternal and Infinite. A colourless monism or a pale vague transcendental Theism was not its beginning, its middle and its end. The one Godhead is worshipped as the All, for all in the universe is He or made out of His being or His nature. But Indian religion is not therefore pantheism; for beyond this universality it recognises the supracosmic Eternal. Indian polytheism is not the popular polytheism of ancient Europe; for here the worshipper of many gods still knows that all his divinities are forms, names, personalities and powers of the One; his gods proceed from the one Purusha, his goddesses are energies of the one divine Force. Those ways of Indian cult which most resemble a popular form of Theism, are still something more; for they do not exclude, but admit the many aspects of God. Indian image-worship is not the idolatry of a
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barbaric or undeveloped mind, for even the most ignorant know that the image is a symbol and support and can throw it away when its use is over. The later religious forms which most felt the impress of the Islamic idea, like Nanak's worship of the timeless One, Akala, and the reforming creeds of today, born under the influence of the West, yet draw away from the limitations of western or Semitic monotheism. Irresistibly they turn from these infantile conceptions towards the fathomless truth of Vedanta. The divine Personality of God and his human relations with man are strongly stressed by Vaishnavism and Shaivism as the most dynamic Truth; but that is not the whole of these religions, and this divine Personality is not the limited magnified-human personal God of the West. Indian religion cannot be described by any of the definitions known to the occidental intelligence. In its totality it has been a free and tolerant synthesis of all spiritual worship and experiences. Observing the one truth from all its many sides, it shut out none. It gave itself no specific name and bound itself by no limiting distinction. Allowing separative designations for its constituting cults and divisions, it remained itself nameless, formless, universal, infinite, like the Brahman of its agelong seeking. Although strikingly distinguished from other creeds by its traditional scriptures, cults and symbols, it is not in its essential character a credal religion at all but a vast and many-sided, an always unifying and always progressive and self-enlarging system of spiritual culture."
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Towards a Vedantic Christianity: the Individual,
About the "pantheistic experience...that the Divine is everywhere and is all", a letter by Sri Aurobindo1 pronounces: "it is a very common thing to have this feeling or realisation in the Vedantic sadhana2 - in fact without it there would be no Vedantic sadhana. I have had it myself on various levels of consciousness and in numerous forms and I have met scores of people who have had it very genuinely - not as an intellectual theory or perception, but as a spiritual reality which was too concrete for them to deny, whatever paradoxes it may entail for the ordinary intelligence." But, keeping in mind his correspondent's reference to the thesis that "all is good" because the Divine is everywhere and in all, he adds: "Of course it does not mean that all here is good or that in the estimation of values a brothel is as good as an Ashram, but it does mean that all are part of one manifestation and that in the inner heart of the harlot as in the inner heart of the sage or saint there is the Divine.... I don't think any Vedantin (except perhaps some modernised ones) would maintain that all is good here - the orthodox Vedantic idea is that all is here an inextricable mixture of good and evil, a play of the Ignorance and therefore a play of the dualities.... He [the Vedantin] says that the dualities come by a separative Ignorance and so long as you accept this separative Ignorance, you cannot get rid of that, but it is possible to draw back from it in experience and to have the realisation of the Divine in all and the Divine everywhere and then you begin to realise the Light, Bliss and Beauty behind all and this is the one thing to do. Also you begin to realise the one Force and you can use it or let it use you for the growth of the Light in you and others - no longer
1.On Yoga II, Tome One (Pondicherry, 1958), pp. 125-26,
2.Sadhana - practice and process of inner spiritual development. (K.D.S.)
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for the satisfaction of the ego and for the works of the ignorance and darkness."
Like pantheism the ancient Vedanta is monistic, a spiritual philosophy of the One, an Adwaita - to use the Indian term meaning "Non-dualism" - but it does not overlook the Many. Only, "the Many exist in the One and by the One, the differences are variations in manifestation of that which is fundamentally ever the same".3 And the ancient Vedanta avoids the two common extremes of monism: (1) the One alone is and the Many are an illusion (Mayavada Adwaita), in which case there is only the transcendental reality, with the universe a phantasmal appearance; (2) the universe, as a system of the One and the Many, is the sole reality, in which case God is nothing except Nature and hence, despite appearance, everything of Nature is equally divine. Nature, as we know it, is, for the ancient Vedanta, merely the outer manifestation and if we ignore what is behind this manifestation "we shall fall into the intellectual error of Pantheism, not realising that the Divine is more than this outer manifestation and cannot be known by it alone".4
"The European type of monism," Sri Aurobindo5 states in a letter, "is usually pantheistic and weaves the universe and the Divine so intimately together that they can hardly be separated. But what explanation of the evil and misery can there be there? The Indian view is that the Divine is the inmost substance of the universe, but he is also outside it, transcendent; good and evil, happiness and misery are only phenomena of cosmic experience due to a division and-a diminution of consciousness in the manifestation but are not part of the essence or of the undivided whole-consciousness either of the Divine or of our own spiritual being."
However, Sri Aurobindo6 is careful to note in consonance with the ancient Vedanta: "...it is not, as some religions
3.On Yoga Il, Tome One, p. 44
4.Ibid., p. 280.
5.Ibid., p. 34.
6.Ibid., p. 28. Cf. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 89,
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suppose, a supracosmic, arbitrary, personal Deity, himself altogether uninvolved in the fall who has imposed evil and suffering on creatures made capriciously by his fiat. The Divine...is an infinite Being in whose infinite manifestation these things have come - it is the Divine itself that is here, behind us, pervading the manifestation, supporting the world with its oneness; it is the Divine that is in us upholding itself the burden of the fall and its dark consequence. If above It stands for ever in its perfect Light, Bliss and Peace, It is also here, its Light, Bliss and Peace are secretly here supporting all; in ourselves there is a spirit, a central presence greater than the series of surface personalities which, like the supreme Divine itself, is not overborne by the fate they endure. If we find this Divine within us, if we know ourselves as this spirit which is of one essence and being with the Divine, that is our gate of deliverance and in it we can remain ourselves even in the midst of this world's disharmonies, luminous, blissful and free. That much is the age-old testimony of spiritual experience."
On the general position as regards ultimate reality Sri Aurobindo7 makes the summary; "In the Upanishads, in the inspired scripture of the most ancient Vedanta, we find the affirmation of the Absolute, the experience-concept of the utter and ineffable Transcendence; but we find also, not in contradiction to it but as its corollary, an affirmation of the cosmic Divinity, an experience-concept of the cosmic Self and the becoming of Brahman in the universe. Equally, we find the affirmation of the Divine Reality in the individual: this too is an experience-concept; it is seized upon not as an appearance, but as an actual becoming."8
Now we may consider at a little more length the subtlety and complexity of the old comprehensive Vedanta:
7.The Life Divine, p. 567.
8.Here "appearance", contrasted to "actual becoming", has the suggestion of "illusion". In a different context the word can suggest "phenomenon" or "manifestation", e.g., the next quotation. (K.D.S.)
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"The Unknowable knowing itself as Sachchidananda9 is the one supreme affirmation of Vedanta," writes Sri Aurobindo.10 "The universe and the individual are the two essential appearances into which the Unknowable descends and through which it has to be approached; for other intermediate collectivities are born only of their interaction." 11
"The universe and the individual are necessary to each other in their ascent. Always indeed they exist for each other and profit by each other. Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning. Therefore it creates in itself a self-conscious concentration of the All through which it can aspire. In the conscious individual...,World seeks after Self; God having entirely become Nature, Nature seeks to become progressively God.
"On the other hand it is by means of the universe that the individual is impelled to realise himself. Not only is it his foundation, his means, his field, the stuff of the divine Work; but also, since the concentration of the universal Life which he is takes place within limits and is not like the intensive unity of Brahman free from all conception of bound and term, he must necessarily universalise and impersonalise himself in order to manifest the divine All which is his reality. Yet is he called upon to preserve, even when he most extends himself in universality of consciousness, a mysterious transcendent something of which his sense of personality gives him an obscure and egoistic representation."12
9. Sachchidananda - Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. (K.D.S.)
10.The life Divine, p. 43.
11.Ibid.
12 Ibid., p. 45.
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"All views of existence that stop short of the Transcendence and ignore it must be incomplete accounts of the truth of being. The pantheistic view of the identity of the Divine and the Universe is a truth, for all this that is is the Brahman: but it stops short of the whole truth when it misses and omits the supra-cosmic Reality. On the other side, every view that affirms the cosmos only and dismisses the individual as a byproduct of the Cosmic Energy, errs by laying too much emphasis on one apparent factual aspect of the world-action; it is true only of the natural individual and is not even the whole truth of that: for the natural individual, the nature-being, is indeed a product of the universal Energy, but is at the same time a nature-personality of the soul, an expressive formation of the inner being and person, and this soul is not a perishable cell or a dissoluble portion of the cosmic Spirit, but has its original immortal reality in the Transcendence.... But equally any view that sees the universe as existent only in the individual consciousness must very evidently be a fragmentary truth: it is justified by a perception of the universality of the spiritual individual...but neither the cosmos nor the individual consciousness is the fundamental truth of existence; for both depend upon and exist by the transcendental Divine being.
"This Divine Being, Sachchidananda, is at once impersonal and personal: it is an Existence and the origin and foundation of all truths, forces, powers, existences, but it is also the one transcendent Conscious Being and the All-Person of whom all conscious beings are the selves and personalities; for He is their highest Self and the universal indwelling Presence. It is a necessity for the soul in the universe - and therefore the inner trend of the evolutionary Energy and its ultimate intention - to know and to grow into this truth of itself, to become one with the Divine Being, to raise its nature to the Divine Nature, its existence into the Divine Existence, its consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, its delight of being into the Divine Delight of Being, and to receive all this into its becoming, to make the becoming an expression of that
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highest Truth, to be possessed inwardly of the Divine Self and Master of its existence and to be at the same time wholly possessed by Him and moved by His Divine Energy and live and act in a complete self-giving and surrender. On this side the dualistic and theistic views of existence which affirm the eternal real existence of God and the Soul and the eternal real existence and cosmic action of the Divine Energy, express also a truth of the integral existence; but their formulation falls short of the whole truth if it denies the essential unity of God and Soul or their capacity for utter oneness or ignores what underlies the supreme experience of the merger of the soul in the Divine Unity through love, through union of consciousness, through fusion of existence in existence."13
We may note here that the soul's merger in the Divine Unity can come even by love. Contrary to the diverse sides of mystical love-experience, Teilhard fails to recognise this merger and keeps harping on the formula: "Union differentiates." But "union" will never be "internal" if there is no essential unity at the base of the play of a differentiating relationship, a unity into which and out of which the mysticism of love can pass at various stages. The full truth behind love is at once being one and being other: it is a self-differentiating oneness and not a union which can do nothing but differentiate.
To continue Sri Aurobindo:
"The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists-as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. The Upanishads affirm that all this is the Brahman; Mind is Brahman, Life is Brahman, Matter is Brahman; addressing Vayu, the Lord of Air, of Life, it is said 'O Vayu, thou art manifest Brahman'; and, pointing to man and beast and bird and insect, each separately is identified
13. Ibid., pp. 589-91.
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with the One, - 'O Brahman, thou art this old man and boy and girl, this bird, this insect.'..."14
"[Brahman] is the Absolute independent of all relatives, the Absolute basing all relatives, the Absolute governing, pervading, constituting all relatives..."15
"...there are three fundamental aspects in which we meet this Reality, - Self, Conscious Being or Spirit and God, the Divine Being or to use the Indian terms, the absolute and omnipresent Reality, Brahman, manifest to us as Atman, Purusha, Ishwara..,"16 "...with regard to the universe Brahman appears as the Self of all existence, Atman, the cosmic Self, but also as the Supreme Self transcendent of its own cosmicity and at the same time individual-universal in each being.... As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above,..; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever.... At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature."17 "The Conscious Being, Purusha, is the Self as originator, witness, support and lord and enjoyer of the forms and works of Nature. As the aspect of Self is in its essential character transcendental even when involved and identified with its universal and individual becomings, so the Purusha aspect is characteristically universal-individual and intimately connected with Nature even when separated from her."18 "This comes out in its fullest revelation in the third aspect of the Reality, the Divine Being who is the master and creator of the universe. Here the supreme Person, the Being in its transcen-
14.Ibid., p. 294.
15.Ibid., p. 295.
16.Ibid.
17.Ibid., pp. 313-14.
18.Ibid., pp. 314-15.
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dental and cosmic consciousness and force, comes to the front, omnipotent, omniscient, the controller of all energies, the Conscious in all that is conscient or inconscient, the Inhabitant of all souls and minds and hearts and bodies, the Ruler or Overruler of all works, the Enjoyer of all delight, the Creator who has built all things in his own being, the All-Person of whom all beings are personalities, the Power from whom are all powers, the Self, the Spirit in all, by his being the Father of all that is, in his Consciousness-Force the Divine Mother, the Friend of all creatures, the All-blissful and All-beautiful of whom beauty and joy are the revelation, the All-Beloved and All-Lover. In a certain sense, so seen and understood, this becomes the most comprehensive of the aspects of the Reality, since here all are united in a single formulation: for the Ishwara is supracosmic as well as intra-cosmic; He is that which exceeds and inhabits and supports all individuality; He is the supreme and universal Brahman, the Absolute, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha....revealed as possessor, enjoyer of his own self-existence, creator of the universe and one with it, Pantheos, and yet superior to it..."19
19. Ibid., p. 318.
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The Vedantic Vision, the Historical Christ and Soul-Evolution
Thus the ancient Vedantic vision is inclusive of all possible aspects of divinity and can harmonise the diverse currents of thought running through Teilhard's philosophy. Even the idea of the Incarnation the historical Christ-figure, can be a part of it; for the Avatar stands out in the Bhagavad Gita, a development of the Ishwara-aspect. But, of course, the uniqueness, so dear to the Christian, of Christ's avatarhood would be set aside. Instead, we would have a divine phenomenon repeating itself at several stages of human history, a guiding companionship of God to man again and again.
"India," explains Sri Aurobindo,1 "has from ancient times held strongly a belief in the reality of the Avatar, the descent into form, the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In the West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it has been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without any roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But in India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedantic view of life and taken firm root in the consciousness of the race. All existence is a manifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be except as either a real figuring or else a figment of that one reality. Therefore every conscious being is in part or in some way a descent of the Infinite into the apparent finiteness of name and form. But it is a veiled manifestation and there is a gradation between the supreme being of the Divine and the consciousness shrouded partly or wholly by ignorance of self in the finite. The conscious embodied soul is the spark of the divine Fire and that soul in man opens out to self-knowledge as it develops out of ignorance of self into self-being. The Divine also, pouring itself into the forms of the cosmic existence, is
1. Essays on the Gita (New York, 1950), pp. 12-13.
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revealed ordinarily in an efflorescence of its powers, in energies and magnitudes of its knowledge, love, joy, developed force of being, in degrees and faces of its divinity. But when the divine Consciousness and Power, taking upon itself the human form and the human mode of action, possesses it not only by powers and magnitudes, by degrees and outward faces of itself but out of its eternal self-knowledge, when the Unborn knows itself and acts in the frame of the mental being and the appearance of birth, that is the height of the conditioned manifestation; it is the full and conscious descent of the Godhead, it is the Avatar."
And in the central scripture of Avatarhood, the Gita, whose composition all Indologists date to the pre-Christian period,2 the divine Incarnation Krishna declares: "Many are my lives that are past... Whensoever there is the fading of the Dharma3 and the uprising of unrighteousness, then I loose myself forth into birth. For the deliverance of the good, for the destruction of the evil-doers, for the enthroning of the Right, I am born from age to age" (4.5,7,8).4 Sri Aurobindo's comment5 runs:
"We have to remark carefully that the upholding of the Dharma in the world is not the only object of the descent of the Avatar, the great mystery of the Divine manifest in humanity; for the upholding of the Dharma is not an all-sufficient object in itself, not the supreme possible aim for the manifestation of a Christ, a Krishna, a Buddha, but is only the general condition of a higher aim and a more supreme and divine utility. For there are two aspects of the divine birth; one is a descent, the birth of God in humanity, the Godhead
2.According to S. Dasgupta, it is even pre-Buddhistic (A History of Indian Philosophy, Cambridge, 1922-55, Vol, II, p. 551). R.C, Zaehner opines that it was composed in the third or fourth century B.C. {Hinduism, New York, Oxford University Press, 1962, p. 93).
3.Dharma = right moral law.
4.The Message of the Gita, as interpreted by Sri Aurobindo, edited by Anilbaran Roy (George Allen & Unwin Ltd,, London, 1946), pp. 67, 68-69.
5.Ibid., p. 70, fn. 1 (Continued to p. 71).
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manifesting itself in the human form and nature, the eternal Avatar; the other is an ascent, the birth of man into the Godhead, man rising into the divine nature and consciousness...; it is the being born anew in a second birth of the soul. It is that new birth which Avatarhood and the upholding of the Dharma are intended to serve. If there were not this rising of man into the Godhead to be helped by the descent of God into humanity, Avatarhood for the sake of the Dharma would be an otiose phenomenon, since mere Right, mere justice or standards of virtue can always be upheld by the divine omnipotence through its ordinary means, by great men or great movements, by the life and work of sages and kings and religious teachers, without any actual incarnation. The Avatar comes as the manifestation of the divine nature in the human nature, the apocalypse of its Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood, in order that the human nature may by moulding its principle, thought, feeling, action, being on the lines of that Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood transfigure itself into the divine. The law, the Dharma which the Avatar establishes is given for that purpose chiefly; the Christ, Krishna, Buddha stands in its centre as the gate, he makes through himself the way men shall follow. That is why each Incarnation holds before men his own example and declares of himself that he is the way and the gate; he declares too the oneness of his humanity with the divine being, declares that the Son of Man and the Father above from whom he has descended are one, that Krishna in the human body... and the supreme Lord and Friend of all creatures are but two revelations of the same divine Purushottama,6 revealed there in his own being, revealed here in the type of humanity."
We may throw a glance at what the Avatar Krishna reveals of his Godhead in the Gita. He is the Personal God par excellence, yet although a Person he says that the whole universe is secretly he - Vasudevah sarvam iti (7.9), which can be rendered "The son of Vasudeva is all" as well as "The
6. Purushottama = supreme Being.
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omnipresent Being is all". A Personal Pantheos meets us in clear-cut terms as in no other scripture; but this Personal Pantheos is also, on the one hand, the single undifferentiated Self of all and, on the other, the Master and Lord seated in the heart of every creature and - beyond the Universal Person, the common Self of selves and the Inner Presence - he is the Supracosmic, the Transcendent Being. Again, while creatures are projections of himself, they are in a certain aspect distinct from him and granted various relationships with him as his knowers and lovers and doers. We may put together a few stanzas in Sri Aurobindo's translation7 to illustrate some of our points:
"He is called the unmanifest immutable; him they speak of as the supreme soul and status,.. But that supreme Purusha has to be won by a bhakti8 which turns to him alone in whom all beings exist and by whom all this world has been extended in space" (8.21,22). "By Me all this universe has been extended in the ineffable mystery of My being; all existences are situated in Me, not I in them.... All existences...return into my divine Nature...in the lapse of the cycle; at the beginning of the cycle I loose them forth" (9.4.7). "I am here in this world and everywhere, I support this entire universe with an infinitesimal portion of Myself" (10.42). "It is an eternal portion of Me that becomes the Jiva9 in the world of living creatures..." (15.7). "His hands and feet are on every side of us, his heads and eyes and faces are those innumerable visages which we see wherever we turn, his ear is everywhere, he immeasurably fills and surrounds all this world with himself, he is the universal Being in whose embrace we live.... He is indivisible and the One, but seems to divide himself in forms and creatures and appears as all the separate existences.... He is the light of all lights and luminous beyond all the darkness of our ignorance. He is knowledge and the object of knowledge. He is seated in the hearts of all" (13.14,17,18). "His supreme
7.The Message of the Gita, pp. 131-32,137-38,163, 215,194-95,167,
8.Bhakti = devotion.
9.Jiva = individual soul.
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Form...is that of the infinite Godhead...who multiplies unendingly all the many marvellous revelations of His being... Such is the light of this body of God as if a thousand suns had risen at once in heaven. The whole world multitudinously divided and yet unified is visible in the body of the God of Gods" (11.9,13).
Some words of Teilhard's may well be juxtaposed with these stanzas. Teilhard10 writes:
"If we look at this world, we see that the fundamental substances within which souls are formed, the highest environment in which they evolve - what one might call their own particular Ether - is the Godhead, at once transcendent and immanent, in quo vivimus et movemur et sumus - in whom we live and move and have our being. God cannot in any way be intermixed with or lost in the participated being which he sustains and animates and holds together, but he is at the birth, and the growth, and the final term of all things. Everything lives, and everything is raised up - and everything in consequence is one - in Him and through Him.
"Worthily to describe the rapture of this union and this unification, the pantheists' most impassioned language is justified...: and to that rapture is added the ecstatic realization that the universal Thing from which everything emerges and to which everything returns... is a living, loving Being, in which the individual consciousness, when it is lost, attains an accentuation and an illumination that extends to the furthest limit of what is contained in its own personality. God, who is as immense and all-embracing as matter, and at the same time as warm and intimate as a soul, is the Centre who spreads through all things; his immensity is produced by an extreme of concentration, and his rich simplicity synthesizes a culminating paroxysm of accummulated virtues. No words can describe the bliss of feeling oneself possessed, absorbed, without end or limit by an Infinite that is not rarefied and
10. Writings in Time of War, p, 48.
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colourless, but living and luminous, an Infinite that knows and attracts."
Yes, in diverse ways Teilhard's Christ affines himself to the Gita's Krishna. But the background of this Christ is a static universe which Teilhard's evolutionary vision has to struggle against and at times the victories of that vision are pyrrhic: the old background refuses to let the new vision have its full play. Neither the Divine Incarnation nor the human soul is allowed to stretch its history beyond one life-time. In Indian thought both the Avatar and the human soul can stretch their histories not only beyond one life-time but even outside the human formula itself. Here is indeed evolution with a vengeance. Rebirth, which is a cardinal tenet of Indian thought, carries one not only through a long series of human embodiments towards a divine outflowering in the terms of manhood: it also implies a non-human past preparing for the status of humanity. Sri Aurobindo11 writes: "A Upanishad declares that the Self or Spirit after deciding on life creation first formed animal kinds like the cow and horse, but the gods, - who are in the thought of the Upanishads powers of Consciousness and powers of Nature, - found them to be insufficient vehicles, and the Spirit finally created the form of man which the gods saw to be excellently made and sufficient and they entered into it for their cosmic functions. This is a clear parable of the creation of more and more developed forms until one was found that was capable of housing a developed consciousness. In the Puranas it is stated that the tamasic animal creation was the first in time. Tamas is the Indian word for the principle of inertia of consciousness and force... The animal, in whom there is this less developed force of consciousness, is prior in creation; the more developed human consciousness, in which there is a greater force of kinetic mind-energy and,light of perception, is a later creation. The Tantra speaks of a soul fallen from its status passing through many lacs of births in plant and animal forms before
11. Vie Life Divine, pp. 74546.
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it can reach the human level and be ready for salvation. Here, again, there is implied the conception of vegetable and animal life-forms as the lower steps of a ladder, humanity as the last or culminating development of the conscious being, the form which the soul has to inhabit in order to be capable of the spiritual motive and a spiritual issue out of mentality, life and physicality."
A soul-evolution and a qualitative time-gradation in the appearance of species, though not explicitly a change of one species into another, are part of ancient as well as mediaeval thought in India. Both are necessary for the Teilhardian philosophy of world-evolution. Particularly is the former needed, if there is a distinct individual soul active in the evolutionary scheme and if the future of this soul is of extreme evolutionary importance. A soul which existed before its present body and which inhabited other bodies earlier and which not only survives the death of its present body but also will inhabit new bodies in the future - such a soul Teilhard should logically envisage instead of the one he does, with no before and no after in earth-evolution. And the Vedanta's soul-evolutionary conception through various species increasing in complexity with time emerges most markedly in relation to the Avatar, thus joining up the Indian theory of the "Incarnate Word", as Teilhard would phrase it, directly with his philosophy of Christogenesis along with cosmogenesis. Apropos of the Avatar-tradition preserved in the Puranas Sri Aurobindo12 writes in a letter:
"The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is..., as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal [Tortoise] between land and water, then the land animal [Boar], then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the...Avatars leading to the human development from the vital [Rama of the Axe],..to the
12. On Yoga 11, Tome One, p. 405,
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mental man [Rama, son of Dasaratha] and again the over-mental man [Krishna]. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development -Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing... forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable."
All this should seem like an unfolding, along a special line, of the implications held by excerpts like those from a passage of Teilhard's13 we have reproduced earlier: "The first act of the Incarnation, the first appearance of the Cross, is marked by the plunging of the divine Unity into the ultimate depths of the Multiple... It is because Christ was 'inoculated' in matter that he can no longer be dissociated from the growth of Spirit... It is philosophically sound to ask of each element whether its roots do not extend into the furthest limits of the past. We have much better reason to accord to Christ this mysterious pre-existence... The endless aeons that preceded the first Christmas are not empty of Christ, but impregnated by his potent influx. It is the ferment of his conception that sets the cosmic masses in motion and controls the first currents of the biosphere. It is the preparation for his birth that accelerates the progress of instinct and the full development of thought on earth... All these preparations were cosmically, biologically, necessary if Christ was to gain a footing on the human scene. And all this work was set in motion by the active and creative awakening of this soul, in as much as that human soul of his was chosen to animate the universe..."
Implications in tune with the Hindu procession of the Avatars could not be brought out by Teilhard from his philosophy, nor could any other open correspondence with the Vedanta be established by him in spite of his philosophy
13. Science and Christ, pp. 60-61,
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approaching suggestively close to it - the natural sense of his intuitions could not emerge because it could have no fitness in current Christianity. The Christianity which can grow out of Teilhardism will thus have to be considerably different from the religion to which he tried to conform his intuitions. Understood in the true light, the Cosmic Christ who is central to his thought must lead to an Indianised Christianity giving prominence to Pantheos but holding the transcendent Divine as its prime concept - affirming in the midst of Pantheos the Personal Godhead and, along with him, the human soul as an eternal portion of the ultimate Reality and as an evolutionary adventurer through a series of births - positing a meaningful succession of Avatars until the spiritual consciousness is founded in man, with the last Avatar unifying the world in an earthly Kingdom of God - and, from among the Avatars, turning to the historical Jesus as the chosen object of worship, ista devata, as Hinduism would put it, and looking forward to his universal mystical Body's final plenitude of a humanity gathered together in a Superconscious Super-organism.
Formulated wholly from within outward in a spontaneous fashion instead of partially from without inward with the Roman Catholic Church now and again in view, the real religion of Teilhard de Chardin would be this Indianised Christianity as modified and modernised by his brilliant many-faceted reading of biological fact.
Such a Christianity would perhaps be opened by that reading to see, in the unknown face of the future, greater possibilities than all past ones of embodied epiphany -possibilities akin to what Sri Aurobindo himself has envisioned as the divine destiny even of man's physical being by the very logic of Evolution.14
19.6.1974
14. The Life Divine, pp. 3-7.
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Supplementary Note
We may press some further statements of Teilhard into service of our contention that he subscribes to panpsychism not only in the sense that life is present in all matter even where it is not apparent but also in the sense that one single life, an identical vital presence, is active in various degrees throughout the universe - a sense which would be a natural and logical step towards pantheism.
A pronouncement at some length in our support meets us on pp. 98-100 of The Vision of the Past (Collins, London, 1966). The article where it occurs is called "The Transformist Paradox" and refers to "the new perspectives of discontinuity and polyphyletism", which seemed to the anatomist Louis Vialleton to tell against the evolutionary hypothesis as generally understood. Teilhard opines that these perspectives, far from making this hypothesis vanish like a mirage, broaden and deepen it and bring about its true expression. Before arriving at his conclusion he has a many-sided argument which cannot but mean panpsychism in an extreme form.
He tells us that hitherto, in the study of life, as in that of matter, scientists have attended to corpuscular forces of matter and to individual actions for the living world. But, besides the properties resulting from the collective play of parts, science needs to investigate properties belonging to the collectivity as such. We cannot fully explain phenomena without taking into account the specific attributes of natural unities larger than those we habitually study. "Terrestrial life," says Teilhard, "stands in the forefront of these entities which invite us to study them directly." He sees this life as forming a solid, unified and patterned mass, which shows itself in currents, oscillations and laws of its own: beyond all individual lives, it functions as "a specific whole". As soon as even a small collection of individual lives is taken in geographical isolation, "a certain balance progressively establishes itself between herbivorous, carnivorous, burrowing and other
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types, as if any large fragment of life - taken as a cutting, as one might say - tended to reproduce as a stem the general design of the tree from which it has been taken". Teilhard asks : "Do not these facts point to an autonomous power of organisation and differentiation, in no way localized in individuals, but diffused in any large portion of animate matter?"
He also notes the sudden appearance and linear development of biological characteristics, and ventures to explain "how it happens that these mutations declare themselves simultaneously in a relatively large number of individuals who suddenly begin to drift simultaneously in the same direction".
Finally, surveying biological evolution in its broad outlines, he observes: "...we see to our surprise that each new blossoming of superior forms reduces the pressure of sap in the lower branches. There seems to be a certain constancy, a certain invariance in the total quantity of energy carried by terrestrial life. Does not this unity of growth between the various realms of the organic world show that there is some actual physical unity informing the whole?"
Proceeding along diverse routes Teilhard affirms: "...we begin seriously to envisage the possible existence of a vast living telluric entity," In "this mysterious but not metaphysical biosphere" he places "the seat, the spring, the ultimate regulator of zoological evolution" and he concludes with "the conception of a universe in which the principal zoological types, as distinct from one another as the rays of a light spectrum, would find their connection in the fact that they radiate from a common force of organic development, whose seat is the world as a whole".
The same conclusion Teilhard puts in the words: "What is plastic in the world of living creatures, what moves, what periodically divides into newly-formed branches, will in this case not be the elements (which are confined to small-scale variations) but the physical power that envelops all these elements."
Whether we agree with Teilhard's arguments or no, his
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panpsychism in the one-life sense for the "telluric" (terrestrial) scene is undeniable. And, granted this range, a cosmic panpsychism in the same sense is a legitimate imputation in the light of his assertion that matter is intrinsically animate everywhere.
Such an assertion, read in its full depth, we can ultimately equate to the vision of what we may Shelleyanly term "the one Spirit's plastic stress" in the universal phenomenon.
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Part Two
THE BASIC TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
AND THE MODERN RELIGIOUS INTUITION
I
The Fundamentals of Teilhard's Faith: T.
(1)
It is our thesis that among contemporary Europe's religious thinkers Teilhard de Chardin is a case sui generis calling us beyond easy and exclusive labels to a truth at once of the present-day West and of the ancient East.
He is not only complex but also puzzling - and he is a puzzle to his own being no less than to others. Just as he is basically an unorthodox Roman Catholic and cannot be fitted into mere Christianity, as his co-religionist admirers want, so too is he a strange heretic and cannot be fitted into mere pantheism, as his co-religionist critics contend. But he has himself given a handle to either party. Continually he sways between his openly confessed inborn pantheist temperament and the equally sincere Christian responses evoked in his heart and mind by early training and later discipline. He never quite finds the correct poise to which, beyond both mere Christianity and mere pantheism, his deepest attempts at self-clarification point. This poise may broadly be termed the modern religious intuition. And that intuition in its turn may be defined in general as an evolutionist version of what is in essence the original many-sided as distinguished from the later single-tracked Vedanta.
*
Not that those who would connect Teilhard to orthodoxy are as sweeping in their championship of his cause as are his critics in running him down. They admit considerable obstacles in several places and positively reject some of his ideas. But they still argue that on the whole and in his centrality he
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is a genuine Christian adhering to traditional truth no less than practice, and that even his so-called advanced notions are, in the main, really what the Church has always said in old-fashioned instead of in new-fangled forms. Such, for instance, is the conviction of Emile Rideau, S.J., in an extremely intelligent book which has the honesty to offer us an enormous number of passages illustrating all possible shades of opinion in Teilhard. He quotes a series of them which tend to the orthodox Roman Catholic, and then comments:1
"In these paragraphs the form of expression sometimes, we can recognize, goes beyond what the thought behind it will bear, so that they would seem to suggest that we must look for something that will re-fashion or complement Christianity. They may, however, be interpreted in a way that reduces them to a more classic theme. The 'synthesis' in question is not an augmentation of Christianity in itself, but an enriching of 'our faith' by a better appreciation of its mystery, by an assimilation and integration of human values into the transcendence of its catholicity...."
Rideau2 goes on to a passage from Teilhard which concludes with a reference to "convergence around a Religion of Action which will gradually be recognized as identical with, and subordinate to, a Christianity that has been extended, in a spirit of faith, to its extreme limit" (Le Christianisme et le monde, 1933).
Then he3 introduces a tribute by Teilhard to Christianity. Rideau begins: "'Everything that justly vindicates the sense of man can find a home' in Christianity" - and ends with Teilhard's words: "The new religion will be exactly the same as our old Christianity, but with a new life drawn from the legitimate evolution of its dogmas as they come into contact with new ideas."
1.Teilhard de Chardin: A Guide to His Thought (Collins, London, 1967), p. 643.
2.[bid. We follow the translations of Teilhard's writings as they appear in Rideau's book. They were published before the official versions in English came out and so their wording differs from them.
3.Ibid., pp. 64344.
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Thus Rideau feels assured of the Roman Catholic nature of Teilhardism. Actually the situation is more complicated than he suspects. The complication makes its presence felt in the words: "a Christianity that has been extended, in a spirit of faith, to its extreme limit." We have the sense of a "faith" exceeding all accomodable extension. The complication stares us in the face in one of the very paragraphs he has commented on. Let us take a straight look at it:4
"A hitherto unknown form of religion - one that no one could yet have imagined or described, for lack of a universe large enough and organic enough to contain it - is burgeoning in men's hearts, from a seed sown by the idea of evolution. God is no longer sought in an identification with things that annihilate personality, nor in an escape from things that de-humanize man. God is attained (and this is infinitely more energizing and brings infinitely truer communion) by entry into the centre of the total sphere that embraces all things - a centre that itself is in process of formation. Far from being shaken in my faith by so profound a revolution, it is with irrepressible hope that I welcome the rise and anticipate the triumph of this new mysticism. For if in the end nothing, absolutely nothing, can prevent man from finally coming to rest in the form of belief that activates in him the forces of convergence to their maximum - then, indeed, we have the finest proof of the transcendence of Christianity. We see it in its unique power to find within itself and present to us, at the very time we need it, what at this precise moment in history is absolutely indispensable to our nature if it is to develop its power to act and adore to the full: and that is a Christ who can be and is commensurate with the universe, in other words a God - the God we look for - of evolution." To complete the sense, Rideau adds some further words of Teilhard's and says that then will be effected "the meeting between the Above of heaven and the Ahead of earth, between a 'cosmified' God
4. Ibid., p. 642.
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and a 'personalized' evolution" (L'etoffe de l'univers, 1953, in L'activation de l'energie, p. 406).
Surely, it is not only the form of expression that has run beyond the exact need of the thought. There is the positive statement that the new religion could never have been part either of the imagination or of the description possible to any old religion. And yet we are told of Christianity's power to bring out of itself the new religion. A veritable paradox faces us - a sheer self-contradiction - unless Teilhard means by "Christianity" something that cannot be identified with any historical version of it. Christianity, to Teilhard, must stand for a religion that undergoes a complete metamorphosis so that it differs toto coelo from all past manifestations of Christian dogma, and yet is qualified to be called Christianity. Christianity must be a certain "truth" connected with the historical Jesus but quite independent of everything that men have understood in connection with him. It seems to be a religion of Christ divested of Christianity, if not even of the historical Jesus as figured so far.
And this is precisely what we can conclude on submitting Teilhard to a close scrutiny. At first it may look as if he has in mind the Christian religion in an older mode than the world-depreciative one that was current in his time: "At the point the world has now reached we are impoverishing it by our modern Christianity. This modern Christianity cannot, however, be the whole of Christianity.... What makes Christians sterile is that they do not love the world" (Le neo-humanisme moderne, lecture, 1948).5 We are led to ask: "What is the rest of the Christian religion that is left out by modern Christianity?" All readers of Teilhard know how much store he sets by St. John and especially St. Paul in whom he reads a body of doctrine justifying his "faith in the world", his forward gaze towards a collective ultra-human ready to be gathered into Christ. But can we aver that Teilhardism coincides with Pauline Christianity? If we go by Rideau's information we
5. Ibid., pp. 326-27.
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cannot. Does he not remark on the selectivism, the tenden-tiousness of Teilhard's resort to his chief authority, the Pauline Epistles? Rideau writes:
"Not being really familiar with the whole of St, Paul, he paid too little attention to his description of man's fundamental cleavage and the deviation of his impulses."6 - "It is interesting that Teilhard's quotations from St. Paul are chiefly taken from humanist or cosmic passages...rather than from the dialectic of the first chapter of Romans."7 - "There is no trace in Teilhard of the Pauline dialectic of death, through the death of God, of the final destruction of a fundamental alienation and a collective existential regeneration through Christ's priestly act. The Cross is never interpreted as a pardon and a return to grace."8
We see that Teilhard fastens on certain elements of original Christianity and ignores others. Even in those elements, can we take him as a faithful interpreter? Rideau9 observes apropos of Teilhard's science-guided vision of evolution culminating in a super-conscious totalisation of mankind at Omega Point: "...it is doubtful whether one can see a correspondence or coincidence between what St. Paul says about the final unification of the Church and the convergence of cosmic history deduced from scientific reflexion." Touching on St. John in relation to the Teilhardian vision of Christ's re-appearance (Parousia) to super-naturalise a mature humanity millions of years hence, Rideau10 pronounces: "...the attraction of a temporal Parousia, to be hoped for in some future, blurs and weakens the Johannine idea that it is already being realized in the here and now of history, by man's present entry into spiritual transfiguration, or his rejection of it."
So even what Teilhard takes from St. John and St. Paul is
6.Ibid., p. 219.
7.Ibid., p. 627.
8.Ibid., p. 226.
9.Ibid., p. 218. 10.Ibid.
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not seen by him with their eyes but with his own slant of sight. It would appear that he just takes from them what strikes him as Christianity's vital nerve freed of all particular reactions according to one temperament or another. He seems to find it chiefly in St. Paul but he does not always care for the manner in which that Apostle reacts with it. He gives us the impression that Christianity consists for him of just a few assertions: the remainder that is known as Christianity through the ages is to him negligible and dispensable.
Indeed there is a passage in Teilhard which takes into the scope of its criticism not only the modern age but the whole long period during which Christianity has flourished. All of it - from its very beginning - needs to be altered to Teilhardism. Rideau11 himself has the passage among his copious notes: "After two thousand years so many of our views have been modified that, in religion, we have to slough off the old skin. The formulas we have been using have become too narrow and unyielding. We find them irksome and they have ceased to move us. If we are to go on living we must make a fresh start. By constant repetition of dogma in the same form and developing it only abstractly, we are losing ourselves in the clouds, where we are completely out of touch with what agitates the world, with what it seeks, and with what feeds its vigour. From the religious point of view we are living cut off from the world, both intellectually and emotionally. Here we have an indication that the time for a renascence is not far distant" (Christologie et evolution, 1944).
We have even a definite spotlighting of what this "renascence" should involve. Passages can be culled from Teilhard's writings, that leave us in no doubt of the concentrated specialised vision he had of Christianity. Rideau has, among his quotations, the following:
"The essence of Christianity is simply and solely belief in the unification of the world in God, through the incarnation"
11. Ibid., p. 574.
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(Esquisse d'un Univers personnel, 1936, in L'energie humaine, p. 113).12
"Christ's essential message is not to be found in the Sermon on the Mount, not even in the significant act of Calvary: it consists entirely in the proclamation of a 'divine fatherhood': to put it in another way, in the affirmation in which God, a personal being, offers himself to man as the term of a personal union" (L'energie humaine, 1937, p. 193).13
"The most essential aim and criterion of Christian orthodoxy may be reduced to this one point: to preserve Christ on the scale of and at the head of creation: however vast the world is found to be, the figure of the risen Christ must enclose it. Such, since St. John and St. Paul, is the fundamental rule of theology" (Reflexions sur le peche originel, 1947).14
We may add one more passage from outside Rideau's book. It is perhaps the earliest (1920) in the same volume (published in English) as the preceding one which is perhaps the latest (1947):
"There are times when one almost despairs of being able to disentangle Catholic dogmas from the geocentrism in the framework of which they were born. And yet one dung in the Catholic creed is more certain than anything: that there is a Christ 'in quo omnia constant'.15 All secondary beliefs will have to give way, if necessary, to this fundamental article. Christ is all or nothing."16
Here in these four excerpts we have, unmistakably, Teilhard's understanding of what constituted being Christian, orthodox and Roman Catholic. It has intrinsically nothing to do with the Roman Church's proclamations at any period of history. And it affirms the right to jettison all of them. Now and then they may have had resemblances to this or that
12.Ibid., p. 546.
14.Ibid., pp. 538-39.
15.'in whom all things hold together' (Col. 1:7).
16."Fall, Redemption, and Geocentrism," Christianity and Evolution (Collins, London, 1971), p. 44.
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aspect of Teilhardism; but the resemblances are accidental and to Teilhard unnecessary. He has his own all-or-nothing Christ-fixation which is for him the true Christianity. According to him, the Church should turn and listen to his voice, that of an inspired loyal priest who stays within her fold because God has meant her to be Christ's world-body and because she has the promise of being truly Christian though so far she has been imperfect in her truth-sense. She has always fallen short of Teilhardism. The defect, of course, could not be helped in the past when the universe was not large enough and organic enough for Teilhardism to take shape, but today the defect has no excuse and must get remedied as soon as possible.
Such an attitude, implying basic irreconcilableness between Teilhard's Christianity and orthodox tradition, is so glaring in his works that not even the most fervent among his co-religionist admirers who wish to prove him fundamentally traditional and orthodox can avoid undermining their own thesis by admitting this attitude. The fellow Jesuit Henri de Lubac17 well voices them all, half neutrally half ironically: "Teilhard could not escape the conviction - in some cases, possibly, one might say the 'illusion' - that in what was most personal in his thought and in that part of it, accordingly, to which he naturally attached most importance, he was ahead of the main body of the Catholic community," De Lubac18 also notes in Teilhard's essay "Christianity and Evolution" of 1945 the phrase "prae-sentire cum Ecclesia" (="think beforehand with the Church") and comments: "This...verb 'prae-sentire' might cover not only an illusion but a secret pride. Its equivalent can be found in a number of his letters."19
17."Teilhard and the Problem of Today", included in the volume The Eternal Feminine (Collins, London, 1971), p. 194.
18.Ibid., p. 195.
19.For example in a letter to Pere Gorce, 4 October, 1950. Cf. Teilhard missionnaire et apologiste, (Ed. 'Pri£re et Vie,' Toulouse, 1966), pp. 42-43 (De Lubac's Note).
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A Teilhard-quotation in Rideau's own book bears pointed testimony to the great gap between Teilhard's Christianity and that of his Church and of the Jesuit Order to which he belonged. In addition, it shows him active in what he considers the most strategic as well as the most loving way to make them mend the errors of their present religious stand and reach forward to the fundamentals of his faith. A letter of 15 July, 1929, tells us about these institutions: "I want to work, as an individual atom, to perfect them from within..."20 The operative words for us here are not the italicised ones but the expression: "perfect them."
20. Op. cit, p.298.
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(2)
Throughout his life Teilhard sought to bring the Church into line with himself. He made attempt after attempt to present his Christianity in a fashion that might make it look orthodox in the ordinary sense of the term. He remained respectfully within the Society of Jesus and the Roman Catholic Church, believing in the great destiny of those institutions as well as in his own great mission of changing them from within. Now and again he reduced the sharp angles of his dissension from accepted doctrine. But the compromise was always temporary. Rideau2 alludes to one such compromise. When Pere Joseph Marechal read in 1934 the manuscript of Teilhard's Christology and Evolution (1933), he made a comment correcting Teilhard's complete negation of the accepted meaning of Redemption. Teilhard's Introduction to Christianity, written in 1945, "shows that he took notice of this comment". But in 1953, in The Stuff of the Universe, "Teilhard puts it with less qualification". And to get an insight into the real Teilhard we have only to read the passage that removes the qualification previously made. We may cite Rideau's own reference to it. In fact he refers to it twice, and the second occasion2 reveals Rideau's own awareness of the true Teilhard, the obstinate irreducible innovator:
"Towards the end of his life, Teilhard summed up his theological views as follows: 'It is impossible to think of Christ as the "evolver" without thereby having to re-think the whole of Christology.... A functional completion of the one and the multiple takes the place of the creative paternalism we were accustomed to. The twofold notion of statistical evil and evolutionary redemption corrects or complements the idea of catastrophic sin and reparative expiation. The final Parousia becomes more a maturing than a destruction'" (L'etoffe de l'univers, in L'activation de l'energie, p. 405).
1.Op. cit., p. 549.
2.Ibid., p. 575.
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Let us touch, in the context of Rideau's book, on the salient points of this passage.
"Creative paternalism" implies that God, as an agency external to what is created, brings about or "fathers" the world, producing it from absolute non-being or nothingness by an act of sheer benevolence, an act of gratuitous creation -that is, unconditionally free, and without any need in himself or obligation to create. Teilhard contests both the externalistic production - by "efficient causality", as if by a "worker" - of the universe ex nihilo, and the utter contingence or dependence of the universe, the universe's nature purely as what in Christian theology is called "participated being" that has no intrinsic eternal existence, the universe's entire lack of inherent as distinguished from conferred value. In a passage Rideau3 quotes from an early writing, Teilhard anticipates in 1919 his stand of 1953: "...if you look around you, you cannot help being astonished that the Christian way of presenting the origins and vicissitudes of the world should be so artificial and even infantile." Among other things Teilhard points out that in "making non-being absolute" and "the creation gratuitous" we are "in danger of making the universe insupportable and the value of souls, which we so emphasize, inexplicable".
Rideau4 refers to Comment je vois of 1948, Nos. 25-31, and, calling it "an essential source" on "the problem of creation", he5 quotes the key-passage No. 28: "The self-subsistenl unity lies at the pole of being, and as a necessary consequence the multiple occupies the whole circumference around it - I mean by that pure multiple: 'Creatable nothingness', which is nothing, and yet in virtue of a passive potentiality for
3.Ibid,, p. 510: Note pour servir a I'evangelisation des temps nouveaux in Ecrits du temps de la guerre, p. 337.
4.Ibid., p. 509.
5.Ibid., p. 507.
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arrangement (that is to say, union) is at the same time a possibility of, a yearning for, being - and here our intelligence is completely at a loss to distinguish, in such depths, supreme necessity and supreme freedom, for this potentiality or possibility of yearning is such that it is just as though God were powerless to resist it."
A further gloss on the problem comes when Rideau,6 after mentioning Nos. 25-31 of Comment je vois,
"This line of thought had appeared earlier, in l'union creatrice, 1917 (in Ecrits du temps de la guerre, pp, 184-8), not intended for publication. In this we find that Teilhard has already arrived at his fundamental idea that being is defined by union, whether active or received, and is trying to envisage an interconnexion between God and the world that goes beyond the notion of efficient causality. He imagines 'a primitive substratum of spirit' which he sees as an 'extremely attenuated and reduced substance', and even as 'a sort of positive non-being'. 'I cannot pretend,' he says, 'that there are not grave objections to this concept.... It suggtests that the creation was not absolutely gratuitous but represents a work of almost absolute involvement.' He adds, however, 'why should we not admit that the necessary existence of absolute unity entails as a secondary consequence, ad extra, as an antithesis or a shadow, the appearances at the antipodes of being of an infinite multiplicity?'"
In all this context Rideau7 is most concerned to comment: "The imagery of his language is sufficient evidence of the absence of any trace of Manicheanism, of the suggestion of God's coexistence with an eternal matter" - in other words, "an antagonistic co-eternal", to use Teilhard's expression8 But while, in being non-Manichean, Teilhard is markedly Christian, what happens in his hands to Christianity's doctrine of pure nothingness rather than "a sort of positive non-being" or "a passive potentiality for arrangement...a yearning
6.Ibid., pp. 509-10.
7.Ibid., p. 153.
8.Ibid., p. 507.
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for being"? Do we not have to un-Christianise Teilhard in order to accommodate it? We get the answer when we see Rideau9 writing: "One might add a comment that is perhaps too far-fetched. The difficulty would vanish from the real problem put forward by Teilhard, if we accepted an eternal pre-existence of the creature in God. That, however, is impossible and the hypothesis is untenable. Teilhard went a tittle way in this direction when he spoke, as we saw earlier, of a 'pure potentiality', 'at the antipodes of God' and 'a yearning for being'."
True, Teilhard never made up his mind to go the whole way to the destination indicated by Rideau, He always endeavoured to strike a compromise which was chimerical -but even the little way he went takes him leagues off from Roman Catholicism. His problem can never be solved within its framework.
And, if it cannot, Teilhard's demand for "a functional completion of the one and the multiple" must logically elude Christian thought. The total contigence of the multiple will always leave a hole in the theory of functional completion a la Teilhard. As a quotation from him by Rideau10 tells us, Christianity stands poles apart from his theory and it is this theory, rather than the traditional Christian religion, that should be entitled real Christianity:
"From the human point of view, a doctrine that no longer justifies in our eyes the vastness and the laboriousness of the evolution in which we can see that we are now caught up, does more than violently contradict the evidence of our minds - it strikes at the very motive power behind our action. What is the point of attaining 'beatitude' if, in the final reckoning, we have made no absolute contribution, through our lives, to the totality of being? At the same time, from the Christian point of view, we can no longer understand why a God could have committed himself, out of mere 'benevolence', to such a flood
9. Ibid., p. 514.
10. Ibid., p. 508.
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of sufferings and vicissitudes. You may, by a dialectic of pure act, silence our reason as much as you please, but you will never now convince our hearts that the vast business of the cosmos, as we now see it, is simply some gift or plaything of God's, And why, again, if that were so, do the most unmistakable scriptural texts attach so much importance to the fulfilment of the mysterious Pleroma? God is entirely self-sufficient: nevertheless the universe brings him something that is vitally necessary: there you have the two conditions, apparently contradictory, that must in future be satisfied explicitly by any theory of participated being" (Christianisme et evolution, 1945).
Once more we glean from Rideau11 an onslaught on Christianity as it has been so far and a claim that Teilhardism alone is the true Christian position:
"Christian faith, through its mysteries of the Incarnation and even of the Redemption, adorns this world with many charms, but does it not, on the other hand, rob it of all interest - even, maybe, make it contemptible to us - by insisting on God's self-sufficiency and, in consequence, on the complete contingence of creation?.,. It is sound scholastic philosophy, we all know, that being, in the form of Ens a se, is posited exhaustively and super-abundantly, and immediately, at the ontological origin of all things. After this, in a second phase, all the rest (which means the world) appears only as an addition, or an extra granted entirely by favour: we are guests at God's banquet.... Unless at the term of existence we seek only an individual happiness (and that is a form of happiness we have definitely to reject), how could the self-styled revelation of man's radical uselessness fail to make him lose all heart for action?... This is a time when man is becoming conscious -as, apparently, he will now never cease to be - of his planetary responsibilities and future: and Christianity (for all the beauty of its gospel) would cease to have any religious value for us if we could suspect that it was depriving our universe
11. Ibid., pp. 508-09.
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of its zest; for that alone would exclude it from the domain of vitalising faiths.... If I allow myself here to criticise so sharply the scholastic notion of 'participation', it is not only (as will have been apparent) because it degrades the man in us, but also because it angers the Christian in me. 'God creates by love' is a fine scholastic phrase: but what is this love, then, inexplicable in its subject and degrading for its object, that is based on no need (unless it be the pleasure of giving for the sake of giving)?" (Contigence de Tunivers et gout humain de survivre, 1953).
Teilhard presses home in another of Rideau's citations12 the disparity between the doctrine of a wholly contingent participated being and "the really authentic and concrete expressions of Christian revelation and mysticism". He writes: "What we find at the heart of the teaching and [of] those outbursts is none other than the affirmation and the experience of a strictly bilateral and complementary relationship between God and the world.... We should read St. John again, and St. Paul. They accept the existence of the world (in too summary a fashion, maybe, for our taste) as an initial datum. But, on the other hand, what a feeling they both have for the absolute value of a cosmic drama, in which it is just as though God, even before his Incarnation, were ontologically involved. And, in consequence of this, how forcibly they stress the Pleroma and Pleromization. Indeed, what really gives life to Christianity is not the sense of the contingence of the created, but the sense of the mutual completion of the world and God."
Teilhard goes on to fill with "this spirit of 'complementarity"' what he considers a lack in the "Aristotelian ontology" which Christianity bases itself on. He takes the created and the uncreated as indispensable to each other, "both, each in its own way, exist in themselves and join together."13
But we know that neither St. John nor St. Paul denied the
12.Ibid., p. 511.
13.Ibid., p. 512.
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complete contingence of participated being. So, in Teilhard's eyes, even Johannine and Pauline Christianity must be inadequate, failing as it does to plumb the full implications of the Pleromatic mystery. For, this mystery at its deepest must imply two modes of perfection in God: one of them enables God to do without the world but the other needs the world: the world "represents completion and fulfilment for absolute being itself"14 and "we cannot conceive the world as being merely accessory without rendering creation incomprehensible, the passion of Christ an absurdity - and our own struggle meaningless".15
We can perceive how radically revolutionary Teilhard's feeling is about the first point of his re-thought Christology. The second is no less uncompromisingly unorthodox.
In orthodox Christianity, sin occurs with the first Man, whether we take Adam in an individual or in a collective sense. As a result of Adam's violation of God's command, evil entered the world and ruined the paradisal state: all life, and not only humanity, underwent a catastrophe and man lost the intimacy with God he had been accorded by supernatural Grace. Adam's loss extends, because of the solidarity of all human generations, over the whole post-Adamic history. To heal the terrible cleft between Man and God, God's Son came to earth to sacrifice himself in an extreme love and pay by his death the price of original sin. The root of Sin and Evil on earth is in Adam, in initial Mankind - and Christ's mission is to expiate divinely for human transgression. This nexus of human sin and divine expiation has been basic for Christianity ever since St. Paul enunciated it in Romans 9:5.
Teilhard does not overlook the fact that sin as such is confined to the human state in which one has the power to choose, the freedom of rejecting love for God and His
14.Ibid., p. 511: Le Cceur de la Matiere, 1950, p, 30.
15.Ibid., p, 508: Mart u Miners,
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creatures. Nor does he ignore the impression of an excess of evil in the human world due to man's exercise of his distinctive and intensified power, as the sole moral being among all the products of evolution, to go counter to evolution's upward push. Evil assumes in the human world a specially marked colour which is absent from what we may call the "natural" or "normal" evil in the general state of the universe.
What Teilhard refuses to accept is, in the first place, that man is the originator of evil on the earth. Disorder was there from the beginning, suffering and death were present in prehuman times. One of Rideau's16 quotations from Teilhard says: "The origin of evil does not present the same difficulties, nor call for the same explanations, in a universe whose structure is evolutionary as it does in an initially perfect static universe. It ceases then to be necessary for reason to suspect or look for a 'culprit'. Physical and moral disorders arise spontaneously in a self-organising system, so long as that system is not completely organised. Necesse est ut eveniant scandala.17 From that point of view, original sin - considered in its cosmic basis, if not in its historical occurrence among the first men - tends to merge into the actual mechanism of creation, in which it appears as the activity of the negative force of counter-evolution" (Note sur le peche originel, at the end of Le Christ evoluteur).
In the second place, Teilhard refuses to accept that Man's Sin was accidental and could as well have not happened. Being an element in the evolutionary process man was subject from the start to the forces of counter-evolution: moral evil, which is the form that universal evil takes among reflective beings, is to be expected. To expect it is just to acknowledge that statistically a certain number of sinful actions must take place because there is a constant pull back towards the lesser
16.Ibid., p. 539.
17."It is necessary that temptations come," The exact text of the Vulgate (Matt. 18:7) is: "Necesse est mint ut veniant scandala." (Footnote 5 on p. 150 of Christianity and Evolution, Collins, London, 1971.)
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conditions of synthesis from which man has half-emerged. Here we may take some passages of Teilhard's from Rideau.18 Evil, according to Teilhard, is "the very expression of a still incompletely organized plurality. In a world that is in process of formation, this transitory state of imperfection is manifested, no doubt, in detail, in the form of a certain number of culpable actions: the very first instances of these, and the most decisive (although the least conscious actions in human history19) could well be taken separately and described as a 'primitive fault'. But what constitutes the original weakness for the creature is in reality the radical condition that causes it to be born from the multiple, so that it continually retains in its fibres (so long as it is not completely spiritualized) a tendency to sink back into the dust. In such conditions evil is not an unforeseen accident in the universe. It is an enemy, a shadow that God inevitably raises up simply by the fact that he decides on Creation.... Creation is no trifle for omnipotence, no afternoon picnic. It is an adventure, a risk, a battle to which he commits himself entirely" (Christologie et evolution, 1933). "In this new setting, evil, without losing any of its bite or horror, ceases to be an unintelligible element, and becomes a natural feature of the world's structure" (Ibid).
Thirdly, Teilhard refuses to consider man a fallen being who needs to be redeemed from his hopeless state by a divine sacrifice. Man is the spearhead of evolution's forward thrust towards the ultra-human. Statistically, in spite of his freedom to choose the downward path and in spite of a certain number of fall-backs, there must be on the whole an evolutionary advance - a passage towards a finer and wider synthesis, a collective unanimity, a superconscious totalisation of mankind. Hence whatever payment has to be made, in sweat and tears and blood, is not for an initial fall whose victim is the entire race throughout history, but for errors and crimes constantly commited all along historical time by individuate
18.Ibid., pp. 540-41.
19.Here a very original piece of early writing by Sri Aurobindo would be pertinent. It is reproduced as a Note on pages 122-25 (K.D.S.)
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and collectivities. It is the harsh price to be rendered for an inevitable yei hard-won progress. Sin is not a catastrophe which chanced to strike down heavenly man; redemption is evolutionary and not reparative: it is meant to uplift man still further along his rising curve and to check him from a degringolade which he could never be immune from. A short Teilhardian excerpt from Rideau20 will bear out this point: "Nothing, as it seems to me, can prevent the universe from succeeding - nothing, not even our human liberties, whose essential tendency to union may fail in detail but cannot (without 'cosmic' contradiction) err 'statistically'" (Faith in Peace, 1947, in The Future of Man, p. 152). A letter of Teilhard to Rideau,21 of 13 June 1953, may also be called to witness: "Human evolution is both conscious and self-directed. Nevertheless it is, at the same time, statistically determined in this sense: 1. That there are natural through-roads and deadends about which our freedom can do nothing; and 2. there are, in the Human, currents of unanimity against which the individual's reaction is fruitless or impotent,"
Finally, Teilhard refuses to whittle down the function of Christ the Evolver of all cosmos to a function of salvation that is not cosmic in its central meaning. We would decosmicise his role by making him counter merely the wrong turn taken by man in quite recent time, rather than act as one who has animated universal evolution from the very beginning of time - animated it not by an external "juridical" right but by an internal "organic" activity. How could he be a cosmic organic evolver if he is not made the saviour of a cosmic fall structurally inherent in creation? Teilhard urges that St. John and St. Paul always saw Christ's function in cosmic terms. Christ saved the entire universe and not only man. The original sin, therefore, must be as cosmic as Christ. If it were just a moral accident of no great antiquity, then, as a quota-
20.Ibid., p. 551.
21.Ibid., p. 552.
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tion by Rideau22 has it, "the Christie power could never directly, organically, formally extend beyond a short slender human spindle" (Reflexions sur le peche originel, 1947).
Rideau23 informs us: "some aspects, at least, of the problem of original sin have been removed by the principles of the encyclical Divino afflante spiritu (1943) and by advances in exegesis. Thus Teilhard's statement of the problem is to some extent out of date." But the progress of theological thought on the subject still leaves the crux of Teilhard's differences from orthodoxy untouched. And an assertion of Rideau's24 a little earlier suggests the unconvertible heart of the situation even now. He says that, realising the difficulty in winning acceptance for his theory, Teilhard wrote: "I don't think that in the history of the Church anyone has 'pulled off such an adjustment (in the way of representation) of dogma as that of which we're speaking though similar attempts have been made and carried half-way, for example when geocentrism was abandoned...." (Letter of 14 May 1922).
The exact divergence of Teilhard's theory is spotlighted in a letter of Pere Joseph Marechal cited by Rideau. The letter, according to Rideau,25 is most sympathetic to some of Teilhard's theories, yet Marechal26 is forced to write: "...this new explanation modifies, it seems to me, the essential basis and not simply the formulation of the 'defined' dogma. More precisely still, it suppresses the dogma, by declaring that it is superfluous. What in fact it does is to replace original sin by the distant ontological root of physical and moral evil.... The whole Christian economy of justification is upset. The hypothesis put forward would lead to saying that mankind as such has never lost its initial right to grace and that the deprivation of grace is to be seen in each individual, simply as the effect of a fault of which he is now guilty."
22.Ibid., p. 539.
23.Ibid., p. 540.
24.Ibid., p. 539.
25.Ibid., p. 543.
26.Ibid., pp. 543-44.
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Teilhard's revolutionary departure in going beyond Adam and making a cosmic Christ call for a cosmic imperfection to be compensated and turned to the advantage of man's earthly progress - that revolutionary departure is indirectly brought to a head and hit at in a sharp condensed negative mode by N.M, Wildiers27 in a footnote to Teilhard's "Reflections on Original Sin" when Teilhard appeals to St. John and St. Paul, The footnote goes: "St. Paul himself in the Epistle to the Romans (9:5) speaks of Adam as essentially related to Christ. This point of view must dominate all theological treatment of the nature of original sin." This point of view is precisely what Teilhard brushes aside.
In passing, we may remember that St. Paul takes Adam to be "one man" - a single individual, even if representative of all possible human nature. Teilhard repeatedly dubbed absurd by scientific standards the assertion of monogenism that mankind first emerged as a single individual or, at most, as a pair: one male and one female. Rideau28 informs us: "Discussing the question of monogenism, Teilhard says that it is essentially for 'theological' reasons ('the Pauline conception of the fall and redemption') that 'tire Church clings to the historical reality of Adam and Eve' (Wfiat should we think of transformism?', 1930, in Vision of the Past, p. 156). He adds: 'On the other hand, for reasons of probability and also comparative anatomy science, left to itself, would never (to say the east of it) dream of attributing so narrow a basis as two individuals to the enormous edifice of humankind'. And he anticipates that more theological research may solve the problem (Ibid)." According to science, every natural species makes its evolutionary appearance polygenerically - as a group - though mostly within a certain restricted cradle-area. But, as late as July 1966, the allocution of Pope Paul VI as communicated to the secular press suggests that polygenisrn
27.Christianity and Evolution, p. 190, fn. 5.
28.Op. cit„ p. 517.
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spoils the picture of original sin.29 Hence the authoritative Christian position is still in conflict with Teilhard's modern-mindedness with regard not only to the Fall as such but also to the type of "genism" that may be associated with it.
Free of the incubus of orthodoxy's "peccatum originale", Teilhard cannot help fixing his gaze on a peak of evolution awaiting us in the future. And he defines the peak as the natural meeting-place between fully evolved Man and the Christ who will reappear with his final supernatural action to gather the elect into himself and, through himself, into God. But we must get the proper "hang" of Teilhard's statement that the Parousia will not be a destruction.
By this he does not mean that all will be peaceful for the world at the end - clear of all internal conflict within the world itself. Rideau30 has well said that "although Teilhard emphasizes certain passages in St. Paul dealing with the final unity of the Church or the presence of God in all things", he is also at pains to set forth the view suggested by many other passages "(in the Gospels and the Apocalypse for example) which present the general history of the world as a dramatic conflict whose issue is a forcible division of mankind". But even a final conflict can come only when a mass of mankind has attained en ultra-human unification by an evolutionary process of fulfilment. What Teilhard means by "destruction" grows clear when Rideau shows him writing: "The Kingdom of Christ to whose cause we have devoted ourselves can never be established, either peacefully or through conflict, except on an earth that has been carried by the development of every intellectual and technological resource to the extreme limit of its humanization" (Sur la valeur retigieuse de la recherche, 1947, in
29,See Teilhard and the Creation of the Soul by Robert North, SJ. (The. Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1966), p. 207, m. 4 (continued on p. 208).
30.Op. cit., p. 559.
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Science et Christ, p. 203).31 - "We continue from force of habit to think of the Parousia, whereby the Kingdom of God is to be consumated on earth, as an event of a purely catastrophic nature - that is to say, liable to come about at any moment in history, irrespective of any definite state of mankind. But why should we not assume, in accordance with the latest scientific view of mankind in a state of anthropogenesis, that the Parousia can, of physical and organic necessity, only be kindled between heaven and a mankind which has biologically reached a certain critical evolutionary point of collective maturity?" (The Heart of the Problem, 1949, in The Future of Man, p. 267).32
Teilhard has a footnote to the above: "And it may be added in perfect analogy with the mystery of the first Christmas which (as everyone agrees) could only have happened between heaven and an earth which was prepared, socially, politically, and psychologically to receive Jesus."
Teilhard's thesis simply is that there will be and can be no Parousia in the manner Christianity has figured. He insists: "Christ delays his reappearance until collective humanity shall have finally become capable, in virtue of having fully realized its natural potentialities, of receiving from him its spiritual consummation" (Trois choses que je vois, 1948).33
The Teilhardian thesis in its stark and firm formulation flies in the face of the Christian vision. Rideau,34 for all lus sympathy with several of Teilhard's contentions, makes this perfectly plain. In the previous section we have already seen him35 sceptical whether the convergence of cosmic history which Teilhard deduces from scientific reflection can correspond or coincide with what St. Paul says about the final unification of the Church. Further on, Rideau36 notes:
31.Ibid., p.627
32.Ibid., p. 564.
33.ibid.
34.Ibid., p. 248.
35.Ibid.
36.Ibid., pp. 248-49.
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"While...the final coming of the kingdom of God implies conditions and preparations, the conception of a global unanimity of the human mass at the end of history as a necessary preliminary to the Parousia, is purely hypothetical. The realism of the beatitudes, modelled on the long, austere and dramatic experience of Israel, can hardly be reconciled with this triumphalism. Rather than this hypothetical vision, some would prefer - and rightly - that of a humanity or a Church that is constantly staggering under a burden, constantly road-weary, constantly, but always with greater hope, crying out to the divine mercy to take pity on it. Christianity, we must remember, is above all salvation, which means liberation - God's enterprise to extract man from a condition of loss and despair; and the true picture of man is always that of the wounded traveller, more dead than alive lying by the roadside and awaiting the charity of the Samaritan."
Thus we can derive the clearest evidence from Rideau's book that Teilhard contradicted orthodoxy on every vital issue.
Note
THE LEGEND OF ORIGINAL SIN AND ADAM'S FALL
(These pages are from a chapter in a series of articles written by Sri Aurobindo for his journal The Karmayogin in the first decade of the twentieth century. The chapter is entitled "The Place of Religion in Ethics" and is preceded by the exposition of a view of human development which Sri Aurobindo calls "trigunic development", from the Indian vision that all nature is a play of three "gunas" or qualities: tamas = inertia, obscurity, mechanical movement; rajas = kinesis, movement prompted by impulse, desire, self-assertiveness; sattva = balance, harmony, enlightened activity. Thus human development would be, on the whole, in a tamasic, rajasic, sattvic sequence. To what phase of this sequence would correspond the
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legendary picture of the "original sin" committed by Adam and leading to his "Fall"? Religious dogma speaks of a lapse from perfection; Teilhard de Chardin, speaking from the evolutionary standpoint, considers the first state of humanity to be "the least conscious" in its whole history. Sri Aurobindo casts light on the subject from many sides and gives us a convincing assessment of the legend's implications within the general panorama of human progression.)
...we shall have to part with several notions long cherished by humanity. One of these is the pristine perfection of man and his degradation from his perfect state by falling into the domination of sin; God made man perfect but man by his own fault brought sin and death into the world. This Semitic tradition, passed from Judaism into Christianity and less prominently into Mahomedanism, became for a long time part and parcel of the fixed beliefs of half of humanity. Yet it is doubtful whether the original legend which enshrined and prolonged this tradition, quite bears the interpretation which has been put on it. If rightly understood, it supports rather than conflicts with the theory of trigunic development. The legend does not state that man was unfailingly virtuous by choice, but that he was innocent because he did not yet know good and evil. Innocence of this kind is possible only in the primitive state of man and the description of man as naked and unashamed shows that it is precisely the primitive state of society before arts and civilisation were developed, to which the legend alludes, Man was then innocent, because being unable to distinguish between good and evil he could not choose evil of free choice and therefore had no sense of sin and no more responsibility for his actions than the pure animal. His fall from the state of innocence was the result of the growth of rajasic. individuality in his mind which led him to assert his own will and desires and disobey the law imposed on him by an external Power. In this first stage of his evolution he is not guided by a law within himself, but by prohibition which his environment imposes on him without
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his either understanding or caring to understand the reason for their imposition. Certain things are forbidden to him, and it is as much a necessity for him to refrain from them as to refrain from putting his hand in the. fire lest he should be burned; all others are allowed to him and he does them freely without questioning whether, apart from their legality, they are bad or good. Sin comes by disobedience and disobedience by the assertion of an inner standard as against the external standard hitherto obeyed; but it is still a standard not of right and wrong, but of licit and illicit. "What I desire, what my individual nature demands, should be allowed me," reasons the rajasic man; the struggle is between an external negation and an internal assertion, not between two conflicting internal assertions. But once the former begins, the latter must in time follow; the physical conflict must create its psychical counterpart. From the opposition of punished and unpunished evolves the opposition of licit and illicit; from the opposition of licit and illicit evolves the opposition of right and wrong. Originally the sanction which punishes or spares, allows or disallows, approves or disapproves, is external and social; society is the individual's judge. Finally, in the higher stage of evolution, the sanction is internal and individual; the individual is his own judge. The indulgence of individual desire in disobedience to a general law is the origin of sin.
With the rejection of this theory of an originally perfect humanity, the tradition of an infallible inner conscience which reflects a divinely-ordained canon of absolute right and wrong must be also rejected. If morality is a growth, the moral sense is also a growth and conscience is nothing more than the activity of the moral sense, the individual as judge of his own actions. If conscience be a divine and infallible judge, it must be the same in all men; but we know perfectly well that it is not.... Even in the same man conscience is an uncertain and capricious quantity changing and deciding inconsistently under the influence of time, place and circumstances. The conscience of one age or country varies from the conscience of another age or country. It is therefore contrary to all expert-
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ence to assert the divinity or infallibility of conscience. A man must be guided ordinarily by his moral sense, not because it is infallible or perfect, but because moral growth depends upon development from within and to this end the independent use of the "inner monitor", when once evolved, is the first necessity.
Sri Aurobindo
(Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Pondicherry, 1972, Vol. 27, pp. 286-88.)
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(3)
It is surprising how - in spite of Teilhard's "Universal Christ" necessitating a radically novel envisagement of (1) God's creative act and His relationship with "participated being", (2) the nature of "original sin" in its bearing on man in particular as well as on the cosmos in general and (3) the right moment for Christ's "Parousia" or final advent to unify the Creation with himself and God - it is surprising how Rideau finds Teilhard still a true son of the Church. But he is too sharp to miss the dissident notes wherever they occur: what he does is to give them a minor role in the total reckoning.
One of the points is that Teilhard makes Christianity depend on Evolution: he maintains that it has to come to terms with Evolution and that whatever does not do so fails to qualify for the religion of the future. Not only does Teilhard hold the Universal Christ to be the core of Christianity: he also considers this Christ as unable to carry out his unifying cosmic function unless we accept science's evolutionary world. Occasionally he states nothing more than that such a world is in the fitness of things for the central work of Christ, but Teilhard's recurrent stress is on its indispensability for this work. Thus Rideau,1 after mentioning a less rigorous context, remarks: "In another passage, what is here noted as appropriate, is regarded as necessary: 'The Christian Universal-Christ would be inconceivable if the universe which it is his function to gather into himself, did not in virtue of some evolutionary structure have a natural centre of convergence from which the Word, becoming incarnate, could radiate its influence over the whole of the universe' (Introduction au Christianisme, 1944)." Again, we have Teilhard saying: "By showing us the summit that crowns the world, evolution makes Christ possible, just as Christ, by giving direction to the world, makes evolution possible. In other words Christ
1. Op. cit., pp. 528-29, note 83.
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must find a summit to the world for his consummation, just as he had to find a woman for his conception" (Comment je crois, 1934).2
One would have thought it was admitted by all that Teilhard based himself on science in most of his philosophical and theological writings. Rideau3 himself cites J.M. Le Blond: "The tendency in fact in Teilhard's work is to move from science and technology to religion, the general direction is religious" (Mise en garde contre le P. Teilhard de Chardin in Etudes, September 1962, p. 283). Yes, Teilhard ends with religion, but by beginning with science; and what he ends with may even be characterised as science turned religious. Rideau has several passages which play variations on the leitmotif phrase in the one we have taken from him in the preceding Chapter - namely, that the need of the hour is "a Christ who can be and is commensurate with the universe, in other words a God - the God we look for - of evolution."4 And yet Rideau5 tells us: "Teilhard's theology, which, in virtue of its supernatural sources, is entirely independent of his cosmological system, expresses the essence of the whole content of tradition, to which on a priori grounds it is absolutely faithful. There is no fundamental dogmatic statement that is not affirmed and maintained in its entirety." But after listing the traditional dogmas, Rideau6 has to admit: "These dogmatic statements can be found in Teilhard's work but their expression is sometimes sporadic and disconnected." We get the impression that Teilhard's heart lay elsewhere than in these echoes of tradition. And we may add that, while the general form of the dogmas is retained from the past, their whole content is recast. Rideau's direct ground7 for Roman-Catholicising Teilhard in toto reduces itself really to a letter
2.Ibid., p- 635, note 180.
3.Ibid., p. 656.
4.Ibid., p. 642.
5.Ibid., p. 188. 0
6.Ibid., p. 189.
7.Ibid., p. 574.
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Teilhard wrote on 12 October 1951 to the General of the Society of Jesus. He speaks of "three convictions which are the very marrow of Christianity: the unique significance of man as the spearhead of life; the position of Catholicism as the central axis in the convergent fascicle of human activities; and finally the essential function as consummator assumed by the risen Christ at the Centre and peak of Creation" (in Letters from a Traveller, pp. 42-3). Actually, in the idea of life's having a spearhead in man and of an axis in a convergent human collectivity and of a consummation at Creation's centre and peak we have the idea of a natural development towards the ultra-human through an organising and unifying energy drawn ever higher by Point Omega - an idea that is evolutionary through and through. The very language of the letter bespeaks the scientific cosmologist envisioning a theology. So, with the scientific cosmologist being all-pervasive, Rideau is surely off the mark when, after painting Teilhard as true to orthodoxy, he8 adjoins the following counter-balance as if it constituted just a minor aberration:
"In so far, however, and only in so far, as Teilhard sought to effect too close a rational synthesis of cosmology and dogma, his theology necessarily became somewhat more precarious: the rigidity of the system then becomes apparent and, although it gives his thought its vital originality, at the same time it tends to undermine its validity.
"In so far, again, as Teilhard's theology depends upon an evolutionary concept of history and a "Weltanschauung" of total unification, there is some difficulty in reconciling it completely with the legacy of tradition."
One should expect that true Teilhardism is just the feature which gives his thought its "vital originality" and that, if his thought is not founded on evolution, it is utterly un-Teilhardian. What else can we say when we face these words
8. Ibid., p.189.
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which Rideau9 quotes from The Phenomenon of Man (p. 219) and which, with a sentence at the start and one at the close which are omitted by Rideau we may regard as Teilhard's touchstone of truth: "Is evolution a theory, a system or a hypothesis? It is much more; it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow, and which they must satisfy henceforth if they are to be thinkable as true." Nor does Teilhard stop with his sweeping ascription of primacy to the evolutionary world-view. He comes to a burning focus in the question of Christ himself: "Nothing can be admitted into our systems unless it first satisfies the conditions of a world in process of transformation.... A Christ whose features are not moulded to the requirements of a world that is evolutionary in structure, will be progressively rejected without further examination - just as in any scientific institution today a treatise on perpetual motion or squaring the circle goes straight into the wastepaper basket, unread" (Christianisme et evolution, 1933).10
No mode of speech could be harsher towards orthodoxy, no attitude of mind more coldly contemptuous of tradition, no sentence of death on non-scientific Christianity so definitive. The formula "Christ is all or nothing", which we have seen Teilhard to be deeming the sole dogma distinguishing his Christianity, is now seen glaringly to signify "Christ the Evolver and the Evolving - or no Christ at all". Whatever disagrees with Teilhardism, with a Christology totally rethought in the light of the Universal Christ as demanded by Evolution, is to be summarily discarded. The whole of Christianity's contents of the pre-scientific epoch is fit for the wastepaper basket.
Even the special sense in which "orthodoxy" and "Christianity" and "Catholicism" were understood by Teilhard seem in two passages to have struck him as doubtful and his Christ appears to break through all Christian framework. One may
9. Ibid., p. 386.
10. Ibid., p. 308.
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indeed query whether his use of the name "Christ", connected as it is with the historical Jesus, is valid at all, though his ever-increasing devotion still works under the spell of this name. Rideau's collection of Notes has both the passages:11
"Christ is becoming more and more indispensable to me, ...but at the same time the figure of the historical Christ is becoming less and less substantial and distinct to me" (Letter of 8 January 1936). - "I have never felt myself so full of my 'gospel' and at the same time more wholly and entirely dependent, body, mind and soul, on Christ Jesus. I have a bitter-sweet feeling of being completely powerless without him. And at the same time I am terrified when I realize that my view of him is continually carrying him further and higher along the axis of (I hope) orthodoxy. It is not unlike what astronomers tell us of the stars - that while they are ever more closely integrated in our system they are also ever more breathtakingly distant than we imagine. In fact, my panChristism is in some way'trans-Christie' ..." (Letter of 12 April 1948).
Doubtless, Teilhard always held that we could not dissociate from Jesus of Nazareth the extra push towards unification which he felt going on in the world after the birth of the Son of Mary and which, in his eyes, would be fulfilled by the Pleromatic Divinity visioned by St. Paul as the Christ of the Parousia. But his mind was concentrated on that Pleromatic Divinity rather than on Jesus of Nazareth. According to him, without the latter serving as a point de depart, the former could not be what St. Paul had visioned: besides, the former, without the latter's humanity, would lack for us the heart and face our own humanity keenly wants. Yet once the sense of a heart and face in the Universal Christ is acquired by us, Teilhard would like to forget the Man bom in Nazareth and Crucified on Calvary: only the Risen Christ, the Christ who, after his human body had been crucified, appeared with a
11. Ibid., p. 622.
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glorified divine form to the Apostles and to St. Paul on the road to Damascus mattered to Teilhard.
The birth in Nazareth would have little meaning for Teilhard if the Universal Christ were not related to it. Even Rideau cannot escape this idea of its being a means-to-an-end instead of an end-in-itself. After quoting passages that speak of the historical Christ as indispensable for generating "the mystical energy that has been accumulating for the last two thousand years in the Christian phylum", Rideau12 adds: "Teilhard immediately, however, relates Christ's historical reality to his universality. 'I believe in the divinity of the child of Bethlehem because it is included, and in so far as, and under the form in which it is included historically and biologically in the reality of the Universal Christ to whom my faith and adoration are more directly extended'" (Introduction au Christianisme, 1944).
Rideau's own impression of the balance between the historical Christ and the Universal in Teilhard's "total Christ" comes out pretty definitively in the course of a comparison of Teilhard's "spirituality" with the details of St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises which is the handbook of the Jesuit Order. Rideau13 writes:
"...In spite of what Teilhard asserts in principle his thought is so centred on the glorious mysteries that consummate the Incarnation, that it seems by contrast to be less concerned with the contents of the Gospel. It leaps directly to the Paschal, the Eucharistic Christ, the Christ above all of the Parousia. It is so wedded to the rational and scientific view of the historical evolution of the world, that it tends to emphasize the still incomplete character of Christ (in his mystical body) at the expense of his already actual and total character. The very ardour of Teilhard's contemplation of the burning heart of Christ soon leads to an imprecision that identifies it with the universal presence of Christ in the world. In the
12.Ibid., pp. 530-31.
13.Ibid., pp. 219-20.
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tradition of the Exercise, however, the spiritual transformation is in fact effected only in diligent contemplation of the person of Jesus in the acts and events of his historical existence, by assimilating his mysteries and imitating his behaviour. On the other hand, Teilhard's spirituality, though it never excludes this, does not go further than to pre-suppose the journey of the faithful soul on the roads of Galilee and the hill of Calvary. One may well wish, too, that Teilhard's enhancement with the greatness of the universe had been balanced by a more loving examination of the humble station and the negation of the greatness chosen by the Word."
Teilhard thus cannot be considered a good Jesuit. And in general we must agree with Rideau14 when he says: "One can well understand the reaction of Francois Mauriac who was disconcerted by a certain lack of intimate physical feeling for the Jesus of the Gospels..." Mauriac15 exclaims: "If Christ is commensurate with the cosmos, I am perfectly happy about it - but it means nothing to me" (Ce que je crois, Grasset, 1962, p. 139). Pere Marechal, as cited by Rideau, has perhaps the last critical word from the orthodox yet understanding mind. Rideau16 reports: "Pere Marechal...felt that he was justified in pointing out to Teilhard that Christ's 'universal' and cosmic function was less important than his supernatural function of sanctifying souls." Then Rideau gives us the verba ipsissima of the eminent Jesuit: "...Surely, to be thus the key to the whole of nature and the 'saviour of cosmic evolution', necessary and splendid though that be, is only a secondary perfection for Christ the saviour of souls? To 'see' it and explicitly to inspire our 'practice' by it seems to me to belong more to the elaboration of our religion than to its essence." Rideau picks up the thread here and writes: "He added that some of Teilhard's expressions seemed to him to invert, at least 'affectively', the necessary order of the two aspects - supernatural and cosmic - of Christian salvation."
14.Ibid., p. 229.
15.Ibid., p. 629.
16.Ibid., p. 168.
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Rideau does not mention Teilhard's comment on Mare-chars criticism. Teilhard cannot separate the saving on evolution from the saving of the souls: the two necessarily and indivisibly imply each other. De Lubac17 tells us that to Teilhard the World has to be envisaged "in the form of an immense movement of Spirit"18 and the immortality of the soul no less than the personality of God is an element "essential to the structure of my Universe".19 We learn further that for him God would be fully glorified in "the realization of an organic unity - into which, of course, will be drawn the whole marvellous essence of the inter-personal relationships that characterize the Universe, starting from Man".20 This being so, "nothing in my view is more spiritual than the consummation of the Universe".21 To split, as Marechal did, the function of the Cosmic Christ into two components, which required to be rearranged in order of priority, is senseless in Teilhard's eyes. On 24 August 1934, he remarks in a letter: "This distinction knocks me sideways! as if souls weren't the fruit par excellence of the cosmos, supremely 'cosmic' themselves! - I must say, I thought anyone could understand what I meant."
If so acute a mind as Marechal did not understand it, there must be a huge hiatus between his Christianity and Teilhard's. So, even as regards the Cosmic Christ, Teilhard stood at variance with the Bible's and the Church's attitude. And, apropos of the inversion recommended by Marechal and the indivisibility envisaged by Teilhard of Christ's role as saviour of evolution and as saviour of souls, we may define Teilhard's own broad position vis-a-vis the Bible and the Roman Church. For, the Bible as the scripture of the Cosmic Christ and the Church as his instrument, had to Teilhard
17.Teilhard de Chardin; The Man and His Meaning, p. 147,
18.Letter of 15 April 1929, to Leontine Zanta.
19.Utter of 20 September 1929.
20.Utter of 29 April 1934.
21.Ibid.
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quite other functions than those which orthodoxy primarily claims for them. Rideau22 confesses:
"Teilhard does not seem to have paid much attention to the purifying and illuminating influence of the Bible. In fact he seldom uses the word. He was content to take a number of passages - not many, but admittedly of capital importance -from the New Testament to confirm his theory of the convergence of history towards unity; but he does not consider the present efficacy of the sacrament of the Word of God for the spiritual progress of consciousness. The Church, again, to whom Teilhard asserts his loyalty and to whose growth he is devoted heart and soul, is not presented in the first place as the means of salvation, as the sacrament of Christ in history, or as the mother who brings into life the Sons of God. In short, the primacy accorded to the universe (a universe that, no doubt, when one re-reads Teilhard, is theologically recognized as Christie), to which everything is related, tends to relegate to the background the act of theological submission to the supernatural sources of the revealed message, and the acceptance of the historical forms which determine the relationship between man and God."
In numerous respects Teilhard's Christianity stands away from that of his fellow-Catholics and in the most important respects it stands over against theirs. Whatever he holds in common with them is mainly a matter of nomenclature. His devotion to Christ, the Church and the Jesuit Order cannot be questioned but it is there for reasons all his own: he sees them as forms under which a new religion of the future can best be fostered provided their present contents are either emptied out or radically refashioned.
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II
What is Basic Teilhardism? What Place has his Christianity in it?
In Rideau's book we have found from his Teilhard-quota-tions that Teilhard's Christianity has no vital concern for any traditional dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church but concentrates solely on preserving "Christ on the scale of and at the head of creation".1 According to Teilhard, such an exclusive regard is "the most essential aim and criterion of Christian orthodoxy"2 and, "since St. John and St. Paul, the fundamental rule of theology".3 The divine power so figured is the Cosmic or Universal Christ and, naturally, his central function is related to the cosmos with whose space-time he is coextensive and which he works to consummate. A new quotation taken from Rideau4 shows Teilhard affinriing this role in a personal confrontation with his Master: "All my joy and all my triumph, my very reason for existence and my zest for life depend upon this fundamental vision of your coming together with the universe" (Le Cceur de la Matiere, 1950).
But Teilhard's double-aspected Christology - Christ Cosmic and uniting the cosmos in himself - does not hang, so to speak, in the air of a merely religious orientation. It is intrinsically connected with the mind of the modern world. It is fundamental to his Christianity because he is an embodiment of that mind at every moment of his religious life. A progressive self-exceeding of man by a collective unanimity which will constitute a super-consciousness within a sort of super-organism: such is the direction of his modernist spiri-
1.Op. tit., p. 539.
2.Ibid., p. 538.
3.Ibid., p. 539.
4.Ibid., p. 615.
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tual turn. Rideau5 tells us: "Teilhard speaks of the 'novelty, the boldness and at the same rime the paradoxical possibility in the attitude' that must be adopted by a man who 'in his quest for holiness has decided to allow the free interaction within himself of the upward impulse of faith in God and the forward impulse of faith in the ultra-human'" (Ibid., p. 25).
The same turn towards a synthesis of essential Christianity with the religious spirit implicit in the modern world-sense is discovered in even more pronounced a vein in another quotation Rideau6 makes from Teilhard belonging to the same year, 1950: "Even now I am still experiencing the dangers to which a man is exposed who, by internal law and necessity, sees himself forced to leave the well-beaten track of a certain traditional askesis that is now insufficiently adapted to human requirements; he then has to try to find another road that will lead to heaven by which the entire dynamism of matter and flesh is channelled into a genesis of the spirit -and it must not be a mean between the two but a synthesis of them" (Ibid).
The synthesis demanded sets up the temper of scientific modernism as the test to which Christianity must submit. Another quotation by Rideau7 runs: "As a result of the scientific discovery of the natural unity and immensity of the world, modern man can no longer accept God except as the extension of (could one say 'under the species' of?) some universal progress of attainment of maturity" (L'incroyance moderne: Cause profonde et remede, 1933, in Science et Christ, p. 151).
We may consider along with these exceedingly important words the following of Teilhard's as cited by Rideau:8 "In future, faith in Christ will never hold its own or gain ground except through the medium of faith in the world" (Letter of 4 May 1931, in Letters from a Traveller, p. 177).
5.Ibid., p. 588.
6.Ibid.
7.Ibid., p. 308.
8.Ibid., p. 602.
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Now, if Christianity has no future save as a Christianised faith in the world and if Christ himself has to be accepted "under the species" - that is to say, under the aspect - of evolution, as a cosmic divine "extension" of the ultra-human, two capital issues arise: (1) What is first and fundamental to Teilhard - faith in the world or faith in Christ? (2) Is the name "Christ" utterly indispensable to Teilhardism?
The answer to the second question would be implicit in the answer to the first. For, with faith in the world, the basis of the Teilhardian religion, the name "Christ" comes in simply because Teilhard happened to be born a Christian: the choice of it is accidental and optional. What is needed is just an Incarnation to give an intimate humanised concreteness to the cosmic divinity. Teilhard's position emerges pretty plainly from some of Rideau's excerpts from his writings:
"I have come to see more clearly the only thing I believe and the only thing I want to be my gospel and my vocation, if I may put it so. The things in which I believe: there are not many of them. They are: first and fundamentally the value of the world and secondly the indispensability of some Christ to give this world a consistency, a heart and a face" (Letter of 25 February 1929).9
Mark the expressions: "secondly" and "some Christ". A world in process of evolution and calling for total adherence: that is the prime spiritual necessity. The Christian religion is only the next desideratum. And it is wanted because it supplies a God-Man. Not this religion especially but any that provides a God-Man will serve. A Christ of one kind or another is indispensable - not necessarily the Christ we know of as Jesus of Nazareth. Such, logically, is the sense of the adjective "some" which the Concise Oxford Dictionary10 defines as: "Particular but unknown or unspecified (person or thing)."
However, Teilhard, according to his lights, has no alterna-
9. Ibid., pp. 649-50.
10. Ed. 1964, p. 219, col. 2.
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five and that is why he does not look beyond Jesus of Nazareth. This we learn when, after repeating in general the need of "some Christ" by saying, "We cannot dedicate ourselves to a 'faceless' world", he continues: "And it is because we have, historically speaking, no face to give it but that of Christ that I feel myself bound until the end..." (Letter of 15 July 1929).11
Of course, we cannot deny that, in a full religious stand which would be valid for today, Christ was to Teilhard as necessary as world-value. Occasionally he appears as even more so - but here we must be careful not to mix up two questions.
Teilhard often spoke of the Ahead and the Above - on the one hand cosmic fulfilment at Omega Point and on the other the Omega already complete though experientially seeming to be in the making, in a process of formation which will be finished in the remote future. The already completed Omega is called by Teilhard the Above, the term meaning "transcendent": this Omega is fully existent for all time and does not depend on the attainment of the ultra-human in order to become a reality. Its transcendent reality that shall fulfil the collectivity of evolution's highest products so far - human persons - is distinguished by Teilhard12 as not only "ultra-conscious" and "ultra-present" but also "ultra-personalised". What else than a Super-Person can be the supreme Centre of all personal centres? Teilhard's "phenomenology", taken to its furthest, culminates in the vision of the God Ahead as actually a Super-personal God Above, both loving and lovable. "This conclusion," Rideau13 claims, "...is strikingly confirmed by an appeal to another source of information besides facts of the natural order" - namely, Christianity's supernatural mysteries - but he also explicitly tells us that Teilhard's conclusion is "arrived at solely in the light of an
11.Op. cit., p. 650.
12.Ibid., p. 374, note 72.
13.Ibid., p. 60.
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honest appraisal of the scientific evidence". No Christ as such is yet on the scene. The "Christian phenomenon" is still to be integrated into the "ultra-physics" treating of the "Phenomenon of Man". And it is at this furthest boundary of ultra-physics without Christianity that we get a statement like the one which de Lubac14 culls from Teilhard's Comment conce-voir...l'unanimisation humaine (1950): "However effective may be man's faith in the Ultra-human, I do not think that its urge towards Some Thing ahead can succeed without being combined with another still more fundamental aspiration, one that comes down from on high, from Somebody." De Lubac does not particularly bother to keep this superpersonal Omega separate from Christ. He15 speaks of Teilhard holding up before the world "the figure of Christ", "Centre of total convergence" and he talks of objects "intrinsically united at their term in Christ-Omega..." Teilhard does identify Omega and Christ, but not at the juncture we have mentioned. So the "still more fundamental aspiration" is not outside but inside the phenomenology of ultra-physics and is part of the philosophy of World-value.
We may note that this philosophy, involving a loving and lovable Omega, whose secret presence enfolds us and attracts our adoration as well as endows the cosmos with solidarity and unity and evolves it as one whole towards ever more complex and conscious states of synthesis, has room for a "heart" in the universe no less than for a "consistency" (a holding-together) without the postulate of a Christ. Rideau has Teilhard clearly affirming this. Drawing upon Teilhard's own words, he16 writes: "If, 'when all is said and done, all the forces of the world work together to bring about our fulfilment', then 'our terror of matter and of man is transformed, and reversed, to become peace and trust, and even existential love...and all this is so, because the world has a heart"." Only a
14 Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning, p. 156,
15.Ibid., p. 157.
16.Op. tit, p. 60.
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"face" is missing and Christ offers it. Indeed in the passage from the letter of 15 July 1929 it is just the face that Christ is credited with putting upon the divinity of the evolutionary World.
But the work of preventing this divinity from facelessness does not confer primacy on Christ in Teilhard's religion. Only as a push towards a sense of certainty in world-fulfilment at Omega Point does Teilhard consider Christ more fundamentally required. Yet Christ is thus rated because he serves the purpose of reinforcing for us the value of the world. If he did not do so he would be useless. Exclusively Christ the Evolver, Christ the Consummator of Cosmic Evolution is the Christ worth having. As we saw in the preceding chapter, if our concept of Christ did not conform to the criterion of evolution, it would be fit for summary dismissal and contemptuous disposal like a would-be scientific paper on perpetual motion or on squaring the circle.17 Christianity independent of the scientific truth of evolution is a veritable absurdity to Teilhard: it has no raison d'etre for him. So it is this scientific truth which, ultimately, is all in all. It needs to be enriched by a faith in the God-Man of Nazareth - it needs him if it is to become a total grip on our hearts and minds - yet it is the World that is the primary Value. If World-value were not there, nothing would be of any consequence: Christ would stand merely as the Centre of a religion which would be, in Marx's phrase, "the opium of the people". Rideau18 has here an apt extract from Teilhard: "Religion can become an opium. It is too often taken to be no more than an anodyne. Its true function is to maintain and spur on the progress of life" (L'esprit de la terre, 1923, in L'energie humaine, p. 53). Without belief in evolution no progress of life can be maintained and spurred on. We would be in a static universe with no natural pole of vital fulfilment, no Ultra-human awaiting our long travail. And even if Christianity brings us an assurance of success by
17.Ibid., p. 308.
18.Ibid., p. 650.
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its doctrine of the Mystical Body whose unity is assumed to be already there and by whose gathering together its members the cosmos will be unified in that unity - even if the Christian religion holds forth before us by its revelatory authority the final universal plenitude, does it actually set at rest the doubts arising when we witness all around us the innumerable signs of conflict and divergence instead of harmony and convergence? Teilhard's answer as cited in Rideau's book19 is both Yes and No: "For a Christian...the eventual biological success of man on earth is not merely a probability but a certainty; since Christ (and in him virtually the world) is already rising. But this certainty, born as it is of a 'supernatural' act of faith, is of its nature of a higher order than the phenomenal: which means, in one sense, that it leaves all the anxieties attendant upon the human condition, on their own level, still alive in the heart of the believer" (The Directions and Conditions of the Future, 1948, in The Future of Man, p. 237).
Even if the "supernatural" act of faith could remove the anxieties of the phenomenal plane, it would not, for Teilhard, be of pre-eminent and paramount meaning. It would be something superadded: it could never be the basis of his life. The basis is a direct, independent conviction of the world as a Divine Movement. No special revelation is required to convince Teilhard on this score. Whether Christ historically happened or not, there would be a living All, claiming his religious adherence. And it is not always that he feels the scientifically inferred sense of an all-totalising future Omega to be deficient - an anticipation fragile and precarious in the absence of Christian faith. In an earlier section we have shown his irrepressible optimism. We may extract a few more "quotes" from Rideau's "Notes" to prove that the true Teilhard, for all his spells of hesitation, could have no final misgivings nor require a "supernatural" prop.
"Human molecules" may have dissensions on the surface, but Teilhard is sure that "under the rapidly mounting
19. Ibid., p. 559.
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pressures forcing them upon one another the human molecules will ultimately succeed in finding their way through the critical barrier of mutual repulsion to enter the inner zone of attraction" (The Human Rebound of Evolution, 1947, in The Future of Man, p. 211).20 Again: "No obstacle can prevent human energy - the expression of a force as irresistible and infallible as the universe itself - from freely attaining the natural term of its evolution (L'energie humaine, 1937, in L'energie humaine, p. 190).21 Once again: "It would be easier at the stage of evolution we have reached to prevent the earth from revolving than to prevent mankind from becoming totalized" (Directions and Conditions of the Future, 1948, in The Future of Man, p. 229).22
Confronted with such confidence in an inwardly propelled world-development, we may justifiably argue that, apart from his desire for a "face" borrowed from a human-divine historical figure, there is no vacuum left to be filled by Christianity in the science-inspired philosophical religion of faith in the world, which is the basic religion of Teilhard. The desire for a God-Man's face is a legitimate one; but it never has for Teilhard an utter indispensability, nor is it ever given by him an outstanding place. And, if the secondary level of what he believes in is occupied by none other than Christ out of all historical figures, it is merely because he has no notion of any other possible Avatar. Could he have visualised an alternative incarnation, he might not have focused on Christ. When we consider the circumstances under which he made his choice, we cannot regard the choice as either basic or exclusive. And, even as things are, we may recall that the individual Jesus is, in the framework of Teilhard's vision, just the stepping-stone to the Cosmic Christ whom he saw taking shape from the Resurrection of Jesus - a stepping-stone he
20.Ibid., p. 368.
21.Ibid., p. 369.
22.Ibid.
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practically ignored in his worship once he had arrived at that universal divinity. Further, as the Cosmic Christ is but the Principle of Evolution apotheosised, the name "Christ" marks no more than a special enhanced stage of activity reached by a Universal Presence functioning under the appearance of an ascending cosmogenesis - a Presence that was there even before the birth of Jesus. Essentially this Presence, of whose all-embracing vastness the historical Jesus may be deemed a concentrated manifestation rather than the individual fount and origin, is the truth behind Teilhard's Christian stance.
The awareness of such a Presence causes what Rideau23 takes to be Teilhard's overwhelming religious experience -"entrancement with the greatness of the universe".
23. Ibid., p. 220.
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One of the last Teilhard-quotations we picked out from Rideau's book1 had the phrase applying the attributes "irresistible" and "infallible" to the "universe".2 In this expression we may read a virtual summing-up of what we have termed Teilhard's basic religion. It answers to the "cosmic sense" he often spoke of as something born with him. And Rideau quite openly recognises the foundational and self-sufficient character of that sense for Teilhard, as indeed no intelligent student of Teilhardism can help doing. He3 writes: "Teilhard was a romantic, and his keen sensibility was so excited by the immense spatial dimension of the universe, by the power and complexity of cosmic energies, without qualifying that emotion by critical assessment, that he made of the world an initial, paramount, primordial entity. No doubt this world is dialectically linked with man and ascends towards a fuller degree of spirit; but, in its very development, it is affirmed as absolute and governs his whole view of being and existence."
Rideau4 frowns at Teilhard's "romanticism". He sees it as part of the modern scientific spirit which assigns a primary place "to nature and to action upon nature" and gives rise to "philosophies of becoming". He is doubtful whether those philosophies will retain their hold for long and feels that Teilhard was not cautious enough when he based everything on a scientific formulation of his cosmic sense and brought even traditional Christianity to this touchstone. "Though the force and usefulness of some of Teilhard's criticism should not be overlooked," Rideau envisages with Bergson a non-Teilhardian turn of man's mind in the future: "this hypothesis would weaken the case he made out against a theologi-
1.Op. cit.
2.Ibid., p. 369.
3.Ibid., p. 246.
4.Ibid., pp. 246-47.
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cal system and a Christian attitude that is not sufficiently receptive to the modern spirit."
Rideau is right in his assessment of "the passion for action" in an objective environment which, as current science ordinarily goes, is not conducive to "the development of interior and mystical potentialities".5 However, Teilhard's science is not endstopped, but flows over and gets "enjamb-ed" to religious prospects. Rideau is aware of this: "...what Teilhard tried to do was, in principle, praiseworthy and in conformity with a long philosophical tradition: he sought to use science (particularly in its biological branches essentially linked with history) in order to induce from it, almost experimentally, the existence of God, and from that a religious apologetics." While appreciating Teilhard's ultra-scientific project, Rideau expresses his reservations. He continues: "Nevertheless, the biological law of unification, backed by the rational demand for unity, cannot be fully transposed to the plane of a human history, for the latter is subject to the indetermination of moral freedom, to the alternative of the spiritual option, as it is to God's loving battle with sinful man."
Whether or not Rideau's stricture be quite correct, his setting forth of the "romantic"-cum-scientific Teilhard concedes and endorses a point that has often been debated: Teilhard's affirmation of what Rideau6 calls "the universe in the vastness of its extension and the power of its energies" as a world that is "absolute" - "an initial, paramount, primordial entity". What is of further pertinence is Rideau's .reference to the Teilhardian induction of God's existence from this entity and then from that existence "a religious apologetics", the process of demonstrating that the Personal God, loving and lovable, of ultra- or hyper-physics is concerned not only to reflect Himself in man's consciousness by way of a general worship-instinct and then of a precise revelation but
5.Ibid., p. 247.
6.Ibid., p. 246.
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also to appear in an incarnate mode in the course of world-history: in short, that He evokes religion, inspires a Bible and produces a Christ. Yes, Teilhard attempts to guide the modern age through his phenomenology to Christianity or, more correctly speaking, from a hyper-physics to a "hyper-Catholicism" - that is, to an extreme extension of the central Catholic dogma of "Christ is all" into that Christian version of pantheism - "pan-Christism" - with its Universal Evolver Christ. But Rideau is not quite logical in equating Teilhard's "religious apologetics" with "a long philosophical tradition". Teilhard does use science in the interests of religion but there is a momentous difference between his apologetic procedure and that of a whole line of Christian philosophers in the past.
Rideau" tells us that "in his sense of nature and of man, Teilhard follows in the steps of Saint Thomas who also based his thought on the analogy of being, on the correspondence between the 'orders' and on nature's pre-adaptation to the supernatural". But Rideau8 himself admits a little later: "[Teilhard] did not, of course, deny man's supernatural end, but by making religion a function of life, a privileged natural organ of cosmic history, he tended to transpose the 'kingdom of heaven' to the terrestrial plane, as something to be hoped for in world-time. Again, while retaining God's transcendence in relation to his work and the gratuitous character and newness of the Christian mystery, all his intellectual and emotional bent led him to emphasize the connexions and continuities between Creation and Creator, between the world and Christ. His logical insistence on unity and his aspiration for the universal caused him, while retaining the distinction between them, to unite in synthesis and in theory orders or planes that are separated by their distance from the mystery." We may remember that, for Teilhard, God is conceived as an extension of the world's progress and figured under the form of the world's evolutionary peak, Omega Point. He makes
7.Ibid., p. 239,
8.Ibid., p. 245.
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this peak the test of religious truth. Everything has to be in accord with Omega Point. No religion, no revelation can have any force for Teilhard if it is unaware of Omega or bypasses it. This stand of Teilhard's has always to be kept in mind when defining his "religious apologetics".
Rideau seems apt to ignore it in an important place. If we look at Teilhard's apologetics in a broad general fashion we may stress, as Rideau does, a passage penned in 1946. Rideau9 writes: "In his Esquisse d'une dialectique de l'esprit (1946, in L'activatian de l'energie, pp. 149-58) Teilhard sets out clearly the 'successive phases of his apologetics or, if you prefer it, dialectic': (1) discovery of Omega as the 'purely immanent focus of Convergence'; (2) discovery of God as the personal centre of attraction not only for the world but for free consciousness; (3) discovery of the Christian phenomenon and faith in the Incarnation; (4) discovery of the Church, the germ of the 'supervitalization' of history. The distinction and dialectical connexion of the stages of the religious quest are well brought out by these phases, in particular the transition into the order of revelation. 'It is worth noting that the second phase opens with a question: that of 'knowing whether there are not hidden messages, as yet unnoticed by our observation' (Ibid., p. 153). The enquiry, still rational, into the divine is connected by an historical enquiry. 'It is here, in the very midst of the human phenomenon that the Christian problem emerges and demands our attention. Historically starting with the Man-Jesus, a phylum of religious thought appeared in the human mass' (Ibid., p. 154)."
Then Rideau approaches a passage in Teilhard which has aroused much controversy but which, according to us, is the most explicit key to the core of his specific "ism". Referring to his own note on Teilhard's apologetics Rideau10 remarks: "It is in this context that one should interpret the controversial passage from Teilhard..." The passage in question is quoted,
9. mid., p. 376.
10. Ibid.
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but not in full. So before citing Rideau's comment, we may pick out the complete text as first presented in a critical article in the Vatican's mouthpiece, the Ossewatore Romano of July 1, 1962. We shall follow the official translation, which has recently come out, of the essay How I Believe (1934),11 where the text occurs.
Teilhard writes: "If as the result of some interior revolution, I were to lose in succession my faith in Christ, my faith in a personal God, and my faith in spirit, I feel that I should continue to believe invincibly in the world. The world (its value, its infallibility and its goodness) - that, when all is said and done, is the first, the last, and the only thing in which I believe. It is by this faith that I live. And it is to this faith, I feel, that at the moment of death, rising above all doubts, I shall surrender myself.... I surrender myself to an ill-defined faith in a world that is one and infallible - wherever it may lead me."
Rideau's comment12 runs: "Pere de Lubac, while admitting that there is some ambiguity in this passage, forcibly demonstrates that it expresses an approach both justified and classical. Teilhard, addressing himself to an unbeliever and adopting an existential point of view, seems to make a clean sweep of his religious faith; but he does this only to develop to its conclusion the basic affirmation of the world and unfold the dialectical stages that can lead the unbeliever to the recognition of God and of Christianity. Both on the objective and the personal level, the order of nature and that of the supernatural are connected by a dialectic of analogy and discontinuity. The passage from one order to the other is achieved by a gratuitous initiative on the part of God, which resumes and transcends nature, and subjectively by an act of
11.Christianity and Evolution, pp. 99, 103.
12,Op. cit., pp. 376-77.
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faith that transcends, without denying, the initial affirmation of the world (H. de Lubac, The Faith of Teillhard de Chardin, London, 1965, pp. 136 ff.13). In a recent book the eminent theologian Pere Guy de Broglie shows also that Christian faith appears not as the result of two different intellectual processes (one purely rational, the other purely mystical) but as the climax of a single spiritual activity, animated by grace and receptive of the good tidings that crown it (Les origines de credibilite de la Revelation Chretienne, Fayard, 1964),"
All this insistence on the need of a direct revelation in order to reach the total Christian vision is not irrelevant to Teilhard's stand, and we may also grant that what Teilhard throws aside at the start is certain to be recovered if he pursues to its end his initial faith in the world, and that this very faith leads him to the position in which the need of a direct revelation of the Christian vision is logically compassed; for, if a Personal God issues from the dialectic of faith in the world, not only the strong possibility but also the extreme probability of such a God directly communicating Himself to man and even incarnating Himself in history and founding a Church as His growing Mystical Body arises by sheer force of reasoning. Situated as Teilhard was, the direct communication could be conceived only as Judaeo-Christianity and the incarnation as the Man-Jesus and the Mystical Body as the Roman Catholic Church. But when we have traced the broad shape of the Teilhardian apologetics we have not yet got to the heart of the matter: we have not yet explicated all the definite and decisive terms of the "controversial" passage.
Why is the passage "controversial" at all? Why is de Lubac constrained to write: "We would not deny that there is something over-nice and paradoxical in the turn which Pere Teilhard gives to his thought...."14 - "His style of writing in the opening passage of How I Believe is philosophically
13.This book appears in our footnotes in its paperback form as Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning.
14.Op. cit, p. 132.
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unsatisfactory until it is explained by what follows...."15 -"Here at the very beginning of his apologetic task he finds himself obliged to use language that is still elliptical and involves a certain ambiguity..."16 Merely to undertake an apologetic task cannot render a piece of writing so difficult to "Christianise". Every Christian reader could understand that for the sake of argument the writer has to proceed as if he did not believe ab initio in the spirit, the personal God and Christ. The apologist commences on what is common ground between his interlocutor and himself: here this ground should be the world of natural experience, which one pragmatically accepts as worth living in and working for. An additional merit of the world for a modern thinker would be its interrelated vastness and its evolutionary career with a present climax in Man, Beyond this, no apologist who is alleged to write for an unbeliever can go. But does not Teilhard give us much more than a science-tinged practical acceptance of the world?
He gives us a fervent mysticism of the universe. He endows the cosmos not only with a unified character, not only with value in general, but also with infallibility and goodness. He has endowed the world with a secret unerring intelligence heading towards some glorious goal, a concealed heart of absolute love which makes it lovable to us and inspires us to trust implicitly in its forward-looking guidance. Teilhard's faith is in some supreme divinity whose appearance is the world of natural experience. He cannot precisely define this faith with which he starts, but there is no denying that the faith is most firm and is felt as intrinsically justified. What is even more unusual for an apologist who has Christianity at the back of his thought, Teilhard's world-mysticism is openly declared to be the first and last and only thing he believes in. All else - spirit, personal God, Christ - are considered secondary and superadded. Their existence is not necessarily denied; neither is their value in any way negated. And if
15.Ibid., p. 155.
16.Ibid., p. 158.
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nothing about them is asserted, it is because the stage proper to any assertion about them has not been reached. Just because Teilhard has supposed a situation in which he might lose faith in them, we have no reason to think that he has actually lost faith. So much can be conceded to de Lubac and his tribe. But on the other hand we have no reason to hold that Teilhard can afford to start with a clean sheet merely because he knows that he will be able to fill the sheet with all the contents of the New Testament. Nothing to that effect is implied in the words. There is no question now of either a straight pro or a straight contra for spirit, personal God and Christ. But while a straight contra is absent, an oblique contra of a specific sort is present. We are unmistakably told that all through his life right up to the moment of his death Teilhard, though he might not actually choose to do so, could live without them. They do not belong to the fundamentals of his faith. All that is fundamental, the sole thing that he is sure of and regards as indispensable - the one and only essential for him in his religious life from birth to death - is his world-mysticism. If this essential carries him towards faith in spirit, personal God and Christ, he is prepared to embrace that faith. But even if it does not, he is ready to follow its lead, confident that it will never let him down and that somehow it will fulfil him. He can doubt everything else but he will succeed in banishing at all times all hesitation here - and this world-mysticism is the single religious experience he requires for the very act of living, as it were, and for final as well as constant peace of mind and happiness of heart.
Teilhard could not be more precise and categorical as regards these implications. He would appear ambiguous, paradoxical, over-nice, philosophically unsatisfactory under just one condition - namely, that we try to "Christianise" his basic religious stance. We are far past a Christian apologist's pretension of unbelief. We have the downright confession of a belief that is deeper in Teilhard than Christianity and that can even do without it. In view of his well-known devotion to Christ we may be tempted to read here a hidden Christianity
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and then we shall be forced to feel uneasy and to explain away the non-Christian, though not inevitably anti-Christian, mysticism that is the bedrock of Teilhard's soul - a mysticism that can be defined simply as the ineradicable inner sense of a God who is a World-Soul, within whose bosom all things and beings are ultimately held and borne both intelligently and lovingly towards their as-yet-unknown consummation in the context of an unavoidably slow and difficult cosmic process.
An honest analysis of the so-called controversial statement is bound to yield a special kind of pantheism. This pantheism blends the universal and the personal without making any philosophy or dogma out of the blending. It is the pantheism to which Rideau draws our attention when he17 notes that "in Christ in the World of Matter (1916, Hymns of the Universe, pp. 53, 54) Teilhard, deliberately disguising his own identity," wrote: "I had always been by temperament a pantheist... I live at the heart of a single, unique Element, the centre of the universe and present in each part of it: personal love and Cosmic Power.'"
The pantheist temperament which provides the theme of the opening of How I Believe is frankly acknowledged by Teilhard more than once in the course of the same essay. Thus, he18 mentions "the cosmic sense from which germinates the whole organism of my faith". Again we read: "I tried to place at the head of the universe which I adored from birth the risen Christ whom others had taught me to know."19 Evidently Teilhard considers himself to be a born pantheist, an adorer of the world as divine in its inner substance and in its wholeness. Once more we read: "From the point of view we are adopting here, Christianity would appear to satisfy the essential religious tendency which impels man towards some sort of pantheism."20 In the same vein but with a direct
17.Op. cit., p. 279.
18.Op. cit., p. 124.
19.Ibid., p. 128.
20.Ibid., p. 136.
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personal note we have the confession: "Now I realize that on the model of the incarnate God whom Christianity reveals to me, I can be saved only by becoming one with the universe. Thereby too my deepest pantheist aspirations are satisfied."21 Earlier in the essay, as if to leave no misgiving about the radical drift of the "controversial" passage, a new reference to the religious state of self-sufficient world-mysticism such as we have found there, is broadly framed. Tracing the individual development of his faith, Teilhard speaks of its culminating "at a point at which were I to lose confidence in all revealed religion, I would still, I believe, be firmly anchored".22
With these pronouncements before us, it is not only inadequate to speak of the opening words as a mere apologist's procedural gesture: it is also futile to argue that whatever apologetics operates in them is of the general or classical type in a confused mode. Teilhard23 himself goes out of his way to disown any general operation: "...these pages make no claim to determine the theory of a general apologetics. All I am proposing to do is to describe, so far as I understand them, the developments of a personal experience. As such, what I have to say will not satisfy everybody." Later he24 distinguishes his venture from the classical type: "In all the old apologetics, the choice of religion was principally governed by the consideration of the miraculous." And what exactly is Teilhard's own style of apologetics, as differing from the classical, we can gather from a quotation by Rideau:25 "You will note the interesting apologetical approach I feel driven into. Visibilia are to me no longer simply a logical premise to some chain of reasoning that leads to the invisibilia. They now constitute for me an initial world of faith of which the world of supernatural faith is only the development. I wonder whether
21.Ibid., p. 128.
22.Ibid., p. 117.
23.Ibid., p. 97.
24.Ibid., p. 119.
25.Op. cit., p. 650.
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that is not the only legitimate apologetics...." (Letter of 25 February 1929). Here the classical procedure is spotlighted as the chain of reasoning which starts with the visible order of things as premise and ends with the invisible order as conclusion. Teilhard's non-classical or rather anti-classical procedure takes the world of natural experiences as in itself a revelation, a basic presence of the Divine - independent of what is termed supernatural revelation and actually constituting a foundation without which supernatural revelation would have no substance and would lack any possibility of existence. Do we not have here the exact position of the "controversial" passage? And we may observe that the lines on the Teilhardian neoapologetics occur in the same letter that pins down "the things in which I believe".26 We have already cited the credo in an earlier chapter; what is of moment here is that, although the total Teilhard cannot dispense with "some Christ", his credo makes no bones about listing "first and fundamental, the value of the world".27 This phrase along with that about the visibilia being for him "an initial world of faith", should clinch our reading of the pseudo-enigma that de Lubac has created out of the primary posture of How I Believe.
Practically the same posture - and with the further characteristic that, unlike in the letter mentioning "some Christ", it announces itself without adding any secondary article of belief - confronts us in another Teilhard-quotation by Rideau:28 "In future, the only religion for man is the religion that will teach him in the first place to recognize, love and serve with passion the universe of which he is a part" (Le sens humain, 1927).
Not that Teilhard could ever completely do without
26.Ibid., p. 649.
27.Ibid., p. 650.
28.Ibid, p. 307.
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Christianity, but Christianity comes in only to intensify and enrich the world-mysticism that in various ways fills his entire consciousness. We get an emphatic picture of his position - world-mysticism in the full foreground, with Christianity a reinforcing touch from the background - in a letter of April 16,1948, which has even the main motifs of our passage running through it: "All I can find to say from the whole edifice of my experience, my reason, and my deepest convictions, is this: 'whatever happens,...hold fast and do not lose confidence (however ironic it may seem) in the value, the interest and even the fundamental and ultimate goodness of the world.' In a Universe in which we find that we have awakened one day, without asking to, or understanding why, and in a Universe which, however, really seems to be going somewhere, engendering something, after we have done our best in staying afloat and our strength fails, the great infallible and fundamental gesture is to abandon ourselves confidently (I think with our whole Christian experience we must say, lovingly) to the current that bears us along. In this atmosphere of blind surrender, the absurd and the unjust are transformed and take on a meaning. This is the prayer of prayers."29
How primary and pervasive this "prayer of prayers"was in Teilhard's life may be felt in the very fact of what Rideau30 terms his "steadfastness" as a Roman Catholic priest. Rideau31 tells us: "A letter of 15 July 1929 speaks of the end of an interior crisis and his firm determination never to break with the Church and the Society of Jesus: 'I am conscious of feeling myself fundamentally bound to both, for new and even more cogent reasons - by which I mean that I believe I would be betraying "the world", if I deserted the post I have been assigned to. In this sense I love them both, and I want to
29.Letters to Two Friends, 1926-1952 (The Fontana Library, Theology and Philosophy, Collins, London, 1972), p. 103.
30.Op. cit., p. 298.
31.Ibid.
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work, as an individual atom, to perfect them from within, with no trace of antagonism...'." Here we have three truths to set together. One is that Teilhard's "steadfastness" is not a mere adherence to what the Church and the Society of Jesus teach as Christianity. Secondly, his own Christianity is considerably different from theirs and he sees the need to change theirs into his own vision. Thirdly, his aim in not leaving them is to act as an inside force to bring about the required perfection of them - in short, their Teilhardisaton. Lastly, all these Teithardo-Christian movements spring basically not from loyalty to the Vatican but from loyalty to "the World". The World in which he is borne along as an inseparable element is to him the physical presence of an all-wise guiding Power that has his unquestioning love. He believes this Power to have made him a Jesuit Churchman and that is the reason, above all others, why he remains one. Faith in the World is at the back of even his career as a member of the Catholic clergy. When he says of the Church and the Society of Jesus: "In this sense I love them both", he clearly refers to the duty to them he has derived from a deeper duty, the obligation of not "betraying" the World. His vocation as a priest as well as his mission to reform the institutions he serves are at bottom taken up for the World's sake and because of a faith beyond Christianity as such.
Before moving further, we may make for the sake of exactness a certain observation. The adoration of the world as being inwardly a divine Person and acting as such in its totality through the aeons is not itself the religious evolutionism which Teilhard so often expounds. The cosmogenesis of an already existent Omega towards its own emergence in the space-time process is not the same as the single infallible World that Teilhard worshipped from birth. The presence of a Pan-Person under the appearance of a natural order of things precedes in his experience the presence of universal evolution which he felt to be a Pan-Person. De Lubac32 informs us that
32. Op. cit., p. 18,
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when the First World War broke out in 1914 Teilhard's "scientific ideas had already matured": "In contrast with the mental attitude that predominated in his environment, generalized evolution was already to him a matter of conviction." Rideau33 also gives the time-bracket 1908-1914 for Teilhard's growth into an evolutionist. One of Rideau's excerpts34 from him vividly recalls the great occasion of this growth soon after his return from a three-year teachership in Cairo: "It was during my theology years in Hesting (That is, immediately after the marvels of Egypt) that there gradually grew in me -much less as an abstract notion than as a presence - until it filled my whole interior climate, the consciousness that all around me flowed the deep all-embracing ontological drift of the universe" (Le Coeur de la Matiere, 1950).
What Teilhard's being was charged with from the very start of his life was an intuition with three levels of depth.35 At its most elementary, it gave him "the live sense of universal relationships of interdependence". At the next deeper step it disclosed that "the universe forms a system endlessly linked in time and space" and constitutes un bloc. At the final Stratum it provided the inevitable conclusion from the word "bloc": "the world constitutes a whole." This whole laid itself bare as "a global reality whose condition is that of being more necessary, more consistent, richer and more certain in its ways, than any of the particular things it embraces".36 In fact, "there are no longer any 'things' in the world: there are only 'elements'". Carried a little further, this transition from things to elements makes us "speak of their 'identity'". The infinite multiple of the cosmos is "necessarily completed in some unity".37 All this is independent of the question: "Is it a static totality we are concerned with or a dynamic one? Is it material or spiritual? Is it progressive in its movement, or is it
33.Op. cit., p. 27.
34.Ibid., p. 295.
35.Christianity and Evolution, p. 100.
36.Ibid., p. 101.
37.Ibid.
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periodic and circular?"38 Just the overwhelming presence is there of the unitary and unifying whole behind the apparent multiplicity, a oneness existing with a plenitude of being and a certainty of action and taking care of all its elements that are really identical with one another in spite of their surface differences. Prior to any recognition of an evolutionary process mounting higher and higher, Teilhard stands with the statement:39 "Does not the presence of the Whole in the world assert itself for us with the direct evidence of some source of light? I do indeed believe that that is so. And it is precisely the value of this primordial intuition which seems to me to hold up the whole edifice of my belief."
Such an intuition can very naturally, under the impact of modern physics and biology, go past the ordinary materialistic conclusion of science and taking the world's most advanced element, Man, for the starting-point of a synthesis of phenomena, flower into the well-known Teilhardian vision of a march of complexity-consciousness towards Omega Point which is at once "God Ahead" and "God Above." But in itself it is just a special pantheism blending, as we have said, the universal and the personal. The impression of its being pantheism is particularly strengthened by the "elements" getting termed not only a unified ensemble but also an ultimate "identity". If they are secretly identical with one another, then the whole, whose elements they are, must, in the last computation, have an identity with them. At the stage where Teilhard's credo is, he merely calls his intuition "cosmic sense".40 He distinguishes it from its full flowering when he uses the phrase: "the spiritual-evolutionary point of view to which faith in the world has led me."41
38.Ibid.
39.Ibid., p. 102.
40.Ibid.
41.Ibid., p. 118.
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We have shown everything in the opening passage of How I Believe to be as clear-cut as the profundity of the subject permits. Teilhard's hand nowhere shakes or wavers. And, though he does not yet employ the word "pantheism" for his basic posture and afterwards condemns "false pantheisms", as against the true one which is his own "Christian" brand, we find here no blurring of any proper issue. His stand is unequivocal: "The world (its value, its infallibility, and its goodness) - that, when all is said and done, is the first, the last, and the only thing in which I believe."1
The spuriousness of the enigmatic character assigned to the passage is evident from what Teilhard on his own has to say of his essay. De Lubac2 tells us about the work: "At first he wished to publish it, but when he had finished the draft he was not entirely satisfied and he does not seem later to have tried to have it brought out." However, in the period when he penned it, Teilhard has three capital disclosures to make. To begin with, we have one from de Lubac's own book:3" In 'How I Believe', he confided to a friend when he was actually writing the last pages, 'I feel that I have succeeded in expressing my personal reasons for believing.'" Can we associate with this sense of success any dissatisfaction with the draft? The motive for the latter feeling must be sought in some extraneous circumstance connected with publication.
As for the essay's thesis, there is first his declaration4 in a letter of August 18, 1934: "...basically, my whole religion-can be reduced to this active surrender to a world which I understand less and less in detail (in the sense that the traditional explanations that people give of it seem more and more inadequate) but whose 'divinization' or 'personaliza-
1.Christianity and Evolution p. 99.
2.Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning, p. 133.
3.Ibid., p. 139.
4.letters to Two Friends. 1926-1952, p. 83.
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tion' seems clearer to me every day. That my existence has been as much as possible an act of fidelity to Life is the only thing that interests and reassures me from now on." In addition to this affirmation of a profound "cosmic sense" and its passionate intuition of what the cosmos is leading us to - a consummating "ultra-human" - we have on December 31 of the same year the communication:5 "I am taking the liberty of sending you...a copy of my latest essay 'Why I Believe'. It seems to me that these pages are clear and that I have almost succeeded in expressing my present position.... 'Why I Believe' was originally intended for publication but as it has expanded it has taken on characteristics that may cause it to be considered unpublishable. In that case there is always private circulation." Teilhard has no feeling of ambiguity - he says he has attained clarity and near-exactitude and, if he puts aside the project to publish the essay, it is simply because the Church would not favour its thesis which, starting with faith in the world as primary and self-sufficient in essence, went on to say a number of unconventional things like: "the sense of the Whole..,is the life-blood of all mysticism."6 - "Christianity gives the impression of not believing in progress. It has never developed the sense of the earth."7 -"Judging from first appearances, Catholicism disappointed me by its narrow representations of the world and its failure to understand the part played by matter,"8 Teilhard also says that he found repose in Christianity only when the Universal Christ was revealed to him,9
5.Ibid., pp. 85-86. It will be noted that Teilhard refers to his essay as Why I Believe. In a letter of 23 September 1934 he writes of the essay: "I am calling it 'Comment je crois' (Why and How')" (Letters from a Traveller, Fontana Religious Books, London, 1967, p. 158).
6.Op. cit., p. 122.
7.Ibid., p. 126.
8.Ibid., p. 128.
9.Ibid., p. 126.
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have this Christ unless we fully "accept the most modern concepts of evolution".10
For Teilhard there is the crucial question: "How exactly is the divine power to put the universe together in such a way that it may be possible for an incarnation to be biologically effected in it?"11 The answer, of course, is: in no other way than evolutively. And there is also the crucial point for Teilhard that, unless there is "a physical pole of universal evolution" where the world's "co-ordinated system of activity" rising higher and higher converges irreversibly, never "can any being, no matter how divine he may be, carry out the function of universal consolidation and universal animation which Christian dogma attributes to Christ".12
Then Teilhard adds a sentence with a puzzling last part. "By disclosing a world-peak, evolution makes Christ possible, just as Christ, by giving direction and meaning to it, makes evolution possible."13 The last part is puzzling because the direction and meaning of evolution have already been traced entirely to a source outside Christianity: "Under the combined pressure of science and philosophy, we are being forced, expertentially and intellectually, to accept the world as a coordinated system of activity which is gradually rising up towards freedom and consciousness. The only satisfactory way of interpreting this process...is to regard it as irreversible and convergent. Thus, ahead of us, a universal cosmic centre is taking on definition, in which everything reaches its term, in which everything is explained, is felt, and is ordered."14 This renders that last part itself devoid of "direction and meaning". It is just an inconsequential side-bow, en passant, to orthodoxy.
Obviously the Universal Christ, who alone enables Teilhard to embrace Christianity, has no logical link with that
10.Ibid., p. 127.
12.Ibid., pp. 127-28.
13.Ibid., p. 128.
14.Ibid., p. 127.
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religion: he is absolutely bound up with the scientific view of the world as evolutionary. The concepts of evolution are all in all to Teilhard and apart from them Christianity must fail and even "the most magnificent cosmic attributes lavished by St. Paul on the risen Christ"15 be inexplicable and unconvincing: "Christianity takes on its full value when extended (as I find it rewarding to do) to cosmic dimensions."16 The only nexus with orthodoxy lies in the latter's ascribing to Christ "the function of universal consolidation and universal animation" - a function appearing akin to the one performed by the "physical pole of universal evolution". It is thus that Teilhard finds his "individual faith in the world" and "Christian faith in Christ" "inexhaustibly justified by one another".17
In pantheist style he calls Christ the "world-soul"18 but he Christianises his pantheism by finding in Christ "a personalized universe whose domination personalizes me".19 He does not hesitate to declare like the pantheist: "The world around me becomes divine"20 - but he adds that in "pan-Christism" the individual is super-personalized and does not dissolve in the divine All. Looking at his religious discovery he21 tells us: "I have never for the last twenty-five years ceased to marvel at the infinite possibilities which the 'universalization' of Christ opens up for religious thought..." And he22 holds that only through the Universal Christ as he envisaged him "a religion of the future can be conceived."
But can the Roman Church ever allow the value of Christianity to depend vitally and inevitably on modern evolutionism? Surely it will not. De Lubac,23 facing in an early
15.Ibid., p. 129.
17.Ibid.
18.Ibid.
19.Ibid.
20.Ibid.
22.Ibid., p. 130.
23.Op. cit.. Preface, p. v.
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work (Forma Christi) of Teilhard's the doctrine of "Christ the final determination and plasmatic Principle of the Universe" - that is, the Principle of Evolution - is liberal enough to say that the vision Teilhard so resolutely followed is one of the roads that lead to Christ, yet he insists that it "cannot but be only one of the convergent roads...; the road, maybe, that best answers the expectations of our own days, but that must fail to reach its destination if it claims to be the only road". We suspect de Lubac is being liberal because of missing the true import of Teilhard's highly heterodox evolutionism. For, on the issue of the "only road" Teilhard never compromised. About "the most modern concepts of evolution" he24 wrote in How I Believe that "If we Christians wish to retain in Christ the very qualities on which his power and our worship are based, we have no better way - no other way, even - than fully to accept" these concepts.
Hence, Teilhard's exclusive Christianity of the Universal Christ cannot be considered attuned to the orthodox tradition despite the Pauline attributes to which he directs our attention. The Church would be bound to adjudge these attributes of a cosmic range to be cosmic in a different sense than the Teilhardian. No wonder Teilhard knew that his essay would lack the Vatican's Nihil Obstat and disqualify for official publication. However, we should refrain from thinking him personally averse to its seeing the light. He held his own Christianity to be in agreement not only with "what is most determinedly emergent"25 in him but also with "what is most alive in the Christian religion",26 so that he "finally .and permanently recognized that in the latter" he had "found the complement" he had "sought" to his "own self".27 He says that therefore to "what is most alive in the Christian religion" he has "surrendered".28
24.Op. cit., p. 127.
25.Ibid., p. 129.
26.Ibid.
27.Ibid., pp. 129-30.
28.Ibid., p. 130.
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We may pause a little over this gesture. The word expressing it harks back consciously to the phrase about surrendering himself absolutely to "faith in a world that is one and infallible - wherever it may lead me".29 The echo shows that world to be really "the synthesis of Christ and the universe", the Universal Christ whose being is organic to the cosmic Whole, the Christ who is "the soul of the world" and whose body in that case must be the world itself - the world for whose evolutionary progress Teilhard heartily shares the devotion of the modern humanists.30 Among the humanists, he31 informs us, "we have without any doubt been watching for the last century the birth and establishment of a new faith: the religion of evolution". And he32 asks what in truth is his own "cosmic sense...but precisely the same faith in the universe which animates modern pantheisms". Hence his synthesis of Christ and the universe is essentially pantheist except that the universe is not an impersonal energy but the fosterer and manifester of ever richer and deeper personality.
Similarly, the synthesis has an affinity with the "eastern religions" to which he was intensely drawn because "they are supremely universalist and cosmic"33 - the religions which are responsible, according to him, for "the birth of pantheism"34 but which he understood (or rather misunderstood) as suppressing the multiple in the One and leading to an unconsciousness of the individual person.35 But inasmuch as he grants that the sense of the Whole "never perhaps has... flowered more exuberantly than in the plains of India,'"he36 proves himself again by his cosmic sense a pantheist with a stress on the individual person in the totality, the One being
29.Ibid., p. 103.
30.Ibid., p. 123.
32.Ibid., p. 124.
33.Ibid., pp. 121-22.
34.Ibid., p. 122.
36.Ibid.
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seen as "the concentration of the multiple".37But his "perso-nalism" must not be taken as entirely Christian; for although "Christianity is eminently the religion of the imperishable and the personal", the average Christian, "as a result of seeing only 'personal' relationships in the world...has ended by reducing the creator and creature to the scale of 'juridical man'".38 Teilhard explains this verdict on the average Christian; "In his effort to exalt the value of spirit and supematuratity of the divine he has come to look upon the soul as a transient guest in the cosmos and a prisoner of matter. For such a Christian, accordingly, the universe has ceased to extend the primacy of its organic unity over the whole field of interior experience: the operation of salvation, reduced to being no more than a matter of personal success, develops without any reference to cosmic evolution."39
Teilhard's true final position, as sketched in How I Believe, is best summed up in three passages of Letters to Two Friends: "We all need a new face of God to worship, and I am more and more convinced that this face can appear to us only through and beyond an 'ultra-human'" (March 31, 1950).40 -"...the vague impressions of my youth are now invading everything in the form of participation in some immense energy which is a curious blend of Hindu 'totality', Western 'technology', and Christian 'personalism'. More and more I see growing in me the evidence and the human consequences of the great thing that is happening right now. Not 'God who is dying,' as Nietzsche said, but 'God who is changing,' so that, as I am in the habit of saying, the Upward movement is now reinforced by a Forward movement never before considered by the religions" (July 25, 1950)41 - "...the moment one realizes that the Universe flows (and always has flowed) in the direction of 'ever greater order and consciousness,' a whole
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., p. 125.
39. Ibid., pp. 125-26.
40 Op. cit., p. 112.
41. Ibid., p. 113.
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group of values is introduced into things which, without making one blind or insensitive to Disorder or Evil, give everything an extraordinary savor, warmth, and limpidity: a superior and synthetic form of 'mysticism' in which the strengths and seductions of oriental 'pantheism' and Christian personalism converge and culminate!" (January 2, 1951 )42
Of course, Teilhard, with his central religious slogan "the Universal Christ", seriously believes that "the mainstream of the Christian 'phylum'" is completely capable of carrying as its own "the great event of our time" - namely, "a change in the face of God in which the pure 'God of above' of yesterday is being combined with a kind of 'God of ahead' (in extension of the Human)" (August 30, 1930),43 But he is perceptive enough to make three statements which clarify his "belief": "Truly...I have confidence that my line of thought is essentially Christian, in spite of the fact that I am sometimes forced to define it to myself with a word that looks rather dangerous: hyper-Catholic" (June 25, 1926)44 - "I remain rather (with a few others) at the spearhead of the fight for a 'new' Christianity, a position that renders my superiors shy whenever it is a question of me" (April 30, 1947)45 - "I know that, from your point of view, those limitations (and my not fighting stronger against them) are hard to understand; and I feel it myself to some extent too. And yet, I do not see any other logical (or even biological) way to proceed. According to my own principles, I cannot fight against Christianity: I can only work inside it, by trying to transform and 'convert' it. A revolutionary attitude wou!d be much more easy, and also much more pleasant, but it would be suicidal. So I must go on step by step tenaciously" (March 21,1942).46
A new, transformed, "converted" Christianity, brought about by his working towards it from inside the Roman
42.Ibid-, p. 115.
43.Ibid., p. 114.
44.Ibid., p. 35.
45.Ibid., p. 171.
46.Ibid., p. 155.
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Church, constituted the kind of change which Teilhard saw coming in the face of God. And we cannot help being struck by his mentioning "Hindu 'totality'" and "the strengths and seductions of oriental 'pantheism'" as the factors introducing the universal aspect of his religion. The Christian contribution is restricted to "personalism". Teilhard is often disposed to talk of the Christianity of St. Paul and St. John as supplying the universe-ingredient to make up his Universal Christ. Why has he not talked here of Pauline or Johannine "totality" plus the usual personalism of the Christ preached in the Gospels? Why has he not spoken of a Christian "pantheism" derived from the Epistles of Paul and the Fourth Gospel? We can see his feeling that his religion, while remaining Christianity by retaining Christ, transcends whatever totality of a pantheist character the Christian scripture can attribute to Christ.
Indeed, what he extracts from that scripture is more than it can really yield. We observe the excess when in his letter of October 30, 1926, he47 refers to St. Paul: "Have you read...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." The last sentence is strange enough for a Christian: it implies that the human Jesus, though necessary for the World-Soul to be named Christ, does not draw Teilhard's adoration at all. And this exclusion is quite pointedly prepared a little earlier when, while appreciating "the real historical beginning of Christ (with a practical code of moral comparison with Him)" presented by "the first three Gospels", he48 declares: "If Jesus were no more than 'a father, a mother, a brother, a sister' to us, I would have no need of Him; and, in a sense, the past does not interest me." But what is most notable is that, though the name "Christ" is there, it denotes the typical God-sense of "Hindu 'totality'" and "oriental 'pantheism'". Of course, the Hindu Godhead, the
47.Ibid., p. 48.
48.Ibid.
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oriental Divinity, is more than a World-Soul; but the latter is the characteristic aspect of this Godhead, this Divinity, in relation to the universe. The beginning of the Epistle to the Colossians has never before been credited with such an aspect by any Catholic exegete. And Teilhard is aware of the lacuna. He writes of "the full, organic meaning" which that Chapter of the Epistle "requires": he is saying that so far the meaning he needs has not been given but that it should be given. In other words, St. Paul does no more than frame for us a text which we may use as a point de depart for an entirely novel development towards the coming change in God's face.
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(4)
Apropos of "the change in the face of God", with which Teilhard is primarily and passionately concerned, so that "God Ahead" may predominate over "God Above", he observes: "I know that hundreds of people around me feel it (hence the success of the books I've circulated privately)" (August 30, 1950).1
This allusion to a wide Teilhardian public, because of the representative nature of the author in the modem context, sends us back to the sequel Teilhard has in How I Believe to his announcement that he has surrendered to faith in the Universal Christ as a complement to his surrender to faith in the World. He2 writes: "But, if I have surrendered myself why should not others, all others, also do the same? I began by saying that what I am now writing is a personal confession. Deep in my mind, however, as I have proceeded, I have felt that something greater than myself was making its way into me. The passion for the world, from which my faith springs, the dissatisfaction, too, which I experience at first when 1 am confronted by any of the ancient forms of religion - are not these traces in my heart of the uneasiness and expectancy which characterize the religious state of the world today?"
Here we have an indication about the sort of people for whom How I Believe would be a significant and helpful document. Rideau,3 after de Lubac,4 has made out that the essay was specifically addressed ad Gentiles, unbelievers, non-Christians, And de Lubac5 quotes a letter of Teilhard's (March 1947) in which, answering an attack by Pere Lagrange-Garrigou, Teilhard says that How I Believe "was intended for a very special public and not for general circulation". De Lubac goes on: "He is ready to concede that his starting-point and
1.Letters to Two Friends, 1926-1952, p. 114.
2.Christianity and Evolution, p. 130.
3.Op. cil., p. 376.
4.Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning, p. 133.
5.Ibid., pp. 175-76.
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his causes for credibility, in so far as they are personal, may have little solidity or probative force for many minds, including that of his critic: they may, if they wish, regard them as 'flights of imagination'. He does not, however, believe that he is thereby excused from trying to say something that will weigh with other minds - the 'special public' he refers to. He considered that he owed this to the scientists he mixed with and who more or less shared his initial 'general view of the universe', even if they were incapable of discovering a solid basis for it. It was among these men that God had placed him, and it was of them that he once exclaimed in his missionary zeal, 'These are the Indies that call me with even more urgency than St. Francis Xavier's.'"
What de Lubac and Rideau suggest is valid, as far as it goes, for Teilhard certainly wanted to reconcile science and religion; but he never thought that the shortcoming lay always on the side of unbelievers. One of Rideau's quotations6 from him runs: "Everything stems from the perception and acceptance of a sense of the value of the world. It is the absence of such a sense...that leaves the admonitions of our missionaries so cold and uninspiring. On the other hand, once this sense emerges, then I am convinced the Christian faith will once again find echo throughout the world" (Letter of 3 January 1948). An earlier piece of Teilhard's writing rings the same note:7 "In their quest to give a name to the unknown God whose existence they divine, the Gentiles look to us. And then they turn away from a Gospel that seems to have no answer either to their outlook on the world, or to the questions they ask or to the things they look for. The resistance the Church comes up against nowadays in getting a footing, does not derive, as is sometimes said, from its dogmas being too lofty and its moral systems too difficult. It is due to the fact that men no longer recognize in us their religious and moral ideal and accordingly stand aside waiting
6.Op. cit., p. 318.
7.Ibid., p. 326.
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for something better" (L'incroyance moderne, 1933, in Science et Christ, p. 151).
There is nothing in the terms of Teilhard's extension from himself to others that would pinpoint fellow-scientists as his intended readership. Fellow-Christians who are forward-looking would as well come within his purview. Rideau has several passages, either directly quoting Teilhard or incorporating his words, which bear us out:
"With the present development of mankind, 'a new section or, to put it more exactly, a further dimension, has suddenly brought about an almost limitless expansion of man's destiny - a section and dimension of which there is no explicit mention in the Gospel. Until that happened, the Christian had learnt to think and act, to fear and worship, on the scale of his own individual life and death. How without breaking with his traditional background, will he or can he extend his faith and hope and charity to the proportions of a terrestrial organization that is destined to persist for millions of years?' ...There is 'a lack of proportion between the insignificant mankind that still appears in our catechisms and the great mankind with which science is concerned'; 'a lack of proportion between the tangible aspirations and anxieties and responsibilities of life, according to whether they are expressed in a secular book or a religious treatise'" (Le Christ evoluteur, 1942).8 - "Teilhard concludes a criticism...as follows: 'It is here, and only here, in this lack of balance (sometimes more sometimes less distinctly felt) that we can hope to find the ultimate source of the uneasiness that today lies heavy on the mind and consciousness of so many Christians, Contrary to what is generally held, it is not the scientific discovery of man's humble origins but much more the equally scientific discovery of man's fantastic future that now troubles the hearts of men; and it is with this above all, accordingly, that our modern apologetics should be concerned'" (Le Christ
8. Ibid., p. 323. In connection with the italicised phrase here, see the discussion in the Note at the end of the article.
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evoluteur).9...Christianity will lose, to the extent that it fails to embrace as it should everything that is human on earth, the keen edge of its vitality and its full power to attract. Being for the time incompletely human it will no longer fully satisfy even its own disciples....We wonder why there is so much unease in the hearts of religious seekers and priests..." (The Heart of the Problem, 1949, in The Future of Man, p. 260).10 - "Not only to the Gentiles and simple layfolk, but even in the heart of the religious orders, Christianity is still to some extent a refuge, but it does not embrace, or satisfy, or even lead the 'modern soul' any longer. Something has gone wrong, and something, therefore, must be provided, on this planet, in the field of faith and religion - and that without delay" (Le Dieu de revolution, 1953).11 - "Many Catholics, failing to find in their religion 'a complete vindication of their lives, adhere to Christianity but only for want of anything better, and only so long as a number of central points (in connection with the origin and significance of the world) are discreetly left in the background. This is no longer a complete and fervent adherence to the light one has found. They are already - how many people have told me this - conscious of awaiting a new Gospel' (Le sens humain, 1942)."12
Lastly, we have Teilhard referring to his own writing and the Catholics readership it commanded: "Between my way of thinking and the really 'orthodox' (I do not say 'official' but 'practical') Christian vision of the World there is not such a big gap as you think. The proof is the way in which the best of the Catholics are jumping on my poor essays. As I wrote a few days ago to a Superior, a good friend of mine, I do not know whether my bread is well baked: anyhow the way the people eat it is a pathetic proof how much they are starving for a food
9,Ibid., p. 326.
10.Ibid., p. 327.
11.Ibid., p. 328.
12.Ibid.
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in which Love of God does not exclude, but includes, Love of the World" (Letter of February 14,1949).13
All this - taking us beyond the narrow focus sought for How I Believe - brings us back to the point made by the first two quotations we made in contradicting de Lubac and Rideau. They were directed at missionary work and the need for the right type of apologetics. The Catholic priesthood itself is confronted there. And it is strange how de Lubac forgets the information he14 has himself proferred about Teilhard's essay: "Pere Teilhard wrote it in China between September and November [1934] at the suggestion of Mgr. Bruno de Solages." And de Lubac never attends to the fact that at least four times Teilhard uses the pronoun "you" unmistakably to denote de Solages, a fellow-Jesuit who was the rector of the Institut Catholique of Toulouse. In one place, Teilhard uses it after affirming about the "cosmic sense": "In fact, nothing in the vast and polymorphous domain of mysticism (religious, poetical, social and scientific) can be explained without the hypothesis of such a faculty, by which we react synthetically to the spatial and temporal ensemble of things in order to apprehend the Whole behind the multiple."15 Naturally the usual Roman Catholic mind would not be immediately receptive to this affirmation and Teilhard says to de Solages: "You may, if you wish, speak of temperament ..."l6 At the next place, Teilhard says: "You see, then, how by degrees my initial faith in the world was irresistibly transformed into a faith in the increasing and indestructible spiritualization of the world."17 Evidently Teilhard is impressing on his Jesuit friend the mode in which the modern Christian should envisage religion. At another place, after being told that in the supreme universal personality we shall inevitably find ourselves personally immortalised, we read:
13.Utters to Two Friends, 1926-1952, p. 198.
14.Op. cit., p. 133.
15.Christianity and Evolution, pp. 102-03.
16.Ibid., p. 103.
17.Ibid., p. 113.
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"You may find this an astonishing prospect: but that is because the materialist illusion is still at work, in one of its many forms, and it is leading you astray, as it has led astray the majority of pantheists. We almost inevitably, as I recalled at the beginning of this section, picture the great Whole to ourselves as a vast ocean in which the threads of individual being disappear. It is the sea in which the grain of salt is dissolved, the fire in which the straw goes up in smoke. Thus to be united with that Great Whole is to be lost. But what I want to be able to proclaim to all men is that this is a false picture and contradicts everything that has emerged most clearly in the course of my awakening to faith. The Whole is not, definitely not, the tensionless, and thus dissolving, immensity in which you look for its image. Like us it is essentially a centre, possessing the qualities of a centre...."18
These passages provide the key to the nucleus of the readership Teilhard has in mind. It is the Roman Catholic clergy, whom de Solages stands for in general. A friend of Teilhard's, he could not be the sort of mentality that condemned and thwarted Teilhard all his life. But he too has his reservations. Like "the majority of pantheists", as Teilhard conceives them, de Solages, though not a pantheist but representing all Roman Catholics of the official type, is yet habituated to think of any universal Whole as a diffuse unit in which the personal human soul would be submerged by union. Teilhard points out that to think in this manner is to approach the Whole on the analogy of a uniform material substratum - like the ether of the old physics. Teilhard shows the Whole to be a Being commensurate with the physical cosmos but with a quality which carries to the supreme degree what the highest result of universal evolution possesses -personalisation - and in whose Super-Personhood this personalisation is itself super-personalised. The shying away from a religion of the Whole, from the worship of a cosmic Divinity, is hit off with precision by Teilhard in one of
18. Ibid., pp. 116-17.
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Rideau's citations:19 "In practice, if not in theory, our Lord has been too exclusively presented to our contemporaries in the form of a complement promised to their personality - a complement that is moral, extrinsic, particularist, and individual. They have been given a picture of Christ dissociated from the universe, as a detached fragment which brings men into conflict with one another. Is it in any way surprising if the Soul of the world, now that it has, in its turn, spontaneously disclosed itself to their consciousness, has appeared to them as an 'extra', or antagonistic, or stronger absolute - a new Messiah more desirable than the old?" (L'ame du monde, 1918, in Ecrits du temps de la guerre, p. 227).
Further, the extrinsic individual Christ stood in history for a God who was Himself expressed in religious texts "in terms of a typically neolithic symbolism" - that is to say, one belonging to "the age of a mankind (and, more widely, of a world) built up from the sky above to the village below, on the model and (practically speaking) the scale of the family and the ploughed field".20 In such a universe, monotheism could not have emerged "except in terms of a God who is the great paterfamilias and supreme landlord of the inhabited world".21 This was written in Le phenomene chretien, 1950, but round about the time of How I Believe there is the same attitude on Teilhard's part: "The expression of our Christology is still exactly the same as that which, three centuries ago, was sufficient for men whose cosmic outlook has now become physically insupportable" (Christologie et evolution, 1933).22 -"The time has gone when God could simply be imposed on us from outside, like a master or proprietor. The world will never again fall on its knees, except before the organic centre of its evolution. What at the present moment we all lack, in varying
19.Op. at., p. 319.
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degrees, is a new formulation of holiness" (Le phenomene spirituel, 1937, in L'energie humaine, p. 136).23
"The organic centre of the world's evolution" is Teilhard's Universal Christ. And the essence of all these passages is distilled in the words24 with which, just before its "Epilogue", the main body of How I Believe closes and from which we have already culled a phrase: "A general convergence of religions upon a Universal Christ who fundamentally satisfies them all: that seems to me the only possible conversion of the world and'the only form in which a religion of the future can be conceived."
These words indicate that the essay was centrally written for those who want to convert the world to Christianity. It calls for the abandonment of the old apologetics and the adoption of a new line by the Church.
The right way for the Church to set about in its work of reassuring dissatisfied Christians and of Christianising unbelievers, the Gentiles, the "infidels" (to use another bit of the old terminology): such is the main general purpose that can be ascribed to How I Believe, apart from its character of a personal document contributing to the study of the psychology of belief. And the Christianity in which love of the World and love of God are combined has its true apologetic colour properly brought forth in a letter of 1948-49 which again discusses "faith in heaven" and "faith in earth" as both leading to the same religious conclusion: "The synthesis of the two forms of faith in Christo jesu is not an arbitrarily chosen tactical move ad usum infidelium. It represents hie et nunc a condition of survival for an increasing number of Christians. We have to choose right now between the Christianising of neo-humanism and its condemnation. The problem is with us now, and the time is short."25
23.Ibid., pp. 318-19.
24.Christianity and Evolution, p. 130.
25.Quoted by Claude Cuenot, Teilhard de Chardin: A Biographical Study (Burns and Oates, London, 1965), p. 271.
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The entire drive of How I Believe, with its synthesis of scientifically evolutionary pantheism and the Universal Christ who fulfils in a personalist manner Teilhard's innate pantheist tendency and who breaks through Christianity as it has been presented up to now is caught in an early communication of Teilhard's, bearing on his master-passion for a "converted" Christianity which could "convert" mankind: "What continues rather to dominate my outlook is the realization, sometimes overwhelming, of a lack of proportion between the greatness of the realities involved in the world's forward progress (physical, biological, intellectual, social, etc.) and the pettiness and narrowness, the makeshift nature, of the philosophico-dogmatic solution which we claim to have built up as a permanent bulwark for the universe. We're trying to put the ocean into a nutshell" (Letter of 16 March 1921).26
We can now discern with accuracy not only Teilhard's primary purpose, but also his basic belief as it emerges from his famous essay. Merely because his limited vision of historical spirituality could embrace Christ alone as a divine incarnation, he calls by the name of "Universal Christ" the Personal Pantheos whom he has intuited and loved from birth and in whom all God-lovers will attain by their union with Him a fulfilling super-personalisation. Accepting Christ, Teilhard naturally remains within the Roman Church that, in his eyes, derives from this incarnation, but he finds all traditional dogmas and apologetics most faulty, and strives, by reading his own Personal Pantheos in St. Paul's Epistles, to metamorphose Roman Catholicism into, first of all, a pantheist Personalism and, finally, an evolutionist form of this faith in a World single, infallible, all-guiding.
It is thus that we can evaluate correctly the conventional-seeming sentence at almost the start of How 1 Believe: "...I have
26. Rideau, op. cit., p. 316.
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tried to pin down in what follows, the reason for my faith as a Christian."27
Such an evolution means that actually there is nothing of Christianity in the accepted sense in Teilhard's Christian faith. And perhaps we cannot do better than make a gloss on basic Teilhardism with an excerpt from another credo of our author - the commencement of My Universe (1924). There, after asserting "the primacy of consciousness", the faith that it is better to be than not to be and better to be more than to be less; he adds that "directly side by side" with this "comer-stone" of his "interior life" he "can distinguish another: Faith in life, in other words the unshakable certainty that the universe considered as a whole
a.Has a goal
b.Cannot take the wrong road nor come to a halt in mid-journey."28
Then Teilhard speculates on what the assurance of success may be due to. He gives four possible causes: it "may be due to a providential transcendent action; or to the influence of a spiritual energy immanent in the whole (some soul of the world); or to a sort of infallibility which, though not accorded to isolated attempts, attaches to indefinitely multiplied attempts ('the infallibility of great numbers'); or again it may, more probably, derive from the hierarchically ordered action of these factors, at the same time."29
In the last clause we have a clear pointer to Teilhard's full vision: transcendentalism fused with pantheism as well as with a progressivist naturalism in which a forward-tending "grope" of elements moves through the multitudinous play of "chance". But Teilhard, at this stage, hastens to add: "the precise reason does not matter for the moment. Before looking for an explanation of the thing, 1
27.op. cit., p. 96.
28.Science and christ ( Collins, London, 1966), p
29.Ibid., p. 41.
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that is to say (in virtue of our first principle) of arriving at a certain higher degree of consciousness."30 Then comes the grand finale of the Teilhardian confessio fidei:
"I believe it by inference: because if the universe has hitherto been successful in the unlikely task of bringing human thought to birth in what seems to us an unimaginable tangle of chances and mishaps, it means that it is fundamentally directed by a power that is eminently in control of the elements that make up the universe. I believe it, too, from necessity because, if I thought that the solidity of the substance in which I am implicated was not proof against any test, I would feel completely lost and despairing. Finally, and perhaps most of all, I believe it from love: because I love the universe that surrounds me too dearly not to have confidence in it."31
The closing note of the confession has the gist of the "controversial" passage and the same accent of pantheist Personalism as in those keywords of How I Believe: "the universe which I adored from birth."3Z
We have used a quotation by Rideau from Teilhard's essay Le Christ evoluteur, having the words: "...a section and dimension of which there is no explicit mention in the Gospel."
In the essay's English translation, Christ the Evolver, included in the collection Christianity and Evolution (Collins, London, 1972), the words carry a footnote (p, 142) by the Editor, N.M. Wildiers, Doctor of Theology: "Christ had foretold it: 'I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you in all the truth'" (John 16:12-13).
30.Ibid.
32.Op. cit., p.128.
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Teilhard is speaking of the new conception of man's destiny that has emerged with the evolutionary vision of the world - the destiny of " 'humanization' of mankind" which is a further step beyond the "'hominization' of life" and which shows the human group no longer as forming "a static aggregate of juxtaposed elements" but as constituting "a sort of super-organism subject to a global and well-defined law of growth".33 In short, Teilhard is looking towards a state of collective "co-reflection", awaiting us in the distant future, and he asks: "How can one expect [the Christian], without breaking through the framework of tradition, to expand his faith, his hope and his charity to the measure of a terrestrial organization which is destined to continue throughout millions of years?"34 The Editor's purport is: the Spirit of truth, representing Christ after his departure, was meant to reveal even the Teilhardian evolutionary vision which Christ was aware of but kept silent about because the time was not ripe for it!
It is difficult not to laugh at the footnote's extravagant claim. But it is not merely its absurdity that strikes us. We are struck too, in the first place, by its attempt to cover up the obvious. Christ, who is addressing his disciples, refers obviously to matters which would be revealed in their own lifetime and not in after-ages. In the second place, it is easy to prove from both the Bible and the Church's pronouncements that the doctrinal scope of Christ's "many things" and "all the truth" is severely restricted and can never be made to extend to whatever one wants. We may draw upon The Mystical Body of Christ by Fulton Sheen, Ph.D. {Sheed and Ward, London, 1938) to fix the correct relevance of Christ's declaration.
Fulton Sheen, himself a distinguished Roman Catholic thinker, is aware (p. 254) of the quotation Wildiers has made but his readers can never interpret it as Wildiers does, for
33.Ibid,, p. 140.
34.Ibid., p. 142.
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already on p. 182 we have the proper setting for its drift. Discussing Papal Infallibility, Sheen writes:
"As the Council of the Vatican stated it: 'For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter, that by His Revelation they might make known new doctrines, but that by His Assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation on the Deposit of faith delivered through the apostles'.35 Infallibility, then, lays down nothing new; it only safeguards and explains what is old. The contents of revelation closed with the Apocalypse."
Hence "many things" and "all the truth" cannot go beyond what the New Testament already holds. Roman Catholicism, whether explicating the saying of Christ (John 14:26) or understanding from the Spirit-inspired Apostles' writings all that he left unsaid during his life (John 16:12-13), cannot, without contradicting itself, trace to the Gospel the promise of anything like the Teilhardian vision.
Wildiers's footnote is one more example of how Teilhard's co-religionist admirers, when they are not trying to demonstrate that Teilhard merely formulates in a modern mode something the Church has already said, are trying to show that even if the Church has been silent in the past she can take as something implicit in herself any truth found in Teilhard!
35. Const. Dog. de Ecclesia Dei, c. 4.
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III
We have tried to show Teilhard's "apologetics" in its proper bearings. We have distinguished it from the classical form with which it is equated by admirers who wish to assimilate him into traditional Christianity. True, Teilhard has a missionary aim inasmuch as he wants to bring the modern world to Christ. But we must never forget that the Christ he preaches is one who is in accord with the demand of that world and differs from the traditional version of the God-Man of Judea. And his missionary aim backfires on the Church to which he belongs, for he wants just as earnestly the traditional version to change in the light of the religious intuition prompted by modernism.
Rideau, who keeps insisting on Teilhard's assimilableness to the Church's basic stand, is yet forced to admit difficulties in him for Roman Catholics. But he tries to play them down by adducing certain reasons for them. After mentioning the marked originality of Teilhard's thought as one difficulty, h1 adds: "It is surprising, too, that so original a thought should be embodied in a style that is coloured by personal emphasis and prepossessions." Then he 2 comes to the final explanation, namely, that Teilhard's message "is addressed primarily to the Gentiles and uses language deliberately adapted to the modern world". Rideau's suggestion3 is that the difficulties are linguistic and that if "the deposit of faith", "the Word of God", could merely be re-expressed in consonance with new historic factors Teilhardism would hardly be considered "a shattering revision". But, when he4 tells us of the project that
1.Op. cit., p. 244,
2.Ibid., p. 245.
3.Ibid., p. 243.
4.Ibid.
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inspired Teilhard - "the gulf between the Church and the modern world must be closed" - we get a hint of the backfiring we have spoken of, and are emboldened to ask: "Why should the Teilhardian use of language create difficulties unless what is addressed to the Gentiles is at the same time a criticism of the terms in which Roman Catholic theology still expresses itself and of the old dogmas it still retains in face of the modern world?" The Church evidently finds it difficult to accept Teilhard as its missionary. This means that the manner in which he attempts to convert the Gentiles cannot be taken, always and mainly, as suiting the Church. It has to go against the Church's position and attitude as he sees them. We are therefore under no obligation to interpret Teilhard's apologetics to be no more than linguistically anti-traditional.
Something in his thought itself sheers away from the orthodox line. And Rideau, despite his aversion to doing so, has again and again to write in a regretful vein when particular points are evaluated. For an example, take the subject of Redemption in Teilhard's hands. Rideau5 informs us: "He looks at it in a way that is more faithful to the logic of his thought than to the biblical evidence.... It would certainly seem that because he wished to present his apostolic message in a form acceptable to the modern world Teilhard did not develop the full depth of the traditional teaching of sin whose gravity (involving a divorce and a rupture of friendship between God and man) called for a tragical redemption, God's passage through death."
Rideau's words definitely attest to Teilhard's fundamental non-orthodoxy: else he would not speak of the "logic" of Teilhard's "thought" as ignoring the evidence of the Bible. But he endeavours at the same time to make this non-orthodoxy look like a matter of missionary convenience - a strategic disguise in order better to impress the modern world and win acceptance by it. The truth is not that Teilhard, while addressing the Gentiles, has orthodoxy up his sleeve: he
5. Ibid., p. 171.
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presents his message as he does simply because neither he nor the modern world whose product he is has any need of a Christianity that fails to chime with the heterodox implications of an evolutionary universe. All we can affirm on the other side is: Teilhard, in the midst of his modernism and his heterodoxy, firmly holds that the evolutionary universe which is basic to his thought is fully provided for in his double-aspected formula: "an apologetics based on evolution but whose spirit seems to me to be truly and equally Christian."6 Evolution, not Christianity, is the basis of Teilhard's missionary project; nevertheless, in his view, Christianity is well served by such a basis if we get simultaneously at the true drift of the evolutionary phenomenon and the true version of the Christian faith.
What is the former's true drift and what the latter's true version? The whole of Teilhardism would be contained in the answer to this question. We have already treated the theme from various angles. Now we may concentrate the answer in a few excerpts and then proceed to the precise reconciliation proper to Teilhard's sense of the true drift and the true version. Thus we shall get at the true revelation of Teilhardism itself.
On the evolutionary phenomenon we may take the pronouncement:7 "Our world contains within itself a mysterious promise of the future implicit in its natural evolution." On the Christian faith let us pick out the utterance:8 "If Christianity is to keep its place at the head of mankind, it must make itself explicitly recognizable as a sort of pan-Christism,"
A commentary on the two statements comes in a letter of August 13,1948:9 "The fundamental question really at issue is
6.Letter of August 21, 1925, to Auguste Valensin. quoted in Christopher Mooney's Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ (Collins, London, 1966), p. 199.
7.Writings in Time of War (Collins, London, 1968), pp. 55-56.
8.Science and Christ, p. 124.
9.Letters to Two Friends, 1926-1952, p. 106.
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whether or not official authority is willing to accept (and to integrate into the Christian faith) a 'faith' in a future (i.e. a super-evolution) of Humanity on earth."
Here we are given to understand that evolution points to a higher state of itself in the future, the development of a Super-Humanity on earth by the very drive of the process which has developed through millennia an increasing complexity of biological structure and an advancing interiority of consciousness. Also, we receive the impression that this terrestrial fulfilment is the object not only of the modern scientific vision truly interpreted but also of the most authentic religious intuition possible today. There is a "faith" involved and to this "faith" Christianity has to adjust itself by finding in its heart of hearts a response it can identify as natural to its own revelatory drive. We cannot have integration, on top of acceptance, of the new "faith", without such a discovery.
A further gloss on the critical religious situation in which the Church is placed meets us in a quotation from Teilhard by Rideau:10 "The neo-humanist mysticism of an ahead clashes with the Christian mysticism of the above: it is precisely in this apparent conflict between the old faith in a transcendent God and a young 'faith' in an immanent universe that we find the modern religious crisis: here we touch the inmost essence, expressed in a form at once scientific and social. The whole progress of the kingdom of God depends at the moment on the problem of reconciling with each other not superficially but organically these two currents" (International Conference of the Society of Jesus, Versailles, 1947).
An organic and not a superficial reconciliation: this is Teilhard's call vis-a-vis Christianity's "transcendent God" and Evolutionism's "immanent universe" - that is to say, a universe inwardly activated by its own nature towards an ultimate self-fulfilment in a Super-Humanity, towards a final convergence - an "Omega Point" - of all reflective conscious-
10. Op. cit., p. 315.
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ness to form a totalised co-reflective Super-Consciousness. Teilhard's own solution of the crisis is what he terms "pan-Christism", the religion of the Cosmic Christ. But he appears to be in two minds as to how cosmos and Christ are related. What is the real meaning of making Christ a universal presence by which the transcendent God and the immanent universe are linked in a living way, conjoined in an internal manner?
How intensely Teilhard would like to permeate the cosmos" with Christ is evident from the very start of his religious career. To be convinced we have only to read a passage Rideau11 cites from one of his earliest writings: "In my own small way, Lord, I would wish to be the apostle and (if I may be so bold) the evangelist of your Christ in the universe.... To bring Christ, in virtue of interconnexions that are specifically organic, to the heart of realities that are considered the most fraught with danger, the most philosophically naturalistic, the most pagan - that is my gospel and there lies my mission" (Le pretre, 1918, in Ecrits du temps de la guerre, p. 298). Rideau12 rightly sees as basic to Teilhard "the experience of the conjunction or coincidence of the universe and Christ", and adds: "As has been demonstrated by Madame M. Barthe-lemy-Madaule, it is from this intuition that the whole body of Teilhard's work is derived."
But Rideau13 is careful to stress a feature of Teilhardism which poses a challenge to the synthetising mind: "Throughout his life he was to strive to unite, while still keeping them distinct, two absolutes: 'that of experience (the universe) and that of Revelation (the transcendent God)' (Mon univers, 1916, in Ecrits, p. 278)." The suggestion here is that God and the universe must never be identified, and that no Pantheism such as Spinoza's should be entertained; but there is also the suggestion that we have "two absolutes", which must signify
11.Ibid., p. 331.
12.Ibid., p. 329.
13.Ibid., p. 328.
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that to Teilhard the universe has in some sense as much primacy, as much sufficiency, as much reality as God: the position is as if there were not only a transcendent divinity but also a Pantheos, and the two godheads - each existing in its own right - were to be organically reconciled. Obviously, Teilhard's religious sense is pretty complicated. And nothing short of a strong suspicion of there being a Teilhard Pantheos leads Pastor Crespy to remark, as Rideau 14 notes: "Teilhard tries to make evolution say what only faith can say,"
Teilhard himself often makes no bones about the absolutism of the universe for him. "I am possessed", he15 says, "by a certain demon or angel of the All and the Universal." Again, he16 confesses to "a certain enthusiastic vision of the immensity and promise of the World, a certain relish, a certain intoxication with real concrete 'being' as it is revealed to us in the Universe". As a Christian he cannot circumscribe himself with the cosmos, however drunk with it his religious heart may be: he needs must turn his eyes to the Transcendent. But even the Transcendent is, for him, a summum bonum continuous with the Universe's revelation of "real concrete 'being'". To his friend Leontine Zanta he17 writes from China: "It looks as though mankind will never regain its passion for God until God is presented to it as the term of a movement which extends our worship of the concrete Real (rather than tearing us away from it). Oh how tremendously powerful the Real would be for lifting us out of our egoism if only we knew how to see it in its prodigious greatness."
"Worship of the concrete Real" which is the physical cosmos, and this worship extended (rather than diverted) to God, the Transcendent, who thereby is definable as the Super-Real, the Ultra-physical, the Hyper-cosmic: here we have the Teilhardian bedrock. This bedrock may be felt also through
14.Ibid., pp. 648p-19.
15.Letters to Two Friends, 1926-1952, p. 40.
16.Ibid., p. 44.
17.Utters to Leontine Zanta (Collins, London 1969), p. 72.
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an expression of Teilhard's18 like: "the Saint...loses his materiality. Everything is God for him, God is everything for him, and for him Christ is at once God and everything." Hence the concrete Real, the physical cosmos, must in the last resort be, to Teilhard, the outer expression or the expressive body of a World-Soul, and the World-Soul must be the transcendent God Himself expressed or embodied in cosmic terms. Hence, again, the Cosmic Christ must be the Transcendent self-projected as the Soul of a universe which is that Soul's concretely real form moving evolutionarily onward to manifest this Soul completely and join it with its transcendent counterpart. Hence, finally, pan-Christism must be a new pantheism differing from the old sort, as understood by Christianity, in only one particular: Pan-Christos, as the Soul of the cosmos, is a Being who has an aspect of Self distinct from all the selves or beings or entities He manifests out of His own plenitude, so that He can be loved as the Personal Other at the same time that He is known as one's own deepest Within. But this pan-Christism is like the pantheism abhorred by Christianity insofar as the cosmos is a manifestation of Christ Himself and not a foreign substance, however often the manifestation may be a veil rather than a "transparency" or -to use a still more typical term of Teilhardian mysticism - a "diaphany".
Christianity, unlike ancient Vedanta, knows nothing of such a many-sided vision. As a Christian, Teilhard shares his co-religionists' anti-pantheist shudder. However, while the doctrinal mind in him tends to shy away, his intuition cannot be frightened off. In consequence we see him expressing his "cosmic sense" in several modes, some of them running counter to those where the conscious Christian is unmistakably intended to have his say. Facing the unconventional modes, de Lubac19 observes: "He tried to show in Our Lord Jesus Christ 'the synthesis of the created Universe and its
18.Writings in Time of War, p. 108.
19.The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin (Collins, London, 1967), p. 202.
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Creator': did he not sometimes seem to establish this synthesis at a too accessible level and thus, in spite of the qualifications and corrections we have noted, and against his unmistakable intention, to some degree naturalize Christ?"
We may ask in return: "How can Christ help being naturalized to some degree by a worshipper of the concrete Real?" Simultaneously we must admit that Teilhard the Churchman would act as censor to his instinctive World-adoration, his spontaneous touch on the World-Soul through the "prodigious greatness" of its cosmos. The Churchman Teilhard is bound to look upon the World as gross Matter, as Godless distracting dust, to which the human psyche must never give its love and to whose glitter it must always rise superior. Especially the physical universe of modem science, with its intoxicating immensity and unity, is the snare par excellence for stealing the heart away from the Christian pursuit of the "above", the transcendent Perfection beyond cosmic life. Yet Teilhard the modernist can hardly shut his eyes to this universe. How then to be a genuine Christian as well as an authentic modernist - how to keep Jesus as "Our Lord" even while leaping to the call of science's divine-seeming cosmos?
In order not to look worshipfully at this World in spite of thrilling to its wonderfulness, Teilhard seeks to combine a Personal Creator God with a Divine Universal Presence in the creation. To do so he has to oppose a common practice of Jesus's partisans. They emphasise how sweetly and virtuously a Man lived in Galilee twenty centuries before us rather than emphasising how superhumanly he rose from the dead, assumed a body of glory, took his place in heaven to oversee the entire universe and reveal himself as the terminator and gatherer-up of all things. In a passage we can cull from Rideau20 we get a passionate appeal by Teilhard to Jesus to disclose his real being: "Sometimes people think that they can increase your attraction in my eyes by stressing almost
20. Op. at, pp. 613-14.
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exclusively the charm and goodness of your human life, in the past. But truly, O Lord, if I wanted to cherish only a man, then I would surely turn to those whom you have given me with the bloom of their charm here and now. Are there not with our mothers, brothers, friends and sisters, enough irresistibly lovable people around me? Why should I turn to the Judea of 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. Tear away, O Jesus, the clouds with your lightning! Show yourself to us as the mighty, the radiant, the risen! Come to us once again as the Pantocrator who reigned alone in the cupolas of the ancient basilicas! Nothing less than this Parousia is needed to counterbalance and crown in our hearts the glory of the world that is coming into view. So that we may triumph over the world with you, come to us clothed in the glory of the world" (Le Milieu divin, pp. 127-28).
What directly concerns us are the last two sentences. Teilhard wants Jesus to come in such a manner as both to prevent the glorious universe of science from out-weighing him in our eyes and to allow this universe to get its fullest response from us, the utmost justification of its splendour. Teilhard wants the manner of Jesus's coming to be itself cosmic and still personal: he must appear as a Universal Presence and yet as substantially different from the Universe - the wonderful world must be seen to be a tremendous beauty with which he has adorned himself but with which he is not identified - it is divine by being his decoration and not divine in its own right.
Thus does Teilhard strive to be a genuine Christian no less than an authentic modernist and to proclaim pan-Christism without succumbing to what Christianity considers the danger of world-deification in pantheism. But has he really subdued the glory of the world that science has overawingly laid bare and has he rendered valid a Pan-Christos without bringing in a Pantheos?
If the wonderful world still remains substantially different
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from Christ, its power must always stand over against him: such a world, by its alien glory, will continue to demand our worship. To avoid this, we must relate it to Christ as an emanation of his own being: we must be able to see Christ himself in it - not merely by its clothing him but by its forming his outer self - an evolving and developing self, no doubt, but nonetheless essentially his own being.
Nor is Teilhard always bound down to the metaphor of "clothing"; he is capable of exhibiting a more plastic vision. In a recent book R.C. Zaehner21 has some quotations from him which lead on from the sense of All to the question of this All's relation to God. Zaehner has Teilhard saying: "When one reads the accounts of certain Christian or pagan mystics or indeed the confidences of many apparently quite ordinary men, one has to ask oneself seriously whether there is not a sort of cosmic consciousness in our soul more diffused than individual consciousness, more intermittent, but perfectly well defined - a sort of feeling of the presence of all beings at once, not perceived as multiple and separate but as sharing in the same unity - at least in some future time...." Zaehner remarks: "In 1923 Teilhard thought that this experience of the All must necessarily point towards God. 'The All,' he then wrote, 'with its attributes of universality, unity, and infallibility (at least relative), could not reveal itself to us unless we recognized God in it - or the shadow of God. - And can God, on his side, manifest himself to us except by passing through the All, by assuming the figure, or at least the clothing, of the All?'"
Here Teilhard is ready to go beyond Christ's coming merely "clothed in the glory of the world". He entertains the possibility of Christ taking on the world's very figure - nay, he even conceives of Christ passing through the world, which means that the world would be Christ himself not only assuming the look of the world for the sake of self-manifestation but actually charging the world with his own being and
21, Drugs, Mysticism and Make-believe (Collins, London, 1972), pp. 177-78. The reference Zaehner gives is: "Comment je crois (Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1969), pp. 75-76. Written in 1923" - and Ibid., p. 77.
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getting transmitted by it as if its glory were his outer self, though under the conditions of a developing process. To the Teilhard of this passage the "clothing"-metaphor is the minimum necessary rather than the maximum possible. The latter takes Divinity to be making the All "the shadow of God", a reduced reflex or image or duplication of Divinity in spatio-temporal terms, the being of Divinity transposed and exteriorised in an evolving universal form.
The solution Teilhard has offered in the passage from Le Milieu divin is not the whole solution even he is capable of offering. It is a superficial, not an organic reconciliation between "the old faith in a transcendent God and a young 'faith' in an immanent universe". The true solution glimmers out only in those parts of his writings where in presenting through Christ "the synthesis of the created Universe and its Creator" he seems, as de Lubac marks, to "naturalize Christ" to some degree even while unmistakably intending to preserve Christ's supernatural status.
And, after all, if Teilhard wishes to build a living bridge between Evolutionism and Christianity, he cannot but do as we have suggested. The very terms in which he poses the religious situation brought about by Evolutionism require him in some measure to "naturalize Christ" and thereby Christify Nature. To be convinced, we have only to look at the picture he paints time and again of this situation. Rideau provides us with several glimpses of it, some of them carrying also Teilhard's hints of his fond belief that the picture- does not call for a rejection of Christianity but, on the contrary, for a readjusted Christian frame to lend it proper definition.
Teilhard speaks of "the Soul of the world" having "spontaneously disclosed itself" to the consciousness of our contemporaries and of its appearing "to them as an 'extra', or antagonistic, or stronger absolute" than Christ - "a new Messiah more desirable than the old" (L'ame du monde, 1918, in Ecrits, p. 227).22
22. Ibid., p. 319.
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We also read: "Some reasonable reconciliation must be made, I am sure, between God and the world, between the detaching mysticism of Christianity and the ineradicable passion that makes our whole being vibrate when we experience something of the soul of the mighty whole of which we are undeniably a part" (Letter of 2 February 1916, in The Making of a Mind).23
Then we have: "For every modern mind (and the more modern the mind the truer this is)...a sense is born - the sense of a universal, completely specific, movement, by virtue of which the totality of things shifts as one whole, from top to bottom, and in one block, not only in space but in a space-time (hyper-einsteinian) whose particular curvature has the faculty of making what moves within it progressively more organized" (Du cosmos a la cosmogenese in L'activation de l'energie, p. 264).24 The idea of evolution is the perception of "this fundamental unity" (Ibid.).25
Once again: "What is happening to the world now is that it is being spontaneously converted to a sort of natural religion of the universe that is mistakenly turning it away from the God of the Gospel; and it is in that that its unbelief lies. We must carry that conversion one degree further by making our whole lives show that only Christ in quo omina constant ['in whom all things hold together'] is capable of inspiring and directing the universe's newly appreciated line of advance; thus from the very thing that produces modern unbelief, there may emerge the faith of tomorrow" (L'incroyance moderne: Cause profonde et remede, 1933, in Science et Christ, pp. 152-3).26
"It has become a commonplace to speak of Western civilization - the home of the new mankind - as materialistic. Nothing could be more unfair. The West has overthrown many idols, but by its discovery of the dimension of the universe
23.Ibid., p. 315.
24.Ibid., p. 338,
25.Ibid.
26.Ibid., pp. 602-03.
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and of its forward progress, it has stimulated a powerful mysticism. The whole question now is to determine the truth of the Presence we believe we feel behind the fire of the universe, and to give it a name" (Le Christianisme dans le monde, 1933, in Science et Christ, p. 136).27
"In future, the only religion for man is the religion that will teach him in the first place to recognize, love and serve with passion the universe of which he is a part" (Le sens humain, 1929).28 The idea of "a unity in convergence is the only one that can be the basis of the morality and religion of a universe which is being built on research and progress. No conversion accordingly (if we may so express it) will be so deeply rooted as that which is now coming about under the disguise of modern unbelief" (La route de I'Ouest, 1932).29
Then: "The humanist pantheisms we see around represent a completely youthful form of religion - a religion that (apart from Marxism) has little or no exact formulation: a religion with no apparent God and no revelation. But it is a religion in the true sense of the word, if by religion we mean contagious faith in an ideal to which one's life can be devoted.... A rapidly increasing number of our contemporaries are agreed, from now on, in recognizing that the most important thing in life is to devote oneself body and soul to universal progress -that progress being expressed in tangible developments of mankind.... This can only mean that under different names (communist or national-socialist, scientific or political, individual or collective), for the last hundred years we have been witnessing the positive birth and the building up of a new faith: the religion of evolution" (Comment je crois, 1934).30
Finally: "Contrary to an over-popular preconception, it is in Christianity (provided it is understood in the fullness of its Catholic realism) that the pantheist mysticism of all times, and more particularly of our own day (when it is dominated
27.Ibid., pp. 305-06.
28.Ibid., p. 307.
29.Ibid., p. 308.
30.Ibid., p. 306.
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by creative evolutionism) can reach its highest, most coherent and most dynamic form, the form which is most instinct with worship."31
What we can gather from these delineations of the contemporary temper does not admit of any doubt. The modern religious intuition springs from the scientific vision of a universe which is known to be a colossal unity advancing in its complex wholeness towards a super-organisation of consciousness and which is thus felt to be a blaze of beauty and power on the move as if it were a divine phenomenon evolving through the ages its potentialities of perfection, "The religion of evolution", "a sort of natural religion of the universe", "a powerful mysticism" teaching man "in the first place to recognize, love and serve with passion the universe of which he is a part", "undeniably a part" of "the mighty whole" whose secret "soul", "the Soul of the world", has made itself perceptible to us and made "our whole being vibrate" with "passion" to its forward-calling convergence-effecting "Presence" for which we have yet no "name" but which is "antagonistic" to a "detaching mysticism" like Christianity and tends to turn the world "away from the God of the Gospel" and, by setting the universe afire to manifest it through "tangible developments", proves to be a "stronger absolute" than "the old Messiah" - how can a religious intuition that comes alive in terms stressing the progressive "totality of things" and inspiring the devotion of "body and soul" to the world itself and taking form, however vaguely at present, as "humanist pantheisms" or as a "pantheist mysticism... dominated by creative evolutionism", be ever fulfilled by a Christ such as Teilhard suggests when he tries not to break clean off from the Roman Church - a Christ in whom all tilings are said to hold together but who still is entirely different in being from the natural world and with whose divinity this world is in no essential sense continuous? The "over-popular preconception", which Teilhard wants to con-
31. "Introduction to Christianity" (1944) in Christianity and Evolution, pp. 171-72.
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tradict, is obviously correct. Christ - to be "capable of inspiring and directing the universe's newly appreciated line of advance" and of converting, by himself becoming cosmic, "modern unbelief" to a religion of his own universality and supplying it with a "form most instinct with worship" - has to stand, for all his aspect of transcendence, under the aspect also of "an immanent universe" and present himself "as the term of a movement which extends our worship of the concrete Real (rather than tearing us away from it)". Teilhard, in those moments when he dares to dub himself not Catholic but "irreducibly 'hyper-Catholic'32 and is ready to flout orthodoxy, evokes the kind of cosmic Christ who could produce a Christianity-coloured "faith of tomorrow" which would at once remedy the shortcomings, and answer to the truth-sense, of "our generation, essentially pantheist because evolutionist".33
But will this kind of Cosmic Christ be anything more than Christie in name? Can he correspond in any fundamental way to the Saviour-figure emerging from the New Testament? Do we not need to reckon with only a novel Pantheos - one who Vedantically is the universe-constitutive aspect of a transcendent Reality and is the All even while being more than the All? If so, why should basic Teilhardism, with its root-function to save humanist pantheisms from remaining vague-visioned about their God-sense and to give their central truth a revelatory name, be tied up with Christianity?
32.Letters to Leontine Zanta, p. 36.
33.Human Energy (Collins, London, 1969), p. 67.
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Teilhard has many moments when he believes that his Cosmic Christ cannot be conceived except in an initial relation to the historical Jesus, even though, once we reach the Universal Presence, the individual who lived in ancient Judea is of very minor importance. His importance for Teilhard lies simply in supplying the religious consciousness with a starting-point for its arrival at a Christic universality. Teilhard once vehemently underlines this importance in an assertion quoted by Rideau:' "While it is indeed Christ-Omega who maintains the universe in motion, on the other hand it is from his seed, the Man of Nazareth, that (both in theory and in historical fact) the Christ-Omega draws for us his consistence.... The two terms are intrinsically part and parcel of one another and in a Christ who is truly total they cannot vary except simultaneously" (Christianisme et evolution, 1943). "I find myself so placed that 1 cannot breathe apart from our Lord - and that I realize that without the historical and traditional revelation, our Lord vanishes" (Ibid).
Here Teilhard proceeds from a capital confusion. Identifying Christ with Omega Point, he has slurred over the fact that the chief drive of his masterpiece, The Phenomenon of Man, as well as of all those writings of his by which he hoped to reconcile Science and Religion, seeks to establish Omega Point independently of Christ. Rideau,2 laying out for us the different phases Teilhard distinguishes in man's approach to God, states: "Phase I, reflection on the phenomenon of man, leading up to a transcendent Omega Point, the universal centre that brings spirit together, i.e. God (conceived as uniting the world to himself, rather than creating it). Phase II, evolutionary creation, in which God is seen as the motive force of the universe and as revealing himself in it. Phase III, the Christian phenomenon, the incarnation. Phase IV, the
1.Op.cit., p. 531.
2.Ibid., p. 503.
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living Church. It is only at this point that Christ can be identified with Omega. 'Nothing now remains of the conflict that seemed, ever more dangerously, to range against one another the majesty of the universe and the primacy of God.'" Omega is reached on phenomenological reflection and is not necessarily identical with Christ. Elsewhere Rideau,3 by way of a summing-up, says: "Omega Point, which reason accepts as God, is, for faith, none else than Christ in his glory, the head of the Mystical Body." It is reason that finds God in Omega. In another place Rideau4 speaks of "Omega Point" as "what is known through rational reflection on the ultimate significance of evolution". Rideau also quotes Teilhard directly. Teilhard writes: "...Christ (provided he is seen in the full realism of his Incarnation) is a perfect parallel to the Omega Point our theory led us to anticipate and tends to produce exactly the spiritual totalization we are awaiting" (L'energie humaine, 1937, in L'energie humaine, p. 192).5 Theoretical search and not acceptance of Christ discerns Omega. We may in addition remember that, as Rideau shows in his chapter on Teilhard's Phenomenology and as he6 later reminds us, Omega, as argued rationally and without any Christ-presupposition, possesses "the attributes of divinity: personality, presentness, transcendence, unity, distinctness". So there is no question of a historical Incarnation being required for the existence of a divine pole of attraction, personal as well as universal, transcendent no less than immanent, who sets all things in motion and finally totalises them.
What the historical Incarnation does for the Christian evolutionist is to give Omega a concrete certainty over and above reasoned deduction. But, for the evolutionist as such, for the modem consciousness apart from Christianity and face to face only with the majesty of the progressive universe,
3.Ibid., p. 180.
4.Ibid., p. 233.
5.Ibid., p. 380.
6.Ibid., p. 150.
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there is no self-evidence of divinity in the Jesus of history and, even if he accepts the Man of Nazareth as divine, he is not bound to him as the sole divine manifestation in humanity: there could be other Avatars and Christ is not the inevitable religious datum by which to feel a triumphant touch given to the action of Omega Point. Omega by itself will surely not vanish "without the historical and traditional revelation". What will vanish is Omega as the Cosmic Christ whom Teilhard calls "Our Lord" and considers inseparable from the Man born in Nazareth. "Our Lord" vanishes only in the sense that, if one sets aside Jesus, the name "Christ" for "Omega" will have no raison d'etre. If Omega, being cosmic, can be named "Our Lord", there is no vanishing. And as long as Omega stands, basic Teilhardism, which consists in bringing a fully realised formulation to the more or less amorphous religious intuition of modern Evolutionism, will stay intact.
There is also the question: "Whereas Omega's existence and function, in Teilhard's thought, are independent of any Christian religious datum, can the Cosmic Christ stand on his own, needing only the Man of Nazareth for his seed? If there were no Omega deducible on its own, would the Man of Nazareth suffice for Teilhard to think of the Cosmic Christ?" We can draw from Rideau7 a very positive answer by Teilhard: "The Christian Universal-Christ would be inconceivable if the Universe, which it is his function to gather into himself, did not in virtue of some evolutionary structure have a natural centre of convergence from which the Word, becoming incarnate, could radiate its influence over, the whole of the universe" (Introduction au Christianisme, 1944).
Clearly, according to Teilhard, although the Nazarene seed has to be once present for the Cosmic Christ to flower, the flowering of cosmicity cannot automatically follow from that seed. This must signify that Christ's cosmicity as visioned by Teilhard is not innate to the religion built upon the historical Jesus. It must also mean that whatever cosmicity
7. Ibid., pp. 528-29, n. 83.
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such a religion may attribute to Jesus is different from the Teilhardian vision - for the plain reason that no "evolutionary structure" leading to "a natural centre of convergence" -that is, to an Omega - could be conceived before modern times. So, actually, the designation - "the Christian Universal-Christ" - is a misnomer: we can speak only of "the Teilhardian Universal-Christ", And then the concept cannot refer to any possible direct flowering from the Nazarene seed. A Christic flowering from an evolutionary world-seed has been wrongly linked "both in theory and in historical fact" with Jesus. The mistake has been prompted by the function Scripture ascribes to Jesus of gathering up the universe into himself. But this gathering-up is not at all related to evolution and, if we are true to the spirit of Scripture, should never be related to it: the Parousia, the Re-appearance, of Jesus for that gathering-up can come at any moment and was first expected in a generation or two immediately after his death: it is essentially a non-evolutionary expectation. The Christ of Teilhard, except for the name, is rooted outside of Christianity.
Our paradox is not neutralised by pointing out that Teilhard, after asserting the inconceivableness of the Universal Christ without evolutionism's Omega, adds a counterpoise to suggest how "evolutionism and Christianity need one another to support and complete each other".8 He writes: "unless some universal Christ were, positively and concretely, plain at the term of evolution, as now disclosed by human thought, that evolution would remain nebulous and uncertain, and we would not have the heart to surrender ourselves to its aspirations and demands."9 And Teilhard sums up: "Evolution, we might say, preserves Christ (by making him possible), and at the same time Christ preserves evolution (by making it concrete and desirable)."10
8. Christianity and Evolution (Collins, London, 1971), p. 155,
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., pp. 155-56.
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The two scales do not actually have equal weights in them. "The term of evolution" - "a natural centre of convergence", as the first half of the passage puts it - is said to be "now disclosed by human thought". It is conceivable and conceived as an existence without recourse to Christianity, and it alone makes the Universal Christ "possible": it alone affords him ground for existence. The Universal Christ, on the other hand, has no say as to the possibility of this Omega: he contributes nothing to its existential status. What he is alleged to do is really to invest it with the features we would associate with a Christ universalised from an accepted human starting-point: we would think of it as a magnified human being with a grandiose appealing face. Absence of such a visualisable heart-moving divinity - a historical figure amplified - at the centre of convergence is what Teilhard means by evolution's remaining "nebulous and uncertain" without "some universal Christ" and by this Christ's making evolution "concrete and desirable". The meaning is clarified in a paragraph coming soon after:11 "Only to the Christian is it given to locate at the summit of space-time not merely a vague, cold something but a warm and well-defined someone; and so hic et nunc only he in all the world is in a position to believe utterly in evolution - evolution that is no longer simply personalizing, but is personalized - and (what is psychologically even more important) to dedicate himself to it with love." Yes, the basic meaning is rendered clear, but to give it cogency Teilhard has had to obfuscate his own vision. He seems to thrust into the background the enormous difference still left between Omega's relation to Christ and Christ's to Omega. Leave out Omega, and there is no Universal Christ: leave out the Universal Christ, and Omega is yet there. The balance tilts tremendously to one side. And even the lack seen of concreteness and desirability or, as in the clarifying passage, of achieved personalisation and lovable ne ss is more than just exaggerated: it is fundamentally imaginary. Have we not
11.Ibid., p. 156.
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quoted Rideau as reminding us that Teilhard's Omega possesses all the attributes of divinity, not only transcendence and unity but also distinctness, presentness and personality -attributes which essentially save it from being "nebulous and uncertain" and substantially make "it both "concrete and desirable"? No "vague, cold something" at the space-time summit of an evolution "simply personalizing" is located by the Omega-arguer. What is located may not be so "well-defined" as the postulated universalisation of a Jesus: still, we have surely "a warm someone", fully "personalized", and therefore capable of putting us "in a position to believe utterly in evolution" and to dedicate ourselves to it "with love".
Nor can we be taken in by Teilhard12 writing in his Comment je crois, an earlier essay than his Introduction to Christianity: "By disclosing a world-peak, evolution makes Christ possible, just as Christ, by giving meaning and direction to the world, makes evolution possible." A parity is asserted - at the cost of logic. What is the meaning and direction given to the world? Simply the world's moving towards the disclosure of a peak. But, if Christ effects this, why say evolution leads to that disclosure? Why not just say: "Christ makes Christ possible"? A little before his assertion of parity, Teilhard13 has written: "If we Christians wish to retain in Christ the very qualities on which his power and our worship are based, we have no better way - no other way, even - of doing so than fully to accept the most modern concepts of evolution. Under the combined pressure of science and philosophy, we are being forced, experientially and intellectually, to accept the world as a co-ordinated system of activity which is gradually rising up towards freedom and consciousness. The only satisfactory way of interpreting this process...is to regard it as irreversible and convergent. Thus, ahead of us, a universal cosmic centre is taking on definition, in which everything
12.Ibid., p. 128. We have already cited the passage in an earlier chapter and commented on it, but not in full and not in the total context of the question involved in its terms.
13.Ibid., p. 127.
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reaches its term, in which everything is explained, is felt, and is ordered." Well, where does Christ come in to make possible this Omega? We conceive this Omega by "the combined pressure of science and philosophy". Not religiously, not Christianly, but "experientially and intellectually" we accept Omega Point, the evolutionary "world-peak". And, if there "everything is explained, is felt, and is ordered", evolution gets its "meaning and direction" without reference to Christ.
Teilhard14 even goes on to tell us: "It is, then, in this physical pole of universal convergence that we must, in my view, locate and recognize the plenitude of Christ. For in no other type of cosmos, and in no other place, can any being, no matter how divine he be, carry out the function of universal consolidation and universal animation, which Christian dogma attributes to Christ." And here Teilhard15 appends the footnote: "In other words, Christ needs to find a world-peak for his consummation just as he needed to find a woman for his conception." A footnote16 on the previous page runs: "Whatever may be the precise positive content of the term 'supernatural', it cannot mean anything except 'supremely real', in other words 'supremely in conformity' with the conditions of reality which nature imposes on beings. If, then, Christ is to be able to be the saviour and the life of souls in their supernatural developments, he must first satisfy certain conditions in relation to the world, apprehended in its experiential and natural reality."
The situation is unmistakable. Evolution's Omega, conceived in relation to the experientially apprehended natural world, is needed by Christ as a sine qua non for his universalis-ing work. He would not be able to do this work unless we posit a "physical pole of universal evolution" - and to posit such a pole we resort to science and philosophy, "the most modern concepts of evolution", and are aware of no depen-
14.Ibid., pp. 127-28.
15.Ibid., p. 128, fn. 11.
16.Ibid., p. 127, fn. 10.
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dence on Christ. Within Teilhard's own scheme it is illogical to think of Christ making evolution possible by giving meaning and direction to the world. As regards "possibles", no parity can be set up between Evolution and Christ. In Teilhard, the Universal Christ is rooted in Evolutionism and not vice versa. And, if so, this Christ cannot be rooted inside of Christianity. Our paradox stays unneutralised.
Perhaps it will be objected: "Has not Teilhard, at the end of his most famous book,17 written about Christ: "By a personal act of communion and sublimation, he aggregates to himself the total psychism of the world.... The universe fulfilling itself in a synthesis of centres in perfect conformity with the laws of union. God, the Centre of centres. In that final vision the Christian dogma culminates. And so exactly, so perfectly does this coincide with the Omega Point that doubtless I should never have ventured to envisage the latter or formulate the hypothesis rationally if, in my consciousness as a believer, I had not found not only its speculative model but also its living reality?" We may be told that this reference of Teilhard to the Christian dogma indicates the rootedness of Omega Point in the Universal Christ rather than the other way around.
But all we have here is Teilhard's autobiographical admission that he thought of Omega Point in the wake of his religious faith in a Christ who gathers up the universe's psychisms. What we must note in the first place is the word "rationally" when Teilhard says he has been prompted by the feeling of this Christ "to formulate the hypothesis". Omega is accepted because Teilhard has arrived at its concept by means of logic, by a rational reflection on the facts of evolution. At the end of his most famous book he18 has clearly said of the need of Omega if reflective life is to continue to function and progress: "That is the postulate to which we have been led logically by the integral application to man of the experi-
17.The Phenomenon of Man (Collins, London, 1960), p. 294.
18.Ibid., p. 291.
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mental laws of evolution." And, if "the experimental laws of evolution" were involved, the logical process had nothing to do with the Christian religion. This religion provided no reason for Omega - and if Teilhard could not have reasoned out Omega he would never have accepted it.
Secondly, he accords so much importance, such primacy, to his scientific logic that when he comes to talk of "the Christian phenomenon" at the end of his most famous book he19 tries his best to banish suspicion of a religious bias by assuring us: "As I am living at the heart of the Christian world, I might be suspected of wanting to introduce an apologia by artifice. But, here again, so far as it is possible for a man to separate in himself the various planes of knowledge, it is not the convinced believer but the naturalist who is asking for a hearing." These phrases unequivocally imply that the coinciding, in Teilhard's mind, of the Parousiac Christ of faith with the Omega Point of reason guided by experimentally found evolutionary laws makes for him no odds to the truly scientific character of the latter discovery. As a "naturalist" he would accept Omega even if it did not coincide with the Parousiac Christ.
Thirdly, we may well question: "Would he accept Christ if Christ did not coincide in his mind with Omega?" The answer can only be "No". For, he is an Evolutionist or nothing. He20 has laid it down about Evolution: "...it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow."
In the fourth place, before Teilhard formulated Omega he was not merely a Christian: he was also a World-worshipper. And he was instinctively a World-worshipper before he was consciously a Christian. In La Table Ronde of June 1955 Claude Cuenot has reported: "From the age of four or five - so he
19.Ibid., p. 292.
20.Ibid., p. 218.
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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'."21 Teilhard himself has written in Le Coeur de la Matiere (1950): "1 was certainly no more than six or seven when when I began to feel myself drawn by Matter - or more exactly 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 for 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."22 Then Teilhard speaks of "this instinctive movement which made me truly speaking worship a little piece of metal" and he adds that in this movement "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".23 At the back of his discovery of Omega lay his pantheist tendency, his "general cosmic sense", to whose developed form the entire structure of his belief has been traced by him in the famous declaration we have discussed elsewhere24 of his fundamental faith: "The world (its infallibility and its goodness) - that, when all is said and done, is the first, the last, and the only thing in which I believe."25 This faith "in a world that is one and infallible -wherever it may lead me"26 is the background and basis, even more than the Parousiac Christ, of his search for Omega after he realised the essentially evolutionary character of the World he had worshipped for "something that 'shone' at the heart of Matter". The role of Christianity is really minor, if not marginal. Omega has its source beyond the Christian religion
21.Quoted in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; His Life and Spirit by Nicholas Corte (Barrie & Rockliff, London 1960), p. 3.
22.Ibid., p. 4.
23.Ibid., pp. 4-5.
24.I, ch. 5,
25.Christianity and Evolution, p. 99.
26.Ibid., p. 103.
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and deeper than it. So the objection raised has to be overruled on a number of counts.
In the face of our four arguments we may well wonder what precisely Teilhard could have intended by his palpably inapposite autobiographical admission about Omega. We need a bit of subtlety to see through it. On the one hand was his oft-expressed desire to equate Pauline and Johannine Christianity with his own concept of the Universal Christ. On the other was his occasional truth-sense that his concept was at bottom a novelty, as well as the fact-sense he had throughout his life that the Church looked askance at his Omega-Christ as a camouflaged Neo-Pantheos. He wished intensely at the same time to be regarded as assimilable to orthodoxy and to stick fast to his own conviction of what should be deemed orthodox. Naturally he endeavoured both to auto-suggest that his Omega-Christ was not un-Christian and to induce, by repeated Christification of Omega, the Church to take him as a genuine interpreter of Pauline and Johannine Christianity.
Our paradox has met with no authentic challenge. And it can be sustained no matter if Rideau27 has a Teilhardian statement like: "If you take away from Christ the quality of having existed as a real element, the Christian movement collapses. The historic Christ constitutes an element of reality, of a concrete involvement in the cosmos" (Cuenot's notes of a conversation on 3 September 1950). Of course, the movement historically called Christian must fail and lose sense of reality without the acceptance of a historic Christ, but a Christ.like Teilhard's should not require the Man of Nazareth to give Teilhardism a sense of God's concrete involvement in the cosmos. And in fact we get glimpses from Teilhard of a different source for such a sense. Does he28 not speak of "the absolute value of a cosmic drama, in which it is just as though God, even before his incarnation, were ontologically invol-
27.Op. cit., p. 531.
28.Ibid,, p. 511.
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ved"? Has he29 not written: "The prodigious expanses of time that preceded the first Christmas were not empty of Christ: they were imbued with the influx of his power"? Have we not Rideau's mention30 of Teilhard's belief in "a spirit that since all time, but more particularly since Christ, has animated the world and man in order to advance them towards their transition [into the Pleroma]"? To be sure, everywhere here Teilhard brings in the historic Christ, but that is because he keeps connecting his Cosmic Christ with the Christian movement. What we have to mark is how in each case the Christie is extended backward beyond the life of Jesus and made out to be a spiritual force, a divine presence, from the beginning of the world, a cosmic dramatis persona ontological-ly involved and therefore "an element of reality, of a concrete involvement in the cosmos". It is as if there were already the flower of a Christic cosmicity at work prior to the life of Jesus and as if this pre-existent flower gave rise to a special seed of itself in that life and then became more intensely flowery. Thus, while the historic Christ is retained and even endowed with importance, the real Cosmic Christ does not depend on him for his seed and has his original subsistence elsewhere than in the life of Jesus and is connected with Christianity not essentially but accidentally - that is to say, purely because for Teilhard, with his peculiar narrowness of approach to a sense of divine world-wideness, Jesus was the sole possible God-Man and St. Paul's doctrine of a Christie Mystical Body as a universal gatherer-up gave the sole possible revelation of a Cosmic Personal Godhead holding all things together and enfolding all beings in His Light and Love.
Yes, the Teilhardian Christ, however Christian he may look, has really his roots outside of Christianity. Discerned in depth, he is basically Omega under a Christie nomenclature. Consequently, it is Omega who is in the last analysis Teilhard's "Our Lord". And it is with our eyes fixed on
29.Ibid., p. 532.
30.Ibid., p. 649.
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Omega and not on a Universal Figure enlarged from the historic Jesus that we can penetrate to the ultimate heart of an exclamation like the one in Teilhard's letter of January 10, 1926:31 "If I cease to believe desperately in the animation of all things by our Lord,...the world, that hitherto has held me up, will engulf me or crush me, or simply fall into dust in my hands." This exclamation means just that a world which is not felt as evolutionarily infused with Omega and drawn ever higher towards an all-consummating unification in Omega's personal no less than universal divinity is not the world Teilhard has always held as an absolute - "that of experience", equal to that which "Revelation" claims: "the transcendent God"32 - and has considered wonderfully worth living in and adored ever since he was a child. To interpret the exclamation merely in the Christian sense which at first it suggests is to read the Teilhardian Cosmic Christ on his surface instead of in his profundities.
A point necessary to stress here in order to de-Christianise "Our Lord" in the ultimate view with a glance backward as well as forward from Jesus, is that the Cosmic Christ a la Teilhard is inconceivable not only if the cosmos lacks an "evolutionary structure" leading at the end to a supreme centre of convergence such as Christianity does not organically imply: he is "inconceivable" also if the cosmos is wanting in an "evolutionary structure" maintained from the very beginning by a gradually formative act of God such as Christianity does not organically require. Catholic theologians seem ready to accept the "creation" by God of an evolving world rather than of a world static and all-at-once, but they shy away from going the whole course with Teilhard in this respect. Thus N.M. Wildiers, D.D.,33 discussing Teilhard's treatment of the problem of Evil, explains his case approvingly as follows: "We live in a universe of evolution....
31.Ibid., p. 297.
32.Rideau, op. cit., p. 328 quoting from Ecrits du temps de la guerre, p. 278.
33.An Introduction to Teilhard de Chardin (Collins, The Fontana Library, Theology and Philosophy, London, 1968), pp. 142-43.
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In a world of this sort evil is no fortuitous occurrence.... On the contrary it is an essential aspect of an evolutionary process which has to pick its way through a maze of errors and miscarriages of effort. Since God willed to create a world that must grow to its completion via an evolutive process, imperfection and evil were bound to occur in this creation." The implication of Wildiers's concluding sentence is: God created an evolutionary universe by His will but He could as well have willed a non-evolutionary one. In other words, within the Christian sphere of discourse, evolution is not intrinsic to the very creation by God of a world. But is this Teilhardism? Teilhard34 unequivocally affirms: "Creation can be effected only by an evolutive process.... God cannot create except evolutively." And the reason why he does so is: Teilhardism departs from Christian theology in conceiving the "nothingness" out of which the God of Christianity creates. In orthodoxy, this nothingness leaves God totally free to exercise His will: it does not stand in the way of any type of world-making: it affords Him scope for an evolutionary or a non-evolutionary world. Naturally, then, that sentence of Wildiers has the implication we have read in it. But Teilhard35 declares: "Not from any lack of power, but in virtue of the very structure of nothingness upon which he will act, God, in order to create, can proceed in only one way: by arranging, by gradually unifying, a multitude of elements...." And He can so proceed because Teilhard's nothingness, which is defined not as pure non-being but as "positive non-being", a completely dissociated multiplicity, will give only a small initial purchase-point for development. By a slow series of such diminutive holds evolution accumulates. Thus creation becomes a long-drawn-out continuous instead of an instantaneous single act. All in all, when we look backward from Jesus, we find Teilhard's Cosmic Christ in a context of world-beginning with an entirely evolutionist rather than a comple-
34.Christianity and Evolution, p. 179.
35.Rideau, op. cit., p. 541: quotation from Comment je vois, 1948, No, 30.
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tely Christian theology. "Our Lord", to Teilhard, is not really identifiable with any aspect of the Holy Trinity in world-making action. At Creation as at the Parousia, He is a non-Christic Omega with a Christian exterior lent by the limited focus of Teilhard's religious devotion.
Doubtless, Teilhard wants to believe he can legitimately Christianise his natural World-worship and his later-developed religion of evolution. He cherishes the sense that the universalised Christ whom he parallels with Omega is truly there in the religion in which he was brought up. Thus he36 writes of "the psychological process by which, ever since I have known myself (seven or eight years [old]), a certain obscure attraction for the Earth and Matter has, in conjunction with my religious training, gradually changed into a well-defined and all-consuming love for some 'Universal Center' whose type and reality are provided for me by the Christian God". But quite often Teilhard lets us have the impression that his Christianity is all his own and falls outside his Church's understanding of its religion even in its most liberal moods. As late as October 12, 1951, by which time several Biblical exegetes have with the Church's blessing expounded St. Paul's cosmic Christianity and, as de Lubac" notes, Pere Emile Mersch, belonging to Teilhard's own Jesuit Order, has written "his books on the mystical body bringing out, in accordance with tradition, its physical and not simply its moral reality", and Pope Pius XII has himself issued an Encyclical on the Mystical Body to emphasise the more-thanmoral significance of that doctrine of Christ's universal gathering-up of Creation - as late as October 12, 1951, Teilhard finds himself still playing a lone hand and moving under the suspicion of heterodoxy. For, he writes to the Very Reverend Father Janssens, General of the Society of Jesus: " ...obviously I cannot abandon my own personal quest - that would involve me in an interior catastrophe and in dislo yalty
36.Letters to Two Friends, 1926-1952, p. 111.
37.Op. cit.,
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to my most cherished vocation; but (and this has been true for many months) I have ceased to propagate my ideas and am confining myself to achieving a deeper personal insight into them."38 And in the same letter Teilhard alludes to his natural World-worship, which grew subsequently into his religion of evolution, as having been the continuous stumbling-stone for his ecclesiastical superiors: "What might have been taken in my attitude for the last thirty years for obstinacy or disrespect, is simply the result of my absolute inability to contain my feeling of wonderment."39
This feeling leads Teilhard along such ways of thought that the Christianity he preached fails to tally with any modernisation the Church allows itself. Whatever Universal Christ emerges from the sanctioned Roman Catholic theology of his time or even from Pius XII's Mystici Corporis Christi does not answer to the cosmic dimension and involvement of his Christ. Else, with all that contemporary authoritative religious literature behind him, would he write, as Rideau40 reports him doing, to the Abbe Breuil on December 13,1952: "If only I were Pope for just long enough to write one encyclical on 'the universal Christ'"?
Nor is his isolation surprising when we see how his Christ's peculiar universality made the immanent universe more and more urgent in his view than the transcendent God in spite of neither of them having complete justification without the other. On October 16,1947, he41 writes from Paris to an American friend: "As I have been repeating constantly for the past year, the great event of modern times is the discovery that for Man, imprisoned within himself, there is a way out ahead (by self-development of something beyond Man), whereas previously the only way out we saw was above (by escape into God), It is the dawn of this 'faith in Man' that appears about to eclipse the traditional faith in God. Under
38.Rideau, op. cit., p. 257.
39.Ibid., p. 626.
40.Ibid., p. 295, n.
41.letters to Two Friends, 1926-1952, p. 102.
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these conditions, my conviction is that if 'ahead' (carried to the limit) cannot be understood without 'above', conversely 'above' is even less understandable without 'ahead', which means that the Christian faith can recover and survive only by incorporating faith in human progress."
Still more radically in the same direction is Teilhard's statement42 from Peking on August 5, 1941, after the typescript of The Phenomenon of Man "has been under consideration in Rome (!) for the past three months": "Fundamentally, the only thing I believe in, the only thing I have chosen, is that one must believe in a Future of the Earth which will coincide with a 'totalization' of Humanity."
A "neo-humanist mysticism of an ahead",43 with its vision "essentially pantheist because evolutionist",44 but lit up in its depths by the onward attraction of a supreme "pole" at the same time personal and universal, an Omega Point pulling towards a future in which a super-organic super-conscious unification will take place on earth of a mankind converging upon a "Soul of the world"45 that is both a Divine Centre and a Divine Milieu, a God who is, as Rideau46 tells us in a phrase from Teilhard, "complete in himself while for us he is continually being born" or, as Rideau47 puts it in his own words, a God whose "eternity coexists with a temporal act of emergence" - there, variously viewed, we have Teilhardism in its basic form behind the appearance of a pan-Christism wishing to be in tune with but actually divergent from traditional Christianity.
42.Ibid., p. 99.
43.Rideau, op. cit., p. 315.
44.Human Energy (Collins, Londoa 1969), p. 67.
45.Rideau, op. cit., p. 319.
46.Ibid., p. 149.
47.Ibid., p. 150.
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Out of all of Teilhard's writings, perhaps the ones that most lucidly and decisively catch up the modern religious intuition into a light at the same time revealing to it its own depths and laying bare Teilhardism in a basic form are made up of the essay he wrote in March 1937 while crossing the Pacific - The Phenomenon of Spirituality - and a few passages from two other essays - The Spirit of the Earth (March 1931) and Human Energy (October 1937) which are relevant to some issues arising in the first-named piece but not wholly solved there.1
This piece is so forthright in its general thesis that not much ambivalence and self-contradiction, not much of the pull-devil-pull-baker double-mindedness recurring in Teilhard's work is possible to it. We can easily take the few hurdles he sets up here and there, and reach in a remarkably easy canter our goal: his fundamental vision of World and God.
His general thesis is the most terrific of his startlers for traditional Christian thought:
"For some, heirs to almost all the spiritualist philosophies of former times, the spirit is something so special and so high that it could not possibly be confused with earthly and material forces which it animates. Incomprehensibly associated with them, it impregnates them but does not mix with them. There is a world of souls and a world of bodies. Spirit is a 'meta-phenomenon'.
"For others, on the contrary, more or less belated representatives of nineteenth-century thought, spirit seems something so small and frail that it becomes accidental and secondary. In face of the vast material energies to which it adds absolutely nothing that can be weighed or measured, the 'fact of consciousness' can be regarded as negligible. It is an 'epi-phenomenon'.
1. All the three essays are in the collection entitled Human Energy.
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"I propose in these pages to develop a third viewpoint towards which a new physical science and a new philosophy seem to be converging at the present day: that is to say that spirit is neither super-imposed nor accessory to the cosmos, but that it quite simply represents the higher state assumed in and around us by the primal and indefinable thing that we call, for want of a better name, the 'stuff of the universe'. Nothing more; and also nothing less. Spirit is neither a meta-nor an epi-phenomenon; it is the phenomenon."2
Let us briefly take stock of the implications here. First, of the word "phenomenon". Its bearing emerges from the opening passage of the essay: "Around us, bodies present various qualities: they are warm, coloured, electrified, heavy. But also in certain cases they are living, conscious. Beside the phenomena of heat, light and the rest studied by physics, there is, just as real and natural, the phenomenon of spiritua- lity."3
"Bodies" and the "various qualities" which they "present" to us - bodies presenting themselves with certain behaviours as part of the world we commonly consider "real and natural", the world of nature which modernism is most preoccupied with and which is the object of scientific observation and the subject of scientific thinking or "natural philosophy" - these constitute "phenomena". When we try to reduce the "real and natural" to its ultimate form, we arrive at "the primal and indefinable thing" which Teilhard dubs "the stuff of the universe". This stuff manifests itself to us phenomenally. According to Teilhard, its manifestation is all in the direction of evolving a "higher state" of itself from a lower one. That state is "spirit". And as to defining "spirit", Teilhard equates it with "the fact of consciousness" which he finds the epiphenomenalists neglecting. He also says at almost the beginning of his essay: "We are coincidental with it. We feel it from within. It is the very thread of which the
2.Ibid., pp. 93-94.
3.P. 93.
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other phenomena are woven for us. It is the thing we know best in the world since we are itself, and it is for us everything."4 In other words, spirit is consciousness in the condition in which we know it in ourselves. And, for Teilhard, the achievement of this condition by the mysterious weltstoff, world-stuff, is the one single overall phenomenon with its roots in the whole past of the universe and its branches, so to speak, thrusting towards the whole future. Hence the universe may be defined as spirit in the making.
Teilhard fully bears us out in this reading. "What are the dimensions of the magnitude that we call 'spirit', if we take it as a whole? 1 am going to show that, rightly regarded, they are the dimensions of the universe itself."5 Teilhard starts with human beings and says: "If we wish to discern the phenomenon of spirit in its entirety, we must educate our eyes to perceiving collective realities.... Like drops of water scattered in the sand and subjected to the same pressure, that of the layer to which they belong; like electrical charges distributed along a single conductor and subjected to the same potential; so conscious beings are in truth only different local manifestations of a mass which contains them all. To the extent that it is subject to experiment, the phenomenon of spirit is not a divided mass; it displays a general manner of being, a collective state peculiar to our world. In other words, scientifically speaking, there are no spirits in nature. But there is a spirit, physically defined by a certain tension of consciousness on the surface of the earth. This animated covering of our planet may with advantage be called the biosphere - or more precisely (if we are only considering its thinking fringe) the noosphere."6
So much for the spirit's present. When we look into the past, we can follow the spirit's traces "with certainty backwards as far as the eye can reach, in the wake of the
5.Pp. 94-95.
6.P. 95.
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movement that is drawing us forward. It is as if no planet can reach a certain stage in its sidereal evolution without breaking into life. But this is not all. The consciousness that we see filling the avenues of the past, does not flow simply like a river which carries an unchanging water past ever changing banks. It transforms itself in the course of its journey; it evolves; life has a movement of its own".7 This evolutionary movement starts with "a swarm of living particles that are hardly separate from molecular energies".8 Then, "step by step, with a growth in complexity, consciousness increases its powers"9 of "interiorization". Teilhard sums up: "Taken as a whole, in its temporal and spatial totality, life represents the goal of a transformation of great breadth, in the course of which what we call 'matter' (in the most comprehensive sense of the word), turns about, furls in on itself, interiorizes, the operation covering, so far as we are concerned, the whole history of the earth. The Phenomenon of spirit is not therefore a sort of brief flash in the night; it reveals a gradual and systematic passage from the unconscious to the conscious, and from the conscious to the self-conscious. It is a cosmic change of state."10
Here Teilhard makes a very pregnant pronouncement: "This irrefutably explains the links and also the contradictions between spirit and matter. And in a sense they are both fundamentally the same thing, as the neo-materialists allege; but between them lies also a point of deflection which makes them in some way the opposite of one another, as the ancient spiritualists maintained. All antinomy between souls -and bodies disappears in the hypothesis of a movement that has reached its 'critical point'."11
N.M. Wildiers, the Churchman-editor of Teilhard's book, makes a footnote to the words "same thing": " 'From a purely
7.p.96.
9.Pp. 96-97.
10.P. 97.
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scientific and experimental standpoint', as is said in the preceding paragraph." In picking out just one part of the pronouncement, Wildiers has voiced a special warning, as much as to say: "The sameness posited is on a superficial impression, valid only for pragmatic purposes. It cannot be posited on a true envisagement of things. The true envisage-ment will show 'a point of deflection' which makes spirit and matter 'the opposites of one another'."
But Wildiers forgets that if Teilhard's first declaration is to be considered in a certain limited context, the second is equally so to be considered - and it has the qualifying words "in some way", matching those in the first: "in a sense." What Teilhard intends is that neither declaration holds in toto. Such an intention should be obvious, for surely he cannot be grouped with either the neo-materialists or the ancient spiritualists. The view he himself embraces is in the sentence where he talks of all antinomy between souls and bodies disappearing. The precise drift here is best approached by our harking back to "the preceding paragraph" where the "standpoint" which Wildiers reminds us of is mentioned. There we read: "...from a purely scientific and empirical standpoint, the true name for 'spirit' is 'spiritualization'."12 And this is followed by the sentence already quoted, containing the expression: "what we call 'matter'." The purport which emerges from both the paragraphs taken together may be expressed thus:
There is no "matter" as a real opposite of "spirit". It is merely the farther end of a process of "spiritualization" - the end at which the weltstoff looks as if it were the opposite of spirit but in truth is just the hidden form of spirit, a covered-up starting-point of "spiritualization". The hidden form has led to spirit along a rising evolutionary line, but round about the spiritualizing process of evolution the hidden form persists and continues and still appears as the spirit's opposite and gives the ancient spiritualists their cue. Similarly, the
12. P. 96.
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neo-materialists get their cue from the fact that spirit seems to be a development of matter: they make matter the fundamental reality, Teilhard does not agree with them and Wildiers's footnote-warning is unnecessary. How could Teilhard ever be at one with the neo-materialists? But, while he is utterly against the ancient spiritualists who deemed spirit a "meta-phenomenon", he has a point of contact with the neo-materialists. For, although he can never subscribe to their view of spirit as an "epi-phenomenon", he concurs with them that matter seems to develop spirit, and that is why, along with the qualified tone of "in a sense", he has here the unqualified "fundamentally" which he does not use when, in referring to the other party, he echoes the earlier qualified tone by now saying "in some way". What he implies by his "fundamentally" is that, while the neo-materialists are wrong, they are wrong not quite in their fundamental but in their taking hold of the stick by the wrong end: matter seems to develop spirit not because matter as such is fundamental but because spirit is fundamental and matter is the deep disguise it has worn: matter is reality's fundamental mask rather than face. And because spirit is the fundamental face it is termed by Teilhard "the phenomenon". He concedes only a degree of truth to the ancient spiritualists on the one side and to the neo-materialists on the other. His own position, which is hinted at in his "fundamentally", does not come before he talks of "a movement that has reached its 'critical point'". On the strength of the hypothesis of such a movement he declares: "All antinomy between souls and bodies disappears." So the central operative Teilhardian term is "critical point".
What is that point? It is simply the point at which, time and again, there occurs what Teilhard has already named "a transformation" or, more frequently, "a change of state". Immediately after mentioning "critical point", he writes: "And the horizon is then swept clear for new perspectives. Recognition that the phenomenon of spirit is a change of state greatly simplifies our views of the universe. But this dis-
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covery has another advantage: it lights the forward march of the world around us."13 The concept of "critical point" does for us exactly the same opening up of vistas ahead as is done by the concept of "change of state". The two concepts are identical. Hence basic Teilhardism is: "Fundamentally the weltstoff is secret spirit appearing in a first phase as matter and evolutionarily disclosing its real nature by means of critical points or changes of state, by which a growth in complexity is accompanied by a greater 'interiorization', until 'self-conscious' man is produced, the acme of 'interiorization' in an individual form looking forward to a further progress."
Teilhard himself, towards the conclusion of his essay, provides us with a clear-cut formulation of his basic vision: "To situate the stuff of the universe in consciousness, and to see in the development of this same consciousness the essential fact of nature, seems the only way not only of satisfactorily explaining the present and past aspects of the world around us, but also of organizing the hesitant energies of the earth in view of a possible future."14
We have yet to see the shape of the Teilhardian future. But, before we do so, we must mark some momentous issues arising from Teilhard's text.
When we describe the process of spiritualization as "a cosmic change of state", "a gradual and systematic passage" running from the very dawn of the world, we are throwing into relief the chief intrinsic characteristic of matter in its universal existence: "being or not being interiorized."l5 "In other words, matter undergoes animation...simply because it is matter" and "no external cause seems experimentally assignable for the transformation's occurence".16 "We are in
13.P. 97.
14.P. 110.
15.P. 97.
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the presence of a kind of autonomous process and inner spontaneity...."17 But Teilhard at once continues that what we are here in the presence of is "comparable alone in its universality to the mysterious dissipation of energy recognized in the cosmos by modern physics". The two movements are sheer contraries - on the one hand the building up of organisation and complexity, with their accompanying "interiorization", and on the other the break-down of ordered energy to an unutilisable dead-level. They show themselves as symmetrical counter-currents of the universe: the universe is undergoing ever more concentration of interiority and pointing through the stage of individual human thought to something beyond it, while simultaneously it is undergoing ever more disintegration into amorphous non-workable heat. What shall we say about this duality of cosmic movements? Do we not have two fundamentals instead of one, a trend of matter against a trend of spirit?
Teilhard's answer is certainly contained in this essay but not quite directly set forth. Its initial statement has a curious blend of slight hesitation and overemphatic assertion and neither element is exactly argued out. Thus we read about "the phenomenon of spirit": "...since, very probably, these two contrary movements...are merely the opposite poles of a single cosmic event of which the positive or synthesizing term is the most significant, it is finally the outstanding cosmic movement, the movement on which everything depends and which nothing explains...."18
As we proceed in the essay, more light can be thrown on the statement by picking out phrases here and there. We are told: "Matter is habitually regarded as inanimate, and this is the source of all our difficulties in understanding it."19 Then there is the suggestion about matter: "it may simply correspond (to the extent that it exists) to a state of consciousness so
18.P. 98.
19.P. 101.
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extended and fragmentated that its elements are only visible to us in their statistical properties, that is to say in the form of inflexible, completely 'dis-animated' laws. From this viewpoint, material determinisms cease to provide the skeleton of the world; they are only a secondary effect in the cosmos..."20 Almost at the end of the essay we are told that the dualism between spirit and matter "is simply and harmoniously resolved...in a world in which consciousness and its appearance are regarded as the phenomenon. Every thing then takes its natural place in a universe in process of changing its spiritual state. Beneath the superficial veil of mechanised processes thrown over it by the laws of great numbers, matter shows itself to be a swarming of elementary consciousness ready to enter into the higher combinations of the organic world. By this fact it ceases to be irreducible to life, the first appearance of which on earth simply corresponds to an emergence of the spontaneous individual into the field of our experience from the inorganic mass. And hominization merely marks a decisive and critical point in the gradual development of this change of state."21
All the ideas playing here obtain a more connected expression in the essay Human Energy. "For obvious reasons of intellectual and practical convenience, science has always tried, from its beginning, to explain the world (that is to say to give it a coherent total pattern) with matter as its starting-point. Now in this effort of synthesis it has more and more palpably come up against an insurmountable obstacle: life... The animals, and more especially man, in whom the phenomena of spontaneity and immanence definitely emerge, cannot possibly be integrated into a purely mechanistic natural system. But it would be impossible to leave them out of our picture; this omission would prove science bankrupt. How do we get out of the quandary? A single way out presents itself; to reverse direction.... Now our task is to rejoin
20.Pp. 101-02.
21.p. 111.
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and reconstitute matter by an opposite process, by coming down from spirit accepted as the primal substance of things. Let us assume as an axiom that only spontaneity and consciousness (masked though they may be by a state of extreme division and diffusion) exist at the beginning. Then the determinisms which we choose to consider as essential to the world would be no more than an inelastic veil cast over a mass of elementary freedoms by the play of great numbers. If we follow this line, the difficulties disappear; the road becomes level, and movement becomes possible between the two poles of the universe, the conscious and the unconscious. If the cosmos were basically material, it would be physically incapable of containing man. Therefore, we may conclude... that it is in its inner being made of spiritual stuff."22
Here we may remark that Teilhard goes beyond what Wildiers, in his Foreword to the volume including the three essays we have named, ascribes to him: "the theory of the dual character of the weltstoff,...the hypothesis that everything has a without and (virtually at least) a within, and that these two aspects of reality evolve throughout history towards an ever growing complexity/consciousness...."23 By the words "inner being" in his own passage, Teilhard does not mean just the "within" as a counterpart to the "without". The "within" would always, in one degree or another, be "spiritual stuff": it does not need to be so described. When Teilhard talks of "inner being" he is referring to the question: What "basically" is the cosmos? Is it material or spiritual? And Teilhard's answer is that it is the latter. He wants "spirit accepted as the primal substance of things". Wildiers's formulation falls short of basic Teilhardism.
The falling short becomes even sharper when we cull passages from The Spirit of the Earth which is six years earlier than The Phenomenon of Spirituality. There Teilhard anticipates his later contraposition, in our universe, of simultaneously
22 Pp. 119-20.
23. P. 11.
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concentrating interiority and disintegrating energy. He says that once life has appeared and started its progressive evolution, "only one reality (in so far as it truly exists) remains to confront it, and can be compared to it in size and universality: this is entropy, that mysterious involution by which the world tends progressively to refurl on itself, in unorganized plurality and increasing probability, the layer of cosmic energy.24 And then, before our enquiring minds, a final duel is fought between life (thought) and entropy (matter) for the domination of the universe. Are life and entropy the two opposite but equivalent facts of a single fundamental reality in eternal equipoise? Or radically has one of them the natural advantage of being more primal and durable than the other?"25 Then Teilhard argues that the acceptance of matter "as the primordial stuff" leads nowhere:
"Not only does matter, the symbol for multiplicity and transience, escape the direct grasp of thought, but more disadvantageously still, this same matter shows itself incapable by its very nature of giving rise to the world that surrounds us and gives us substance. It is radically impossible to conceive that 'interiorized' and spontaneous elements could ever have developed from a universe presumed, in its
24.Elsewhere in Teilhard the term "involution" is used at times for the very reverse of entropy: the centring process of "radial energy", the folding back of being on itself, its in-turning, which raises rather than lowers the organisational level. Teilhard has also the word "convolution" or "coiling" for this folding-back. It may be of interest to compare Teilhard and Sri Aurobindo here. Sri Aurobindo mostly uses "involution" to connote either the movement by which the plenitude of the transcendent Divine manifests an increasingly lesser degree of itself in a descending hierarchy of cosmic planes or else the total submergence of all the powers of the Spirit in a sort of zero-level called the Inconscient, from which all the powers gradually emerge, the process of emergence being designated an evolution from the involution. Instead of "involution" in the first sense Sri Aurobindo once speaks of "devolution". At one place he also speaks of a highest involution of the Spirit - "Superconscience" - from which everything evolves downward just as from the lowest involution - " inconscience" -everything evolves upward. (K.D.S.)
25.P. 22.
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initial state, to have consisted entirely of determinisms.... On the other hand, from a cosmos initially formed and made up of elementary 'freedoms', it is easy to deduce, by virtue of the effect of large numbers and habitual behaviour, all the appearances of exactitude upon which the mathematical physics of matter is founded. A universe whose primal stuff is matter is irremediably fixed and sterile; whereas a universe of 'spiritual' stuff has all the elasticity it would need to lend itself both to evolution (life) and to involution (entropy)...,
"No, the cosmos...is fundamentally and primarily living, and its complete history is ultimately nothing but an immense psychic exercise; the slow but progressive attaining of a diffused consciousness - a gradual escape from 'material' conditions which, secondarily, veil it in an initial state of extreme plurality. From this point of view man is nothing but the point of emergence in nature, at which this deep cosmic evolution culminates and declares itself. From this point onwards man ceases to be a spark fallen by chance on earth and coming from another place. He is the flame of a general fermentation of the universe which breaks out suddenly on the earth. He is no longer a sterile enigma or discordant note in nature. He is the key of things and the final harmony. In him everything takes shape and is explained."26
Far-reaching suggestions have been made in these passages. We begin with "a universe of 'spiritual' stuff", a cosmos "fundamentally and primarily living".
26. Pp. 22-24.
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in secret, of the same order as the human consciousness.
Our conclusion is spotlighted by Teilhard himself some pages later: "Under penalty of being less evolved than the ends brought about by its own action universal energy must be a thinking energy."27
But this anthropocentric and anthropomorphic conclusion is not the end of the story. The above assertion by Teilhard is meant to have a deeper substance. According to him, "we are confronted with two theoretical possibilities: either from man onwards life comes to an absolute peak and scatters in a plurality of reflective consciousness, each of which is its own final reason; or beyond man (beyond the area of hominiza-tion), and despite the decisive and definitive value of 'personality', the unity of the evolutionary front remains intact and the value of the world continues to be built ahead by a communal effort....28 Precious though it is, the human monad remains vitally subjected to the law that, before his coming, obliged units to preserve and promote the whole in preference to themselves.... Thus on the level of man...the progressive advance of earthly life does not fragmentate. Unities of a new kind are formed, to act as more perfect constituents and intended for a superior organization. The general convergence which constitutes universal evolution, is not completed by hominization.... But...we twentieth-century humans are indeed, scientifically speaking, nothing but the elements of a soul seeking itself through the cosmos..."29
If a greater than man the individual thinker is sure to emerge by the very drive of cosmic evolution - if that Soul of souls is the reality of the future and is even now seeking itself via evolution, then the evolutionary cosmos in its secret origin must be a concealed consciousness greater than the one we know of as man today. This consciousness can be said to be of the same order as ours in only the sense that it too is a power
27.P. 45.
28.P. 30.
29.Pp. 30-31.
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of "reflection" - the bending back in awareness upon the centre which is aware, what Teilhard often speaks of as the knowing that one knows. Characteristically, he calls the coming greater consciousness "co-reflective".
Here we may revert to The Phenomenon of Spirituality. If the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega is a Super-consciousness, it goes without saying that the current of evolutionary life should be, on the whole, "irresistible (that is to say infallible)" and "irreversible" and "totalizing".30 Considering the last property, "if we try to imagine the final condition towards which the spiritual transformation taking place is apparently guiding the world, we find ourselves impelled to express it in the form of a monocen trism: the All, becoming self-reflective upon a single consciousness",31 But now a problem presents itself. "We are moving towards a higher state of general consciousness, which is linked with a further synthesis of our particular consciousness.... In man, by virtue of reflexion, a fragment of cosmic consciousness is definitely individualized. But how can we imagine that this portion once shaped can afterwards join other like fragments in the building of a super-consciousness? To become super-conscious, it must unite itself with others.... But precisely in order to give itself, must it not decentre, that is to say become less conscious of itself?... The solution of this paradox is to be found by making a distinction between two entirely opposite sorts of union: union by dissolution and union by differentiation."32 In the former, according to Teilhard, the uniting parts break down into "an imagined homogeneous unconsciousness": in the latter "all the lower centres unite, but by inclusion in a more powerful centre"33 - "a supreme centre in which all the personal energy represented by human consciousness must be gathered and 'super-personalized' "34 - "a
30.P. 98.
31.P. 100.
32.Pp. 102433.
33.P. 104.
34.P. 103.
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distinct and autonomous centre...which is itself personal and radiates over the myriad of inferior personalities".35 As distinguished from union of "relaxation", "union of concentration (the only true union) does not destroy but emphasizes the elements it swallows. Reflective human units can therefore undergo this operation without being destroyed or distorted. Despite appearances, persons can still serve as elements of a further synthesis, because the precise result of their union is to differentiate them".36
Teilhard is here in the domain of mysticism, and it is evident from his talk of "an imagined homogeneous unconsciousness" that his understanding of this domain is imperfect. The closest he comes to the heart of the matter is when he says: "to complete ourselves, we must pass into a greater than ourselves" - and adds: "Survival and also 'super-life' await us in the direction of a growing consciousness and love of the universal."37 But surely we cannot pass into a greater than ourselves and, by that very act, complete ourselves unless the greater and ourselves are essentially one and therefore capable of either an utter fusion or a unity-in-diversity. In both cases, essential oneness has to be posited. And then the two sorts of union which Teilhard lists - that by "dissolution" and that by "differentiation" - wear a look other than the one he gives them. What seems dissolution is no "imagined homogeneous unconsciousness": it is the transcendence of a smaller and lower self-hood by becoming a greater and higher selfhood. There is really no dissolution: there is an infinitisation of the essence by the breaking down of the boundary-lines developed within the essence, the removal of what the ancient Indian seers termed "name and form" whereby the infinite One took on the appearance or the play of manyness. When the "name and form" are gone, a liberation occurs of the self-limited into its own illimitable-
35.P. 105.
36.P. 104.
37.P. 105.
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ness. Ultimately, such liberation would tend to take the mystic out of the cosmic process, but not to dissolution: the end would be an extra-cosmic status, the unparticularised Unmanifest. On the other hand, union by differentiation implies merely that the multiple statuses assumed by the One remain in their general "name and form" while being freed from the ignorance attached to this condition. Aware of the One who has assumed this condition, the person is not bound any more to his own "name and form": all other "names and forms" are his by empathy and intuition and he knows too that he is more than every "name and form". There is in addition a consciousness of the Truth of namehood and formhood, so to speak: an Original Divine Super-Person, "Para-Purusha" of the Upanishads, "Purushottama" of the Gita, is realised, who is Himself and yet All and with whom the persons have a play of ideal relationship in love, knowledge and work, and through whom they are also ideally related and at play among themselves,
Teilhard does not understand that any sort of real union implies essential oneness. He speaks of "the unification without confusion of...unmixable centres".38 Unmixable centres can collect and combine and be organised around a greater centre, and even have profound contacts of consciousness, but we shall have no more than a common-centred community: where will union in any true connotation come in? Conversely, "inclusion in a more powerful centre" would destroy the lower centres if they were not essentially one with it. Only when they are such can the lower find themselves "emphasized" while being "swallowed" - "emphasized" in the sense of getting intensified, deepened, sublimated, divinised, super-personalised by the experience that they are diversifications of the Being who serves centrally as their focal point.
But, whatever his intellectual blinkers, Teilhard instinctively drives towards such an experience as the authentic
38. Ibid.
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version of his "union of differentiation" on coming to the topic: "God's Spiritual Function."
Talking of the spirit's future, he writes: "Examined in its external development, the phenomenon of spirit appeared to us to depend on a common centre of total organization. Observed now in its internal functioning, it brings us - as was inevitable - face to face with this pole of attraction and total determination."39 That means a movement inclining us "towards the future, in pursuit of a God".40 Then Teilhard reaches his climax of inspiration in the essay:
"I think it necessary to state two conditions, cohering to the views developed in this essay, which the God we are seeking must satisfy, if He is to be capable of sustaining and directing the phenomenon of spirit.
"The first condition is that He shall combine in his singularity the evolutionary extension of all the fibres of the world in movement: a God of cosmic synthesis in whom we can be conscious of advancing and joining together by spiritual transformation of all the powers of matter.
"And the second condition is that this same God shall act in the course of this synthesis as a first nucleus of independent consciousness: a supremely personal God, from whom we are the more distinguishable the more we lose ourselves in Him.
"These two in no way contradictory conditions immediately result from the characteristics recognized above in the cosmic genesis of the spirit: a universal God to be realized by effort, and yet a personal God to be submitted to in love. If the world is really moving within consciousness, He is the indispensable 'mover' of all further progress of life.
"In short, humanity has reached the biological point where it must either lose all belief in the universe or quite resolutely worship it. This is where we must look for the origin of the present crisis in morality. But it is necessary also
39.P. 109.
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for the religions to change themselves in order to meet this new need. The time has passed in which God could simply impose Himself on us from without as master and owner of the estate. Henceforth the world will only kneel before the organic centre of its evolution.
"What we are all more or less lacking at this moment is a new definition of holiness."41
Evolution - and evolution alone - is the basis of Teilhardism. And it is a process with a centre to it. This centre is Teilhard's God. And the God-centre is organic to the process - that is to say, it is not extrinsic, posed side by side, acting from without as something or someone radically different: it is intrinsic and in-built, a master-function co-ordinating everything as if everything were a projection of its own being and found in that being the full evolutionary extension of all force and form, the very life of their life. Because of this centre the process is one developing whole: the centre is its seed-power, its growth-principle, its flower-and-fruit realiser. The process seems to radiate from the God-centre and to be held together by it and to culminate in it: the process is as if an emanation of it, a going out of it to come back to it while that, which the process goes out of and comes back to, remains complete in the midst of all this movement. Here we must take the organicity of action very literally, for, as we saw earlier, spirit in diverse phases is all that is. But to be the organic centre of the world's evolution implies for God both universal existence and personal existence. And in His universal existence He is a secret omnipresence as well as a manifest activity. Active, He is spirit manifesting at the same time as matter running in an ever increasingly complex mould for consciousness, for interiority, and as matter running down in an ever increasingly simplified and unusable form of energy. But the rising or evolutionary manifestation of universal spirit has the upper hand of the falling or involutionary manifestation and so, predominantly, the
41. Pp. 109-10.
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universe faced by twentieth-century man is matter under the transforming pressure of the truth of itself that is spirit -matter charged with God, transparent to God, bodying forth God. That is why present-day humanity, if it realises at all the value of the universe, must not do anything save "quite resolutely worship it". The God of evolution, comprehended by the modern religious intuition, is to be loved as a Person but with a holiness which is best defined as love of Him for and through and across and in and even as the universe.
Teilhard's worship of the universe is no gross idolatry of matter, no "materialistic pantheism" bowing "before the god 'energy'".42 Nor is it a pantheism excluding the Personal God. It is born of "a certain 'cosmic sense', by which each one of us tends to be habitually and practically conscious of his links with the universe in evolution".43 And Teilhard goes on to say: "In this active participation of our beings in a collective task (a task whose reality is visible at the end of every scientific avenue) the nebula of ancient pantheisms condenses and takes shape at the heart of the modern world."44 The universe as spirit turned matter - spirit that is both Pantheos and Person - is what Teilhardism worships.
There is nothing here to be shocked at: on the contrary, it is religion at its widest and deepest and highest. It is also a religion standing self-justified by its "new definition of holiness". That the new definition assimilates a pantheist strain should not astonish us. Has not Teilhard rejected "the spiritualist philosophies of former times", which made a stark dualism of spirit and matter, regarded the former as a "meta-phenomenon" and sought to look down upon and subdue the latter? Has not Teilhard appreciatively written: "Pantheistic aspirations towards a universal communion are as old in man as his 'spiritualistic' attempts to conquer matter" - and has he not added as a modernist: "But only lately, thanks to the precise data provided by science concerning the unity of
42.P. 45.
43.P. 158.
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matter and energy and the reality of a cosmogenesis, have these vague desires begun to take the rational form of definite intellectual discoveries. In every realm we are beginning habitually to live in the presence of the All and with some attention to it. Nothing seems to me more vital, from the point of view of human energy, than the spontaneous appearance and, eventually, the systematic cultivation of such a 'cosmic sense'"?45 Even at the start of his writing career, Teilhard, as a quotation by Rideau46 shows, recorded, with his whole self vibrant, "the fundamental, lived, incurable yearning for total union that gives life to all poetry, all pantheism, all holiness" (La lutte contre le multiple, 1917, in Ecrits du temps de la guerre, p. 118).
Teilhardian pantheism needs no such cautious deprecation as Wildiers makes in a footnote to the phrase about worshipping the universe: "The author was to explain later in the autobiographical pages entitled Le Coeur de la Matiere, how the universe became adorable in his eyes in the person of the Son of God, who assimilated it totally to himself as a result of the Incarnation."47 The footnote is absurd and impertinent as well as executive of a hysteron-proteron. Le Coeur de la Matiere was written in 1950, The Phenomenon of Spirituality in 1937. Are we to believe that Teilhard left this earlier essay of his without its proper key for thirteen years? Opening the "Conclusion" of his essay, Teilhard recalls the mode of approach he proposed in his "Introduction": "As we said at the beginning, if the interpretation of the phenomenon of spirit here presented is correct, its truth can only be established by the greater coherence it establishes in our perspectives. To see more clearly into the past and foresee the future in better outline."48 What was said at the beginning reads: "...my only form of argument will be that universally employed by modern science, that and that alone: by which I mean the argument of
45.P. 130.
46.Op. cit., pp. 446-47, note 83,
47.P. 110.
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'coherence'. In a world whose single business seems to be to organize itself in relation to itself, that is by definition the more true, which better harmonizes in relation to ourselves a larger body of facts. If therefore I can succeed in showing that, regarded from the point of view I have chosen, the universe harmonizes better with our experience, thoughts and actions than the two contrary viewpoints, I shall have established in so far as is possible the truth of my thesis."49 Surely the essay is self-contained and neither presupposes nor requires "the Son of God" and his "Incarnation".
We do not have to deny the Christian side of Teilhard, which often busied itself with creating a Christianity to match his Evolutionism, even inclined at times to push the former into the forefront and repeatedly sought to water down what another essay in the same volume has called "my profound tendencies towards pantheism",50 But it is in his Evolutionism that we strike the Teilhardian bedrock, and this bedrock is built on Teilhard's modern religious intuition.
For, what exactly is the religious intuition Teilhard as a true modernist felt in his very blood and bones except the pantheist-tempered scientific neo-humanism whose growing with the Catholic Church he51 has vividly sketched in the following passage? -
"During the first, and much the longest, phase, the hostility between experience and Revelation was seen almost entirely in local difficulties encountered by exegesis in its attempt to reconcile Biblical statements with the results of observation: the immobility of the earth, for example, and the seven days of Creation. Gradually, however, with progress in physics and natural sciences, a much more general and much deeper schism ultimately became apparent. By force of circumstances (in view of the date of its birth) the best that Christian dogma could do, originally, was to express itself in the dimensions and to the requirements of a universe that in
49.P. 94.
50.Sketch of a Personalistic Universe, p. 91.
51.Science and Christ, pp. 187-88.
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many respects was still the Alexandrine cosmos; a universe harmoniously revolving upon itself, Limited and divisible in extension and duration, made up of objects more or less arbitrarily transposable in space and time. At the time we are speaking of, this view, under the effort of human thought, was beginning to change. Space was becoming limitless, Time was being converted into organic duration. And within this vitalised domain the elements of the world were developing so close an interrelationship that the appearance of any one of them was inconceivable except as a function of the global history of the whole system. In man's eyes a universe in genesis was irresistibly taking the place of the static universe of the theologians. Inevitably again, a specific form of mysticism was emerging from this new intuition: faith, amounting practically to worship, in the terrestrial and cosmic future of evolution. Thus, from beneath exegetical difficulties in matters of detail, a fundamental religious antinomy ended by coming to the surface: the conflict that was involved (though this was not clearly realised) in the Galileo controversy. With the universe rescued from immobility, a kind of divinity completely immanent in the world was progressively tending to take the place in man's consciousness of the transcendent Christian God."
Pointers to all the terms we have used are in the passage: "this new intuition" - "faith, amounting practically to worship, in the terrestrial and cosmic future of evolution". And in the phrase - "a kind of divinity completely immanent in the world" - we get "a specific form of mysticism" whose essence basic Teilhardism involves and whose expression it corrects. The correction may be said to lie in substituting "truly" for "completely". Complete immanence of the world's divinity would, as in the general modern trend noted by Teilhard, push out the transcendent God towards whom Christianity aspires; but if the immanence is merely what Christian theology gives to its God - that is, an immanence which has no ultimate oneness-of-being with the universe and represents only the ever present preservative action of the trans-
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cendent God in a universe created by Him as different from Himself - then it is not a true immanence such as the modem religious intuition feels. True immanence, in accord with this intuition, must imply that the divinity in the world is one-in-being with the world and that the latter has been put forth or exteriorised by the former and is the former itself in an evolutionary mode of spirit-matter. Unlike Christianised immanence, true immanence would permit - nay, demand -worship of the universe as a consequence of faith in evolution's terrestrial and cosmic future. But, unlike complete immanence, it would leave room for a transcendent God who is to be loved as a Supreme Person while through the immanent God we are one self with Him and with all.
Teilhard cannot lay claim to being a genuine modernist without subscribing to true immanence. But his claim is also to look into the heart of modern Evolutionism and discern there the necessity of an already existent Perfect Pole of attraction, that is a Super-Person and by which alone evolution can pass from synthesis to greater synthesis and reach the human personal level where the persistent cry for a Super-Person is as much a natural fact as is "the fundamental, lived, incurable yearning for total union" that characterises pantheist mysticism and arises in a form most valid and justified against the background of the progressive infinite unity that is modem science's worshippable universe of inwardly impelled evolution.
Perhaps in the phrase, already quoted, which makes all individual human persons "nothing but the elements of a soul seeking itself through the cosmos"52 we have the most felicitous summary suggestion of a Pantheos who is also a Super-Person, both aspects rendering worship-worthy the cosmos through which they are beckoning us to their single secrecy.
One may go on to say that a universe like Teilhard's must ultimately call, both naturally and supernaturally, for a
52. p. 31.
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Divine Incarnation such as Wildiers's footnote draws our attention to. Teilhard even prepares us for an incarnational corollary. But his preparing, we should mark, follows and does not precede the demonstration of his scientifico-religi-ous thesis and is never said to underline or explain it. Here also Wildiers's footnote puts the cart before the horse. Provided the horse is in its right place we may appropriately listen to Teilhard's indirect incarnational allusion:
"If it is true, as we have been led to imagine, that cosmic developments of consciousness depend on the existence of a higher and independent centre of personality, there must be a means without leaving the empirical field, of recognizing around us in the personalized zones of the universe, some psychic effect (radiation or attraction) specifically connected with the operation of this centre, and consequently revealing its positive existence.
"The definitive discovery of the phenomenon of spirit is bound up with the analysis (which science will one day finally undertake) of the 'mystical phenomenon', that is of the love of God."53
Yes, a "Son of God" may be expected in the Teilhardian universe where God is the Alpha and Omega of evolution. But this universe is not conceived on the strength of a religious dogma. Also, it has no connection with accepting Jesus Christ as the one and only Son of God. The Phenomenon of Spirituality is independent of Christianity and stands on its own legs. The verity it offers is bom of a scientifico-religious insight. This insight, for all its wearing the hypothetical look proper to a confrontation in the field of science, is the core of Teilhard - Teilhard who, even in 1951, a year after Le Coeur de la Matiere, declared during an interview: "I am neither a philosopher nor a theologian, but a student of the 'phenomenon', a physicist (natural philosopher) in the old Greek sense."54
53.P. 112,
54.Nouvelles Litteraires, January 11, 1951.
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On a close analysis of the various elements constituting Teilhardism we have discovered his Christianity to be a fine superstructure rather than an inalienable part of the foundation, leave aside its being the sole and whole foundation. We have de-centred Teilhard's Cosmic Christ from the historical Jesus so that the name "Christ" becomes merely an individual preference and, while finding the historical Jesus a medium of the former, we have seen no cause to consider this medium necessarily unique: it has the appearance of uniqueness simply because of Teilhard's religious milieu and cultural limitation. A Pantheos who is also a Person, a Universal Godhead who is also a Transcendent Divinity, form the basis of Teilhardism, and this many-sided Ultimate is inseverably linked with an evolutionary world-vision and reveals the true heart of the religious intuition striving to take shape in the modern consciousness that is charged with the scientific sense of a unitary developing cosmos. Teilhardism is best summed up in the multi-faceted concept of Omega, evolution's Final Term which is really the Prime Mover ahead, drawing to a super-state of collective Uranimity His own aspect of a Spirit in physical evolution. The historical Jesus is an expression of Omega, but Omega exists independently of him and would suffice Teilhard, no matter how coloured with Jesus's historicity Omega might seem at first glance. Teilhard speaks of the Mystical Body of Christ, but that is only the concrete omnipresence of a World-God, the subtle stuff in which this Soul of the World functions as a formative power in the midst of the gross substance which is its evolutionary emanation.
One shade, however, of the Teilhardian movement to relate the Cosmic Christ with the historical Jesus remains to be assessed. Teilhard1 argues that it is to the latter that we have to apply "the long series of Johannine - and still more Pauline - texts in which the physical supremacy of Christ
1. Science and Christ, p. 54.
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over the universe is so magnificently expressed" - texts answering to "the very definition of Omega". He2 continues: "I am well aware that there are two loopholes by which timid minds hope to escape the awesome realism of these repeated statements. They may maintain that the cosmic attributes of the Pauline Christ belong to the Godhead alone; or they may try to weaken the force of the texts by supposing that the ties of dependence that make the world subject to Christ are juridical and moral, the right exercised by a landowner, a father or the head of an association." Teilhard3 declares himself against the "juridicists," who "will always understand 'mystical' (in 'mystical body') by analogy with a somewhat stronger family association or association of friends". He4 puts himself among the "physicalists", for whom "the beauty of life consists in being organically structured" and who "will see in the word mystical the expression of a hyper-physical (super-substantial) relationship...." At the moment we are not concerned with Teilhard's physicalism. Our concern is with the first of what he has dubbed "two loopholes". He5 remarks: "As regards the first subterfuge, all I need to do is to refer to the context, which is categorical: even in Col. 1: 15ff. St. Paul quite obviously has in mind the theandric Christ; it was in the incarnate Christ that the universe was pre-formed."
A further gloss on this subtlety occurs in a passage where Teilhard6 asserts the very exceeding of the Jesus-fact by the Christ-truth: "Even before the Incarnation became a fact, the whole history of the universe (in virtue of a pre-action of the humanity of Christ, mysterious, but yet known to us through revelation) is the history of the progressive information of the universe by Christ." The gloss comes in the phrase: "a pre-
2.Ibid.
3.Ibid., p. 55.
5.Ibid., pp. 54-55.
6.The Prayer of the Universe: Selected from Writings in Time of War, translated by Rene Hague (Collins, Fontana Books, 1973), p. 21.
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action of the humanity of Christ" - and the central operative expression is "humanity". The human Christ, the Word Incarnate, the "theandric" or God-Man Jesus, is said to preexist in the eternal Second Person of the Holy Trinity and to pre-act within the universe. This puzzling notion derives, as Teilhard indicates, from St. Paul. Christopher Mooney7 refers to the Pauline origin thus: "Paul seems clearly to affirm a pre-existence for Christ, and apparently it is always the concrete, historical God-Man of whom he is thinking, never the Word independent of his humanity. How this is to be explained theologically is a question for which there is as yet no satisfactory answer."
Whether theology has a satisfactory answer or not, the doctrine - for one who adheres to it - stamps on the Cosmic Christ the personality of the historical Jesus. If Teilhard can convincingly put his contention across instead of repeating what St. Paul appears to have preached, our interpretation of him will suffer a setback. Does he do so?
Mooney8 reports, without any endorsement, Teilhard's attempt to render St. Paul intelligible: "Teilhard's own theory is that 'every cosmic particle, even the tiniest electron, is rigorously coextensive with the totality of space and time.' Hence 'the body of a living being, far from limiting it inside the universe, is simply the expression and gauge of its inferiority and its "centreity".' But 'in the case of Christ, this coextension of coexistence has become a coextension of domination,' and the reason Christ's Body has such a privileged position in the universe is to be traced to 'the transforming effect of the Resurrection'."
We are afraid there is here a slip into a serious bit of obscurum per obscurius. Surely the dark is rendered darker by the talk of the Resurrection bringing about the pre-existence of the human Jesus as a dominating World-Body. The expla-
7.Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ, p. 170.
8.Ibid. The quotations from Teilhard are from Comment je vois (1948), note 4, note 35.
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nation attributed to Teilhard can make the human Jesus bear such a World-Body after his death and resurrection but not before. The point at issue is pre-existence and not post-existence of domination. The rising of the body of Jesus from the dead can mark a particular moment of time dividing the past from the future: it cannot have a retroactive effect on all duration prior to it. Even the action on the future - as expressed in a citation de Lubac9 gives from Teilhard: "Christ in his theandric being gathers up all creation" - this "theandric" action itself hardly yields satisfactorily to theological essays at explanation. But it is a conceivable conclusion. The other, as Keats would have said, "dodges conception". Teilhard has provided no shred of plausibility for the cosmic all-time supremacy Paul enigmatically ascribes to the historical Jesus. The "pre-action of the humanity of Christ" stays what Teilhard has designated it: "mysterious". It is a dogma of "revelation" for which, as Mooney implies, he offers no rationale any more than professional theologians have done. It cannot be assimilated into basic Teilhardism, which rests systematically on Omega.
Nor does Teilhard himself always hold to it as if it were a vital component of his Weltanschauung. Mooney has quoted from Comment je vols (1948), but even this document seems to show a different face to George A. Maloney10 who says that here Teilhard distinguishes "between the pre-existing Word on the one hand and the historical, incarnate Man-Jesus on the other". Maloney adds: "Between these two aspects, Teilhard distinguishes, as he did in Le Christique (1955), a sort of 'third nature',... - that emerges. This is the aspect of Christ that St. Paul writes about, the full, total Christ whose activity consists precisely in 'recapitulation' or in bringing the universe to its ultimate centre through the transforming energies of his resurrection." The "third nature" is, of course, the
9. Teilhard de Chardin; The Man and His Meaning, p. 43, fn. 25.
10. The Cosmic Christ: From Paul to Teilhard (Sheed & Ward, New York, 1968), pp. 201-02.
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"cosmic", which Teilhard also described as the "Christie" in Comment je vois.
Perhaps the most clear-cut freedom from the idea of Jesus's theandric pre-existence is seen in a letter written by Teilhard as early as February 2,1918". In connection with the problem of other heavenly bodies than the earth being inhabited ones, he11 says: "It is astonishing that it is only two days back that I have been vividly struck by the difficulty of reconciling my doctrine of the cosmic Christ with the plurality of worlds. - Since the Cosmos is certainly indivisible, and Christianity is not smaller than the Cosmos, one must admit a certain 'polymorphous' manifestation of the cosmic Christ upon various worlds, according to. the aptitude of these worlds for being integrated into the celestial Universe. The human Christ would then be but one aspect of the cosmic Christ. - Otherwise, Christ (if he upheld only the earth) would be smaller than the World."
Here the suggestion goes beyond making Christ overflow the boundaries of a tiny earth and consummate the evolutionary process of other planets or stars. It goes so far as to make him deviate from such a form as he assumed upon earth. It asserts "a certain 'polymorphous' manifestation": this means that he could have many kinds of form and that we should not think of "Jesus" as the one and only form for him. Still further, the passage tells us that even the "human" incarnation proper to earth might be ruled out elsewhere: one aspect alone of the cosmic Christ is said to be the Christ who was
11. Teilhard de Chardin: Lettres Intimes a Auguste Valensin, Bruno de Solages, Henri de Lubac, Andre Ravier, 1919-1955. Introduction et notes par Henri de Lubac (Aubier Montaigne, Paris - IV, 1974), p. 40, note 7. The original French runs: "Il est curieux que je n'ai ete vivement frappe que depuis deux jours de la difficulte de concilier ma doctrine du Christ cosmique et la Pluralite des Mondes. - Etant donne que le Cosmos est certainement inseparable, et que le Christianisme n'est pas plus petit que le Cosmos, il faut admettre une certaine manifestation 'polymorphe' du Christ cosmique sur divers mondes, suivant l'aptitude de ces mondes a etre integres dans l'Univers celeste. Le Christ humain ne serait alors qu'une face du Christ cosmique. - Autrement, le Christ (s'il ne soutenait que la Terre) serait plus petit que le Monde."
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human. The unique position of the historical Jesus is negated. There is no emphasis now on the theandric Incarnation: "a pre-action of the humanity of Christ" is not merely ignored, it is openly denied sole right and deprived of the privilege of exclusively characterising Christ's cosmic function.
Further, if life and mind could develop in other parts of the Universe than our earth, they would do so not always in a period after their terrestrial development: they could flourish centuries and thousands and even millions of years before their epoch here. So the manifestation of the Cosmic Christ in those parts would in several cases precede the appearance of Jesus on our planet. This must mean that the Cosmic Christ is precedent to Jesus's appearance. If so, why employ the term "Christ" which is associated with the Son of Mary? The only excuse is the assumption that "Christianity is not smaller than the Cosmos" and Christ not "smaller than the World". But, even granting this assumption, there remains no reason to tie up Jesus inseparably with what Teilhard knows as Cosmic Christ.
Rationally, this is the unescapable position to take up once we have a Cosmic Christ anterior to the historical Jesus as well as passing through him and once we follow the far-flung thought of Alice Meynell's Christ in the Universe:12
With this ambiguous earth
His dealings have been told us. These abide: .
The signal to a maid, the human birth,
The lesson, and the young Man crucified ...
But in the eternities
Doubtless we shall compare together, hear
A million alien Gospels, in what guise
He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.
12. English Religious Verse: An Anthology compiled with an Introduction by G. Lacey May (Everyman's Library, J.M, Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1937), pp. 259, 260.
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O, be prepared, my soul!
To read the inconceivable, to scan
The million forms of God those stars unroll
When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.
Our quotation from Teilhard is Meynellian through and through, though the "organic" and "physical" nature Teilhard's Evolutionism would discern in Christ's cosmicity was beyond the imaginative ken of the Victorian poet.
A little clarification, however, of the two adjectives -"polymorphous" and "human" - is required. We get an appropriate pointer in a letter by Teilhard to Bruno de Solages on February 16, 1955:13 "In virtue of its whole biochemistry, the Universe is of 'poly-human' (poly-thinking) nature. Possible (?) that, because of the distances, contacts are never established between noospheres. Still, the probability of the existence of n Noospheres has become such that a religion excluding (or even not admitting positively) by structure the eventuality of a plurality of thinking focuses would no longer cover the dimensions of the world we know. That is, I insist, the reason why we shall sooner or later need a new Nicaea defining the cosmic aspect of the Incarnation."
Our "polymorphous" gets equated to "poly-human". And what "poly-human" connotes is indicated by Teilhard's bracketed "poly-thinking". The precise connotation emerges in the footnote to a passage in his essay: A Sequel to the Problem of Human Origins: The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds.14 The
13.Lettres Intimes..., p. 459. The original French runs: "En vertu de sa bio-chimie tout entiere, l'Univers est de nature 'poly-humaine' (poly-pensante). Possible (?) que, a cause des distances, les contacts ne s'etablissent jamais entre noospheres. Reste que la probabilite de 1'existence de n Noospheres est de venue telle q'une religion excluant (ou mime n'admettant pas positivement) par structure l'eventualite d'une pluralite de foyers pensants ne couvrirait plus les dimensions du Monde que nous connaissons. Voila pourquoi, j'insiste, il nous faudra, tot ou tard, un nouveau Nicee definissant la face cosmique de 1'Incarnation."
14.Christianity and Evolution, pp. 229-36.
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passage15 is: "...considering what we now know about the number of 'worlds' and their internal evolution, the idea of a single hominized planet in the universe has already become in fact (without our generally realizing it) almost as inconceivable as that of a man who appeared with no genetic relationship to the rest of the earth's animal population." The footnote16 elucidates the epithet "hominized" as being "synonymous with 'psychically reflected life'", and adds: "We have, it is true, no idea either of the chemistry or the morphology peculiar to the various extra-terrestrial forms of life. However, there is every reason to believe that should material contact be effected between two 'hominized' planets, they would be able, at least through their noospheres, to understand one another, combine and be synthesized with one another."
"Polymorphous", then, stands for some development of life which, whether or not assuming a human form like ours, has a mentality akin to that of homo sapiens and is, in that respect, human or "hominized". So what Teilhard envisions, in contrast to the human Christ whom he classes as but one aspect of the Cosmic Christ, is simply a reflectively conscious incarnation, hominized in a broad sense, elsewhere than on earth and therefore unlike the one in terrestrial history who is known to us as Jesus Christ.
But, truly speaking, it is not the chemistry or the morphology of the extra-terrestrial Incarnation that is important. What is important, in regard to Alice Meynell's "million forms" and Teilhard's "'polymorphous' manifestation", is the existence of a non-Jesus Incarnate Word. The crucial question involved is: "If Jesus is not the single instance possible of the Incarnate Word and there must be others in the several inhabitable worlds modern astronomy feels bound to posit, why should we at all employ for that Word and for its cosmicity the name 'Christ' which is tied up with Jesus?" The name has an aptness only insofar as it denotes the Omega that
15,Ibid,, p. 231.
16.Ibid., fn. 4.
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is taken to have manifested in the figure we have called Jesus Christ, but the moment other figures are acceptable as Incarnations the name becomes irrelevant. And with its irrelevance Christianity loses its claim to be the core of Teilhardism.
A suggestion similar to that in the letter about Christ's polymorphousness meets us when Teilhard, in the essay from which we have quoted a passage and a footnote, scans the various modes of dealing, in terms of Christianity, with the new situation. In one alternative he17 envisages that a theologian "can assume that the Incarnation was effected only on earth, the other mankinds being, in addition, duly 'informed' of it in some way (!?)." Teilhard18 rejects this alternative as "'ridiculous', particularly when one considers the enormous number of stars to be 'informed' (miraculously?) and their distance from one onother in space and time".
How exactly are we to construe Teilhard's comment? Of course, as he19 says at the end while giving a general solution, we have to bring in a Christ who is the centre of the universe and has not only a humano-divine nature but also a third nature which is cosmic, "enabling him", as the editorial footnote20 puts it, "to centre all the lives which constitute a pleroma extended to the galaxies". Yet, within the operation of this cosmic nature, more than one Incarnation to cover the plurality of inhabited worlds could be brought about. Does not the condemnatory word "ridiculous" apply to the phrase: "the incarnation was effected only on earth"? If it does, as it must since the condemnation applies to everything in the alternative supposed, it would confirm our thesis that the core of Teilhardism cannot be Christian.
We may add that as soon as we grant polymorphous Incarnations in other planets we bring up the general possibility of non-Jesus manifestations of Omega on this very earth as implicit in the Teilhardian concept of the Cosmic Christ.
17.Ibid., p. 232.
18.Ibid., p. 235.
19.Ibid., p. 236.
20.Ibid., fn. 12
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All in all, this Godhead is Christ in no more than name. The features of Jesus cannot be seen indelibly marked on him and, in the absence of any valid ground for welding the two together, our reading of Teilhardism as Omegalic rather than Christian must be allowed, along with our reading of Omegalic Teilhardism as including, even while exceeding, the essence of that most un-Christian doctrine: Pantheism.
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(5)
As more and more writings of Teilhard's get published, an increasingly clearer picture emerges of the fundamentals of his faith. The most illuminating aid comes from his letters. From the fact that he kept no copies of his communications and destroyed whatever his friends wrote to him we may infer that he expected his own communications to be destroyed by his friends. So he must have written his letters without any thought of their publication. Naturally, then, we may hope to find in them his most uninhibited self-expression - disclosures of his mind and heart free of whatever little reservations of speech he might have deemed desirable in order not to deepen still further the division that already lay between him and his Church and even his own religious Order, the Company of Jesus, except for a few intimate members of it.
There have already been two sets of correspondence which have seemed to us to exhibit the greatest freedom and frankness: Letters to Leontine Zanta and Letters to Two Friends. We have drawn upon the former mainly in another book1 yet to be published and upon the latter in the present one. Now a third set has come to hand, in the original French at the moment, a series of letters to four fellow-Jesuits to whom he felt closest.2 In English its title would run: Intimate Letters of Teilhard de Chardin to Auguste Valensin, Bruno de Solages, Henri de Lubac, Andre Ravier, 1919-1955, with Introduction and Notes by Henri de Lubac. All the themes dealt with in Teilhard's books are touched upon here in one form or another, just as they are in those two earlier-published series, but the chief interest for us of this latest compilation lies in the emphatic and ultimate confirmation it provides of our reading of basic Teilhardism from the previous volumes
1.The Spirituality of the Future: A Search apropos of R.C Zaehner's Study in Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin.
2.Teilhard de Chardin: Lettres Intimes a Auguste Valensin, Bruno de Solages, Henri de Lubac, Andre Ravier, 1919-1955.
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of correspondence as well as from the various books.
Our reading showed Teilhard to be - for all his attempts to establish contacts with the Church's traditional teaching and with certain passages of St. Paul - centrally unorthodox, formulating a Christianity sui generis. It also demonstrated as mostly mistaken and sometimes perverse the attempts of his co-religionist admirers to assimilate him into established Roman Catholicism and reduce his differences to merely an adaptation of old dogmas to new conditions and climates of thought, so that those differences would amount finally to a matter of nomenclature, a mode of using words. Again, while taking due note of Teilhard's avowals of devotion to Rome, we have stressed a certain inner independence radical in nature. And we have thrown into some relief his constant hope of Teilhardianising Rome by means of his very presence within its orbit. Not that Roman Catholic exegetes fail to record instances of what they consider wrong-headedness on Teilhard's part, but on the whole they discern in him a true son of orthodox Christianity putting in evolutionary terms the traditional Christian religion in order to convert the scientific non-believers amongst whom his lot as a researcher in palaeontology was cast.
How wrong-headed are these exegetes themselves should have been clear from much of Teilhard's correspondence published in the past. Perhaps the most pointed and positive statement by him of his personal religious stance is in a letter from China to Leontine Zanta on January 26, 1936:3 "What increasingly dominates my interest and my inner preoccupations, as you already know, is the effort to establish within myself, and to diffuse around me, a new religion (let's call it an improved Christianity, if you like) whose personal God is no longer the great 'neolithic' land-owner of times gone by, but the Soul of the world - as demanded by the cultural and religious stage we have now reached.... My road ahead seems
3. Letters to leontine Zanta (Collins, London, 1969), pp. 114-15.
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clearly marked out; it is a matter not of superimposing Christ on the world, but of 'panchristising' the universe. The delicate point (and I touched on part of this in Christology and Evolution) is that, if you follow this path, you are led not only to widening your views, but to turning your perspectives upside down; evil (no longer punishment for a fault, but 'sign and effort' of progress) and matter (no longer a guilty and lower element, but 'the stuff of the Spirit') assume a meaning diametrically opposed to the meaning customarily viewed as Christian. Christ emerges from the transformation incredibly enlarged (at least that is my opinion - and all the uneasy contemporaries with whom I have spoken about it think like me). But is this Christ really the Christ of the Gospel? And if not, on what henceforward do we base what we are trying to build? I don't know whether, among the many of my colleagues who are in front of me or behind me on the road I'm travelling, there are any (or even a single one!... that seems incredible) who realise the importance of the step that all are taking. But I'm beginning to see it very clearly. One thing reassures me: it is that, in me, the increase of light goes hand in hand with love, and with renouncement of myself in the Greater than me. This could not deceive."
We may recall here the comment we made after quoting the passage in an earlier book: "This declaration should settle all controversy. Teilhard is after a new religion, which can stand in its own right. It need not be un-Christian, but it can be Christian only if Christianity undergoes an improvement. The improvement does not lie just in extending, heightening, intensifying what we have been accustomed to as Christian: it lies basically in a complete revolution, an entire inversion -the head has to be put where the feet were and vice versa: no mere patch-up or expansion along the same line will do. But Christ still remains the core of the new religion, even though the Church's outlook on evil and matter has to be turned topsy-turvy or taken to a sheer antipodes. And Christ is now the Soul of the world, the Cosmic Person who is the animating principle of all matter: he is as wide as the universe: he is the
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universe itself in its true inner reality, the One Spirit whose outer stuff, as it were, is the world of matter, the sphere of a difficult, often erring yet ever advancing evolution. There can be no going back on this view, whether or not it agrees with the picture of Christ given by the Gospel. But if we gauge the true temper of the Gospel's Christ - the revealer of love for God's children and of the mystical resort of our whole self to the Divine Infinite - we may be sure he is not negated by this Panchristism which the trend and mood of our modern age with its discovery of universal evolution demands."
An additional point we may repeat from the same book. We are often told, on the basis of several "faithful" confessions by Teilhard, that at no time was there any question of his quitting his Order and his Church. Fearing the possibility of a recantation or a revolt, he4 once appealed to Leontine Zanta to pray that he might never break either with the Church or his own truth. In one occasion he5 even contemplated calmly the possibilty of a break: "... I am more and more determined to put my trust in Life, without letting anything surprise me. And then I feel that I haven't the least apprehension about anything that could happen to me, provided that it is 'in the service of the world'." The calm contemplation had for its background a situation which, under ordinary conditions, would inevitably have led to a rupture with the Vatican: "... in my heart I haven't changed, except along the same lines. One consequence of this movement is that I am gradually finding myself more and more on the fringe of a lot of things. It's only thanks to the exotic life I'm leading that this drift doesn't develop into a break." These words can mean only one thing: if Teilhard had been in Europe and not in far-away China, the conflict between his own truth and the Vatican's position would have been acute enough to force him to cut himself away from his Order and his Church for the sake of his "new religion."
4.Ibid., pp. 79-80.
5.Ibid., pp. 110-11.
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A third point to make from past epistolary sources concerns the motives for Teilhard's sincere struggle, despite his "new religion", to remain in the traditional fold. In the first place, a strong sense was his that here was an institution founded by Christ himself and charged with a great office. Next, he was deeply enamoured of the doctrine at the heart of this institution that there was a Divine Incarnation, an insertion of the Personal Godhead into matter, and that at the end of time the Resurrected Christ would complete his Mystical Body of faithful followers and form with their spiritually glorified physical beings a Plenitude, a Pleroma, with himself and carry this Cosmic Fullness into the bosom of the Transcendent God. Lastly, he had the conviction that he could bring home to his Church his evolutionary vision of that wonderful doctrine and lift Roman Catholicism out of an old-fashioned interpretation taking no stock of modern evolutionism which, with its view of a unitary and organic cosmos, was to him the truth of truths. It is the last motive that needs underlining. It has been denied, smacking as it may of fifth-column tactics. But the spirit of the fifth column resides in wanting to destroy by stealth what one hates. Here the aim would be to destroy that which would kill what one loves. Granted the vital distinction, we cannot deny Teilhard's faithfulness as partly fed by the desire to hold on because, from outside, it would have been impossible to have any influence for change. In his letters in English to an American woman, Lucille Swann, he states this desire three times.
On March 21, 1941 he 6 writes from Peking: "According to my own principles, I cannot fight Christianity; I can only work inside it, by trying to transform and 'convert' it. A revolutionary attitude would be much more easy and also much more pleasant, but it would be suicidal. So I must go on step by step, tenaciously. I know that the tide is rising, which supports me." Again, from Peking, on June 22, he7 declares: "I
6.Letters to Two Friends, 1926-1952, p. 155.
7.Ibid., p. 158.
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have well received your long and so good letter in which you urge me to force more strongly my way towards a freer expression of my Weltanschauung. You must be sure that I understand perfectly your point of view. The only and great difficulty, as I told you many times, is that I am convinced that my best efforts could be useless if I should break with the religious current which the problem is not to fight but to transform. On such a battlefield, I can only act from inside, and this not by politics, but by sheer conviction. Let us hope." Finally, from Paris on February 8, 1949, we have the words: "Leaving the Order, a ce point des choses, would be suicidal, as far as the success of my 'gospel' is concerned. In addition to the bad effect of the gesture on my 'followers', don't forget that my whole spiritual construction is genuinely built on (or rather culminating into) an enlarged and 'rejuvenated' figure of Christ; so that I can do nothing in the way of parting from the 'Church' which is, biologically speaking, the 'phylum' of Christ. The only thing I can do is to work 'from inside ."
None of the three points we have spotlighted are quite brought into focus by de Lubac in his copious and often extremely competent notes. Here and there they are allowed to emerge, but some counterpoise is always added and the total result in the annotation is a Teilhard with his sharp edges blunted. Fortunately, the text of the correspondence -the major contents of which have already been accessible to Teilhardian students, especially Emile Rideau and Claude Cuenot - offers almost an embarros de richesse to whoever is minded to prove de Lubac in error.
The intense disparity between the official Roman Catholicism and Christianity a la Teilhard hits us in the eye in a letter to Auguste Valensin from Tientsin on 13 October 1933:8
8. Lettres Intimes..., pp. 253-54, The original French runs: "A Rome, essaiera-t-on de s'entendre avec moi, - ou simplement de me faire sentir qu'on me donne une nouvelle chance' (vous avez sans doute raison: one explication orale la-bas serait dangereuse)? - J'attends, et je suis decide a aller dans la direction d'un accord avec un maximum de sincerite et de bonne volonte. Mais, pour vous dire le fond de ma pensee, je redoute un peu, a I'avance, tout ce qui ressemblerait & un
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"In Rome, will they try to come to an understanding with me - or simply make me feel that they are giving me 'a new chance' (you are undoubtedly right: there, an oral explanation would be dangerous)? -I am waiting, and I am determined to go towards an agreement with a maximum of sincerity and good will. But, to tell you what I truly think, I rather fear in advance anything that would resemble a pact. There is, between the Roman authorities and myself, more than a misunderstanding of words. All of us dream of one and the same Christ; - and that is the fundamental thing, thanks to which we can remain associates without disloyalty or dupery. But, this capital point set apart, we differ, Rome and I, by two representations of the World, and two practical attitudes towards the World, which are not merely complementary but contrary. It is, at bottom, a merciless fight, - between a static pessimism and a progressive optimism. That, you see, is what we should frankly acknowledge, rather than cheating oneself with words. - Under these conditions, can I really hope for, or even desire, an agreement? Would it be frank? And would it
pacte, Entre les autorites romaines et moi, il y a plus qu'un malentendu de mots. Les uns et les autres, nous revons d'un seul et meme Christ; - et c'est la chose fondamentale grace a quoi nous pouvons rester associes sans deloyaute et sans duperie. Mais, ce point capital mis a part, nous differons, Rome et moi, par deux representations du Monde, et deux attitudes pratiques vis-a-vis du Monde, qui ne sont pas seulement compiementaires, mais contraires. C'est, au fond, une lutte sans merci, - entre un pessimisme starique et un optimisme progressif. Cela, voyez-vous, je crois qu'il vaut mieux se 1'avouer franchement, plutfit que de se tromper avec des mots. - Dans ces conditions, puis-je vraiment esperer, ou meme desirer, un accord? serait-ce franc? et serait-ce solide? - Je finis par penser que la seule solution, dans mon cas, est de continuer a vivre en 'free lance', au moins provisoirement. Si le Seigneur me donne encore assez longtemps force et vie, j'arriverai peut-etre a mettre au point une oeuvre spirituelle plus viable, ou a contempler 1'avenement, dans I'Eglise, d'un esprit nouveau. - En attendant, ce que je puis promettre au P. de B. c'est d'essayer (plus que je ne l'ai sans doute fait dans le passe) de conserver le maximum des vues et des attitudes traditionnelles de I'Eglise et de la Cie dans mes constructions personnelles, - Mais il serait vain, vous le sentez vous-meme, de la part de 1'autorite, de vouloir me limiter a la recherche scientifique seule, - 'sans philosophie', comme on dit. La Science pour moi est morte sans un certain esprit (= esprit de recherche, - la recherche sacree): et c'est precisement de cet esprit qu'on ne veut pas, et dont on redoute la diffusion."
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be solid? - In the end, I think that the only solution, in my case, is to continue to live as a 'free lance', at least for the time being. If the Lord still gives me force and life long enough, I shall perhaps succeed in setting together a more viable spiritual work or in contemplating the advent, in the Church, of a new spirit. - In the meantime, what I can promise P[ere] de B[onneville] is try (more than I perhaps did in the past) to keep the maximum of the traditional views and attitudes of the Church and the Company in my personal constructions. But it would be vain, as you feel it yourself, on the part of authority to want to limit me to scientific research alone, -without 'philosophy', as they say. - For me, Science is dead without a certain spirit (= the spirit of research, - sacred research): and it is precisely that spirit that they do not want, and whose diffusion they dread."
Nothing could be more plain, more trenchant, in its admission of an uncrossable gulf, Teilhardism and the Roman Catholic faith are "contrary" to each other: the fight between them does not revolve around nomenclature. Teilhard's is not just a modern phraseology for ancient truths: the fight is far deeper and can give no quarter. Nor did Teilhard find the division into two opposite camps a temporary one. Sixteen years later - on 10 January 1949 - he9 wrote: "Since I returned from China, I clearly distinguish that I am becoming more and more firm and intransigent about some points of divergence; and this cannot change." Eight months afterwards (8 September 1949) he composed The Heart of the Problem. Cuenot,10 drawing privately upon the documents collected in Intimate Letters, records in connection with that essay: "The fundamental theme is:
The urgent necessity for Christian faith in the 'Above' to incorporate the human neo-faith in a 'still to come'. This latter is born (and this is
9. Ibid., p. 383, note 5: "Depuis que je suis rentre de Chine, je distingue clairement que je deviens de plus en plus ferme et intransigeant sur quelques points de divergence; et cela ne peut plus changer." .
10. Teilhard de Chardin: A Biographical Study (Helicon, Baltimore, 1965), pp. 270-71.
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something that has happened and nothing
can change) of the objective emergence of the ultra-
human (releasing a neo-humanism, and automati-
cally entailing a neo-Christianity)."
Most significantly, Cuenot11 footnotes the word "neo-Christianity" thus: "By neo-Christianity should be understood a transcending of Christianity." Clearly, Cuenot's explanation is inspired by Teilhard's own phrase after writing the word in question which terminates his report of what he has penned to a fellow-priest in a high position. Teilhard's phrase12 after "neo-Christianity" runs: "I have naturally not used this last word." The word would obviously be a terrific startler to orthodoxy.
Cuenot continues, quoting from the same letter of Teilhard's (dated 29 October 1948) to de Lubac:
"The reaction [at Rome] was characteristic:
At Rome they see neither the timeliness nor the
reliability of an apologetics based on faith in man.
For the Church, the only thing that makes an
assured future worthwhile is eternal life.
"To this Teilhard replied:
The synthesis of the two forms of faith in Christo
Jesus is not an arbitrarily chosen tactical move ad
usum infidelium. It represents hic et nunc a condition
of survival for an increasing number of Christians.
We have to choose right now between the Christia-
nizing of neo-humanism and its condemnation.
The problem is with us now, and time is short."
The same want of sympathy in Rome with neo-humanism Teilhard 13 underscores when writing, about a year earlier, to
11.Ibid., p. 271, fn. 2.
12,Op. cit„ p. 382: "Je n'ai naturellement pas employe ce dernier mot."
13,Ibid., p. 377: " ...ce centre ou foyer de spiritualisation manque complete-ment de connexions avec le Monde humain en mouvement autour de lui. Autour de Rome, ce n'est pas le rideau de fer, mais un rideau de ouate, amortissant tout bruit des discussions et des aspirations humaines: le Monde s'arrete aux portes du Vatican."
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de Lubac concerning the Church: "This centre or focus of spiritualisation completely lacks connections with the human World in movement around itself. Around Rome, there is not an Iron Curtain, but a curtain of cotton-wool padding, deadening all noise of human discussions and aspirations: the World stops short at the gates of the Vatican." No doubt, Teilhard was told on 9 November of the same year by a representative of Rome14: "Do not believe, above all, that we are uninterested in neo-humanism, and do not think that we see only a dilemma: either to admit or condemn it. We wish first to study it before judging it. Surely, this is normal." But, even as late as October 1954, after a conference organised to mark the bicentenary of Columbia University, Teilhard, as Cuenot15 tells us, "noted with dismay the 'immobilist' attitude of too manv Christians". Teilhard wrote:16 "... in the course of animated discussions, I was struck by the realization that those who were most vigorous in rejecting the existence in the future of a global ultra-human were in fact Christians (of all denominations)."
Teilhard, optimist that he was, exercised optimism even about the pessimistic stand of the Church whose origin and function he always venerated. But he never forsook either his realistic view of the Church as it actually existed or his effort to convert it rather than himself be converted. Thus on 8 August 1950 we find him17 writing to Valensin:
14.Ibid., pp. 383-84, note 8: "Ne croyez pas surtout qu'on se desinteresse du neo-Humanisme, et ne pensez pas qu'on ne voie qu'un dilemme: ou 1'admettre ou le condamner. On veut l'etudier d'abord, avant de le juger. C'est bien normal."
15.Op. cit., p. 360.
17.Lettres Intimes..., pp. 391-92: "Il y a evidemment conflit radical entre ma vision du Divin et celle de I'autorite officielle. Mais j'ai toujours confiance que nous convergeons. Je suis de plus en plus ardemment convaincu qu'il n'y a pas d'issue a l'Humain sinon en prolongement du Dieu chretien. C'est seulement sur la facon de concevoir les rapports du Christ et du Monde que 1'opposition apparait. Or, on ne m'enlevera pas de la tele et du coeur que 'de mon point de vue' Christ et Monde grandissent simultanement, Tout mon effort va a maintenir
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"There is evidently a radical conflict between my vision of God and that of the official authority. But I have always the confidence that we shall converge. I am more and more ardently convinced that there is no issue to the Human except in prolongation of the Christian God. It is solely over the way of conceiving the relations of Christ and the World that the opposition appears. But nobody will take away from my head and heart that 'from my point of view' Christ and the World grow simultaneously. All my effort goes towards maintaining a Christ as vast and organic as the Universe: is this not the very definition of orthodoxy?
"The source of all the annoyances, at the moment, is that the theologians do not see the World and Man as they disclose themselves henceforth to us. The theologians present us with a God for a World finished (or finishing) while from now on we can adore only a God for a World 'beginning'. I am increasingly sure of it: all the difficulty and all the grandeur of the modern religious problem lie there.
"I have no desire or idea to separate myself [from the Church], But I also know that nothing, absolutely nothing, could turn me away from a vision, outside of which I feel that all my faith would fall to pieces, - because it (this vision) is born of my very faithfulness to living and thinking what has always been taught to me."
Teilhard has the feeling that what he has learned of Christianity is in its truth not contradictory of his special
le Christ aussi vaste et organique que 1'Univers: n'est-ce pas la definition meme de I'orthodoxie?
"La source de tous les ennuis, en ce moment, est que les theologiens ne voient pas le Monde et 1'Homme comme ils se decouvrent desormais a nous, Ils nous presentent un Dieu pour Monde fini (ou finissant) alors que nous ne saurions plus adorer qu'un Dieu pour Monde 'commencant'. J'en suis de plus en plus sur: toute la difficulty et toute la grandeur du probleme religieux modeme sont la.
"Je n'ai aucune envie ni idee de me separer! Mais je sais aussi que rien, absolument rien, ne saurait me detourner d'une vision en dehors de laquelle je sens que toute ma foi s'ecroulerait, - parce qu'elle (cette vision) est nee de ma fidelity meme a vivre et a penser ce qu'on m'a depuis toujours enseigne."
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vision: he believes he is being truly Christian by holding to a view which runs in the teeth of the official doctrine.
The same stand, which amounts to a simultaneous Yes and No, meets us in a more suave form in a letter hel8 wrote on March 1955, hardly a month before his death, to Jeanne Mortier: "I have never felt more essentially bound to the Church, nor more certain that this Church, by rethinking more thoroughly its Christ, will be the religion of tomorrow."
Everywhere we have two sides juxtaposed explicity or subtly. Although Teilhard is pledged to the prolongation of the Christian God in the ultra-human, he is convinced that the Church misconceives that God by not realising the proper implications of what it preserves as orthodoxy. Unlike the Church's conception, this implication is realised by seeing Christ and the World as sharing a single growing vastness and organicity, each in their own manner. Devoted though he is to the Church, Teilhard swears he will never give up his own Weltanschauung, which is not the Church's at present but is, according to him, the genuine meaning of its teaching. This Church alone, which now owns his adherence, will develop the religion of the future, yet on condition that it thinks anew, from beginning to end, the role of Christ - a role over which he and the masters of the Church are at variance not just superficially but at the very roots, and whose true form is discerned only by Teilhard. In such cirmumstances, it is his duty to strain every nerve to bring the authorities round to his "truth". De Lubac 19 himself, annotating a letter of as late as 2 January 1955, admits: "Teilhard has not stopped seeking a dialogue with the authorities of his Order; he never gave up converting them to his point of view. In these last years, he became even more pressing."
18.Ibid., p. 393, note 7; "Je ne me suis jamais senti plus lie, par le fond, 3 l'Eglise, ni plus certain que cette Eglise, en repensant plus a fond son Christ, sera la religion de demain."
19.Ibid., p. 451: "T n'a cesse de chercher le dialogue avec les autorites de son Ordre; il n'a jamais renonce a les 'convertir'
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Here we may appropriately bring in the evidence of Intimate Letters about Teilhard's finding it necessary to stay within the Roman Catholic fold if he wanted to convert it. He20 writes on 2 January 1927 to his cousin Marguerite Teilhard-Chambon: "1 should do all that is possible for me to shake up immobilism, but, by working and pushing 'from inside', 1 sometimes tell myself that it is perhaps my role, my particular vocation, to find myself shut up in the heart of the ecclesiastical organism with the most anticonfessional and the most desperately human temperament one could imagine.21 The legitimate fusion of the loves of Heaven and Earth can get established in the Church, I think, only after numerous conflicts of this kind, accepted and surmounted." About two and a half years later - on 15 July 1929 - we read in Teilhard's letter22 to Valensin: "I no more feel, - since a long time back, in fact, - either for the Church or for the Company, the sort of naive and filial attachment (have I, Indeed, ever felt it?) which is, without doubt, the treasure of many. But I am aware of feeling myself thoroughly tied to the one and to the other for new and higher reasons, - in the sense that I should believe I would be a traitor to 'the World', by getting away from the
20.Ibid., p. 150: "..Je dots faire mon possible pour secouer 1'immobilisme, mais, en travaillant et en poussant 'from inside', je me dis parfois que c'est peut-etre mon role, mon espece de vocation, de me trouver enferme au cceur de 1'organisme ecclesiastique avec le temperament le plus anticonfessionnel et le plus desesperement humain qu'on puisse imaginer. La fusion legitime des amours du Ciel et de la Terre ne doit pouvoir s'etablir dans I'Eglise, je pense, qu'a la suite de nombreux conflits de cet ordre, acceptes et surmontes."
21.Cf. de Lubac in his Preface (Avertissement), pp. 10-11: "He was...,by birth, 'the most anticonfessional' of men. This means that a certain spiritual anarchy was lying in wait for him." ("Il etait..., de naissance, Te plus anticonfessionnel' des homines. C'est dire qu'il etait guette par une certaine anarchie spirituelle.")
22.Ibid,, pp. 194-95: "Je n'eprouve plus, - depuis longtemps, en fait, - ni pour I'Eglise, ni pour la Cie, cette sorte d'attachement naif et filial (l'ai-je jamais eprouve en fait?...) qui est sans doute le tresor de beaucoup, Mais j'ai conscience de me sentir foncierement lie a I'une et a I'autre pour des raisons superieures et nouvelles, - en ce sens que je croirais trahir 'le Monde', en m'evadant de la place qui m'a ete assignee. En ce sens, je les aime l'une et I'autre, et je veux travailler, atomiquement, a les parfaire, da dedans, - sans antagonisme."
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place which has been assigned to me. In this sense, I love both and I want to work, atom-like, to perfect them, from within, -without antagonism."
Besides the disclosure of a reformatory attitude towards the religion whose minister Teilhard was, we have here a beam of light thrown on a commitment central to his life. He is not serving the Company of Jesus and through it the Church because of common religious sentiments. The World, as an all-encompassing, all-governing presence, is what primarily commands his loyalty. He feels he is a Jesuit by the will of this presence and his whole religious service lies in carrying out the Church-transformative mission given him by a cosmic divinity. That divinity is the true Christ to him and what he meant by calling for a rethinking of Christ is the need of the orthodox mind to get steeped in the sense of this divinity and share with modern evolutionists, with scientific pantheists, their urge towards the World's fulfilment by the revelation and realisation of the ultra-human.
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(6)
How much Teilhard was himself imbued with what we may term the religious intuition of the modern scientific consciousness may be gathered from the words in his letter1 to Auguste Valensin on 31 December 1926: "Instinctively, and especially in the last ten years, I have always offered myself to Our Lord as a sort of testing-ground, where, on a small scale. He might bring about the fusion between the two great loves, of God and the World - for without that fusion I am convinced no Kingdom of God is possible. - Is it perhaps for this that He makes me share so intensely the spirit of those whom we call free-thinkers, heretics and pagans?... But may He in return for it give me the force to baptise this soul of the World which has become my true soul (supposing it was not always that)!"
The profound change, cutting down to bedrock, which intense affinity with the World-soul would imply in the rethinking of Christ which Teilhard wished the Church to do, can be guessed in general from a letter a year earlier than the one to Jeanne Mortier, which we quoted in the previous chapter. Claude Cuenot'2 cites this letter dated 20 April 1954: "We have been forced to abandon the static Aristotelian cosmos and introduced (through the whole physico-chemico-biological system) into a universe still in a state of cosmo-genesis. In future, therefore, we have to rethink our Christology in terms of Christogenesis (at the same time as we
1.Lettres Intimes..., p. 144: "Insrinctivement, depuis dix ans surtout, je me suis toujours offert a N(otre) S(eigneur), comme une sorte de champ d'experience, pour qu'Il y opere, en petit, la fusion entre les deux grands amours de Dieu et du Monde, - fusion sans laquelle je suis persuade qu'il n'y a pas de Regne de Dieu possible. - Peut-etrc- est-ce pour cela qu'Il me fait parliciper aussi intense merit a l'esprit de ceux que nous appelons les libres-penseurs, les heretiques et les paiens?... Mais qu'en revanche Il me donne la force de baptiser cette ame du Monde qui est devenue ma vraie ame (a supposer qu'elle ne l'ait pas toujours ete)!" The first half of our English translation is from the introduction (p. 39) of Letters to Leontine Zanta (Collins, London, 1969).
2.Teilhard de Chardin: A Biographical Study, p. 362.
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rethink our anthropology in terms of anthropogenesis). And such an operation is not simply a matter of slight readjustment of certain aspects. As a result of the introduction of a new dimension, the whole thing is to be recast (just as when you move from plane to spherical geometry) - a tremendous effort: and from it, I assure you, Christ will emerge in triumph, the saviour of anthropogenesis."
Positive pointers to the extreme implication of recasting Christology abound in Intimate Letters. They are at their sharpest where we find, for the first time (as far as I know) in Teilhard's writings, the terms: "trans-Christie", "Trans-Christ", "trans-Christian", "trans-Christianised Christianity". On the very face of them they cannot but get linked with the "transcending of Christianity" which, as we saw in the preceding article, Cuenot reads, for a good reason, in Teilhard's "neo-Christianity". We shall quote in chronological order the passages where the terms occur. They all belong to the last nine years of Teilhard's life.
On 20 April 1948 a letter3 to Valensin contained the following: "...I have never felt at the same time more full of 'my gospel', and more integrally dependent, body, soul and mind, upon Jesus Christ. I have a feeling both sweet and painful that I can do absolutely nothing without Him. And
3. Op. cit., pp. 371-72: "...je re me suis jamais senti en meme temps plus plein de 'mon evangile', et plus integralement dependant, corps, ame et esprit, du Christ-Jesus. J'ai un sens a la fois doux et douloureux que je ne puis absolument rien sans Lui. Et simultanement je suis effraye de voir combien je l'apercois toujours plus loin et plus haut sur 1'axe (j'espere!) de 1'orthodoxie. Un peu comme les etoiles que 1'astronomie nous montre toujours plus liees a notre systeme et cependant toujours plus vertigineusement loin que nous ne pensions. - En fait, mon pan-Christisme est en quelque facon "trans-Christique'. Et c'est la seule position coherente avec mon Humanisme qui, biologiquement, est celui d'une Humanite encore tres imparfaitement centree sur soi, individuellement et col-lectivement.
"Cette idee d'une sur-evolution en cours de l'Humanite devient de plus en plus ma plate-forme scientifique...
"Presentement le grand dommage est que, pour une majorite encore de catholiques (pretres surtout) la religion est une lunette prise par le mauvais bout: elle diminue la grandeur et la valeur du Monde, au lieu de les exalter!"
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simultaneously 1 am frightened to see how much I perceive him always farther and higher upon the axis (I hope!) of orthodoxy. A little like the stars that astronomy shows us always more tied to our system and yet always more vertiginously distant than we thought. - In fact, my pan-Christicism is somewhat 'trans-Christie', And it is the only position coherent with my Humanism which, biologically, is that of a Humanity still very imperfectly centred upon itself, individually and collectively.
"This idea of a super-evolution of Humanity in process is more and more becoming my scientific platform....
"At present the great pity is that still for a majority of Catholics (especially priests) religion is a field-glass held by the wrong end: it diminishes the greatness and value of the World, instead of exalting them!"
De Lubac4 annotates the phrase "upon the axis (I hope!) of orthodoxy" thus: "New expression of what Teilhard often repeated. He wrote, 14-2-1949: 'Between my way of thinking and the "orthodox" (I do not say "official" but "practical") Christian vision of the World, there is not such a big gulf as you think.'" The note seems completely to miss the point of both pronouncements of Teilhard's. Whatever "practical" may denote, his "way of thinking" is definitely set over against the orthodoxy of the "official" Christian vision: that is, the declared stand of Rome. This is the central significant point. And even as regards the "practical" Christian vision's orthodoxy the difference is not denied; the difference is still a "gulf", but the gulf is less big than one might conceive at first sight. As for the phrase glossed by de Lubac, the bracketed exclamation "I hope!" has a double shade: it simultaneously suggests the wish to be orthodox and the uncertainty of really being so. The accent of doubt breaks in because Teilhard has recorded his dismay at finding his Christ moving ever more
4. Ibid., p. 373, note 5: "Expression nouvelle de ce que T a souvent repete. Il ecrira, 14-2-1949: 'Entre ma maniere de penser et la vision chretienne du monde "orthodoxe" (je ne dis pas "officielle" mais "pratique") l'abime n'est pas si grand que vous imaginez' (Acc, 241)."
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far and high than one would customarily set him in his divine role vis-a-vis the world. The role Teilhard assigns him is increasingly more remote, more grandiose than the Church has given him by its interpretation of scripture. Teilhard would like to believe that the same scripture essentially justifies his position and that therefore his position cannot be called quite unorthodox; but the two interpretations, despite referring to the identical Jesus Christ and having certain terms and approaches in common, tend to differ toto coelo. The simile of the stars seeming aligned with our galactic system but really lying incalculably beyond it is surely an index to this difference, no matter what the apparent relationship.
If we keep this simile in mind we shall also see the irrelevance of de Lubac's next annotation5 - the one to Teilhard's "trans-Christie": "Some days later, 1st May, he transcribed into his notebook the text of St. Ambroise: 'The world resurrected in Him, heaven resurrected in Him, the earth resurrected in Him. Indeed a new heaven and a new earth resurrected,' ...And on the 7th, day of the Ascension: 'All my mysticism: the ascensional force of Christ...'"
Just because Teilhard quoted a traditional text and summed up his mystical message in terms of Christ's act of Ascension, it does not follow either that Teilhard was directly referring to the particular theme with which his letter had dealt a few days earlier or that, if he was, we have to understand the entries in his notebook in the conventional Christian sense. We must never forget how he put heady-new wine into old bottles: in the letter itself he has clearly referred to the strikingly unusual function he has attributed to the
5. Ibid., note 6: "Queiques jours plus tard, le 1" mai, il transcrira dans son cahier le texte de saint Ambroise: 'Resurrexit in Eo mundus, resurrexit in Eo coelum, resurrexit in Eo terra. Resurrexit enim coelum novum et terra nova' (Lect. 7. 5 dim. apres Paques). Et le 7, jour de 1'Ascension: 'Toute ma mystique: la force ascensionnelle du Christ...'"
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Christ of Roman Catholicism. As he6 says elsewhere to Valensin in Intimate Letters (on 27 June 1926 from China): "I believe...that, God helping, I am always upon the profound Christian axis..,. But, side by side with that, I cannot hide from myself that there has come about, developing within me, an in-horn and deep opposition to what is habitually regarded as the Christian form, hopes, and interests. You see - in the 'Christian world', as presented to us in ecclesiastical documents and Catholic gestures or conceptions, I altogether 'suffocate' physically. We gave, a thousand years ago, a compass-measurement which claimed to encircle the world of physical and moral possibilities; - and now the whole of reality is beyond. We are no longer 'Catholic' in fact; but we are defending a system, a sect. Hence, as I believe I have already told you on my first arrival in China, Christianity now appears to me much less a closed and established whole than an axis of progression and assimilation. Apart from this axis, I cannot see any guarantee or any way out for the world. But around this axis, I can glimpse an immense quantity of truths and attitudes for which orthodoxy has not yet made room, - If I dared use a word which could be given inaccept-able meanings, I feel myself irreducibly 'hyper-Catholic'."
6. Ibid., pp. 136-37; "Je crois..., Dieu aidant, etre toujours sur 1'axe Chretien profond... Mais, a cote de cela, je ne puis me dissimuler qu'il va, se developpant en moi, une opposition native et profonde pour ce qui est regarde habituellement comme la forme, les esperances, et les interets Chretiens. Que voulez-vous: dans le 'monde chretien' tel qu'il se presente A nous dans les documents ecclesiasti-ques et les gestes ou conceptions catholiques, 'j'etouffe' absolument, physique-ment. Nous avons donne, il y a mille ans, un tour de compas qui pretendait encercler le monde des possibilites physiques et morales; - et maintenant toute la realite est au-delA. Nous ne sommes plus 'catholiques' en fait; mais nous defendons un systeme, une secte. Alors, comme je vous le disais deja, je crois, a ma premiere arrivee en Chine, le Christianisme m'apparait maintenant beaucoup moins comme un ensemble ferme et constitue que comme un axe de progression et d'assimilation. Hors de cet axe, je ne vois au monde aucune garantie, aucune issue, Mais, autour de cet axe, j'entrevois une immense quantite de verites et d'attitudes auxquelles l'orthodoxie n'a pas encore fait de place - Si j'osais employer un mot qui peut avoir des sens inacceptables, je me sens irreductible-ment 'hyper-catholique'." The closing part of our English translation is from the Introduction (p. 36) of Letters to Leontine Zanta.
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Here we have a clear light with which to see the implications of the twenty-two-year later passage. Teilhard accepts in essence the axis of Christianity, the orthodox axis, but would like it to be no fast-shut final doctrine: he visions immense vistas of new spiritual revelation to which he wants it to open up instead of constituting a stifling old-world creed. Not orthodoxy as it is but orthodoxy changing itself enormously is what makes his religion. As such, it cannot help exposing itself to the accusation of not being orthodox at all: Teilhard, by saying he is farther and higher - "hyper" - along the Catholic Une, without any chance of reducibleness to the customary Christian gestures or conceptions, might have the charge laid at his door that by centring his Catholicism in the Universal Christ, the Christ of pan-Christism, who is intimately linked with the idea of Humanity's "Super-evolution", with the envisagement of the "ultra-human," which is not accepted by the Church, Teilhard in some way is going in for the "trans-Christic", a Christianity basically transposed.
Indeed we get the very word "transposed" in a context closely resembling the one in which he is "frightened" to see how much he perceives Christ always farther and higher than does the Church to which he has pledged himself. And in that second context he even brings in themes related to that which de Lubac mentions as supplying the key to our passage -Christ's Ascension after his Resurrection. On 17 December 1922 a letter7 to Valensin says: "I am sometimes a little frightened when I think of the transposition I have to impose, within myself, upon the common notions of creation, inspiration, miracle, original sin, Resurrection, etc., to be able to accept them."
And has not Teilhard written to de Lubac himself of the novel shape required of old dogmas and indirectly warned him against doing the. transposing act by halves? On 9
7. Ibid, p, 90: "Je suis parfois un peu effraye quand je songe a la transposition que je dois faire subir, en moi, aux notions vulgaires de creation, inspiration, miracle, peche originel, Resurrection, etc., pour pouvoir les accepter."
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December 1933 de Lubac was told:8 "I have quite a number of friends, and you know some of them, who admit at the same time that Christ is the Centre of things and that the ensemble of things is of an evolutive form; - but they do not seem to see what are the reactions organically and psychologically necessary of this situation upon: the notion of Redemption, the notion of Incarnation, and the moral Evangelical ideal."
On 27 June 1934 Teilhard 9 speaks even directly of transposition to de Lubac apropos of the Christian idea of the Supernatural face to face with the old pre-evolutionary idea of Nature: "...the most serious defect of the 'Supernatural' is to stand opposite a static notion of 'nature' which suffices no longer. The whole theory of the Supernatural (like all the rest of the theological theses which express themselves by 'substances' and 'accidents') moves about in a domain of thought which the majority of the modems have deserted. It is essential to transpose it to a system of representations which will be intelligible and living for us."
How radical and definitive the general transposition of Christianity was to be in Teilhardism can be gauged from the uncompromising declaration he made in the essay "Christology and Evolution"10 written in the same period as the above letters and sent to both Valensin and de Lubac to be read: "...nothing can any longer find place in our constructions which does not first satisfy the conditions of a universe in process of transformation. A Christ whose features do not adapt them-
8.Ibid., p. 259; "J'ai bien des amis, et vous en connaissez, qui admettent a la fois que le Christ est le Centre des choses, et que 1'ensemble des choses est de forme evolutive; - mais ils ne semblent pas voir quelles sont les reactions organiquement et psvchologiquement necessaires de cette situation sur: la notion de Redemption, la notion d'Incarnation, et 1'ideal moral Evangelique."
9.Ibid., pp. 277-78: "...le plus grave defaut du 'Surnaturel' est de s'opposer a une notion statique de 'nature' qui ne suffit plus. Toute la theorie du Surnaturel (comme du reste toutes les theses theologiques qui s'expriment en 'substances' et 'accidents') s'agite dans un domaine de pensee que la plupart des modernes ont deserte. Il est essenttiel de le trattsposer dans un systeme de representations qui soit pour nous intelligible et vivant."
10. In Christianity and Evolution, p. 78.
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selves to the requirements of a world that is evolutive in structure will tend more and more to be eliminated out of hand - just as in learned societies today articles on perpetual motion or squaring the circle are consigned to the waste-paper-basket, unread. And correspondingly, if a Christ is to be completely acceptable as an object of worship, he must be presented as the saviour of the idea and reality of evolution."
About this very essay Teilhard11 wrote to Valensin on 28 December 1933: ".,.1 am sending you...a new paper which, in itself, would have in it all that is wanted for me to be treated as a heretic."
In the face of such pronouncements it would be misguided to suggest a different view with the help of a quotation dating to 1954 which de Lubac12 makes at nearly the end of Intimate Letters: "The essential of my position: to integrate Evolution into Christification. (Nature into Supernature)...." Here, despite appearances, we do not have the earlier position reversed. What is said is simply that Evolution and Christification are inseparable. The emphasis is laid on Christification, but it is a Christification which is to be seen in evolutionary terms: these terms have to become part and parcel of it, be integrated into it, at the same time that they are not to be understood except as implying a process of the World being more and more changed into Christ-stuff, so to speak. What Teilhard intends to convey is his desire to reconcile with the Christian Pleroma or complete Christification of the universe the evolutionary attainment of the ultra-human, the Omega-Point, the peak of the progression on earth, so that there would be a fusion of the God Above with the God Ahead. The proper elucidation of de Lubac's extract is to be obtained by looking at some words in Teilhard's very last letter,13 the one
11.Op. cit,, p. 261: "...je vous.envoie.,.un nouveau papier qui, in se, aurait tout ce qu'il faut pour me faire traiter en relaps."
12.Ibid., p. 464, note 6: "L'essentiel de ma position: integrer ('Evolution dans la Christification. (La nature dans le Surnaturel.)"
13.Ibid., p. 465: "Un Dieu de Involution: c'est-a-dire un Dieu divinisant, christifiant, a la fois 1'En Haut et 1'En Avant..."
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to Andre Ravier two days before his death: "A God of Evolution: that is to say a God divinising, christifying, simultaneously the Above and the Ahead...."
As to the second part of de Lubac's citation - "nature into Supernature" - we may seek light at two places in Intimate Letters. First, in a phrase to Valensin on 12 December 1919:14...the Supernatural forms itself continually by super-creation of our nature." Second, a phrase to de Lubac on 29 October 1949.15 "...Ultra-human and Supernatural: the two complementary terms of a total experience of the Universe." Here, as with Evolution and Christification, we find an indivisible pair - Nature and Supernature playing into each other's hands, the former getting super-created into the latter, the latter completing by that super-creation the former's development of the ultra-human. Evolution is again the conditio sine qua non. As the letter" just before Teilhard's death puts it: "Evolution, that is to say ultra-Creation!" And, when Evolution is concerned, we must have a Supernature no longer of the old type, the type hit off by Teilhard in the letter to de Lubac on 27 June 1934, where he speaks of "re-thinking the Supernatural"17 and then, as we have already seen, he mentions that "the gravest defect of the Supernatural" is its being coupled with "a static notion of 'nature' which no longer suffices".18 So, when he writes of integrating Nature into Supernature, he means a new dynamic evolutionary Nature-notion getting assimilated into a vision of the Supernatural, in which the Supernatural is found to prolong and perfect, complete and crown the natural rather than rejecting it as something that has no issue in itself, no earthly developmental fulfilment.
14.Ibid., p. 33: "...le Surnaturel se forme continuellement par sur-creation de notre nature."
15.Ibid., p. 382: "Ultra-humain et Surnaturel: les deux termes complemen-taires d'une experience totale de l'Univers."
16.Ibid., p. 465: "Evolution, c'est-a-dire ultra-Creation!"
17.Ibid., p. 277: "...de re-penser le Surnaturel."
18.Ibid:, "...une notion statique de 'nature' qui ne suffit plus."
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Neither part of de Lubac's quotation changes the basic stand emerging from the various pronouncements we have underlined. And directly to counterbalance it we have two statements in a letter to de Lubac himself on 15 August 1936. There Teilhard19 first savs: "Thus 1 succeeded in re-integrating the historic Christ, - as a structural condition for the universal equilibrium." Obviously, the central figure of Christianity could not be taken up in his own traditional right: he had to form a reasoned necessary part of a new cosmic outlook. Such a change is further clarified in more general and clean-cut terms when we further read:20 "It is a great point of force for me, in any case, to recognise that the whole effort of 'evolution' is reducible to the justification and development of a love (of God). It is already what my mother used to tell me. But it will have taken me a lifetime to integrate this truth into an organic vision of things. I imagine that it is this effort of integration that the World must make in order to be converted...." The words unmistakably show that to Teilhard Christianity, as it is, cannot be primary and convincing: he needs to reconcile it with an evolutionary view of the world for it to be credible and acceptable. The integration of it into Evolutionism is always the "essential" of his "position", whether made the frontal or the background theme and whatever the verbal shape it may assume.
So the pronouncements we have underlined earlier should bear out our contention contra de Lubac's hints for interpreting Teilhard's "trans-Christie". And our contention will be found totally supported by each of the several passages we shall produce as companions to the one where that new word catches our eye. These passages have no play of any counterpoint but are quite straightforward in their tune.
19.Ibid., p. 315: "Ainsi arrive-je a. re-integrer le Christ historique, - comme une condition structurelle de l'equilibre universel."
20.Ibid:. "Ce m'est une grande force en tout cas de reconnaitre que tout I'effort de 'revolution' est reductible a la justification et au developpement d'un amour (de Dieu). Cest deja ce que me disait ma mere. Mais il m'aura fallu une vie pour integrer cette verite dans une vision organique des choses. J'imagine que c'est cet effort d'integration que le Monde doit faire pour se convertir..."
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(7)
On 17 January 1954 Teilhard1 writes to Bruno de Solages:
"...the 'sin' of Rome (in spite of its blessings bestowed haphazardly upon Technique and Science) is not to believe in a future, in an achievement (for Heaven) of Man upon Earth. This I know because for the past sixty years I have stifled in this sub-humanised atmosphere. And I know it also because, in 1948, in Rome itself, the Father General himself said it to me with a perfect candour...
"Far from discouraging or embittering me - a strange thing - this evidence that the 'Anti-Christ' can only be vanquished by a Trans-Christ both calms and excites me. Something magnificent is in sight. And one cannot escape (both humanly and Christianly) from falling upon that very position. From this point of view, the Church's present resistances to the movement seem to me simply a little ridiculous. The movement is already carrying it away."
Here we can be in no doubt of what Teilhard means by "Trans-Christ". It indicates a Christianity transcending the one the Church seeks to perpetuate. The latter is found by Teilhard to be an obscurantism which not only represses and chokes his own finest self but also fails to appreciate the true human condition and discourages its legitimate aspiration towards the attainment of the Ultra-human, the great evolutionary future fulfilling life and establishing the Kingdom of
1. Lettres Intimes..., p. 434: "...le 'peche' de Rome (malgre ses benedictions prodiguees au hasard sur la Technique et la Science) est de ne pas croire a un avenir, a un achevement (pour le Ciel) de l'Homme sur Terre. Cela je le sais, parce que depuis soixante ans j'etouffe dans cette atmosphere sous-humanisee. Et je le sais aussi parce que, en 1948, a Rome meme, le Pere general lui-meme, avec une parfaite candour, me l'a dit...
"Loin de me decourager, ni de me rendre amer - chose curieuse - cette Evidence que 1' 'Ante-Christ' ne peut etre vaincu que par un Trans-Christ me calme et m'excite a la fois. Quelque chose de magnifique est en vue. Et on ne peut pas eviter (a la foi humainement et chretiennement) de tomber sur cette position-la. De ce point de vue, les resistances presentes de I'Eglise au mouvement me paraissent simplement un peu ridicules. Le mouvement 1'entraine deja."
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Heaven upon Earth. Teilhard goes to the extent of stigmatising religious Rome as Anti-Christ, a hostile force to be subdued, a retrograde frame of mind which would yet not be ultimately of any avail in face of the general drive of evolution and would itself be converted to the fundamentally transposed and modernised Christianity a la Teilhard -Teilhard the scientific "Neo-Humanist" no less than the Jesuit "Hyper-Catholic".
Again to de Solages he2 writes on 2 January 1955, the last year of his life: "...I am considering to take up again (in a way more concentrated and more centred?...) my Weltanschauung more concentrated and more centred?...) my Weltanschauung in an essay on 'The Christie', - unpublishable, of course, - but it might eventually help the birth of the 'trans-Christian' God we are waiting for. Toynbee is right, I think, when he writes that, unsuspectingly, we have already come out of 'the Christian era'. But where he is mistaken (in my opinion) is when he qualifies our epoch as 'ex-Christian' - It is 'trans-Christian' (I repeat) that he should have said. - I am more and more convinced that the Church will only start again upon its conquering march when (taking up once more the great theological effort of the first five centuries) it will set itself to rethink (to ultra-think) the existing relationship, no longer between Christ and the Trinity, - but between Christ and a
2. Ibid,, pp. 449-50: "...je medite de reprendre (en plus concentre et plus centre?...) ma Weltanschauung dans un Essai sur 'Le Christique', - impubliable, naturellement, - mais qui peut eventuellement aider a la naissance du Dieu 'trans-chretien' que nous attendons, Toynbee a raison, je crois, quand il ecrit que, sans nous en douter, nous sommes deja sortis de 'l'ere chretienne'. Mais la ou il se trompe (a mon avis) c'est quand il qualifie notre epoque d"ex-chretienne'. -C'est 'trans-chretienne' (je repute) qu'il aurait du dire. - Je suis de plus en plus convaincu que I'Eglise ne reprendra sa marche conquerante que lorsque (repre-nant le grand effort theologique des cinq premiers stecles) eile s'attachera a repenser (a ultra-penser) les rapports existant, non plus entre le Christ et la Trinite, - mais entre le Christ et un Univers devenu fantastiquement immense et organique (un trillion au moins de galaxies contenant presque surement chacune de la Vie et de la Pensee...). Le Christianisme ne peut survivre (et super-vivre), je le sens, qu'en subdistinguant dans la 'nature humaine' du Verbe Incarne une nature 'terrestre' et une nature cosmique. Autrement, notre Foi et notre Charite ne couvrent plus le Phenomene..."
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Universe become fantastically immense and organic (at least a trillion galaxies each almost certainly containing Life and Thought...). Christianity can only survive (and super-live), I feel, by sub-distinguishing in the 'human nature' of the Incarnate Word a 'terrestrial' nature and a cosmic nature. Otherwise, our Faith and our Charity no longer cover the Phenomenon.
Teilhard makes five emphatic points, from which the true sense of the ''trans-Christian'' may be caught. First, Christianity as it has been held by the Church is utterly out of date: the era of its credibility is over for good. But, unlike Toynbee who sees no future for Christianity, Teilhard discerns in it, behind the dead form Rome still clings to, a living essence capable of re-birth, possible to activate in a new form. This is the second point. The third is that the renovated religion, passing as it does clean beyond the present unrealistic old-world vision, is to be termed "trans-Christian". This means that no mere touching up of the existing orthodoxy will do. A total change is requisite, without which the Church will disappear. Its life today is stagnant: to live at all it has to "super-live": else there is no hope of its survival. And here comes the fourth point. The super-living has to be the rethinking of a certain central factor in Christianity. Teilhard equates rethinking with ultra-thinking: that is to say, there should not be a wholesale replacement of what is associated with Christ but what is associated must be carried far beyond its accepted version and seen in a wholly novel light. To be precise, Christ's relationship with the Universe demands to be formulated differently.
Fifthly and finally, we are given the lines of the different formulation. It is intimately bound up with the modern view of the cosmos, a view that cannot help revolutionising all our religious approaches in a manner that could never have been anticipated in its true urgency. We are faced by a cosmic All, infinitely large, innumerably diverse, organically unified and developing an increasing synthesis of complexity and consciousness - a trillion galaxies in constant evolution and
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bound to contain conditions conducive to the appearance of a vitality and mentality similar to ours. A Christ whose role has been taken as confined to suffering for and saving an erring humanity on a tiny planet is outmoded in the presence of the phenomenal reality as laid bare by science. In the nature of this Christ we have to see, besides a specifically terrestrial component, a component which would not only cover the needs of the cosmos but also be physically and organically coextensive with all space-time. This component would make for Teilhard's famous Cosmic Christ who would include the terrestrial Christ of past orthodoxy yet entirely alter our notion of his essential character and fit him fundamentally to an evolutionary universe. The Cosmic Christ of Teilhard, unlike the traditional God of Christianity, is, first and foremost, the God of evolution on a universal scale and therefore a "'trans-Christian' God". Such a God is the only one whom modern man can worship under the aspect of Christianity, and without Him the coming age will neccessarily be, as Toynbee phrases it, "ex-Christian". Such a God will trans-Christianise not only our "faith" but also our "charity", our self-giving in love. Charity would no longer be confined to binding up our neighbours' wounds and consoling our fellows in distress. It would gain a meaning that would make all collaborative research and all unifying world-work the most important activity of self-giving in love, since these would expedite the universe's evolutionary aim: collective self-convergence. Charity has to be "veritably propulsive of the universe."3
Teilhard4 touches centrally on the same theme in a letter to
3.Ibid., p. 443, Lettre a de Solages, 3 aout, 1954: "Une 'Charite' veritablement motrice de 1'Univers."
4.Ibid., p. 452: "...je voudiais profiter de I'hiver pour rediger 'ad usum privatum' une sorte de resume (final?..,) de mes idees (et de mes aspirations) concernant 'le Christique': la rencontre 'implosive' du Chretien et de 1'Evolutif. -Comme je I 'ecrivais encore demierement a Mgr. de Solages, il me semble que nous revivons, de 1500 ans de distance, les grandes luttes de l'Arianisme; - avec cette difference qu'il ne s'agit plus aujourd'hui de preciser les rapports entre le
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Andre Ravier on 14 January 1955: "...I would like to take advantage of the winter to write up 'ad usum privatum' a sort of resume (final?...) of my ideas (and of my aspirations) concerning 'the Christie': the 'implosive' meeting between the Christian and the Evolutive. - As I wrote only lately to Mgr. de Solages, it seems to me that we are living again, at a distance of 1500 years, the great fight of Arianism; - with this difference that it is no longer a question today to make precise the relation between the Christic and the Trinitarian, - but between Christ and a Universe suddenly become fantastically great, formidably organic, and more than problably poly-human (n thinking planets, - perhaps millions...). - And to express myself brutally (but expressively) I cannot see any noble and constructive issue to the situation outside of the sub-distinction for the theologians of a new Nicaea to work out in the human nature of Christ, between a terrestrial nature and a cosmic nature, - What do you think of it?... In any case, one tiling seems evident, more and more so: and it is that only a trans- (or ultra-) Christianised Christianity is henceforth capable of satisfying our increased powers and demands of adoration!"
Once more we have an unmistakable stress laid on changing Christianity to meet the exigences of an evolutionary view of the world. Teilhard makes no bones about Christianity in its present form being a complete failure, though not lacking in promise of self-renewal. This promise can only be fulfilled if Christ is endowed with a cosmic nature that would make
Christique et ]e Trinitaire, - mais entre le Christ et un Univers soudainement devenu fantastiquement grand, formidablement organique, et plus que probable-ment poly-humain (n planetes pensantes, - peut-etre des millions,..). -Et, pour m'exprimer brutalement (mais expressivement) je ne vois pas de noble et constructive issue a la situation en dehors de la sub-distinction a operer par les theologiens d'un nouveau Nicee, dans La nature humaine du Christ, entre une nature terrestre et une nature cosmique. - Qu'en pensez-vous?... Dans tous les cas, une chose me parait evidente, de plus en plus: et c'est que seul un Christianisme trans- (ou ultra-) christianise est capable desormais de satisfaire nos puissances et exigences accrues d'adoration!"
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him a far different and a far greater divinity than Roman Catholicism has conceived. This divinity would be capable of giving a supreme sense to the process of evolution by which a multi-aspected yet unitary cosmos carries on the development of life and mind in countless parts of its immensity - a development moving in the direction of a collective super-mankind. The Cosmic Christ cannot but trans-Christianise Christianity out of all recognition even while starting from the historic figure of Jesus of Nazareth and remaining within the cadre of the traditional dogmas. All these dogmas would wear a non-traditional face and the doctrines based on them undergo a metamorphosis.
Our next quotation is from a tetter to de Solages on 16 February 1955. At the same time it sustains our thesis and introduces a note corrective of a certain exaggeration in the matter of Teilhard's faithfulness to the Church. The passage5 runs: "You end your discourse on Progressivism with the text: 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.' Have you thought that this text (like the one: 'Render unto Caesar...') is at present the major difficulty encountered by a throng of minds within the Church - and that it represents (like the plurality of 'Mankinds' in the Cosmos) one of those points urgently calling for the dogmatic and mystic emergence of the 'Trans-Christian'?... The achievement of the Earth is not a simple addition but an essential co-condition for the Parousia. And, in this
5. Ibid., p. 460: "Vous terminez votre discours sur le Progressisme par le texte: 'Cherchez le royaume de Dieu, et le reste vous sera donne par surcroit.' Avez-vous songe que ce texte (comme celui: 'Rendez a Cesar...') est presentement la difficulty majeure rencontree par une foule d'esprits dans J'Evangile, - et qu'il represente (comme la pluralite des 'Humanites' dans le cosmos) un de ces points appelant d'urgence l'emergence dogmatique et mystique d'un 'Trans-Chretien'?... L'achievement de la Terre n'est pas un simple surcroit, mais une co-condition essentielle de la Parousie. Et, dans cette nouvelle perspective, le Christ n'est ni deforme, ni diminue, mais vrairnent 'ressuscite'. Voila ce qu'il m'est impossible de ne pas voir et admettre. Autrement je quitterais (moi et bien d'autres) I'Eglise, - immediatement: parce que mon besoin d'adorer et aimer y etoufferait..."
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new perspective, Christ is neither distorted nor diminished, but verily 'resuscitated'. This is what I find impossible not to see and admit. Otherwise I would leave (I and many others) the Church, - immediately: because my need to adore and love would stifle in it."
Teilhard hits out once again at the Church's stress on the Supernatural to the neglect of earth's evolutionary concerns -the division of the Kingdom of God from terrestrial achievement, the things that are God's from those that are Caesar's. Perhaps the best comment here would be some lines 6 from an earlier letter (17 January 1954) to the same correspondent: "I am hurt and wounded...in noticing that for Rome Work is still regarded, at bottom, as a Punishment, and Research (however blessed verbally) as an accessory, an addition and a fashion; -while, in both cases (Work and Research), it is a question of functions essential to the World's Christification (O this 'supernatural' - one should say this 'Extra-natural' - dehumanising -!... who will deliver us from this theological poison which paralyses us in all our movements?).... Christianity, as I will not stop crying out to the end, is essential as a sequel to 'hominisation', to the extent that it is alone capable of rendering 'Cosmogenesis' ultimately loving and lovable. -But it cannot any longer continue without integrating most quickly into its Faith in Heaven a real Faith in Earth..."
The burden of Teilhard's song is Rome's refusal to make the Supernatural go hand in hand with the Ultra-human, the religious aspiration with the evolutionary vision - a refusal of
6. Ibid., pp. 433-34: "...je suis heurte et blesse,..en constatant que pour Rome le Travail est encore regarde, au fond, comme une Punition, et la Recherche (si verbalement benie soit-elle) comme un accessoire, un surcroit et une mode; -alors que, dans les deux cas (Travail et Recherche) il s'agit de fonctions essentielles a la Christification du Monde (0 ce 'surnaturel' - il faudrait dire cet 'Extra-naturel' - des-humanisant qui nous delivrera de ce poison theologique qui nous paralyse dans tous nos mouvements!),... Le Christianisme, je ne cesserai pas de le trier jusqu'a la fin, est essentiel a la suite de 1"hominisation', dans la mesure ou il est le seul capable de rendre 'la Cosmogenese' ultimement aimante et aimable. - Mais il ne peut plus continuer sans integrer au plus vite dans sa Foi au Ciel une reelle Foi en la Terre..."
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the Cosmic Christ or, as Teilhard7 often puts it, "Christ the Evolver". This refusal companions the other which limits Christ within the earth's history and will not see the near-certainty of "hominisation" in numberless planets of the infinite universe of science and will not recognise what Teilhard8 calls "the Christ of all the Galaxies". Evolution everywhere: that is Teilhard's message - and evolution on earth beyond the present human stage is the sine qua non for the arrival of God's Kingdom: without it Christ cannot reappear to gather the world together into his divinity: the logical natural basis for the supernatural advent would be missing. To get rid of the obstacle in the way of the double reason for accepting his Cosmic Christ, Teilhard wants to develop Roman Catholicism beyond itself. The situation to be coped with is thus focused by him 9 elsewhere: "Decidedly, there is something that no longer turns round in the Christian Weltanschauung called orthodox at the moment." In short, the "Trans-Christian" has to be effected, both as an intellectually formulated dogma and as a mode of mysticism by which our whole consciousness would move towards realising the state of collective maturation necessary for that culminating cosmic event, the Parousia.
The capital importance of the "Trans-Christian" to Teilhard's personal life springs into relief towards the end of our passage. Perhaps nowhere else in his writings does he show his cosmos-Christic vision to be such a decisive factor for a parting of the ways. He declares himself ready to quit the Catholic fold unless this vision can find living room.- He checks himself from cutting himself loose because, to his mind, the revelation originally basic to the Church is such that his new perspective not only is permissible but also has the possibility of being accepted by the Church at some time or other. If, however, the Church took up a position more
7.E.g. Ibid., p, 412: "le Christ universel (ou 'evoluteur')..."
8.Ibid., p. 445: "...un Christ cosmique (un Christ de toutes les Galaxies...).
9.Ibid.: "Decidement, il y a quelque chose qui ne tourne plus rond dans la Weltanschauung chretienne qualifiee d'orthodoxe en ce moment."
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anti-Teilhard than merely checking him from propagating his message - if it insisted on his retracting it - he would free himself at once from the Vatican. All this proves his adherence to have never been unconditional. The close of our passage is like Luther's "Here I stand, I can no other." Vigorously and forthrightly it stipulates the sole terms under which Teilhard can remain loyal. The usual talk of his not ever dreaming of a rupture makes too much play of his frequent assertions of attachment to the historic Church. Our quotation helps us to remember all the more the occasion nearly twenty years earlier, in June 1934, when he10 wrote from China to Leontine Zanta: "...in my heart I haven't changed, except along the same lines. One consequence of this movement is that I am gradually finding myself more and more on the fringe of a lot of things. It's only thanks to the exotic life I'm leading that this drift doesn't develop into a break."
In connection with that occasion when a severing of relations with Rome was prevented just by Teilhard's having been far away from Europe, we must cull from Robert Speaight11 a letter of Teilhard's where he says: "Some people feel happy in the visible Church, but for my part 1 think I shall be happy to die in order to be free of it - and to find our Lord outside of it..." Actually this communication is found in Intimate Letters and dated 10 January 1926.12 Intimate Letters also gives us the same death-wish, now expressed by means of two famous words of St. Paul, in a letter13 to the same correspondent, Valensin, on 17 December 1922: "As I was
10.Letters to Leontine Zanta, pp. 110-11.
11.Teilhard de Chardin: A Biography (Collins, London, 1968), p. 140.
12.Lettres Intimes..., p. 132: 'Il y a en a qui se sentent heureux dans I'Eglise visible; - moi, il me semble que je serai heureux de mourir pour en etre debarrasse, c'est-a-dire pour trouver Dieu N[otre] S[eigneur] en dehors d'elle."
13.Ibid., p. 90: "Comme je vous le disais, je crois, une autre fois, je suis pris interieurement entre deux forces divergentes qui sont, 1'une la vue toujours plus 'brutale' qu'il n'y a pas d'autre issue a la vie que N(otre) S[eigneur| - et 1'autre le sentiment toujours plus accentue, peut-etre, de ce qu'il y a de lourd, etroit, et caduc dans I'Eglise actuelle. - Cela me fait penser parfois: 'cupio dissolvi', pour echapper a ce tiraillement."
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telling you of it, I believe, some other time, I am inwardly caught between two divergent forces which are, one the ever more 'brutal' view that there is no other issue to life than our Lord, - and the other, the perhaps ever more accentuated feeling of what there is of the heavy, narrow, and obsolete in the present Church. - That sometimes makes me think: 'Cupio dissolvi' [T desire dissolution'], to escape from this tearing apart."
Nor could the urge to liberate himself from the Church's heaviness, narrowness and obsoletism and enter the true light of his Lord in an afterlife have been a mood of merely two moments in the 1920s. It must have been a background presence throughout his life, for his relations with the Church never changed: if anything, they grew worse. On 22 August 1947 he was commanded to confine himself to pure science, not venture into religion or philosophy, and at the beginning of the next years this order was repeated,14 along with a warning that otherwise very serious measures might be taken against him. De Lubac15 also tells us that in 1949 Teilhard was more suspected than ever by Rome, that Valensin in the autumn of 1950 was deeply concerned about the storm gathering over his friend's head and that already on 10 January 1949 Teilhard had written: "...since I am back from China, I can clearly notice that I am becoming more and more clear-cut and adamant on a few dividing positions; and that cannot change any more."
We may add as further confirmation the fact that two days before his death Teilhard expressed his disillusionment with the Company of Jesus to which he belonged. In a letter16 to
14.Ibid., p. 384, bottom.
15.Ibid., pp. 9, 8 of Avertissement and p. 383, note 5: "Deja le 10-1-1949 T ecrivait: 'Depuis que je suis rentre de Chine, je distingue clairement que je deviens de plus en plus ferme et intransigeant sur quelques points de divergence; et cela ne peut plus changer." Our "translation" is really the original, written by Teilhard in English, and is taken from Letters to Two Friends, 1926-1952 (Collins, The Fontana Library of Theology & Philosophy, London, 1972,) p. 192.
16.Ibid., p. 463: "Je dois enormement a la Cie: mais j'hesiterais fort avant d'inviter qui que ce soit a y entrer. - Caveant consulesL."
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Andre Ravier, a fellow-Jesuit, on 23 March 1955 he confessed: "I owe a lot to the Company: but I would hesitate a lot before inviting anybody to enter it. - Let the counsellors beware!" This, at his life's end, gives a final echo to a downright disillusioned statement in his earlier period, ten years after the "Cupio dissolvi". A letter17 to Valensin of 20 October 1932 said: "In reality, I don't dare and have never dared to push anyone to make himself Christian. The weight is becoming too heavy to carry."
17. Ibid., p. 235: "En realite, je n'ose et n'ai jamais ose pousser personne a se fairs? chretien. Le poids devient trop lourd a porter. ."
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(8)
Teilhard died on 25 March 1955. On 22 March Andre Ravier heard from him:1 "...it is not only apostles of a new type that we require: but indeed (for the use of these apostles) a Gospel of a type that is 'new'. - It is inexact, I am increasingly more sure, to repeat that Society is de-Christianising itself.... It is solely and desperately awaiting to be super-Christianised.... The Christianity presented to us does not satisfy us any more, because its Christ is not great enough."
De Lubac2 annotates this statement by saying that, already, Teilhard wrote to Claude Riviere on 20 October 1943: "What is it that Christianity awaits then for developing its possibilities of the Universal Christ or, as I am beginning to call him, the Evolver Christ? I indeed feel, and definitively, that it is the unique and final form of the objective to which the close of my life should consecrate itself." De Lubac is evidently sympathetic to Teilhard. At the same time he wants to set off the wholly critical attitude of our quotation by another from Teilhard himself, which attributes to the criticised Christianity of the Church inherent powers to bring forth the very Christ found missing in it at present. Doubtless, Teilhard is talking in two voices when he says through the two passages that, while the Church is gravely wanting in the Teilhardian religion, this religion is its own true unsuspected and concealed message which will come through (owing to Teilhard's persistence). But surely, whether he is right or
1.Lettres Intimes..., p. 463: "...ce re sont pas seulement des apotres d'un nouveau type qu'il nous faut: mais bien (a 1'usage de ces apotres) un Evangile d'un type 'nouveau'. - Il est inexact, j'en suis de plus en plus stir, de re peter que la Societe se de-christianise... Elle attend seulement et desesperement qu'on la sur-christianise... Le Christianisme qu'on nous presente ne nous satisfait plus, parce que son Christ n'est plus assez grand."
2.Ibid., pp. 463-64, note 4: "Deja, T ecrivait a Claude Riviere, le 20 oct. 43: 'Qu'est-ce que le Christianisme attend donc pour developper ses possibilites du "Christ-Universel" ou, comme je commence a 1'appeler, du "Christ-Evoluteur". Je sens bien, et definitivement, que c'est la forme unique et finale, de 1'objectif auquel doit se consacrer la fin de mon existence.'"
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wrong about the Church's future, he knows fully the nature of his Christ. Does de Lubac realise what exactly the Teilhardian Christ means?
He was friendly with the older man from 1922 onward.3 Yet fourteen years later - on 26 January 1936 - Teilhard 4 complains to Leontine Zanta: "I don't know whether among the many of my colleagues who are in front of me or behind me on the road I'm travelling, there are any (or even a single one!... that seems incredible) who realise the importance of the step that all are taking." This must mean some lack in the progressive mentality of Teilhard's sympathisers, and his sweeping assertion disqualifies de Lubac from being at the heart of Teilhardism - at least up to 1936. What Teilhard5 writes to Ravier in his very last letter extends the disqualification to the end of his life: "...it has often been my disappointment to discover that minds as penetrating as an Auguste Val [ensin], a Grandmaison, or even a de Lubac (?...), still think and pray in 'Cosmos' and not in Cosmogenesis."
The adverb "even" before the mention of de Lubac indicates that, although from among fellow-Jesuits he had intellectually the most affinity with Teilhard, his insight into his older associate's mind was yet imperfect. And its imperfection would stay affirmed in spite of the interrogation-mark within brackets after his name. The interrogation-mark could not, in this particular context, show anything more than a passing doubt about completely placing him on a par with Valensin and Grandmaison. It would not exonerate him from the suspicion of a "Cosmos"-sense lurking in his mind and heart.
As if to set a seal on our fear that Teilhard, at his life's termination, stood unaccepted in toto by anyone, we have the
3.Ibid., p. 8, Avertissement "(je connaissais le Pere depuis 1922)."
4.Letters to Leontine Zanta, p. 115.
5.Lettres Intimes..., p. 466: "...mon desappointement a ete souvent de decouvrir que des esprits aussi penetrants qu'un Auguste Val[ensin], un Grandmaison, ou meme un de Lubac (?...), pensaient et priaient encore en 'Cosmos' et non en Cosmogenese."
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passage 6 in the "Conclusion" of his Le Christique, whose last pages were penned a couple of days before his death: "How is it...that as I look around me, still dazzled by what 1 have seen, 1 find that I am almost the only person of my kind, the only one to have seen? And so, I cannot, when asked, quote a single writer, a single work, that gives a clearly expressed description of the wonderful 'Diaphany' that has transfigured everything for me." The absence noted in the Zanta-letter of "even a single one" is just as emphatically recorded here. The negative implication of "even a de Lubac" in the other communication finds also a perfect echo.
Teilhard's utter isolation leads us to question whether with Rome or even with his most intimate sympathisers he really had anything "Christie" in common. We may recall that in the letter to Valensin on 13 October 1933 he7 said: "There is, between the Roman authorities and myself, more than a misunderstanding of words. All of us dream of one and the same Christ; - and that is the fundamental thing, thanks to which we can remain associates without disloyalty or dupery. But, this capital point set apart, we differ, Rome and I, by two representations of the World, and two practical attitudes towards the World, which are not merely complementary but contrary. It is, at bottom, a merciless fight, - between a static pessimism and a progressive optimism. That, you see, is what we should frankly acknowledge, rather than cheating oneself with words." Now we are disposed to ask: "Is it at all
6.Lei me Explain, Text selected and arranged by Jean-Pierre Demoulin, translated by Rene Hague and others (Collins, London, 1970), p. 156,
7.Lettres Intimes..., pp. 253-54: "Entre les autorites romaines et moi, il y a plus qu'un malentendu de mots. Les uns et les autres, nous revons d'un seul et meme Christ; - et c'est la la chose fondamentale grace a quoi nous pouvons rester associes sans deloyaute et sans duperie. Mais, ce point capita] mis a part, nous differons, Rome et moi, par deux representations du Monde, et deux attitudes pratiques vis-a -vis du Monde, qui ne sont pas settlement complementaires, mais contraires, Cest, au fond, une lutte sans merci, - entre un pessimisme statique et un optimisme progressif. Cela, voyez-vous, je crois qu'il vaut mieux se l'avouer franchement, plutot que de se tromper avec des mots."
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true that all of them are dreaming of one and the same Christ? Are they not cheating themselves with a word?"
To Teilhard, Christ the Evolver who is also the Christ of all the Galaxies is the only Christ we moderns can henceforward adore. But right up to the present moment what he wrote despairingly in 1920 about fellow-Jesuits holds true, with reference to the urgency of illimitably enlarging Christ and, by cosmifying him, making him the organic centre of all things. He8 noted on 28 February of that year: "I fail to understand how so many of the most learned people - even a Father Marechal - do not realise this situation in which the knowledge of the real puts us by all its observations." In 1967 de Lubac 9 carefully hedged his own recognition of Teilhard's vision: "...the road he followed with such determination is, and cannot but be, only one of the converging roads that lead to Christ: the road, maybe, that best answers the expectations of our own days, but that must fail to reach its destination if it claims to be the only road." We may point out that Teilhard claimed his road - the one of Christian evolutionism or of cosmogenesis that is Christogenesis - to be the only road, whereas de Lubac insists that what cosmogenesis dictates is not all-binding at all even though, according to him,10 "Pere Teilhard's 'vision' is integrated in the great Christian experience". Again in 1974, the Preface to Intimate Letters expresses reservations about the "Neo-Humanism" which Teilhard considered absolutely necessary for Christianity to adopt along with his Universal Christ, both of them being indivisib-ly linked on the basis of the fact of evolution which, in his eyes, was now indispensable to religion and alone gave Neo-Humanism and the Universal Christ their true sense. Assessing Teilhard and the spiritual situation of our times, de
8.Ibid., p. 57: " Je n'arrive pas a comprendre combien les gens les plus instruits, - meme un P. Marechal - ne realisent pas celie situation ou nous met, par toutes ses observations, la connaissance du reel."
9,Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning, p. v.
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Lubac11 writes: "Should we be surprised that his analysis was not complete, or that ageing sometimes simplified excessively its outlines? Let us confess it, he persuaded himself a little too readily that he had 'put his finger on the exact and central point of the religious crisis' or, as he also calls it, the 'human crisis' of the century. There are, he sometimes wrote, 'those who do not see and those who see', - and once he had formed his concept of 'neo-Humanism', whoever hesitated to adopt it as such risked being rejected as amongst those 'who do not see'. It was not easy for him to imagine that others could see also other things, things which his own vision, right but partial, left in the shadow."
The precise state of Teilhard's mind and the particular attitude he had towards both evolution and Christianity can best be educed from two passages put together. One is an entry on 20 July 1947 in his diary:12 "No longer to live, really, except for Christ, or more exactly the super-Christ, glimpsed by the Church. To consecrate my end to making the most of my vision...." The second13 is one we have already cited about Teilhard's feeling definitively that "the unique and final form of the objective" to which he should "consecrate" "the close of his life" was to help Christianity develop "its possibilities of the 'Universal Christ' or, as I am beginning to call him, the 'Evolver Christ'". Clearly what Teilhard termed super-Christ, Universal Christ and Evolver Christ was the form in which
11.Lettres Intimes..., p. 10, Avertissement: "Faut-il s'etonner que son analyse n'ait pas ete complete, ou que I'age en ait parfois simplifie les lignes a 1 'exces? Avouons-le, il s'est un peu trop aisement persuade qu'il avail 'mis le doigt sur le point exact et central de la crise religieuse' ou, comme il dit encore, de la 'crise humaine' du siecle. 11 y a, lui est-il arrive d'ecrire, 'ceux qui ne voient pas, et ceux qui voient', - et lorsqu'il eut forme son concept du 'Neo-Humanisme', quiconque hesitait a 1'adopter tel quel risquait d'etre rejete parmi ceux 'qui ne voient pas'. Il ne lui etait pas facile de supposer que d'autres pouvaient voir aussi d'autres choses, des choses que sa propre vision, juste mais partielle, laissatt dans l'ombre."
12.Ibid., p. 358, note 1: "... - Ne plus vivre, reellement, que pour le Christ, ou plus exactement le super-Christ, entrevu par I'Eglise. Consacrer ma fin a exploiter ma vision..."
13.Ibid., pp. 463-64.
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what others termed Christ was fundamentally and ultimately significant for him. Christ, as conceived by others, had himself no value for Teilhard. Only if connected with the Teilhardian Christ, who had concrete cosmic dimensions and was the soul of evolution, could that Christ have any status. Teilhard found the Church unreceptive of this greater Christ, since it did not encourage or even recognise the prospect of the ultra-human which inevitably went with the evolutionary world-vision of Teilhardian Christianity, the ultra-human whose complementary extension or prolongation was Teilhard's Supernature. The Pleroma, the divine fullness into which the universe is to be taken up by Christ at the end of history, cannot come for Teilhard unless the ultra-human has been first developed on the earth and has an affinity to it. The Church's Pleroma had nothing organically to do with evolution: the Church's Supernature stood opposed to Nature and implied no drive or need of Earth's self-achievement: the Church stopped with a merely moral preparation for an afterlife and had no sense of the earth's intrinsic worth as a field of divine development and as a reality capable of creating in space-time an initial basic counterpart to that after-life. Therefore the Church, though acknowledging evolution as a fact of the material cosmos, could not be said to have the same Christ as Teilhard's. Both it and Teilhard take Jesus of Nazareth as their point de depart for use of the title "Christ"; but, unlike Teilhard, the Church fails to see the Cosmic Evolver in him, the Being who is equal in vastness to the universe and organically involved in its evolution as the World-Soul by whom and in whom all human entities reach the fulfilment of their personal essence in a supreme unity without losing their diversity. Christ, to the Church, is not "the axis and summit of a universal maturation".14 Teilhard and the Church thus stand poles apart.
However, he has the phrase we have cited about the
14. Ibid., p. 140, note 8: "L'axe et le sommet d'une maturation universelle."
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Universal Christ: "glimpsed by the Church."15 He also looks forward to "a recasting of Theology" which would automatically happen when "Christian thought will apply itself to disengage the features of the Universal Christ as it has always adored him, but without understanding explicitly enough what the immense value of this attribute was".16 And he spotlights the place in the Church's tradition where the Universal Christ is to be first discerned: "...this Christ universal and transformative who showed himself, I believe, to St. Paul and of whom our generation has felt so invincibly the need."17
De Lubac too traces the Teilhardian Christ to the same source. One of his notes has a passage speaking of "the affirmations at the same time Christic and Cosmic of Saint Paul".18 Yet there is a deep difference between de Lubac's back-look and Teilhard's. Although Teilhard never completely loses sight of Jesus of Nazareth, he puts in a very minor place the historic earthly manifestation of God as compared with the cosmic omnipresence of Christ the Evolver. As long as the name "Christ" is employed, Jesus can never be ignored: in fact there can be no cosmic reality recognisable under that name without the Christ of history. And, as Teilhard was unaware of any other Incarnation who would endow a Universal Presence with the sort of reality he wished for it, he repeatedly dwells on the importance of the Man of Galilee. But the latter has not at all an all-round importance: he has only the importance of a starting-point for something which is the essential for Teilhard and which, once affirmed, throws that starting-point entirely into the shade - even to the extent
15.Ibid., p. 358: "entrevu par I'Eglise."
16.Ibid., p. 139, note 8: " ..la pensee chretienne s'appliquera a degager les traits du Christ-Universe) tel qu'elle l'a toujours adore, mais sans comprendre assez explicitement quelle etait l'immense valeur de cet attribut."
17.Ibid., p. 78, note 8: "...ce Christ universel et transformateur qui s'est montre, je crois, a saint Paul, et dont notre generation eprouve si invinciblement le besoin..."
18.Ibid., p. 453, note 8: ...affirmations a la fois christiques et cosmiques de saint Paul."
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of blotting it out. This perspective, ignored by exegetes like de Lubac, can be proved for Teilhard with the utmost ease. Even as far back as 1926 and 1927 we see him brushing aside the human perfections of Jesus, out of which his co-ministers made much capital. His heart makes no response to Jesus as an ideal man having various relationships of love with his fellows. Teilhard cares nothing for the picture of "the charm and goodness"19 of Christ's past human life: he prefers actual present relationships such as he can establish with dear ones living around him. And he comes out with an outburst of what is the decisive need in him: "why should we turn to Judaea two thousand years ago?"20 Not the man Jesus, incarnate God though he be, but Someone vaster, a Real Universal Godhead, is what he yearns for. The divine Christ built around the Man of Galilee is too small for a religious scientist whose eyes have been brimmed with the glory of the infinite evolutionary universe thrusting towards a super-humanity. A super-Christ, adequate to this ever-developing Godliness of a trillion-galaxied space-time, is all that Teilhard truly craves. The historic Jesus as such, the Son of Mary in himself, whom de Lubac along with the Church keeps stressing, is a nullity for Teilhard if a cosmic nature cannot explicitly be brought forward from his being. And, even when this nature is completely explicitated, its source in antiquity matters little to Teilhard. That is the central issue for us to focus our minds upon.
This issue, which meets us openly in the book The Divine Milieu written in the period we have mentioned, springs into the clearest prominence in a letter of 30 October 1926. He21 writes to Marthe Vaufrey that though the first three gospels have an "irreplaceable value...in presenting the real, historical beginnings of Christ (with a practical code of moral comparison with him)", he has no need of an "evangelism
19.The Divine Milieu, an Essay on the Interior Life (Harper and Brothers, New York, 1960) p. 106.
20.Ibid., p. 107.
21.Letters to Two Friends, 1926-1952, p. 52.
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which limits itself to a glorification of the purely human or moral qualities of Jesus". And he adds; "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.... Have you read...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."
This passage sheds light on three points. First, the man Jesus who once lived on earth is not needed in his own right by Teilhard, Secondly, Teilhard has love only for the ever-present Cosmic Christ who, according to him, is preached by St. Paul. Thirdly, this Pauline Christ as understood by Teilhard and as understood by the Church are two different Godheads. The last point is not immediately apparent, but the very fact that Teilhard speaks of St. Paul's famous verses as requiring a full organic meaning indicates the absence of this meaning in the Church's interpretation of the divine cosmicity celebrated there. Thus Teilhard, out of his own mouth, suggests that even if the Church has not been devoid of a Cosmic Christ, the Church's Universal Godhead has had a different status from the one Teilhard would accord to him.
A different status is unavoidable in the very nature of the case. The Teilhardian Cosmic Christ has no substance apart from the framework of an evolutionary world-vision. Whatever meaning St. Paul's Cosmic Christ can have will never coincide with the Teilhardian sense. The Church is more logical in interpreting the Christ of the Epistle to the Colossians. But, in being more logical, it reveals an impassable gulf severing its Christianity from that of Teilhard. There can be, for all that Teilhard may wish, no dialogue between the two Christianities.
Teilhard's unconventional and even scandalous attitude to the historical Jesus, on whom both St. Paul and the Church build, comes through most pointedly in a passage of Intimate
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Letters. On 18 January 1936, three years after the mention of "the one and the same Christ" to Valensin, Teilhard22 wrote to that fellow-Jesuit:
"I shall, I imagine, remain tied till the end to research work, which is my platform - and also "my lot. But more than ever I feel my life's deep interest migrate elsewhere: towards the rebirth of a Religion which would really make of faith in a personal God a wheel of the World in activity {and not a supererogatory ornament - or a weight - as it happens, in fact, now. It is about this, particularly, that I should have liked to talk with you. At bottom my attitude is always a rather illogical mixture of faithfulness and unfaithfulness. I can less and less do without Christ (and indeed my life of 'prayers' tends to become more regular and intense).
"But at the same time the figure of the historical Christ becomes to me less and less firm and distinct, misted as it is with all the historical unlikelihood and all the moral inadequacies of the Gospel. Here reappears the basic disposition: what is past is dead and no longer interests me."
The identical turn of thought is here as in the letter to Marthe Vaufrey and, though "the soul of the World" is not mentioned, the implication is certainly there in the phrase about a religion making "of faith in a personal God a wheel of the World in activity". The implication may be affirmed with still more conviction when we realise that the letter was
22. Lettres Intimes..., p. 312: "Je resterai, j'imagine, lie jusqu'au bout a un travail de recherches qui est ma plate-forme, - et aussi mon lot. Mais plus que jamais je sens l'interet profond de ma vie emigrer ailleurs: vers la renaissance d'une Religion qui ferait vraiment de la foi en un Dieu personnel un rouage du Monde en activite (et non un ornement - ou un poids - surerogatoire, comme cela a lieu, en fait, maintenant). C'est de cela, particulierement, que j'aurais aime a vous parler, Au fond, mon attitude est toujours un melange assez illogique de fidelite et d'infidelite. Je puis de moins en moins me passer du Christ (et meme ma vie de 'prieres' tend a devenir plus reguliere et plus intense).
"Mais en meme temps la figure du Christ-historique me devient de moins en moins ferme et distincte, embrumee qu'elle est de toutes les invraisembiances historiques, et de toutes les inadequations morales de l'Evangile. Ici reparait la disposition de fond: ce qui est passe est mort, et ne m'interesse plus..."
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written only eight days before the one to Leontine Zanta where Teilhard23 talks of "a new religion (Let's call it an improved Christianity if you like), whose personal God is no longer the great 'neolithic' landowner of times gone by but the Soul of the world - as demanded by the cultural and religious stage we have now reached..."
Nor does the letter, any more than this of 26 January, have a reference to St. Paul. One may seek an indirect hint of him in the term "rebirth" in connection with the Teilhardian religion which is other than the current Christian in which the personal God is "a supererogatory ornament - or a weight" to "the World in activity". But the original French noun "renaissance" from the verb "renaitre" is to be construed in the light of Teilhard's habitual usage, "thus, at one place in intimate Letters (7 January 1934), he,24 deploring the common methods the Church adopts to effect conversions in Asia, says to de Lubac: "In order to convert, the Church must first be re-born. That is what should be told to the Missionologists. This parenthesis, you understand, is not in the least directed at your communication to the Congress of Missions, - which is, on the contrary, a very successful example of legitimate rebirth. Thanks for sending me these pages, which show how simply a lot of very new views can make their entry into the Christian world." Here the sense is obviously of a "new birth": the mention of "very new views" clinches it. At another place (25 July 1933)25 we are told: "I am more and more persuaded that a Christian rebirth is in process, under
23.Letters to Leontine Zanta, p. 114.
24.Lettres Intimes..., pp. 265-66: "Pour convertir, I'Eglise doit d'abord re-naitre. Voila. ce qu'il faudrait dire aux Missiologues. Cette parenthese, vous le com-prenez, ne s'adresse en rien a votre communication au Congres des missions, -laquelle est au contra ire un exemple. tres reussi de legitime renaissance. Merci de m'avoir envoye ces pages, qui montrent combien simplement des vues tres neuves peuvent faire leur entree dans le monde chretien."
25.Ibid., p. 249: "Je suis de plus en plus persuade qu'une renaissance chretienne est en cours, sous 1'influence de facteurs intellectuels et moraux irrepressibles, - qui se ramenent toujours au meme point: necessity d'un Christ plus grand pour un monde plus grand."
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the influence of irrepressible intellectual and moral factors, -which reduce themselves always to the same point: necessity of a greater Christ for a greater world." Here also Teilhard is referring to a vanguard of progressive Christian thinkers who seem to be working for a "new birth" of their religion in the wake of the modern scientific world-perspective. Teilhard's "renaissance" is charged with a sense of present conditions and does not suggest any revival of past ones.
An earlier letter (28 August 1926)26 brings us further insight into this term: "As regards 'conversions', Christianity is visibly marking time. It is obviously not along current lines that God's Kingdom will be established - but by some rebirth, some 'revelation', which (once again in human history) will spread through the human mass like fire and water. That is what we must wish for and prepare for," Now "rebirth" is coloured by the shade which goes with "revelation". And the sense of the total clause where it figures is that just as in the past a new revelation made a religion go naturally and swiftly everywhere, so too Christianity, by having a new message revealed to it and thereby getting re-born, will obtain a second new birth comparable to the occurrence of its first revelatory entry into the world. In short, the connotation of "renaissance" is general and can refer to the advent of any religion in human history - Christianity or any other - which carries a revelatory content: it does not narrow down to any specific subject-matter of Christianity itself or of Christianity alone in the historical past.
"Renaissance" in our passage has the same general bearing as here and everywhere else: it stands for self-renovation by means of a novel vision. It harks back to no Pauline preaching. As in the Zanta-letter, "a new religion" is invol-
26. Ibid., p. 266: "En matiere de 'conversions', le christianisme pietine visible-ment sur place. Ce n'est pas par les voies actuelles, visiblement, que s'etablira le regne de Dieu, - mais par quelque renaissance, quelque'revelation', qui (une fois de plus dans l'histoire humaine) se repandra dans la masse humaine comme de 1'eau et comme du feu. C'est cela qu'ils nous faut desirer et preparer." Our translation is from Letters to Leontine Zanta, p. 69.
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ved, "an improved Christianity" with a re-visioned Christ.
Besides, the sentence where we hear of "renaissance" links up with another in the same letter. There Teilhard,27 judging by what was going on in himself and looking at the response his mode of thought was secretly having around him, senses behind the rigidities and old-fashioned gestures of current Christianity his own brand of religious vision taking shape: "I am more and more convinced that a great thing is getting born now at the heart of the Church - something which will contagiously convert the Earth. And to this alone I feel myself really pledged. A mass of weights and of restrictions have ceased to affect me - because they no longer exist in my eyes and no longer have a hold on me - as if I have inwardly escaped from them," The word we have to note is the French "nait" ("getting born"): there is no soupcon of any old world-view being revived or taking rebirth. And the whole phrase links up also with the phrase where the Church, to get the power to effect conversions, has to get re-born. "New birth" again is the sense that emerges for our passage's "rebirth".
Perhaps the most direct path to the correct nuance of Teilhard's "renaissance" is through a word in a letter of 25 February 1929 to Valensin, where occur expressions which de Lubac28 has elsewhere considered "what may well be the harshest judgement [Teilhard] ever made" on the Church. These expressions29 run: "The only thing that I can be: a
27.Ibid,, p. 312: "Je suis de plus en plus convaincu qu'une grande chose nait maintenant au coeur de I'Eglise, - quelque chose qui convertira contagieusement la Terre. Et a ceci seulement je me sens reellement voue. Une masse de poids et de restrictions ont cesse de m'affecter - parce qu'ils n'existent plus a mes yeux et n'ont plus prise sur moi, - comme si je leur avais interieurement echappe."
28.Letters to Leontine Zanta, p. 34, Introduction. The English translation is from pp. 34-5.
29.Lettres In times..., p. 184: ."La seule chose que je puisse etre: une voix qui repete, opportune et importune, que I'Eglise deperira aussi longtemps qu'elle n'echappera pas au monde factice de theologie verbale, de sacramentarisme quantitatif et de devotions subtilisees oil elle s'enveloppe, pour se reincarner dans les aspirations humaines reelles... Naturellement, je discerne assez bien ce que cette attitude a de paradoxal: si j'ai besoin du Christ de I'Eglise pour sauver
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voice that repeats, opportune et importune, that the Church will waste away so long as she does not escape from the factitious world of verbal theology, of quantitative sacramentalism, and over-refined devotions in which she is enveloped, so as to reincarnate herself in the real aspirations of mankind.... Of course I can see well enough what is paradoxical in this attitude: if I need the Christ of the Church to save my World, I should accept Christ as he is presented by the Church, with its burden of rites, adniinistrations and theology. That's what you'll tell me, and I've often said it to myself. But now I can't get away from the evidence that the moment has come when the Christian impulse should 'save Christ' from the hands of the clerics so that the world may be saved." The illuminative word for us is "reincarnate", involving as it does in the context a past-free fresh religious start with a Christ seen in a novel way. Its noun-form "reincarnation" would give the true sense of the "renaissance" in our passage.
Everything considered, our passage is a tremendous eye-opener by playing down the historical Jesus entirely and suggesting that Teilhard has no psychological need of him: his "life of 'prayers'", that "tends to become more regular and more intense" is addressed only to a Cosmic Godhead who, "'panchristising' the universe" (as another portion of the Zanta-letter of 26 January 1936 puts it), has no concrete acknowledged role in orthodox Christianity. Indeed, one cannot affirm, except in a purely verbal form, that the Church and Teilhard are talking of "one and the same Christ" or even that anything in the Christian scripture talks of the Christ to whom Teilhard, the uncompromising religious evolutionist, prayed ever more devotedly, neglecting altogether the Jesus of history.
A further idea of how decisively Teilhard's way of thought
mon Monde, je dois prendre le Christ tel que me le presente I'Eglise, avec son fardeau de rites, d'administration et de theologie. Voila ce que vous me direz, et ce que je me suis dit bien des fois. Mais maintenant je ne puis echapper a l'evidence que le moment est venu ou le sens Chretien doit 'sauver le Christ' des mains des Clercs, pour que le Monde soit sauve."
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on Christ-historical and Christ-universal diverged from the Church's Christology is forced upon us by the manner in which he dissociates Mary from the fundamental aspect of his Jesus. We are often told of Teilhard's fervour for Jesus's mother, just as he frequently refers to the Jesus of history as serving a certain initial purpose in his all-importance scheme of the Cosmic Christ, he has several "faithful" allusions to Mary. But he is totally at loggerheads with the Church's magnification of her part in salvational activity. Whatever cosmic function the Church attributes to Jesus is not in the least incompatible with the status it assigns to his mother. Teilhard, however, cannot put together the cosmicity of his Christ and the elevated position given to Mary by the Church. Mary, according to him, can hold that position only in regard to the historical Jesus divorced from his Teilhardianly cosmic function and focused only on terrestrial concerns. The letter driving home this highly unorthodox point in its concluding part is to Ravier on 24 October 1954:30
"At bottom, you know, it is this question of re-thinking Christianity (and more specially Christology) which absorbs me more and more. And on this subject, shall I tell you that yesterday I shuddered when 1 saw the announcement of the
30. Ibid., p. 445: "Au fond, vous le savez, c'est cette question d'une re-pensee du Christianisme (et plus specialement de la Christologie) qui m'absorbe de plus en plus. Et, a ce sujet, vous dirai-je que j'ai fremi hier en voyant annoncee la nouvelle fete de 'Marie Reine'...qui risque de nous enfoncer encore un peu plus dans la conception mortelle d'un Christianisme specifiquement terrestre, -alors que nous ne pouvons plus adorer qu'un Christ cosmique (un Christ de toutes les Galaxies...). Car enfin, s'il est pensable que, d'ici quelques generations, le Christ-Roi soit vraiment universalise, - Marie, elle, est definidvement 'terrienne' et ne peut etre Reine du Monde (a moins qu'on ne 1'eleve en symbole du Feminin..,). - A mon avis, il y a, dans cette poussee incontrolee du 'Marial', un immense danger pour le plus grand 'Christique', - celui-ci se trouvant limite et paralyse par celui-la dans la mesure ou on veut les maintenir 'semblables' entre eux. - Decide merit, i! y a quelque chose qui ne toume plus rond dans la Weltanschauung chretiervne qualifiee d'orthodoxe en ce moment. - Nos dirigeants religieux n'ont pas conscience de ce que, depuis un siecle, 1'Univers est devenu: a La fois spatiale-ment, temporellement et organiquement. - 'Leaf Incarnation et Redemption ne couvrent plus le Phenomene..."
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new feast of 'Mary the Queen'...which creates the risk of our sinking still deeper in the mortal conception of a specifically terrestrial Christianity, - while we can now adore only a cosmic Christ (a Christ of all the Galaxies...)? For, after all, if it is conceivable that, in a few generations from now, Christ-King would be truly universalised, - Mary, in herself, is definitely 'terrestrial' and cannot be the Queen of the World (unless one elevates her as a symbol of the Feminine..,) - In my opinion, there is, in this uncontrolled push towards the 'Marian', an immense danger for the greater 'Christie', - the latter finding itself limited and paralysed by the former -inasmuch as one wants to maintain them as 'similar'. -Decidedly, there is something that no longer turns round in the Christian Weltanschauung called orthodox at the moment. - Our religious directors are not conscious of what for a century the Universe has become for us: at the same time spatially, temporally and organically. - "Their' Incarnation and Redemption no longer cover the Phenomenon..."
It cannot be denied that the Mary-born Christ of Teilhard and that of the Church, in their universal dominating and divinising power, are very far indeed from being "one and the same Christ". This fact also distances off de Lubac from basic Teilhardism.
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What we have concluded so far from the most challenging portions of the new book of letters leads us to a crucial challenge: "A Soul of the World taking evolution forward is the central truth to Teilhard. All else is subordinate and, for his personal life, even insignificant and inutile. This includes the historical Jesus himself - because the past does not concern Teilhard. Could it then be that he is deceiving himself in making out, as he does at some places, the historical Jesus to be an irreplaceable beginning for his Cosmic Christ? Is not a Universal Godhead, who is also a Supreme Person, the primary reality, whose manifestation is the historical Jesus and whose name is Christ simply because that manifestation, bearing this appellative, made the primary reality concrete and recognisable for men like Teilhard?"
We have to seek for an answer from the new book. Teilhard plays on the theme from several sides which do not always cohere. But the key to his basic position is supplied by what we have already noted about the relationship between his Christianity and his Evolutionism. The fact of Evolution is to him all-important. Christianity must be adapted to it. His attempt at its adaptation and his pleasure at his success are reflected in the passages where he speaks of his re-integrating the Personal God of Christianity into his evolutionary Weltan -schauung. We have quoted parts of a long passage in this connection. Now we may look at it again in our present context.
The full relevant passage1 occuring in a letter to de Lubac
1. Op. cit., pp. 314-15: "...ma grande decouverte {?!) actuelle est d'apercevoir 1" que tout le probleme humain se ramene a la question de I'amour de Dieu, - mais aussi, 2° que la legitimite, la possibility psychologique (partout contestee, a ma grande surprise), et le triomphe de cet amour dependent de la compatibilile (ou mieux de t'association essentielle) des deux termes: Universe) et Personnel... L'essentiel chretien, a mon avis, ce n'est precisement aucun des ideals humani-taires et moraux si vantes par les croyants et les incroyants: mais c'est de
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on 15 August 1936 runs: "...my great present discovery (?!) is to perceive (1) that the whole human problem resolves into the question of the love of God - but also (2) that the legitimacy, the psychological possibility (everywhere contested, to my great surprise), and the triumph of this love depend on the compatibility (or, better, on the essential association) of two terms: Universal and Personal... The Christian essential, in my opinion, is not precisely any of the humanitarian and moral ideals so vaunted by believers and unbelievers, but to maintain and to save 'the primacy of the Personal', extended analogically to the All - and also to put positively the World in relation with the supreme Personal, that is to say, to name him. - Thus 1 succeeded in re-integrating the historic Christ -as a structural condition for the universal equilibrium. I had need of that.... It is a great point of force for me, in any case, to recognise that the whole effort of 'evolution' is reducible to the justification and development of a love (of God). It is already what my mother used to tell me. But it will have taken me a lifetime to integrate this truth into an organic vision of things. I imagine that it is this effort of integration that the World must make in order to be converted: 'in the mass, our World denies the Personal and God, because it believes in the All: everything comes back to showing it that, on the contrary, it ought to believe in the Personal because it believes in the All"
maintenir et de sauver 'le primat du Personnel', etendu analogiquement jusqu'au Tout, - et aussi de mettre positivement le Monde en relation avec le Personnel supreme, c'est-a-dire de le nommer. - Ainsi arrive-je a re-integrer le Christ historique, - comme une condition structurelle de l'equilibre universel. j'avais besoin de cela... Ce m'est une grande force en tout cas de reconnaitre que tout 1' effort de 'revolution' est reductible a la justification et au developpement d'un amour (de Dieu). C'est deja ce que me disait ma mere. Mais il m'aura fallu une vie pour integrer cette verite dans une vision organique des choses. J'imagi ne que c'est cet effort d'integration que le Monde doit faire pour se convertir: dans 1'ensemble, notre Monde nie le Personnel et Dieu, parce qu'il croit au Tout: Tout re vient a lui montrer que, au contraire, il doit ( croire au Personnel parce qu'il croit au Tout."
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The passage is somewhat complicated. Apropos of "reintegrating the historic Christ'', de Lubac- has the comment: "This constant reference to the historic Christ, to Jesus of Nazareth, is one of the 'notes' which radically differentiate the Teilhardian Christology from all the 'gnostic' or gnosticising Christologies. Personal God, historic Jesus: these are the two fixed poles of all his effort of intelligent faith (whence the constancy, in his spiritual life, of the prayer, the love, and the fidelity to the Church which preserve for us the presence of Christ). To tell the truth, we notice no fundamental evolution in his thought in this regard. When he speaks of 're-integrating' the one or the other of these two verities into his synthesis, that does not signify that he has more or less lost sight of them or allowed them to get blurred in his mind, but that he finds his way to justify them better intellectually. He has already done the same for the idea of 'person'."
De Lubac admits Teilhard's urge and need to arrive at an intellectual basis for the existence of Jesus as God-Man no less than for the existence of God as Person and for the value of the person-element in the world-plan. What de Lubac fails to bring forward is the nature of the intellectual basis. We have a clue to it in Teilhard's own expressions: "the whole effort of 'evolution'", "an organic vision of things" - and in his reference to the modern world's belief "in the All".
Teilhard's overmastering intellectual preoccupation is with an immeasurable unitary evolving universe, a gigantic "All" organically moving in the direction of an ever greater
2. Ibid., pp. 316-17, note 5: "Cette reference constante au Christ historique, a Jesus de Nazareth, est l'une des 'notes' qui differencient radicalenent la christologie teilhardienne de toutes les christologies 'gnostiques' ou gnostici-santes. Dieu personnel, Jesus historique: ce sont les deux poles fixes de tout son effort d'intelligence de la foi (d'ou la Constance, dans sa vie spirituelle, de ['adoration, de la priere, de l'amour, et de la fidelite a I'Eglise qui nous conserve la presence du Christ). A vrai dire, on ne constate aucune evolution fonciere dans sa pensee a cet egard. Quand il parle de 're-integrer' l'une ou 1'autre de ces deux verites dans sa synthese, cela ne signifie pas qu'il les ait plus ou moins perdues de vue ou laisse s'estomper dans son esprit, mais qu'il parvient a les mieux justifier intellectuellement. Ainsi en allait-il deja pour l'idee de 'personne'."
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physical complexity and psychological centreity - in the direction, that is, of the physically organised "personal" consciousness and, beyond it, to the physical organisation of a unified collectivity of persons, a psycho-social ensemble on an earth-wide scale, charged with a "cosmic sense", inspired by a love of the Universal, the All, who is felt to be a supreme Person attracting them from "ahead". By Him and in Him the various collected and harmonised persons get universalised without losing their distinctive beings. The Universal person, as the' final focus of the converging cosmos, is called by Teilhard "Omega Point". In Intimate Letters, de Lubac3 quotes from Teilhard's book, The Phenomenon of Man: "Like the Omega which attracts it, the element only becomes personal when it universalises itself." Teilhard's letter to Bruno de Solages on 2 September 19474 speaks of "the passage of the Phenomenon of man to Point Omega". Teilhard's Omega, the Universal Person, is at the same time self-existent in Himself and emergent from the evolutionary process as the latter's Term and Climax. He is the Soul of the World, the God of Evolution, the cosmic culmination and fullness, the only Deity acceptable to the religious mood of the modern scientific age with its faith in an increasing human progress and its drive towards a complete earthly fulfilment.
Teilhard's problem as a Christian was to find a natural and logical place for the historic Christ, the human-divine Saviour, in his scientifically religious cosmic scheme. Unless he could thus "re-integrate" Jesus of Nazareth, he could not rest satisfied - both because he felt the necessity to give Omega, the Cosmic Person, an identifiable name in order to render Him thoroughly lovable and because the historic Christ would lack a meaningful reality if not understood in a universal evolutionary framework. The background of the reintegration would broadly be the argument we find in a letter
3.Ibid., p. 316, note 4: "A l'image d'Omega qui 1'attire, ['element ne devient personnel qu'en s'universalisant."
4.Ibid., p. 356: "...passage du Phenomene humain au point Omega..."
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to Leontine Zanta on 23 August 1929, to which de Lubac 5 refers when annotating Teilhard's earlier mention of re-finding the value of the "person" after a long "journey". In that letter Teilhard6 writes: "...if the Universe needs, by the very structure of Being, to fulfil itself in 'person', there must be some Revelation of the Centre-Person to the 'elementary-persons'; as no one can penetrate to the core of the Centre save the Centre itself." To Teilhard the historic Christ is this "Revelation": he discerns there all the signs that Omega has expressed Himself: "Only Christ, who is conscious of his situation, can say of the universal labour: 'Hoc est Corpus meum' ['This is my Body']."'7 Thus Teilhard could declare: "I have rediscovered the exact Christian perspective, but grafted (as it should be) onto a universal and evolutive perspective."8
The upshot of the Teilhardian dialectic is: the universal and evolutive perspective involves a Universal Person who is the Prime Mover ahead, effecting the upward gradient of evolution - an upward gradient which expresses His own cosmic labour - and in the course of this gradient He manifests Himself in a concentrated form in the person of the historic Jesus. Considering Jesus the sole manifestation of the Universal Person, Teilhard calls that Universal Person "Christ" and thus repeats in his own world-view the function he deems as part of the "Christian essential" - that is, to relate the World to the Supreme Personal by naming Him. But the Teilhardian world-view stands on its own feet independently as a scientific religion, a spiritual Evolutionism: that is why the task of re-integrating the historic Christ arose and Teilhard said, "1 had need of that." Omega, not Christ, is the ultimate ground of Teilhardism.
No doubt, Teilhard often speaks of Omega and Christ as one: again and again we come across the compound "Christ-Omega". An example is .the phrase in a letter to de Lubac on 4
5.Ibid., p. 198, note 8.
6.Letters to Leontine Zanta, p. 95.
7.Ibid.
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December 1947:9 "...a new Faith, which appears to me precisely to be that which one obtains by combining, as I was saying, the Above with the Ahead, upon Christ-Omega." But actually there are two entities for him, each an Omega by being final in its own field and endowed with the same all-gathering function, and his work as a Christian who is also a scientist lies in unifying them. We perceive this activity clearly in a quotation de Lubac makes in a note to Teilhard's letter to Auguste Valensin on 12 June 1925.10 The quotation is from Teilhard's essay, "The God of Evolution," written in 1953: "Is there not a revealing correspondence between the shapes (the patterns) of the two confronting Omegas: the one postulated by modern Science and the one encountered by Christian mysticism?... Drawn together by a fundamental identity, the two Omegas, I repeat (that of Experience and that of Faith), are certainly on the point of reacting upon each other in human consciousness and finally of being synthesized."
The moment we have two entities designable as Omegas, we see that the historic Christ who is Omegalic in his own sphere is not irreplaceable as the starting-point for belief in a Cosmic Person: this belief can be based on the data of modern science, and the historic Christ is irreplaceable only if we want to call the Cosmic Person the Universal Christ. Steeped in Roman Catholicism and unable to think of any incarnate divinity other than Jesus, Teilhard could never quite free himself from Christifying the Cosmic Person; but his sense of that Person's independence of Christ made him repeatedly feel the historic God-Man of Nazareth to be a vague and vanishing figure that could hardly draw his love and adora-
9. Lettres Intimes..., p. 362: "...une Foi nouvelle, laquelle me parait precisement etre ce qu'on obtient en combinant, comme je disais, 1'En Haul et 1'En Avant, sur le Christ-Omega,"
10. Ibid., p. 124, note 4: "La correspondance n'est-elle pas revelatrice entre la figure (le 'pattern') des deux Omegas en presence: celui postule par la Science moderne, et celui eprouve par la mystique chretienne?... Attires I'un vers 1'autre par une identite de fond, les deux Omegas, je repete (celui de 1' Experience et celui de la Foi) s'appretent certainement a reagir I'un sur I'autre dans la conscience humaine, et finatement a se synthetiser."
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tion: none except the Universal Christ whom he built out of that figure could he love and adore - and, in loving and adoring Him, he tacitly knew that his love and adoration really went to the Cosmic Person who had nothing radically to do with Christianity.
His tacit knowledge peeps out pretty openly at times. In an earlier chapter we have cited a letter written on 24 February 1918. De Lubac himself has it in one of his notes. There Teilhard is dealing with the difficulty of reconciling his doctrine of the Cosmic Christ with the plurality of inhabited worlds in our universe.11 And there the uniqueness of Jesus as a Divine Incarnation is denied by Teilhard when he talks of the Cosmic Christ's "'polymorphous' manifestation" and of "The human Christ" - that is, Jesus - being "only one aspect of the cosmic Christ".
Another glimpse of the Cosmic Person in His own right and without necessary association with the historic Christ is afforded by another quotation 12 from Teilhard by de Lubac, dating to 1946: "I have often the impression that our Christ is only a veil or an outline behind which there awaits us and desires us Someone or Something incomparably greater."
Teilhard's tacit knowledge that he loved and adored a Cosmic Person with whom Christianity was not radically connected was the product at the same time of his scientific consciousness and another factor which played a decisive part in the totality of his life as a man of religion and a man of science. Before he conceived Omega Point he was already enamoured of a unitary cosmos. His letter of 12 October 1951 13
11.Ibid., p. 40, note 7.
12.Ibid., p. 216, note 12: "J'ai souvent 1'impression que notre Christ n'est qu'un voile et qu'une ebauche derriere quoi nous attend et nous desire Quelqu'un ou quelque Chose d'incomparablement plus grand..." (1946).
13.Ibid., p. 399: "...la qualite (ou la faiblesse) congenitale qui fait que, depuis mon enfance, ma vie spirituelle n'a pas cesse d'etre completement dominee par une sorte de 'sentiment' profond de la realite organique du Monde; sentiment originairement assez vague dans mon esprit et dans mon coeur, - mais sentiment graduellement devenu, avec les annees, un sens precis et envahissant d'une convergence generate sur soi de l'Univers..."
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to John Janssens, General of the Jesuits, speaks of "the congenital quality (or weakness) which brings it about that, since my childhood, my spiritual life has not ceased being completely dominated by a sort of profound 'feeling' of the organic reality of the World; a feeling originally rather vague in my mind and heart, - but a feeling gradually grown, with the years, a precise and overflowing sense of the general convergence of the Universe upon itself...". Doubtless, he 14 goes on to speak of "this convergence coinciding and culminating, at its summit, with the One 'in whom all things hold together', Him whom the Company [of Jesuits] has taught me to love". But that does not negate the prior power in Teilhard of World-worship nor the fact that at all times his spiritual life was completely dominated by his deep and in-born cosmic "feeling". This feeling evidently constituted the root of his religion and flowered both into the concept of Omega and into that of the Cosmic Christ - Christ in his aspect of the World's omnipresent holder-together and ultimate all-gatherer, the Christ of St. Paul whom Teilhard strove to identify with his own Christ the Evolver. Such a feeling Teilhard saw not only as his root-religion but also as the essence of all mysticism. De Lubac15 quotes a writing of Teilhard's from the winter of 1951: "Essentially, the mystical feeling is a sense and a presentiment of the total and final Unity of the World, beyond the present and felt multiplicity; a cosmic sense of Oneness." And, when a name is to be given to the fundamental intuition of the World's Oneness, Teilhard writes on 15 September 1934 to de Lubac:16 "It seems to me...that there
14.Ibid.: "cette convergence coincidant et culminant, k son sommet, avec Celui 'in quo omnia constant', que la Cie m'a appris k aimer."
15.Ibid.: p. 275, note 3: "Essentiellement, le sentiment mystique est un sens et un pressentiment de l'Unite totale et finale du Monde, par-dela sa multiplicity presente et sentie; sens cosmique de 1' Oneness."
16.Ibid., p. 295: "Il me semble...qu'il y a, dans le grand phenomene religieux (en quoi s'exprime la substance de I'histoire humaine, et meme universelle), un consensus fundamental qui peut (doit) servir de base k toute apologetique: la foi 'pantheiste' en I'unite finale,"
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is, in the great religious phenomenon (in which the substance of human and even universal history expresses itself), a fundamental consensus which can (must) serve as the basis of all apologetics: the 'pantheist' faith in the final unity,"
"Pantheism" is "the quality (or weakness)" that was "congenital" in Teilhard, And it is to the focusing of the true posture, so to speak, of this quality that we have to bring the light shed by Intimate Letters.
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Teilhard kept distinguishing throughout his life between "false" and "true" pantheisms and pledging himself to the "true". Apropos of his essay, How I Believe, where he had sketched his notion of the "Person", he remarked to de Lubac on 23 June 1935:1 "It is all the question of the true pantheism which lies there in its root." And how are we to distinguish the true variety from the false?
After mentioning "the 'pantheist' faith in the final unity", Teilhard2 writes: "All the 'play' consists in recognising (showing) that there cannot be a true unification outside a personalising fusion of the elements in the bosom of a maximum of consciousness (that is to say, of personality)." On 3 April of the same year (1934) he voices the same idea in another context to Valensin:3 "Either indeed the spiritual phenomenon is an unintelligible accident (and then there is the death of Action). Or indeed it absorbs everything, and it imposes fundamental conditions on the structure of the Universe around us. And, among these fundamental conditions, is the conservation of the Personal. No means of escaping it, - despite the (apparent) unlikelihood of Survival and the pseudo-repugnance which a mind of the 'pantheist' turn always feels to giving a definitive value to an element of the Universe." Thus the crucial difference is that true pantheism posits a total unity within which personal beings
1. Lettres lntimes..., p. 304: "C'est toute la question du vrai pantheisme qui git la dans sa racine."
2.Ibid., p. 295: "Tout le 'jeu' consiste a reconnaifre (montrer) qu'il ne saurait y avoir d'unification vraie hors d'une fusion PERSONNALISANTE
3.Ibid., p. 269: "Ou bien le phenomene spirituel est un accident inintelligible (et alors c'est la mart de l'Action). Ou bien il absorbe tout, et il impose des conditions fondamentales a la structure de 1'Univers autour de nous, Et, parmi ces conditions fondamentales, est la conservation et l'accroissement du Personnel Pas moyen d'y echapper, - en depit des invraisemblances (apparentes) de la Survie et des pseudo-repugnances qu'un esprit de tournure 'pantheiste' eprouve toujours a donner une valeur definitive a un element de 1'Univers."
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become universalised in relation to a Universal Person without losing their self-existence in the All, whereas in false pantheism the All submerges the elements uniting with it.
According to Teilhard, what philosophically goes by the name "pantheism" is the latter kind. De Lubac4 has the note: "For him pantheism is 'the defective explanation of a quite justified (and for the rest perfectly ineradicable) tendency of the human soul.'" But the common Christian rejection of pantheism, bag and baggage, has no validity for Teilhard, because the Christian explanation of that which is an absolute desideratum to him - namely, the Unity of the world - fails to satisfy his mind. De Lubac5 refers to Teilhard's essay of 1919, The Universal Element and summarises its conclusion: "There must be a unity of the World: but from where does it get that unity? After setting aside 'the pantheist solution', Teilhard considers as insufficient the explanations by 'the Will of God' or by His 'creative Action' and he indicates as a principle of unity 'the cosmic influence of Christ'." It is because these orthodox explanations also are set aside that in introducing the Cosmic Christ, Teilhard,6 in a letter of 17 December 1922 to Valensin, alludes to a discourse intended by him "on the pantheist aspect of Christianity". His Cosmic Christ, therefore, pantheises Christianity at the same time that it Christianises pantheism. And in Intimate Letters as nowhere else, except that Rideau7 in his book has already culled the central passage from it, we get the most exact delineation of Teilhard's pantheist poise. The delineation is all the more impor-
4.Ibid., p. 94, note 8: "Pour lui, le pantheisme est 'I'explication defectueuse d'une tendance tres justifiee (et du reste parfaitement inderacinable) de I'ame humaine'."
5.Ibid., p. 49, note 5: "Il doit y avoir une unite du Monde: mais d'oCi lui vient cette unite? Apres avoir ecarte 'la solution pantheiste', Teilhard considerait comme insuffisantes les explications par 'la Volonte de Dieu' ou par son 'Action creatrice' et il indiquait comme principe d'unite 'l'influence cosmique du Christ'."
6.Ibid., p. 89: "...sur la face pantheiste du Christianisme."
7.Teilhard de Chardin: A Guide to His Thought, translated by Rene Hague (Collins, London, 1967), p. 528.
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tant since it comes by way of criticising an article of Valensin' s, written in a vein proper to Roman Catholic orthodoxy, on the subject in the Dictionnaire apologetique de la foi catholique (Vol. 3). Teilhard8 speaks out his mind to his friend:
"1. You are in the wrong in scorning the pantheism of the poets. This pantheism is the mysticism of which Spinoza and Hegel have been the theologians. It represents a psychological force, and it contains a considerable lived truth: it is the living pantheism. You are acting like a man who, in Christianity, 'disdains St. Theresa in order to busy himself only with St. Thomas or Cajetan.
"2. You leave the reader with the impression that Spinoza's position, for example, is simpliciter mala, falsa. -How is it that you have not suggested that between Spinoza's 'Incarnation', in which the whole is hypostatically divine, and the 'Incarnation' of the over-cautious, extrinsicist theologians, in which the Pleroma is no more than a social aggregate, there is room for an Incarnation that culminates in the building up of an organic Whole, in which physical union with God is at different levels? - You contrast Christian morality with the
8. Lettres Intimes..., pp. 89-90: "1° Vous avez tort tie mepriser le pantheisme des poetes. Ce pantheismela est la mystique dont Spinoza et Hegel ont ete les Theologiens. Il represente une force psychologique, et il contient une verite vecue considerable: il est le pantheisme vivant. Vous faites comme un horn me qui, dans le Christianisme, dedaignerait Ste Therese pour ne s'occuper que de St Thomas ou de Cajetan.
"2° Vous laissez le lecteur sous 1'impression que la position spinozienne, par exemple, est simpliciter mala, falsa. - Comment n'avez-vous pas laisse entrevoir qu'entre 1"Incarnation' spinozienne ou Tout est divin hypostatiquement, et l"Incarnation' des Theologiens extrinsecistes et timides ou le Plerome n'est qu'un agregat social, il y a place pour une Incarnation se terminant a l'edification d'un Tout organique, ou 1'union physique au Divin a des degres? - Vous opposez la morale chretienne k la morale spinozienne en disant que la premiere nous dit seulement de devenir 'semblables a Dieu'. Je n'accepte pas l'opposition. - Pour le Chretien, etre summorphos Christo, c'est participer sous la similitude de conduite, k un etre commun; - c'est reellement 'devenir le Christ', 'devenir Dieu,'
"Notez que je comprends parfaitement les reserves que vous irnposait le Dictionnaire. - Mais, tout de meme, on a le droit de parler comme St Paul! - Ceci soit dit, je le repete, sans prejudice du profond interet que m'a cause votre article. Mais, je vous enprie, ne refutez pas seulement! assimilez, construisez!"
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morality of Spinoza by saying that the former tells us only that we must become Tike unto God'. I don't accept the distinction. For the Christian, to be summorphos Christo is to participate, under a similarity of behaviour, in a common being; - it is really 'to become Christ', 'to become God'.
"Note that I perfectly understand the reserves which the Dictionary has imposed on you. - But, all the same, one has the right to talk like St. Paul! - That may be said, I repeat, without prejudice to the profound interest your article has created in me. But please do not only refuse! assimilate, construct!"
There we have Teilhard at his most Teilhardian. He takes a cue from St. Paul's concept of Christ's union with his followers when they are associated with him as members of his mystical body. Fernand Prat,9 a fellow-Jesuit, has well expressed the concept while commenting on Romans VI:3-5: "Ineffable union compared by St. Paul to the grafting, which intimately mingles two lives even to the point of blending them, and absorbs into the life of the trunk the life of the grafted branch; a marvellous operation which makes both Christ and ourselves symphytoi (animated by the same vital principle), symmorphoi (animated by the same active principle), or as St. Paul says elsewhere, clothes us with Christ and makes us live by His Life." Unfortunately, orthodoxy, as evinced by Valen-sin's article, takes a more or less metaphorical view of Pauline thought. Teilhard, proceeding from that thought, outdoes it in literal organic implication. He comes as close as a Christian possibly can to the arch-pantheist Spinoza to whom universal being is one with God's own self - divine, as Teilhard suggests, in the same way that Christ's humanity was divine by the Word forming a single entity with it (hypostatic union) and not loosely linking itself to it. He openly declares that Spinozism is not "simply evil, false" and that a true Christ-
9. Tlie Theology of St. Paul, Vol. 1, p. 223, quoted by Dom Eugene Boy Ian, O.C.S.O., in The Mystical Body and the Spiritual Life [The Merder Press, Cork, 1964), pp. 38-39,
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ianity is but a slight modification of the Spinozist stand and worlds away from official Christianity which drives a complete wedge between the being of God and that of man. True Christianity is in a real sense pantheism, but it is the pantheism of the poets more than that of a philosophical logician like Spinoza. What the latter does is to theorise the former into an extreme position, yet in its essence it is not far out. In the final union, we are a part of Christ, a part of God, but without being dissolved in them. As they are a Person, our becoming part of them can only hyperpersonalise our own personal consciousness in the act of its growing universa-lised. That is the sole difference Teilhard would accept between his own Weltanschauung and Spinoza's.
Strangely enough, he compares Spinoza as well as Hegel, in connection with the pantheist poets, to St. Aquinas and Cajetan in connection with St. Theresa. The two latter philosophers are not commonly supposed to have distorted in intellectual version the reality experienced by the mystic of Avila. If Teilhard's comparison has force, it would seem that they have pushed the authentic implications of St. Theresa's "living" Christianity into an exaggerated form which would not be altogether acceptable. Either this is an indirect dig at orthodox theory or it is an indirect welcome to Spinoza in spite of his apparent extremism. Teilhard is indeed most advanced in heterodoxy in this letter to Valensin.
At any rate, it is worth marking that nowhere in these passages or anywhere else in Intimate Letters do we have a clear statement that man is created by God, from nothing, as a substance quite distinct from Him - a statement which would divide Teilhard from Spinozism as trenchantly as Christian orthodoxy divides itself. All he insists on is that the human person be not submerged in the ultimate unity with the Divine and that the Divine be not only cosmic but also transcendent.
In how genuinely pantheist a sense Teilhard's God could be cosmic we may gather from three pronouncements in Intimate Letters. The earliest is a Note of 1 May 1921, quoted by de
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Lubac:10 "The two religions of the future: - that of the cosmic Christ; - naturalist pantheism." Teilhard means: Two religions most likely to be adopted because of their common content of a Universal Godhead. Doubtless, a choice is posited because the common content can have somewhat different shades and emphases. Naturalist pantheism would not yield a Universal Person who would also transcend the universe; its Godhead would be a single impersonal World-substance with no transcendence of the world. But if it is just by the personal character that the Universal Godhead who is the Cosmic Christ has the quality of being transcendent, then in its cosmicity as such it need not be altogether a Person: it could share with naturalist pantheism an impersonality of One World-substance. The pair of religions, for all their difference of shades and emphases, may truly have a common content. Rather, the religion of the Cosmic Christ may subsume naturalist pantheism without excluding his transcendent nature.
The same point arises in de Lubac's quotation11 of a Note of Teilhard's on 12 October 1921: "Even though all men were to succeed in arriving at a concerted understanding about a religious attitude (for instance, pantheist), this accord (however well-founded it might be upon internal tendencies and the deep experience of the Cosmos) would be vain as regards informing us about the true nature of the Term. - There
10.Op. cit., p. 102, note 1: "Les deux religions de I'avenir: - celle du Christ cosmique; - le pantheisme naturaliste."
11.Ibid., p. 297, note 2: "Quand meme tous les horn mes arriveraient a s'entendre sur une attitude religieuse (v.g, pantheiste), cet accord (si fonde fut-il sur les tendances internes et 1' experience profonde du Cosmos) serait vain pour nous renseigner sur la veritable nature du Terme, - 11 faudrait encore qu'il y ait une 'reponse', un contact objectifa\ec l'Omega qui vienne corroborer et confirmer cette grande aspiration de nos ames. - Le Christianisme, je continue & le croire, a actuellement besoin d'une forte infusion de seve humaine. Mais toute sa valeur, -toute so force pour sou lever les ames tient a ce qu'il se presenre comme un Impose d'en haut, comme de I'Autre, non seulement pressenti, desire, naltre de nos efforts reunis', - mais dej£ aclue constitute extra nos. Telle est I'essence de i'idee de Revelation."
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would still be necessary an 'answer', an objective contact with Omega which should corroborate and confirm this great aspiration of our souls. - Christianity, 1 continue to believe, needs at present a strong infusion of human sap. But all its value - all its force for uplifting souls lies in its presenting itself as Imposed from above, as from the Other, not only felt, desired, 'to be born from our united efforts', - but already actuated, constituted extra nos. Such is the essence of the idea of Revelation." Here the transcendent Omega is considered the essence of Christian revelation and the indispensable condition for the final fulfilment of humanity. Without asssuming its touch on us as of an independent Being outside ourselves, we shall never have a proper insight into what Omega, the End or Term of evolution, is. However, the complementary of this much-required transcendence is a unifying Omega intrinsic to the Cosmos and realised through a pantheist religion shared as a great aspiration by all souls, a religion full of a human life-interest which Christianity with its eyes principally fixed on an Above badly lacks and must acquire. Clearly, this side of the evolutionary consummation, this Cosmic Omega, is compassed by a pure pantheism which is indeed incomplete without that transcendence but is not annulled by the latter: in fact it goes along with it as part of a larger ultimate Reality.
Again, take Teilhard's complaint to Ravier on 3 August 1952 about a newspaper's misrepresentation of him - inspired, as he asserted, by Rome's tactics - that "the God of Teilhard was becomming a God immanent to the evolution of the world".12 The complaint13 runs: "What annoys me in the
12.Ibid., p. 410: "Le Dieu du P. Teilhard devertait un Dieu immanent a revolution du monde..."
13.Ibid:. "Ce qui me vexe, dans l'affaire, c'est cette maniere elementaire de me faire jeter par-dessus bord une 'transcendance' divine que j'ai au contraire passe ma vie a defendre, - tout en cherchant il est vrai (comme tout le monde, mais en utilisant les nouvelles proprietes d'un Univers en etat de Cosmogenese) a l'harmoniser avec une immanence a laquelle personne ne doute plus qu'il faille donner une part de plus en plus importante et explicite dans notre philosophie et notre religion."
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affair is this elementary manner of making me throw overboard a divine 'transcendence' which I, much to the contrary, have spent my life in defending, - while seeking, it is true (like everybody, but using the new properties of a Universe in a state of Cosmogenesis), to harmonise it with an immanence to which nobody any longer doubts we should give a more and more important and explicit part in our philosophy and our religion." What do we find in these words? At once a corrective to the canard that Teilhard was exclusively an evolutionary immanentist and an admission that his stress does fall on evolutionary immanentism. But if his philosophy and his religion do give primacy to "a God immanent to the evolution of the world" he surely subscribes, even though he does not confine himself, to "naturalist pantheism" and he subscribes to it in a most prominent way in the very act of explaining that he is more than a subscriber to that belief alone.
After all this, it would be foolish to make much of his occasional declarations that his highly disturbing doctrines could be couched in more orthodox language in the future and be absorbed into Catholic thought when the need to employ shock-tactics was over and Rome had made its peace with him.14 He was always eager not to be thrown out of the Church if he could help it and he also coddled a dream that his drastic-seeming innovations could be defended as a development from certain affirmations of St. Paul. His self-deceptions were natural in the context of his faith that, no matter how wrong and perverse the contemporary Church and even historical Christianity were, they were the bearers of a precious truth and that it was his mission to reveal to them the full meaning of this truth. His mission, according to him, could best be carried out by making his convictions active in the most subtle and potent way possible - that is, from within the Roman Catholic fold itself. What he sought to bring about
14. Ibid., pp. 314, 319.
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was "the 'implosive' encounter, in the human consciousness, of the sense of the 'ultra-human' and the Christie sense (or, as I often say, of the Ahead and the Above)"15 - or, in other words, "the 'implosive' encounter of the Christian and the Evolutive".16 The result would be the interplay and inter-miscence of "naturalist pantheism" with transcendentalist Christianity, involving the "re-thinking of Revelation and Christology, in terms of a Universe recognised as convergent."17
15.Ibid., p. 448, note 8: "la rencontre 'implosive' dans la conscience humaine du sens de I' 'ultra-humain' et du sens Christique (ou, comme je le dis souvent, de 1'En avant et de 1
16.Ibid., p. 452: "la rencontre 'implosive' du Chretien et de 1
17.Ibid., p. 404: "re-pensee de la Revelation et de la Christologie, en fonction d'un Univers reconnu comme convergent" (30 Novembre 1951).
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Our survey of Intimate Letters and of de Lubac's numerous Notes to it has picked out from the divers mood-expressions over the years 1919-1955 the main persistent lines of Teilhard's attitudes and commitments. The lines show themselves in summary under two aspects. These aspects the Roman Catholic Church did not seem to accept. He hoped to make it accept them by a constant struggle not against its basic existence but with the narrow old-worldly non-evolutionary form under which it presented the meaning of Jesus's life and the ultimate nature of his role in the universe. What he' said as early as 11 August 1920 to Auguste Valensin held true up to the end: "...I cannot avoid pouring out, with all the force of my personality (small or great, it matters little), ideas on evolution which, I know it, are essentially repugnant to the teaching authority! - We shall then have always to love the Church, the true Church, through the one speaking to us, the one we are in touch with - and to serve it by forcing its hand?"
The two aspects come forth very well in a quotation from a letter of October 1953, which de Lubac makes in a note:2 "...1 should like to use as intensely as possible the last years left to me in 'Christifying' (as I say) Evolution (which implies both the scientific work of establishing the 'convergence' of the Universe, and the religious work of disengaging the Universal Nature of the Christ of history). This, - and then to end well -
1.Lettres Intimes..., pp. 67-68: "...je ne puis eviter de repandre, de toute la force de ma personnalite, (petite ou grande, peu importe), des idees sur 1'evolution qui, je le sais, repugnent essentiellement a I'autorite docens! - IL faudra donC toujours aimer I'Eglise, la vraie, a travers celle qui nous parle et que nous touchons, - et la servir en lui forcant la main?"
2.Ibid., p. 432, note 1: "...je voudrais employer aussi intensement que possible les derreres annees qui me restent a 'christifier' (comme je dis) 1'Evolution (ce qui suppose a la fois le travail scientifique pour etablir la 'convergence' de 1'Univers, et le travail religieux pour degager la Nature Universelle du Christ de l'histoire). Cela, - et puis bien finir - c'est-a-dire mourir en temoignage de cet 'evangile.'"
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that is to say to die in witness to this 'gospel'." Also, the two aspects fuse in another citation by de Lubac in the same note:3 "On this feast of St. Peter: My dream: to be able to confess, profess my answer to the question: 'Who do they say is the Son of Man?' ...Ans [wer]: ...The coolutive focus of a (the) convergent universe."
The traditional answer - the one returned by Peter to Christ's question - is: "you are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Teilhard has surely transposed his own mind and heart to a theological context quite other than that of the Gospel of St. Matthew where the original conversation (16:1516) occurs. So we may enunciate his full position thus: "The universe is to be taken as evolutionary and as converging or coming together upon itself to evolve ever new outer syntheses and ever new interiorisations, which will culminate in a supreme state of unified collective humanity. This state we may call Point Omega. But Omega is also a present Reality, an actual perfection and plenitude attracting evolution towards itself as to a culminating point. Christ who is figured in scripture as a perfection and plenitude that will gather up everything at the end of history into itself is to be identified with both the actual Omega and Point Omega. He is the converging universe's focus - at the same time the final evolutionary concentration and the present power within the universe driving it towards that end. As Evolver as well as Evolving, he is the Universal or Cosmic Christ, the only form of Godhead that can issue momentously and ultimately, for the modern science-expanded consciousness, from the historic Jesus who emerges as a Divine Incarnation from ancient documents like St. Matthew's Gospel."
We have already dealt with the numerous facets of this theme. But one particular persistent nuance which Teilhard gives to it remains to be clarified. We mentioned that nuance when we commented on the incomprehensible Pauline idea
3. Ibid.. "En cette fete de St Pierre: Mon reve: pouvoir confesses professer ma reponse a la question: 'Quem dicunt esse Filium Hominis?' ...Rep[onse]: ...Le foyer evolulif d'un (de l')univers convergent."
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Teilhard reiterates without being able to weave it rationally into his system - the pre-existence and pre-action not of Christ as the Divine Logos in his own status but Christ in his incarnate form, the "theandric" Jesus - that is, the God-Man in an earthly body. The nuance came in Teilhard's phrase about "the physical supremacy of Christ over the universe" and in his declaring himself a "physicalist" as against the "juridicists" and asking for a Christ who is related to the cosmos not as a landowner, a father or the head of an association, exercising moral rights, but as a sort of super-organism in whom the cosmos has its coherence and its evolution and by whom it will constitute a unity without sacrificing the individuality of its component parts. On that occasion we said: "at the moment we are not concerned with Teilhard's physicalism."4 Now we are brought back to the issue by certain expressions in Intimate Letters. One of them occurred in our last chapter itself where we quoted Teilhard on Spinozism, the orthodox extrinsicist theology and his own position: "...there is room for an Incarnation that culminates in the building up of an organic whole, in which physical union with God is at different levels."
Two statements from the same book in tune with this expression may serve to focus minds on the issue. There is de Lubac's quotation:5 "The Universal Christ, that is the Christ influencing everything physically" - and there is Teilhard's phrase to Valensin in a letter on 12 December 1919:6 "0[urJ L[ord] has physically the role of stabilising the World at all its levels."
Such statements remind us of the countless instances when Teilhard employs the term "physical" in relation to his Universal Christ. We may review the most significant of them and set alongside them several from Intimate Letters which
4.See page 239 of this book.
5.Op. cit., p. 50, note 6: "Le Christ Universel, c'est le Christ influencani tout phystquemeiit."
6.Ibid., p. 35: "N. S. a physiquement le role de stabiliser le Monde a tous ses degres."
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tend to illuminate the content of the three statements we have just reproduced from the book. The precise bearing of the physicality of the Teilhardian Christ's cosmicity has never been formulated. Let us attempt to clutch this still "inviolable shade".
Piet Smulders, S.J., after quoting from The Divine Milieu (p. 101) the passage - "All the good that I can do, opus et operatio, is physically gathered, by something of itself, into the reality of the consummated Christ" - explained in a note7 that the word "physically" is opposed to a purely "moral" or "juridical" influence and that here it signifies "really". If this is true, what is meant by something being "really" gathered into something else's "reality"? Not much revelatory light seems thrown on the term used.
Christopher Mooney, S.J., tells us: "Perhaps the closest equivalent to Teilhard's 'physical' in current theological usage is the word 'ontological', which may be applied to whatever has existence in the present concrete order of things. 'Physical' is thus opposed to all that is juridical, abstract, extrinsic to reality."8
The above text is referred to by Bruno de Solages, S.J., and Henry de Lubac, S.J., after remarking on a certain passage thus: "Here, as often elsewhere, Pere Teilhard uses 'physical' simply as opposed to 'juridical'."9 The passage in question is: "If things are to find their coherence in Christ, we must ultimately admit that there is in the nature of Christ, besides the specifically individual elements of Man - and in virtue of
7. The Design of Teilhard de chardin. An Essay in Theological Reflection, translated by Arthur Gibson (The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1967), p. 304, note 119. The passage form The Divine Milieu is quoted on p. 225.
8.Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ, p. 85.
9.The Prayer of Teiihard de Chardin: Selections from Writings in Time of War, translated by Rene Hague (Collins, Fontana Books, London, 1973), p. 175, note 3. The passage quoted is from p. 20.
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God's choice - some universal physical reality, a certain cosmic extension of his body and soul."
Well, if "physical" signifies, as explains Mooney whom de Solages and de Lubac follow, "ontological" or the opposite of "all that is...extrinsic to reality", we shall have Teilhard connoting by "some universal physical reality" a universal reality that is real or ontological. Again very little penetrating light appears to be cast on the word.
De Lubac10 has also the remark elsewhere: "Teilhard's realism was always hard (sometimes excessively so) on the theology that, in general, preferred what are called 'moral' or 'juridical' rather than 'physical' links ('physical' here meaning 'organic', and not being used as opposed either to 'supernatural' or 'metaphysical')".
Mooney has a statement that supports de Lubac and gives a more comprehensive and positive presentation. He11 writes: "In Teilhard's system of thought all created reality is 'physical' and 'organic', and he applies these words equally, though analogically, to the material and personal, as well as to the natural and supernatural."
It is certain that "physical", contrasting to "juridical" and "moral", carries the sense of "organic". Teilhard has turns of expression like "organic or physical meaning",12 "physical relationships and organic connections",13 "organic and physical analogies".14 We may also keep in countenance Mooney's suggestion of "ontological" and therefore too Smulders's "real". In Intimate Letters15 we read: "All my effort has been precisely, for years, to criticise these juridical and vague terms and to rediscover for them an organic and ontological sense."
10.Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning, p. 41, fn. 20.
11.Op. cit., p. 85,
12.Christianity and Evolution, p. 58.
13.Ibid., p. 70,
14.Science and Christ, p. 55.
15.lettres In times..., p. 274: "Tout mon effort est precisement, depuis des annees, de critiquer ces termes juridiques et vagues, et de leur retrouver un sens organique et ontologique."
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Yes, all the commentators belonging to the same religious Order as Teilhard - the Society of Jesus - are not wrong when they thus understand "physical". But within some of their comments there is a sign of the inadequacy of their explanations. As we have indicated, an element of facile tautology is at play at times if we confine ourselves to such glosses. They are too general and do not take us to any crystalline centre of significance which would add to our understanding of Teilhard. Surely some other focus of vision is needed in addition to them?
The first ray of genuine illumination comes in the opening half of a footnote by the editors of Teilhard's earliest compositions:"16 "Pere Teilhard often uses 'physical' in its original Greek meaning: e phusis=nature: phusikos=pertaining to nature, or, we might say, organic." But there follows the confusing phrase: "It is used as opposed not to 'supernatural', but to 'superficial, artificial, or simply moral.'" How do the editors arrive at such a conclusion? If "physical" points us to "nature" and indicates "pertaining to nature", why should it just mean "organic" and not be opposed to "supernatural"?
Actually, in the sentence cited by de Solages and de Lubac we have the phrase "a cosmic extension of his body and soul" to clarify the words "some universal physical reality". Does not Teilhard mean: "his body and soul extended in cosmic nature"? In that case, "physical" by itself would just denote "nature", and the contents of nature would be "body and soul" (ensouled embodiment). Then, with "organic" in mind, we may say that body and soul must be taken to form the structure of a natural organism, in which all the parts are close-knit and unified. Our entire universe, which Teilhard as a scientist looked upon as an evolving unitary system, is an organism in this sense, an organic whole manifesting various levels or degrees of body and soul or, to use another Teilhardian combination, outer synthesis and inner centra-tion.
16. Writings in Time of War, p. 171, fn. 16.
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It is curious how all the commentators we have named either ignore or else fail to see properly the significance which stares them in the face: "natural" balancing "supernatural". Numerous instances of such a usage can be cited, where this meaning is either emphatically implied or undeniably explicit.
Take the assertion:17 "Christ is the terminal point at which, supernaturally but also physically, the consummation of humanity is destined to be achieved." Put by its side this other:18 "By the incarnation, which redeemed man, the very becoming of the universe, too, has been transformed. Christ is the term of even the natural evolution of living beings; evolution is holy." We can at once observe that the second quotation's "term" and the first one's "terminal point" mean the same, so that the former's "physically", which is counterpoised to "supernaturally", denotes the latter's "natural evolution", which is equivalent to "the very becoming of the universe". The suggestion of "naturally" by "physically", the coincidence of the two in meaning, as well as their contrast to "supernaturally", is as clear as anything can be.
Moreover, we have a direct equivalence in the following, which offers a reason "for the stagnation, since the time of St. Paul, of the concept of the Universal Christ": "this is the excessive emphasis in philosophy on logical, moral and juridical relationships. It is simpler, safer (tutius), more convenient (as our Lord's example shows) to express the relations between God and man as family or domestic relationship. Such analogies are true inasmuch as union in Christ is effected between persons, but they are incomplete. If we are to express the whole truth, we must correct them by analogies drawn from realities that are specifically natural and physical. The friendship of God and adoption of God are expressions that include an adaptation of the universe, a transformation, a recasting, that are organic and cannot be cancelled."
18.Science and Christ, pp. 18-19.
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Perhaps this passage is the most comprehensive covering of the issue. We have not only the opposition of "juridical" and "moral" to "physical", but also the parity of the two former with "logical" and the parity of "physical" with "natural" as well as the parity of these two with "organic" and so the opposition of "logical, moral and juridical" to all these three.
In an inspired moment a recent Jesuit commentator has pointedly framed, though merely en passant, the former trio. Speaking of Teilhard's view that the "confluence of thought" which terminates in a collective super-consciousness is the prolongation of the "mega-synthesis" which has dominated evolution over its entire course and is the application, at the human thought-level, of the law of higher complexity engendering a higher consciousness, Jan Feys, S.J.,19 writes of that view of Teilhard's: "This permits him to attribute an operative value in the building of future humanity to social structures, cultural exchange, economic co-operation or common scientific research projects. For, these are the 'hominised version' of natural, physical or organic factors of complexifka-tion."
These three factors are again brought together and made to play into one another by Teilhard's statement:20 "...the elect would be physically incorporated in the organic and 'natural' whole of the consummated Christ."
Here the suggestion is that those who have lived in tune with Christ's presence in the universe will, at the end of history, be taken up by and made part of his Mystical Body which is an organic reality like the realities of nature and that they will reach such a destiny just as physical things are taken up and made part of nature's realities. Here the identical plane of the organic, the natural and the physical emerges.
The single plane of the last two comes to the fore even better - nay, in the most convincing manner - in the phrase
19. The Philosophy of Evolution in Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin (Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyaya, Calcutta,1973) p. 208.
20. Christitmity and Evolution, p. 70.
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which throws light also on the ultimate sense of "supernatural" and its relation to "nature":21 "The Incarnate Word could not be the supernatural (hyperphysical) centre of the universe if he did not function first as its physical, natural, centre."
A double point is made. "Physical" and "natural" are mentioned as mutually explanatory synonyms and the balance between "supernatural" and "physical" is from the start set up by defining the former as "hyperphysical". That is to say, the "supernatural" differs from the "physical" and stands over against it but by being a higher or greater degree of the latter. This proves "physical" to be a substitute-term for "natural", the usual antonym of "supernatural". That is the first aspect of Teilhard's point. The second is the removal of the difficulty set up by the common orthodox question: "How could Christ be ever conceived as a reality 'physical' in the sense of 'natural' or 'belonging to nature'?" If the "supernatural" is only the "physical-natural" raised to a superior pitch or, conversely, the "physical-natural" is itself the "supernatural" at an inferior pitch, then there is no barrier to Christ's being the one just as appropriately as the other. According to a phrase of Teilhard22 elsewhere, the difficulty, the barrier, arises "in consequence of a subtle and pernicious confusion between 'super-natural' and 'extra-natural'". The same confusion is bewailed in a communication in Intimate Letters23 to de Solages on 17 January 1954: "O this 'supernatural' - one should say this 'Extra-natural' - de-humanising - !.., who will deliver us of this theological poison which paralyses us in all our movements?" In the book which castigates the confusion we are also told24 about "many experts in the theory of Catholicism": "Without realizing it, they make the very
21.Ibid., p, 71.
22.Ibid., p. 242.
23.Lettres Intimes..., pp. 433-34: "6 ce 'surnaturel' - il faudrait dire cet 'Extra-naturel' - des-humanisant - ! ...qui nous delivrera de ce poison theologique qui nous paralyse dans tous nos mouvements!"
24.Ibid., p, 68.
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common mistake of regarding the spiritual as an attenuation of the material, whereas it is in fact the material carried beyond itself: "it is super-material." Again, we learn25 that, while "the juridicists...will always understand 'mystical' (in 'mystical body') by analogy with a somewhat stronger family association or association of friends", "the physicalists...will see in the word 'mystical' the expression of a hyper-physical (super-substantial) relationship - stronger, and in consequence more respectful of embodied individualities, than that which operates between the cells of one and the same animate organism."
In the last quote we mark that "mystical", being "hyperphysical", is synonymous with "supernatural", which we have already seen to be "hyper-physical", and that, in view of the stronger relationship affirmed than the one between an organism's cells, "supernatural", "mystical", "hyper-physical" and "super-substantial" are identical with what may be called "hyper-organic". Further, all these emerge as "super-material" and so the "physical" and the "material" get paired.
Teilhard nowhere coins the term "hyper-organic" and he employs the common expression even where he talks of the supernatural, but the positing of it is in the logic of his thought. And it is obviously implied when in a letter to Valensin he stresses the complementary characters of the supernatural and the natural. In stressing them he also implies the pairing of the "material" with the "physical" in the course of pairing the latter with the "natural". On 10 January he26 bewails Father Marechal's non-comprehension of
25.Science and Christ, p. 55.
26.Lettres Intimes..., pp. 47-48: "Il pense que le thomisme bien compris... apprend a unifier le Monde sans autres facteurs que 1'acte divin, - et il hesite a voir dans la Tradition les lineaments d'un Christ-Universel. - Je lui ai repondu... en insistent sur ces deux points: 1" necessite, pour l'acte divin unifiant, de nous trouver (ou
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his stand about the Universal Christ and he insists on two points relevant to this stand: "He thinks that Thomism well understood...teaches how to unify the World without other factors than the divine act - and he hesitates to see in Tradition the lineaments of a Universal Christ. - I have replied to him.,.insisting on these two points: 1. the necessity, for the divine unifying act, of finding us {or making us) all one same thing...(...it must seize us - or constitute us - all together under some created form of unity) that is to say, to the unifying action of God there ought to correspond a unified aspect of the created Universe. - 2. the impossibility of understanding a Christ who would be (organically) central in the supernatural Universe, and physically juxtaposed in the natural Universe."
The passage is a little complicated, but the main idea shines through: "There has to be a natural focus to hold the Universe together and Christianity should put at such a focus a Christ whose function would be the holding together of the Universe. Unless there is a Universal Christ representing a unified aspect of the Universe the divine act cannot do its unifying work in the world of nature any more than there could be a unified world of supernature without a Christ who is the internal organic centre of it and not just an external presence side by side with it."
The vision behind the main idea is that the world of nature has to be seen in the same way that the world of supernature is seen. Both are grades of a single reality in which Christ is a universal Being intrinsic to their structure, and to speak of his being "physically juxtaposed" instead of being intrinsic to the natural world is to talk nonsense. The meaning emerging for the word "physical" from this vision is, on the one hand, that it applies only to the natural world and, on the other, that it is
de nous faire) tous une meme chose...(...il doit nous saisir - ou nous constituer -tous ensemble sub aliqua forma creata unitatis) c'est-a-dire, a faction unifiante de Dieu, il doit correspondre une face unifiee de 1'Univers cree. - 2° impossibilite de comprendre un Christ qui soit (organiquement) central dans 1'Univers surnaturel, et physiquement juxtapose dans 1'Univers naturel."
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there compatible only with such organicity, intrinsic central-ity and unifying universality as we attribute to the supernatural world: it can never be compatible with the juxtaposition which traditional Christianity implies for Christ if it does not view him as Teilhardianly Universal.
Intimate Letters further sets "physical" and "material" in rapport while giving us Teilhard's discussion of his own view of the "possible" as against the view of Scholasticism. He27 writes to Valensin on 19 November 1919: "For Scholasticism, the 'possible' represents a group of abstract characters reconcilable among themselves, studied without taking any account of their physical conditions of realisation; each 'possible' is considered like a little All, holding by itself, and realisable immediately and in isolation. This has for me the air of 'geometry', not of Reality. - Side by side with the 'intellectual' possibility of a being (that is to say the non-contradiction of its abstract traits), it seems to me that there is its physical possibility (as demanding as the other, - to which, nevertheless, that other ought to return, and will return on the day when one will have better understood the structure of the
27. Ibid., pp. 24-25: "Pour la Scolastique, il me semble, le 'possible' represente un groupe de caracteres abstraits, conciliables entre eux, etudies sens tenir aucun compte de leurs conditions physiques de realisation; chaque 'possible' est eonsidere comme un petit Tout, tenant par lui-meme, et realisable immediatement et tsole-ment. Ceci m'a l'air de 'la geometrie', non de la ReaUte. - A cote de la possibility 'intellectuelle' d'un etre (c'est-a-dire de la non-contradiction de ses notes abstrai-tes), il me semble qu'il y a sa possibilite physique (aussi exigeante que 1'autre, -dans laquelle du reste elle doit rentrer, et rentrera du jour ou on aura mieux compris la structure du reel), c'est-a-dire I'impossibilite de cet etre a exister en dehors de certaines lois de developpement, et de certaines associations avec un Multiple.
"Supposons Dieu resolu a creer. En vertu des lois de possibility physique, Il n'a pas seulement a choisir des termes a son action parmi un groupe d'entites coherentes en elles-memes et coherentes entres elles. - Il se voit lie (ex natura entis participati) pour obtenir un etre determine (un individu), a mettre en train le developpement d'un Univers tout entier. Et ce n'est pas encore tout. On entrevoit que les divers developpements de I'Etre participe ne sont pas absolu-ment arbitraires ni independents les uns des autres, Il est possible qu'ils soient assujettis, tous, a quelques memes lois tres generales, c'est-a-dire qu'il n'y ait qu'un seul processus de creation concevable pour 1'etre participe (par exemple simplification progressive d'un Multiple, emersion de la <quelque> matiere)."
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real), that is to say the impossibility for that being to exist outside certain laws of development, and certain associations with a Multiple.
"Let us suppose God resolves to create. In virtue of the laws of physical possibility, He does not only have to choose the terms for his action among a group of entities coherent in themselves and coherent among themselves. - He sees himself bound (by the nature of participated being), in order to obtain one determined being (one individual), to set going the development of a Universe whole and entire. And that is still not all. One glimpses that the diverse developments of participated Being are not absolutely arbitrary or independent of one another. It is possible they may be subject, all, to some very general laws which are the same, that is to say that there is only one sole process of creation conceivable for participated being (for example progressive simplification of a Multiple, emersion from <some> matter...),"
By "participated being" Teilhard means what is created by God and the context involves that the creation is the world of nature whose origin is, in his terminology, "a pure multiple"28 that is reduced or simplified, stage after stage, by a unifying process. This multiple he calls "matter". Teilhard is mostly ambivalent about the significance of that "matter". He would like it not to be considered "an antagonistic co-eternal",29 a pre-existent "stuff"30 but inasmuch as he is always at pains to distinguish it from "pure Nothingness",31 which he regards as "an empty concept, a pseudo-idea",32 and inasmuch as he calls his Multiple "true nothingness, physical Nothingness"33 no less than "creatable Nothingness"34 and regards it as "a 'gate',
28.Ibid., p. 27, note 5.
29.Ibid., p. 25.
31.Ibid., p. 27, note 5.
33.Ibid.
34.Ibid., p. 279, note 3.
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an obligatory entrance (channel)",35 for God, he does refer not only to a restraining or limiting condition for God's creative act but also to a sort of primordial shadow-state at the opposite pole to God's absolute unity of being. In any case the Nothingness that is "physical" is essentially linked with the material cosmos, the universe of organic nature within which and as part of which we exist. So, "physical possibility", in opposition to "intellectual possibility", focuses the sense of "physical" on this universe as a Real and does not have merely a broad Ontological bearing.
We have found Teilhard employing the term "physical" to denote "reality", but his context makes it clear that he does not have in mind every kind of reality but rather the reality possessed by our evolutionary universe - the universe of nature, commonly described as "material" and pictured by Teilhard as a cosmogenesis that is also Christogenesis,
To culminate and clinch our line of thought we may bring forward four other pronouncements of his. The first two36 are:
"Projected, then, on the screen of evolution, Christ, in an exact, physical, unvarnished sense, is seen to possess those most awesome properties which St. Paul lavishly attributes to him."
"In Scripture Christ is essentially revealed as invested with the power of giving the world, in his own person, its definitive form. He is consecrated for a cosmic function. And since that function is not only moral but also (in the most real sense of the word) physical, it presupposes a physical basis in its humano-divine subject."
Let us note the two strokes of emphasis. Teilhard speaks of "an exact, physical, unvarnished sense". Also, the term "physical" is said to be meant "in the most real sense of the
35.Ibid,, p. 25.
36.Christianity and Evolution, p. 88; The Prayer of the Universe, p. 17.
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word". Evidently, the intention is that we should understand "physical" in an absolutely literal connotation. Taken most literally, the word points - as any dictionary will tell us - to material existence, the existence which confronts us in the world of nature, the universe in which we live and of which our bodies, with their souls, are a part.
The unseverable linking of the word's content to material nature is fully supported by Teilhard himself when we read the phrase:37 "...the resurrection of the flesh - taken in its literal, physical sense." And the sentences coming fairly close on the heels of that phrase completely bear out our notion that the two strokes of emphasis we have marked drive home the appropriateness of taking the literal sense - namely, materiality - to be always contained in "physical". The sentences38 read: "...the mystical body of Christ is something more than a totality of souls; because, without there being present in it a specifically material element, souls could not be physically gathered in Christ.... In this regard, there is no difference between the lower natural world and the new world that is being formed around Christ."
Now the picture is distinct: "physical", implying "organic", refers to the material universe of nature. It may not in every context coincide with "material", but the two adjectives show the same thing under two faces: the substance that acts as "physical" is "material" - the "material" substance in its organicity is "physical". And both the faces - the substantial and the organic - are subsumed under the cosmically "natural". On this showing, the Cosmic Christ proves to be intrinsically connected and subtly to overlap with the organic world of matter.
To get this intrinsic connection and subtle overlapping into greater focus we may present a few more extracts. The first we may draw from Mooney's book.39 There we have
37.Ibid., p. 34.
38.Ibid., p. 35.
39.Op. cit., p. 70. The reference given is La Vis cosmique, 1916, in Ecrits du temps de la guerre, pp. 39-40,
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Teilhard saying:
"Minds who are timid in their conceptions...dangerously weaken scriptural thought and render it incomprehensible or banal to people enthusiastic over connections that are physical and relationships properly cosmic... No, the Body of Christ must be understood boldly, as it was seen and loved by St. John, St. Paul and the Fathers. It forms in nature a world which is new, an organism moving and alive in which we are all united physically, biologically...."
The next extract, from Teilhard's "Introduction to the Christian Life",40 speaks of divine "grace" as the "organic" power of "a state of union with God": "from the Christian Catholic and realist point of view, grace represents a physical super-creation. It raises us a further rung on the ladder of cosmic evolution. In other words, the stuff of which grace is made is strictly biological."
These two extracts are more or less parallel and both bring in an addition to the terms we already have: "biological." It has obviously to do with organisms, as the first extract shows, and is akin to "organic". But the chief interest of the extracts is not here. It lies in what is asserted about the Body of Christ, the state of grace which is union of souls with God. We are told that, despite its being "a world which is new" (a phrase echoing an earlier quotation's "new world that is being formed around Christ"), this body is still within "nature" and, for all its being a "super-creation", is yet a part of "cosmic evolution". It is a higher "physical" and "organic" or "biological" step in the evolutionary cosmos of material nature. But this is one side of the situation. The other side is that, though the Body of Christ is not out of "nature" and "cosmic evolution", it is nonetheless a "new" world, a "super-creation", "a further rung on the ladder".
We may speak of two conditions of organic nature - an ordinarily material-physical and an extraordinarily material-physical. The two must not be confused but at the same time
40. Christianity and Evolution, pp. 152-53.
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they must not be split quite apart. They are the same material-physical medium. And there is even a meeting-point of the two. This is Teilhard's famous "Omega", the terminal point of evolution which the universe is bound to reach by a play of increasingly "centred" or "interiorized" synthesis, which we have come to know as Teilhard's law of developing complexity-consciousness. How this Omega serves as a meeting-point between the ordinary and the extraordinary condition of organic nature we may see from statements like the following:
"...ahead of us a universal cosmic centre is taking on definition in which everything is explained, is felt, and is ordered. It is, then, in this physical pole of evolution that we must, in my view, locate and recognize the plenitude of Christ.... I am only too well aware how staggering is this idea of a being capable of gathering all the fibres of the developing cosmic into his own activity and individual experience. But, in conceiving such a marvel, all I am doing (let me repeat) is to transpose into terms of physical reality the juridical expressions in which the Church has clothed her faith."41
"Having noted that the Pauline Christ (the great Christ of the mystics) coincides with the universal term, Omega, adumbrated by our philosophy - the grandest and most necessary attribute we can ascribe to him is that of exerting a supreme physical influence on every cosmic reality without exception."42
"Since Christ is Omega, the universe is physically impregnated to the very core of its matter by the influence of his super-human nature."43
"The pressure of facts is now such that it is time to return to a form of Christology' which is more organic and takes more account of physics. A Christ who dominates the history of heaven and earth not solely because these have been given to him, but because his gestation, his birth and gradual consummation constitute physically the only definitive reali-
41.Ibid., pp. 127-28.
42.Science and Christ, pp. 56-57.
43.Ibid., p. 57.
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ty in which the evolution of the world is expressed: there we have the only God whom we can henceforth worship. And that is precisely the God suggested to us by the new aspect the universe has assumed."44
"It is essential for us to get back to the soundest currents of Catholic tradition and at last offer men a theology in which Christ will be seen to be linked to the development of the whole universe, a universe as physical and as great as he."45
"There is only one centre in the universe: it is at once natural and super-natural: it impels the whole of creation along one and the same line, first towards the fullest development of consciousness, and later towards the highest holiness: in other words towards Christ Jesus, personal and cosmic."46
Let us start with the astonishing phrase making the universe "as physical and as great as" Christ. It is the converse of the one we find in Intimate Letters:" 47All my effort goes to maintain a Christ as vast and organic as the Universe,..." Both imply the same "truth": Christ's is the basic physicality and greatness, the basic vastness and organicity: the universe's physicality and greatness, its organicity and vastness, are an expression of it. And to say this is to proclaim "in terms of physical reality" the primacy with which the Church has endowed Christ in "juridical expressions". These terms have to be taken in a literal sense, pertaining to the realm of nature, because Christ coincides with Omega, "the universal cosmic centre", the supreme focus ahead by which every atom of matter is impregnated and by whose influence it is attracted, Omega that is "the physical pole of evolution". Surely, if Christ is "located and recognized" in that physical pole, those "terms of physical reality" cannot be construed as merely "ontological" ones which reduce "physical" to a generality like "real": the term "reality", already present,
44.Christianity and Evolution, p. 89.
45.The Prayer of the Universe, p. 17.
46.Ibid., pp. 23-24.
47.Lettres Intimes..., p. 391: "Tout mon effort va a maintenir le Christ aussi vaste et organique que 1'Univers..," (8 aout 1950).
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supplies all that we need of "real", and therefore "physical" tells us what kind of "real" is here. This "real'"s physicality has to be absolutely literal and involve material nature. What else can it be and do if Teilhard's Christology "takes more account of physics", the science of the domain of material nature, than does the Christology of his fellow-Catholics?
So, finally, we need not be surprised when Christ's "gestation, his birth and gradual consummation" are said to be "physically the only definitive reality" of cosmic evolution, and when Christ is called both the "natural" and the "supernatural" centre of the universe: that is, one who is physically "cosmic" and supernaturally "personal".
To sum up: in several contexts Christ's being "physical" means his being the universal process of material nature in the basic truth of all its aspects: the evolutive form, the evolver drive, the evolutionary goal - though his being this does not prevent him from being also something "new" in nature and from being hyper-physical and hyper-cosmic.
What is different from and in excess of material nature with its universal process and constitutes the basis of the hyper-physical, the hyper-cosmic, is best indicated by Teilhard apropos of the passage that evoked from de Solages and de Lubac their own comment and their reference to the comment by Mooney, The passage is: "If things are to find their coherence in Christ, we must ultimately admit that there is in the nature of Christ, besides the specifically individual elements of Man - and in virtue of God's choice - some universal physical reality, a certain cosmic extension of his body and soul."
A little after the passage Teilhard48 tells us:
"We should note...that there is nothing strange about this idea of a universal physical element in Christ.
48. "In the Form of Christ", The Prayer of the Universe, pp. 20-21.
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"Each and every one of us, if we care to observe it, is enveloped - is haloed - by an extension of his being as vast as the universe. We are conscious of only the core of ourselves. Nevertheless, the interplay of the monads would be unintelligible if an aura did not extend from one to another: something, that is, which is peculiar to each one of them and at the same time common to all.
"How, then, may we conceive Christ to be constituted as the cosmic centre of creation?
"Simply as a magnification, a transformation, realized in the humanity of Christ, of the aura that surrounds every human monad.
"Just as one sees in a living organism elements, originally indistinguishable from the others, suddenly emerge as leaders so that they are seen to be centres of attraction or points at which a formative activity is concentrated.
"So (on an incomparably larger scale) the man, the Son of Mary, was chosen so that his aura, instead of serving simply as the medium in which interaction with other men might be effected in a state of equality, might dominate them and draw them all into the network of its influence.
"Even before the Incarnation became a fact, the whole history of the universe (in virtue of a pre-action of the humanity of Christ, mysterious, but yet known to us through revelation) is the history of the progressive information of the universe by Christ."
Mooney49 cites the first half of this long statement (in a translation of his own) and precedes it with an earlier text which "describes the cosmic Body of Christ, 'whose principal attributes are sketched by St. Paul' as 'the Point towards which [beings] converge or just as equally the Milieu in which they are immersed'".50 Then Mooney makes his comment: "Whatever meaning 'physical' is to have, therefore, it will have to be situated in the realm of the human and the
49.Op. dr., p. 79.
50.Mooney's Note: L'Union creatrice, 1917, in Ecrits du temps de la guerre.
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personal. Teilhard is not going to 'confuse naively the planes of reality and make of Christ a physical agent of the same order as organic life or the ether. That is what is blamable and ridiculous.' This is simply to become a visionary, whose 'real error...is to confuse the different planes of the world and consequently to mix up their activities'."51
What Mooney argues is well founded and, as he remarks just a little later, Christ's "supremely physical influence over the total reality of the cosmos", as Teilhard52 puts it, is of a personal presence - and, we may add, it preserves in a sublimated form the "person" of each human monad which it gathers up. But, while Christ's "personal presence" is not of "the same order as organic life or the ether" (or, as instead of "the ether" Teilhard would have said at a later date, "energy"), it is still "a physical agent" and its different order is within the same world, and the order which does not comprise it is still a lower pitch of the different order. This comes home to us from a passage in Intimate Letters 53 where Teilhard notes his distinction from Maurice Blondel vis-a-vis the Universal Christ: "...between him and me there is perhaps only a difference of tendency, or at least of accent - he insisting especially on the Transcendence of the Universal Christ, I on his 'physicity'. These attitudes are complementary." Teilhard's remark shows that the order which is not the same "as organic life or the ether" is at the same time transcendent and physical. The Universal Christ has both Blondellian "transcendence" and Teilhardian "physicity". Christ supernatural has yet a natural and therefore "physical" character: although his "physicity" cannot be equated to that of ordinary phenomena, he has nonetheless to be called "physical". If this were
51.Mooney's Note: Letter of May 25, 1923 to Father Auguste Valensin.
52.Mooney's Note: Mon Univers, p. 86.
53.Op. cit., p. 35: "...entre lui et moi il y a peut-etre seulement une difference de tendance, ou au moins d'accent, - lui insistant surtout sur la Transcendance du Christ-Universel, moi sur sa 'physiceite.' Ces attitudes doivent se completer."
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not so, Teilhard54 could never have written in the same letter: "...Christ is the Centre of the Universe, even in its zones called 'natural'."
We arrive at the identical conclusion when we see that Mooney's statement about Teilhard not confusing the planes of reality is based on a communication in Intimate Letters,55 where Teilhard criticises to Valensin a thinker named Sedir. The conclusion is forced on us by what Teilhard56 goes on to say: "But, as regards what is basic (the aspiration towards a total Christ and a religion mixed with the whole of life), he seems to me to carry more of the true religious sap, in his disorderly lucubrations, than Father Janvier, in all his dead prose, where one finds only the truths already a hundred times digested, without any living juice," The suggestion is that we must not separate Christ from the physical reality within which we commonly live. The danger to guard against is simply to think, as Sedir does, all physical reality to be of a single kind - the ordinary external one. This kind too, as Sedir basically believes, is open to Christ but it is not directly one with him. What is directly one with him is a subtler kind. Still, for all its subtlety, it cannot be denied the Sedirian description "physical".
And this point hits us in the eye most forcibly if we probe a certain phrase in the long quotation we have made about "a universal physical element in Christ". The phrase comes almost at the end: "in virtue of a pre-action of the humanity of Christ." It gives the ground of Teilhard's assertion: "Then before the Incarnation became a fact, the whole history of the universe is the history of the progressive information of the universe by Christ." The ground is indeed, as Teilhard says,
54.Ibid.: "...le Christ est Centre de l'univers, meme dans ses zones dites 'natur-elles'."
55.Ibid., p. 105.
56.Ibid:. "Mais, pour le fond (aspiration vers un Christ total et une religion melee a toute vie) il me parait apporter plus de vraie seve religieuse, dans ses elucubrations desordonnees, que le P. Janvier, dans toute sa prose morte, oil on ne trouve que des verites deja cent fois digerees, sans aucun sue vivant."
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"mysterious", and can be accepted only on the authority of "revelation". Its mysteriousness has been stressed and its scriptural source recognised by Mooney too. The doctrine of the "pre-action of the humanity of Christ" is Teilhard's legacy from St. Paul, who does not confine the Incarnate Christ, the Divine in his form of "humanity", to one period of time but sets him in eternity: it is, surprisingly, the Incarnate Christ about whom Paul says (Colossians 1:19-20): "all things were created by him, and for him;/And he is before all things, and by him all things consist." Mooney57 observes that here is "an aspect of St. Paul's thought which...is receiving considerable attention today", an aspect where "apparently it is always the concrete, historical God-Man of whom he is thinking, never the Word independent of his humanity". Mooney adds: "How this is to be explained theologically is a question for which there is as yet no satisfactory answer." Nor does he tell us that whatever explanation Teilhard essays is satisfying. But the fact of Teilhard's Pauline attitude stands. And, corresponding to the pre-action of Christ's humanity, we have the world's pre-formation in that humanity, when Teilhard58 writes: "St. Paul quite obviously has in mind the theandric [God-Man] Christ: it was in the Incarnate Christ that the universe was pre-formed." This signifies that, for Teilhard as for Paul, the universe of our experience exists in its fundamental form from all eternity in the very God-Man who took birth at one period of time in the universe of our experience. Now, if such is the case, there is implied for Christ as well as for the universe an eternal physicality over and above a physicality that is phenomenal and experiential. In ultimate terms, we should have to say, on the one hand, that the universe we know as physical has a transcendence of its own and, on the other, that the transcendent Christ is also physical in the same essential sense as the universe we know. No wonder that in the context of Teilhard's self-comparison with
57.Op. cit., p. 170.
58.Science and Christ, pp. 54-55.
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Blondel we are told of "transcendence" and "physicity" being complementary aspects of the Universal Christ. The Universal Christ's "physicity" is thus no more than a higher order of the same reality whose lower order is "organic life or the ether".
Hence the lower order cannot but be considered Christ himself in disguise. Here he is completely concealed so far as his proper person is concerned. Nevertheless he is fundamentally identical with it. So "the total Christ" of Teilhard has three- pitches, so to speak: he is the cosmos constituting ordinary "nature", he is the immanent Omega who is extraordinary "nature" on a cosmic scale, he is Omega transcendent who is supernature in the sense of being already and ever existent rather than emerging through the aeons as the last step in the series of evolutionary syntheses. And the second pitch - natural physicality in an extraordinary mode -makes the basis for the hyper-physical, the hyper-cosmic, which is the third pitch-Surely, these three pitches make a blend of Christianity and pantheism? Teilhard was always in two minds about the latter: a love-hate relationship with it is found throughout his writings. His Christ, unlike in the pantheism he was afraid of, is more than the combination of natura naturans and natura naturata, in which God is wholly nature (Deus sive natura) and lacks transcendence. But, inasmuch as he is cosmic, he seems indissolubly related to the order of nature, the world of matter, and is in such relation to it as the World-Soul in pantheism, having the cosmos as its body. And this is precisely the true significance of certain assertions of Teilhard's.
Thus he59 says: "If we are to effect the synthesis between faith in God and faith in the world, for which our generation is waiting, there is nothing better we can do than dogmatically bring out in the person of Christ the cosmic aspect and
59. Christianity and Evolution, p. 180.
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function which make him originally the prime mover and controller, the 'soul' of evolution."
Again, there is his pronouncement:60 "We cannot pin down the point at which the hand of God is apparent. It acts upon the whole body of causes without making itself evident at any point: thus, externally, there is nothing so like the action of the Prime Mover as the action of a soul of the world...."
Gnce again, we have the words:61 "When life in its lower stages is moving towards consciousness, when men are passionately striving for the complete freedom and unanimity of their spirit, when thinkers and poets thrill with excitement at the emergence of a 'world-soul', it is in fact Christ whom they are all seeking - Christ who still keeps hidden his personal and divine being, but nevertheless Christ himself, who must be the first object of desire as the keystone that holds together the effort of the universe - Christ who must effectively fulfil this natural function before he can reveal himself to us through the more intimate parts of his being, and, in those depths, undertake the supernatural work of our sanctifica-tion."
Then there is the brief but suggestive phrase62 about the revealed God the Christian worships and the material universe whose dimensions are increasing immeasurably to the eyes of science: "How could either of these two majestic grandeurs dim the radiance of the other? The one is but the peak - the soul, we might say - of the other."
Or take the following two confessions of faith: "To this faith, Jesus, I hold...: You are the cosmic being who envelops us and fulfils us in the perfection of his own unity. It is, in all truth, in this way, and for this that I love you above all things."63 "Lord Jesus,... I love you as a world, as this world which has captivated my heart; and it is you, I now realize,
60.Ibid., p. 26.
61.The Prayer of the Universe, p. 22.
62.Christianity and Evolution, p. 75.
63.The Prayer of the Universe, p. 83.
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that my brother-men, even those who do not believe, sense and seek throughout the magic immensities of the cosmos."64
Lastly, we may consider:65" "Judging from first appearances, Catholicism disappointed me by its narrow representation of the world and its failure to understand the part played by matter. Now I realize that, on the model of the incarnate God whom Christianity reveals to me, I can be saved only by becoming one with the universe. Thereby my deepest 'pantheist' aspirations are satisfied, guided, and reassured. The world around me becomes divine. And yet the flames do not consume me, nor do the floods dissolve me. For, unlike the false monisms which urge one through passivity into unconsciousness, the 'pan-Christism' which I am discovering places union at the term of an arduous process of differentiation. I shall become the Other only by being utterly myself. I shall attain spirit only by bringing out the complete range of the forces of matter. The total Christ is consummated and may be attained, only at the term of universal evolution. In him I have found what my being dreamed of: a personalized universe, whose domination personalizes me. And I hold this 'world-soul' no longer simply as a fragile creation of my individual thoughts, but as the product of a long historical revelation, in which even those whose faith is weakest inevitably recognize one of the principal lines of human progress."
We may ignore, in this last passage, all the prejudiced misunderstanding of pantheism that sees the pantheist as wanting to merge into unconsciousness instead of wanting, as he actually does, to realise the beatitude of a total union with his own supreme Truth, the Universal Self, the World-Soul whose individual phase or aspect he is. What is of moment to us is the affirmation of a certain pantheistic presence, a "pan-Christism" in which the Godhead is both cosmic and personal and which enables each human person to discover his own highest truth of personality, his own widest solidarity with
64.Ibid., p. 104,
65.Christianity and Evolution, pp. 128-29.
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the cosmos and a vision wherein the "world around...becomes divine". A fusion of genuine pantheism with genuine personalism sub specie Christi is what we reach as the fundamental of fundamentals in the faith of Teilhard de Chardin through the analysis of the use to which he frequently puts the term "physical".
If we may weave this conclusion into all that we have expounded so far, we may add that the Christ-aspect in the religion of the basic Teilhard is, but for the name, quite dissimilar to traditional Christianity. The Teilhardian panthe-ism-personalism is rather akin to the ancient comprehensive Vedanta of the early Upanishads which continued the esoteric side of the still older Rigveda. And the Christ-aspect links up vitally with that Vedanta as revived in the Bhagavad Gita where a Divine Incarnation such as would come from age to age in many forms focuses the cosmic-cwm-transcendent God in human history. Modernise this revived Vedanta by setting it in the context of Evolutionism, with many of whose religious overtones it will be in tune, and you have the prototype of the full world-view of Teilhard, to which the proper understanding of his favourite term "physical" can be a most suggestive line of approach.
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