(Note, where you see superscript numbers, for example 1, [go to the original webpage, and then] click on the number for further notes)
‘Christ must always be far greater than our greatest conception of the world’1
‘The day will come when,
after harnessing space,
the winds,
the tides,
and gravitation,
we shall harness for God the energies of love.
And on that day,
for the second time in the history of the world,
we shall have discovered fire.’2
Cosmo-mysticism
Teilhard speaks not only as a research scientist but also as a priest and poet who discerns with Meister Eckhart3
the ‘interdependency of all things.’ He shares with the medieval poet
Dante the conviction that it is ‘love that moves the sun and the other
stars.’4
Claude Cuénot describes him as a ‘cosmo-mystic’5 while Louis Barjon SJ speaks of him as ‘a mystic of the cosmos’6
who rejoices in the wonder of an evolutionary creation that brings
together love of God and love of the earth. He sees cosmic evolution
telling us of the correlation between complexity and consciousness.
‘Consciousness,’ he says, ‘presents itself and requires to be treated,
not as a particular and subsistent kind of entity, but as the “specific
effect†of complexity.’7
He
combines scientific knowledge and mystical intuition to envision a
universe in process towards its completion at a ‘centre of cosmic
spiritualisation’8 or ‘ultimate centre of personality and consciousness’9
he calls Point Omega. And the Omega of Evolution, he believes, is none
other than the Christ of Revelation: ‘The great cosmic attributes of
Christ, those (particularly in St John and St Paul) which accord him a
universal and final primacy over creation, these attributes only assume
their full dimension in the setting of an evolution that is both
spiritual and convergent.’10
Evolutionary creation
Evolution,
of course, is the key to Teilhard’s commitment as priest and scientist.
He had been born at a time when evolution was far from being accepted
by the Church. And, as we have seen already, it was the discovery of
evolution that was to bring him up against the authorities in Rome.
Everything that he had learned in science convinced him of the truth of
evolution. If he was to write in support of evolution it was to make
evolution credible to Christians. He saw evolution opening up a wholly
new vision of the universe that was wholly compatible with catholic
dogma.
‘Once upon a time
everything seemed fixed and solid. Now, everything has begun to slide
under our feet: mountains, continents, life and even matter itself ...
We no longer see the world revolving but a new world gradually changing
colour, shape and even consciousness.’11
‘Within the space of two or three centuries ... the universe no longer
appears to us as an established harmony but has definitely taken on the
appearance of a system in movement. No longer an order but a process.
No longer cosmos but a cosmogenesis’12
‘Evolution,’ Teilhard says in The Human Phenomenon, ‘is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that every line must follow.’13 Evolution, he adds, is ‘no longer a hypothesis but a condition to which henceforth all hypotheses must conform.’14
He always stresses the need for a clear distinction between the ‘two
sources of knowledge: science and revelation. The mistake of
theologians is to imagine that the two sources are independent ... ’15
‘Science,’ he adds, ‘will be progressively more impregnated by
mysticism (in order, not to be directed, but to be animated by it).’16
‘It
is quite illusory for us to imagine,’ Teilhard argues, ‘that, having
arrived at a better understanding of ourselves and the world, that we
have no further need of religion ... Numerous systems have been
developed in which the existence of religion has been interpreted as a
psychological phenomenon associated with the childhood of the human
species. Religion can become an opium. It is too often understood as a
simple antidote to our suffering. Its true purpose is to sustain and to
spur on the progress of life ... Religion represents the long
unfolding, through the collective experience of humankind, of the
existence of God.’17
Humani generis
Teilhard
may not have been mentioned by name in the encyclical Humani generis
(1950) but passages on the instantaneous creation of the human soul and
on original sin seem to have had Teilhard in mind. Teilhard responded
with a short essay on the essential difference between monogenism
(descent of humankind from a single couple) and monophyletism (descent
of humankind from a single phylum): ‘In the encyclical Humani generis
we hear discussed once again, with considerable passion ... and
confusion, the problem of the historical representation of human
origins ... ’
‘The scientist
cannot prove directly that the hypothesis of a single Adam should be
rejected. But he can show indirectly that the hypothesis has been made
scientifically untenable by everything we believe we presently know
about the biological laws of “speciation†(or “genesis of speciesâ€) ...
This leaves us with two options. Either the essence of the scientific
laws of speciation will change (which is hardly likely) or (which seems
fully in accord with recent advances in exegesis) theologians will come
to see one way or another that, in a universe as organically structured
as ours where today we are in process of awakening a human solidarity
far closer than the one they seek “in the bosom of Mother Eve,†is
readily found in the extraordinary internal liaison of a world in a
state of cosmo- and anthropogenesis around us.’18
‘Christ,’ says Teilhard, ‘is the term of even the natural evolution of living beings; evolution is holy.’19
‘Evolution, by revealing a summit to the world, makes Christ possible —
just as Christ, by giving sense (meaning and direction) to the world,
makes evolution possible.’20
Evolution helps us understand the cosmos and the Cosmic Christ of
St John and St Paul and the Church Fathers without whom there would be
no cosmos. ‘Evolution,’ suggests chaplain Charles Combaluzier, ‘has
become the sole argument for the existence of God.’21
Evolution and the Catholic Church
On
22 October 1996 John Paul II in an address to the Pontifical Academy of
Sciences confirmed what Pius XII had previously said in his encyclical
Humani generis (1950) about the compatibility of evolution and catholic
doctrine adding in words that echo those of Teilhard de Chardin that
‘new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as
more than a hypothesis’ (§§ 3, 4). But, continued the Pope, ‘rather
than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of
evolution.’ And here he warned against ‘materialist, reductionist and
spiritualist interpretations’ that are clearly unacceptable to the
Church (§ 4). Teilhard would surely agree.22
Wholism
By
profession a palaeontologist, Teilhard stresses the fundamental unity
of all things. He speaks to us today as a research scientist but his
language is frequently poetic and his outlook wholistic. He raises the
idea of wholism, first used expressis verbis by Jan Christiaan Smuts in
1926,23 to the level of an evolutionary doctrine of universal application to express the fundamental unity of all things.
He
rejects the cartesian dualism between spirit and matter that has
bedevilled human thinking since the Renaissance and Reformation: ‘There
is neither spirit nor matter in the world ... the “stuff of the
universe†is spirit-matter. No other substance is capable of producing
the human molecule.’24
Coherence
Teilhard
he was no modernist and he was certainly no concordist. What he seeks
is coherence. ‘Avoid like the plague,’ he writes to Claude Cuénot, ‘any
form of “concordism†that seeks to reconcile and justify what is
possibly an ephemeral form of dogma and what is possibly also an
ephemeral stage of the scientific view ... On the other hand, try ...
to bring out and develop the basic coherence between what can already
be regarded as the definitive axes of science and faith respectively.’25
‘Religion
and science,’ he adds elsewhere, ‘clearly represent, on the mental
plane, two different meridians that it would be wrong not to separate
(concordist mistake). But these meridians must necessarily meet at some
pole of common vision (coherence): otherwise, everything in our field
of thought and knowledge would collapse.’26
Teilhard’s
importance, however, lies not so much in his having attempted to
reconcile the truths of modern science with the truths of Christian
faith but, as Jesuit theologian Thomas King has rightly remarked, in
his ‘exuberant claim that in the very act of scientifically achieving,
he knew God.’27 His mysticism is a mysticism of knowing.
It
is the fate of mystics to be much misunderstood and much maligned. They
always have been. And no doubt they always will be. Teilhard is
certainly no exception. Mystics often feel they have a problem putting
into words what they see with what is often called the ‘inner eye.’ And
yet they speak at great length about what they have seen. ‘It seems to
me,’ Teilhard says, ‘a whole lifetime of effort would be nothing if
only I could reveal for one instant what I see.’28
He
believes there is a fundamental distinction here between mystics and
non-mystics, between ‘those who see, and those who do not.’29 And yet there is always that nagging doubt, that element of uncertainty.30
‘How is it,’ he asks in his final essay ‘The Christic’ (March 1955), ‘I
find I am almost the only one of my type, the only one to have seen?
And how is it, “when I come down from the mountain,†I find myself so
little better, so little at peace, so incapable of expressing in my
actions ... that wonderful unity that encompasses me?’31
Cosmic consciousness
Teilhard
is one of that comparatively rare breed of men and women who have
experienced what has been called ‘cosmic consciousness.’ Cosmic
consciousness is a way of describing the mystical experience. It is
characterised by a fundamental sense of oneness that seems common to
most, if not all, mystical experiences — no matter how expressed.32
The medieval mystic St Mechthild of Magdeburg describes it well: ‘The
day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw — and knew I saw — all
things in God and God in all things.’33
Mystics
often confess themselves bemused by the apparent inability of others to
see what they can see so clearly. But — and this is important — true
mystics never think themselves superior to others. They are humbled by
their experience. And they come over as deep, creative thinkers
‘possessed with a desire to understand the universe.’34 Teilhard de Chardin was undoubtedly one such thinker.35
Cosmic sense
The
cosmic sense — this extraordinary sense of oneness with the universe —
was nurtured in his early years spent amidst the volcanic hills of his
native Auvergne. It developed during his studies in England. And it
blossomed in the trenches of the First World War to reach maturity in
the long years of exile far from his native France.
Over
the years he came to realise that, to ‘understand the world, knowledge
is not enough, you must see it, touch it, live in its presence and
drink the vital heat of existence in the very heart of reality.’36
The mystic, says Thomas King, is ‘a reflection of the larger process
going on in the universe; the mystic is a microcosm reflecting both the
Many and the One found in the macrocosm.’37
At
the age of thirty, Teilhard tells us in his autobiography, ‘The Heart
of Matter’ (1950), abandoning what he calls the old static dualism, he
found himself emerging ‘into a universe in process, not only of
evolution, but of directed evolution… ’38
It
was, by any accounts, a dramatic change of perspective. His eyes were
opened. He no longer saw a static but a dynamic universe. And he now
began to see a way of resolving the latent conflict between the two
senses — the cosmic and the christic39 — that had been simmering below the surface since his earliest childhood.
The
cosmic sense he had grasped intuitively as a small boy. He was no more
than six or seven years old, he tells us, when he began to feel himself
drawn by matter or, more correctly, by something gleaming at the heart
of matter. Once he came across a rusty old ploughpin. He was absolutely
shocked to discover the fragility of matter.40
Later
on he came to see matter as ‘the matrix of spirit. Spirit is the higher
state of matter ... Matter is the matrix of consciousness and all
around us consciousness, born of matter, is constantly advancing
towards some ultra-human.’41
Teilhard deals abundantly with the cosmic sense in his writings.42 He defines it as ‘the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us.’43 He sees the cosmic sense lying ‘at the psychological root of all mysticism.’44
‘The
cosmic sense must have been born as soon as humanity found itself
facing the forest, the sea and the stars. And since then we find
evidence of it in all our experience of the great and the unbounded: in
art, in poetry and in religion.’45
Teilhard
believes the more we try to comprehend the world along the lines of
contemporary science, the more we find ourselves integrated within a
network of cosmic inter-relationships. All things act on one another.
Awareness of the essential unity of all things is integral to the act
of knowing. ‘For everyone who thinks the universe forms a system
endlessly linked in time and space.’46
Christic sense
The
christic sense — that equally extraordinary sense of the dynamic
presence of Christ in the universe — he had learned as a child at his
mother’s knee. He recalls, for example, his early attachment to the
very catholic notion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus47 or, as he put it later, ‘the Heart of Christ at the heart of matter. The “Golden Glowâ€.’48 This is what he had earlier seen ‘gleaming at the heart of matter.’
He
tells us of the personal struggle that ‘was being produced at the
innermost depths of my soul by the definitive coexistence and
invincible reconciliation in my heart of the cosmic sense and the
christic sense.’49
The two senses — the cosmic and the christic — were to remain with him to his death sixty-five years later.50
Complexity-consciousness
Teilhard
sees all creation existing within a ‘divine milieu’ — a notion inspired
by St Paul when he tells the Athenians: ‘In him we live and move and
have our being’ (Acts 17.28). He uses the word ‘milieu’ in its French
sense to express both centre and circle (or sphere). Hence the ‘divine
milieu’ is both the divine centre and the divine circle, the divine
heart and the divine sphere.
The
creation story becomes the story of a universe that came into existence
twelve to fifteen billion years ago and, as physicist Brian Swimme
remarks, ‘has been complexifying ever since.’51
Complexity or, more correctly, the correlation between complexity and
consciousness is for Teilhard the key to the story of the universe.
‘Consciousness presents itself and requires to be treated ... as the “specific effect†of complexity.’52
Consciousness is truly a cosmic property. And the cosmic story is the
story of a gradual but irreversible movement over billions of years
towards ever-higher levels of what he calls ‘complexity-consciousness.’
‘Life
is apparently nothing other than the privileged exaggeration of a
fundamental cosmic drift ... that we can call the “law of
complexity-consciousnessâ€.’53 This is sometimes called ‘Teilhard’s Law.’54
‘The more complex a being, the more it is centred upon itself and,
therefore, the more aware it becomes. In other words, the higher the
degree of complexity in a living creature, the higher its
consciousness, and vice versa.’55
‘From
the lowest to the highest level of the organic world,’ he continues,
‘there is a persistent and clearly defined thrust of animal forms
towards species with more sensitive and more elaborate nervous systems.’56
He develops his thinking on complexity-consciousness in essay after
essay but especially in The Human Phenomenon — its correct English
title — the book he wrote over two years between 1938 and 1940 but was
unable to publish in his lifetime.57
In
his lifetime his superiors in the Society of Jesus simply could not
accept its transdisciplinary approach despite every effort by Teilhard
to overcome their objections.58
The Roman Curia tried but failed to prevent catholics reading it after
he died. Within months of his death it had appeared on the bookshelves
in France. It soon became an international bestseller.
Seeing
The
Human Phenomenon should be read, Teilhard says, not as ‘a metaphysical
work’ or as ‘some kind of theological essay, but solely and exclusively
as a scientific study. The very choice of title,’ he continues, ‘makes
this clear. It is a study of nothing but the phenomenon; but also, the
whole of the phenomenon.’59
Teilhard
speaks as a scientist but we can see how ‘Teilhard the scientist’
easily becomes ‘Teilhard the mystic’ or even ‘Teilhard the Christian
apologist.’ And many of those who are most critical of Teilhard are
unhappy with the way he easily crosses the boundaries of science,
philosophy and theology into the less well-defined fields of poetry and
mysticism. But this is the virtue of Teilhard. And why he appeals to so
many who are tired of the rigid lines of demarcation between academic
disciplines.60
He frequently puts what might be called today a ‘mystical spin’ on words like ‘knowing’ and ‘seeing.’61
‘Seeing,’ in fact, is a ‘keyword’ in Teilhard’s mystically-enriched
vocabulary. ‘ ... the whole of life,’ he says in the Prologue to The
Human Phenomenon, ‘lies in seeing. To be more is to be more united. But
unity grows only if it is supported by an increase of consciousness, of
vision ... True physics is that which will someday succeed in
integrating the totality of the human being into a coherent
representation of the world.’62
He
speaks of the system he develops in The Human Phenomenon as a
‘hyperphysics’ — an attempt at a correlation or correspondence between
the views of science, philosophy and myth on origins and goals and the
insights of theology on cosmic history.63
He
never saw The Human Phenomenon as an end in itself. ‘The Human
Phenomenon,’ says Henri de Lubac, ‘was, in his mind, nothing more than
a precursor to The Christian Phenomenon he never had the time to
write… ’64
Enfolding and unfolding
Teilhard
frequently uses the verb ‘englobe’ to express the idea of ‘enfolding’
within a globe, sphere or circle. This is something he shares in the
context of a universe in evolution with the Rhineland cardinal and
mystic Nicholas of Cusa who tells us, ‘the divine is the enfolding of
the universe, and the universe is the unfolding of the divine.’65
This
is an image with which Teilhard would have felt perfectly at home.
Indeed, it can be said that the words ‘enfolding’ and ‘unfolding’ are
absolutely vital to understanding the thrust of his thinking. In his
view ‘enfolding’ is even more fundamental to the evolutionary process
than the traditional ‘unfolding’ of nineteenth-century thinkers.66
And he believes a physical (or material) ‘unfolding’ is quite
meaningless unless it is accompanied by what he sees as a psychic (or
spiritual) ‘enfolding.’ Nicholas of Cusa is, of course, but one of the
great mystics who appear in Teilhard. He resonates with Meister Eckhart
when he tells us: ‘God is a great underground river that no one can dam
up and no one can stop.’67
Teilhard
shares with mystics down the ages a rejection of the idea that human
beings alone are created in the image of God. The germ of consciousness
is to be found in the most primitive of particles. It was present
throughout the universe from the very beginning — something that gives
new meaning to the cry of joy expressed by Blessed Angela di Foligno
when she discovers ‘the whole universe is full of God.’68
Groping
Teilhard
frequently describes the evolutionary process as one of ‘groping’ — a
progression by trial and error. ‘Groping is directed chance. It means
pervading everything so as to try everything and trying everything so
as to find everything.’69
Among his many metaphors the idea or symbol of ‘groping’ is perhaps one of the most ingenious.70
It is pure Teilhard. It is dismissed by some and welcomed by others.
Evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, for one, agrees it is
more poetic than scientific yet, he says, ‘it is remarkably apposite.’71
‘Without tentative gropings and without failures,’ Teilhard suggests,
‘without death, without planetary compression, as human beings, we
would have remained stationary.’72
But it is not evolution that is creative — and here Teilhard takes issue with one of his early mentors, Henri Bergson73 — but creation that is evolutive. He calls it ‘evolutionary creation.’74 ‘Evolution is not “creative†as science once believed but is the expression, in time and space, of our experience of creation.’75
Noogenesis and noosphere
The
cosmos or universe as we know it exists in duration in a state of
genesis or generation. This is what he calls ‘cosmogenesis’ — the
creative process that began twelve to fifteen thousand million years
ago with the birth of the universe.76 All matter has what he calls an ‘inside’ or, more graphically, a ‘within’ — a rudimentary consciousness.77
It is cosmogenesis78
which gives rise in time and space to the process he calls ‘noogenesis’
and to the sphere or layer he calls the ‘noosphere.’ He understands the
‘noosphere’ as the ‘sphere of spirit’ where ‘spirit’ is used in a
particularly French sense to describe what we often call in English
‘mind and spirit.’
Teilhard’s
cosmic sense convinced him noogenesis was a cosmic phenomenon. He had
little doubt that what had been happening on Planet Earth over
thousands of millions of years could equally well be happening
elsewhere in the universe.79 In his day he could only speculate on the possible existence of what he calls other ‘noospheric systems.’80 He thought their existence highly probable.81
He believes noogenesis is, above all, a convergent process that is necessarily centred82
and cosmic in application. But — and this is important — a convergent
process of psychic (or spiritual) ‘enfolding’ can only operate centre
to centre in a process he calls ‘centrogenesis.’83 ‘The principal of centrogenesis enables us to formulate, in its most intimate essence, the nature of cosmic evolution.’84
Love
Teilhard sees love as the only known energy capable of uniting beings centre to centre.85
And he continues: ‘Not metaphorically, but in the truest sense of the
term, the cosmic sense is — and can only be — love. In the cosmos it
becomes possible, however unlikely the phrase may appear, to love the
universe.’86
He
envisions love as ‘the most universal, the most formidable and the most
mysterious of cosmic energies ... the primitive and universal psychic
energy ... the very blood of spiritual evolution.’87
‘Present (at least in rudimentary form) in all natural centres, living
or pre-living, that make up the world, it also represents the deepest,
the most direct, the most creative form of interaction that can be
conceived between centres. In fact, it is the expression and the agent
of universal synthesis.’88
Omega and omegagenesis
Here
we come up against what Teilhard sees as the psychological
impossibility of a real love spreading itself directly from one human
centre towards thousands of millions of other (faceless) centres across
the globe.89
The only way, he thinks, we can hope to love so many centres on Planet
Earth (and, potentially, elsewhere in the universe) is by loving one
another in what he calls ‘a centre of centres’90
— a centre to which he gives the name Omega — name consciously inspired
by St John who speaks in Revelation of ‘the Alpha and the Omega ... who
is, who was, and who is to come’ (Rev 1.8 NJB).91 And this through the process he sometimes calls ‘omegagenesis.’92
Omegagenesis, like noogenesis, may well be a cosmic process. But — and
this is an important qualification — ‘there will only be one Omega.’93
Omega
he defines as ‘a centre different from all other centres which it
“super-centres†by assimilating them; a person distinct from all other
persons whom it fulfils by uniting them to itself. The world would not
function if there were not somewhere ahead in time and space a “cosmic
point omega†of total synthesis ... Omega, he towards whom all things
converge is reciprocally he from whom all things radiate.’94 ‘Omega itself,’ he says, ‘is discovered by us at the end of the process ... of universal synthesis… ’95
‘With
the discovery of Omega,’ he says in his autobiography, ‘was completed
what I would call the natural branch of my inner trajectory in search
of the ultimate consistency of the universe. Not only in the vague
direction of “spirit,†but in the form of a well-defined supra-personal
focus a heart of total matter was finally revealed to my experiential
quest.’96
Cosmic Christ
Teilhard
the evolutionist now makes what we can only describe as a gigantic leap
of faith by identifying the Omega of Evolution with the Christ of
Revelation.97 And with this his cosmic sense becomes one with his christic sense.98 ‘Christic consciousness,’ he says, ‘keeps pace with and is required by the growing consciousness of humanity.’99
Omega
is identified with the Cosmic Christ who is the ‘Logos’ or ‘Word’ we
find in the Prologue to the Gospel of St John (‘In the beginning ... ’)100 and St Paul’s Letter to the Colossians (‘All things have been created through him and for him ... ’).101
The
‘Logos’ or ‘Creative Spirit’ — ‘the one who was, who is and who is to
come’ — entered his creation by becoming part of the evolutionary
process for which he himself is responsible. His purpose — to vivify or
give life to his creation from ‘within’ and lead it towards its final
completion and fulfilment.
This is the Parousia102
which Teilhard understands as the presence of the Cosmic Christ in
glory at the end of time bringing together the ‘centre of centres,’ who
is the term of the phenomenal universe, and ‘Christ-Omega,’ who
consummates the totality of creation in the completion of his Mystical
Body.103
Christ
is the focal point of Teilhard’s vision and the dynamic behind his
search: ‘The mystical Christ, the Universal Christ of St Paul,’
Teilhard stresses, ‘has neither meaning nor value in our eyes except as
an expression of the Christ who was born of Mary and who died on the
Cross.’104
Christogenesis and christosphere
Omegagenesis now appears more clearly as a ‘christogenesis’ and the ‘christosphere’105
as the sphere of spheres — the sphere of the Cosmic Christ who
embraces, penetrates and sustains the totality of the cosmos. As Jules
Monchanin put it so well, ‘the christosphere is the goal of the
noosphere.’106
Teilhard
shows an awareness of the teachings of the Greek Fathers that suggests
an early introduction to the Cosmic Christ tradition that found
expression in the Fathers like St Maximus the Confessor. Maximus placed
it in the context of a static universe: Teilhard puts it in the context
of an evolutionary universe: ‘Christ,’ he says, ‘has a cosmic body that
extends throughout the universe.’107
Teilhard’s Credo
Teilhard’s spirituality is, above all, a spirituality of engagement.108 It is based on his intimate conviction of God’s presence and, more immediately, Christ’s presence throughout the universe.109
Teilhard’s
spirituality is profoundly ignatian. Like every Jesuit he made The
Spiritual Exercises every year. And like every Jesuit he woul
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