Teilhard de Chardin on suffering and death

Abstract

The effort of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to assuage modern man's anxiety by elaborating a guarantee of evolution's success is ultimately founded upon the physical relationship between Christ, mankind, and the material world. This relationship Teilhard bases upon the cosmic vision of St. Paul in his letters to the Colossians and Ephesians, as well as upon the Church's subsequent theology of the Incarnation and the Eucharist. In a recent article I have treated at some length this concept of Christ as physical Center of evolution by reason of the Incarnation,1 and I do not wish to repeat myself here. Rather what I wish to do is to show how Teilhard comes to terms with the mystery of suffering and death in this world of which Christ is physical Center. More concretely, this means establishing a relationship between the evolutionary process and Christ's work of redemption, i.e., His suffering and death on the Cross and His Resurrection in glory. Before we begin, however, an important point should be noted. We are not going to deal with Teil hard's approach to the mystery of moral evil in the world. Nor are we going to deal with his approach to the death and Resurrection of Christ insofar as they constitute a redemption from sin. This would involve us in a separate area of Teilhard's theological speculation and raise special difficulties not directly connected with the present topic. We shall limit ourselves, therefore, to one aspect of Teilhard's theology of redemption: namely, his approach to physical evil in the world and its meaning in the Christian life by reason of the death and Resurrection of Christ. Teilhard has a double purpose in treating the mystery of suffering