Abstract
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit mystic and scientist, was a groundbreaking thinker whose synthesis of evolution and faith challenges the faithful to see God in a more expansive perspective. Teilhard’s vision ultimately posits that the universe is evolving closer in relationship with the Divine. Through the increase in material complexity and consciousness, the spiritual power of the cosmos is revealed, identified by Teilhard as becoming personalized in the Cosmic Christ. This article uses the four marks of the Catholic Church—one, holy, universal, and apostolic—to highlight the catholicity, or universality, of Teilhard’s life and vision and its relevance for seekers who probe for God’s presence in all things.
Highlights
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit mystic and scientist, produced a profound synthesis of evolution and faith and is one of the most revolutionary thinkers of the twentieth century. He was a noted paleontologist, and his ideas were influential within the Catholic Church, upon the Second Vatican Council
Teilhard observed how consciousness unfolds uniquely within every human person, yet this process is directed by the same goal: union with God through Christ, in whom we are transformed and made whole, for Christ is the model of consciousness for union with God
Christ Omega, becomes a reality within human history first by way of Jesus of Nazareth: “Once he has been raised to the position of Prime Mover of the evolutive movement of complexity-consciousness, the cosmic-Christ becomes cosmically possible” (Teilhard de Chardin 1978, p. 94)
Summary
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit mystic and scientist, produced a profound synthesis of evolution and faith and is one of the most revolutionary thinkers of the twentieth century He was a noted paleontologist, and his ideas were influential within the Catholic Church, upon the Second Vatican Council. Teilhard’s radical vision empowered him to become aware of the personal character of the cosmos in the Universal Christ, in whom all things hold together by the grace of the movement and molding of the Spirit, who drives apostolic engagement and conscious evolution Empowered by his faith, Teilhard experienced and understood evolution as the increase in awareness of the Divine within the world. Teilhard’s faith is rooted in his belief that evolution is moving to a point of wholeness in God. the human person is seen as an organism capable of growing into a fuller awareness of itself in communion with the universe.
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