The Philosophical and Religious Thought of Teilhard de Chardin

by Dom Georges Frenaud

Why this Translation?

I'd first 'encountered' Father Teilhard in two lectures in the '50s, one in English, one in French; the latter by an evident, not to say 'bubbling' enthusiast. The fictional 'Father Jean Telemonde' had not improbably contributed something also to my gradually-formed, if vague notion of Teilhard as a most significant Catholic author, of great moment to the future of Holy Church; a kind of modern-day super-apologist for the Faith in our time.

I'd even been told once that he constitutes the 'bridge' between Religion and Science. I was duly impressed.

In time, I 'sampled' his Divine Milieu. As a Catholic — and literate — I seemed to lack something, for I was baffled.

However, a duly qualified and long-standing member of a highly literate profession later confessed in my hearing to a like bafflement in his regard. Not 'literacy', but a mentor, suitably equipped — and even multiplied — was, perhaps, what I needed, to constitute a 'bridge' between Teilhard and me.

For 'discovering' Teilhard (by the indirect method) as it proved, is like so much else, a do-it-yourself job — and oddly, there is, that I know of, no local — and authoritative-guidance available in his regard. One has, as it were to 'travel' abroad.

And 'travel' I did, in the event. For twenty years later I discovered Father George Duggan's Teilhardism and the Faith;¹ and M. Henri Rambaud's Strange Faith of Teilhard de Chardin;² and some material by Father Fritz Albers — and the Holy Office Monitum of 30 June 1962 — at least ten years too late.

Teilhard did begin to seem not altogether what I had been induced to suppose.

Curiosity aroused, I continued to search and to read, though necessarily in French, for the above-mentioned is just about all there is in English; at least all that I could find.

A little 'bridging' on my own account, for the benefit of the interested reader, might not, I thought, come amiss. Hence the present translation of the remarkable and most enlightening study³ that follows.

I shall leave Dom Georges, a Thomist, to speak for himself and I trust I have rendered him faithfully.

Thereafter, I leave it to the interested reader to ponder what he says — and use it to dispel the fog of incomprehension in which I had begun and in which many, I imagine, still grope in the matter of Teilhard. — John J. Peterson

1. The Mercier Press, 4 Bridge Street, Cork.
2. "Approaches", 1 Waverly Place, Saltcoats, Ayrshire, Scotland.
3. Permission to translate and publish given by Club du Livre Civique, 49 rue des Renaudes, Paris, 75017, is gratefully acknowledged.

Preliminary Note

The observations made in these pages do not purport to be a straightforward disclosure of the internal defects and incoherencies of Father Teilhard de Chardin's philosophical and religious thought. They are addressed only to readers already convinced of the fundamental certitudes of Thomist doctrine. We take note of a number of Fr. Teilhard's especially striking assertions and are content to prove that these are in opposition to the Thomist standpoint. It will, therefore, be possible to accept these assertions only if we abandon a philosophy and a theology which the Sovereign Pontiff John XXIII, supported by the authority of many of his predecessors, has once again emphatically recommended in his Motu Proprio Dominicanus Ordo of 7 March 1963.

A Holy Office Monitum published on 30 June 1962, requested Bishops and Religious Superiors to warn the faithful of the dangers occasioned by the philosophical and theological ambiguities and errors contained in the works of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin. I intend to raise the main points at issue in a wholly objective way. I cannot do this unless I first retrace Teilhard's system, at once scientific and religious, in its broad outlines. I shall ignore the strictly paleontological aspect of his work, even though some of his conclusions in this area, are still subject to debate. The Holy Office had declared that it did not propose to offer any judgment on his scientific work. I shall, therefore, confine myself to a summary of those aspects of his thought that bear directly on philosophical and religious truths. I shall take account of all his hitherto published works, in so far as I have contrived to acquaint myself with them; but two of his main writings deal, broadly speaking, with both the viewpoints that concern us: these are "Le Phénomène Humain" and "Le Milieu Divin". My references are taken chiefly from these.

a) On the Plane of Natural Science

The "Phénomène Humain" is a work devoted to the genesis of the human race from its earliest cosmic origins. The author's intention is to limit himself exclusively to the plane of scientific experience and to its physical (phenomenological) interpretation. He restricts himself to the observation and verification of sensible phenomena, to the discovery of their sequence, their laws, the meaning and end-result of their development. He excludes, in principle, all metaphysical considerations and, therefore, any quest for an efficient or final cause, transcending the sensible world. He does not deny the legitimacy of such metaphysical research: but that is not his mode of operation, and he excludes that kind of problem. "Nothing (he says) but the phenomenon,¹ but the phenomenon whole and entire."

The law of complexity and of consciousness

The basis of his research is the absolute acceptance of biological evolutionism² from the simplest living monocell to Man. All that lives on this earth issues from a common source.

From this, his point of departure, Fr. Teilhard deduces a universal law which he calls "the Law of complexity and of consciousness". According to this law, the degree of vital consciousness throughout all gradations of living things, is always in proportion to the degree of complexity of the organism's nervous system, and in the higher animals to the complexity of the brain. Maximum consciousness has actually been attained by Man. But in Man, that consciousness is not only more intense than in other living things, it is different in kind: it has become reflection and thought. We shall return later on to the actual nature of this transformation which establishes a break, an abrupt leap in the ascent of vital evolution.

Physical energy and psychic energy

Thanks to the full reflexive consciousness which we have of ourselves and of our activities, we observe, directly in ourselves and indirectly in animals, that the vital phenomena all admit of the concomitant exercise of two forms of activity or energy. Physical energy³ which is manifestly superficial and external, subject to quantative measurement: this type only is studied in treatises on Physics. Fr. Teilhard calls it "tangential" energy; its activity is purely transitive and modifies the various relationships which parts of matter have with each other. The second form, psychic energy, is internal and immanent. This he calls 'radial'; it is strictly of the qualitative order. That second form of energy is, at first sight, perceptible to us only in living things, and, as we have already stated, it is this that grows with the complexity of their organism.

But here, still on the purely scientific plane, Fr. Teilhard does not hesitate to make an extremely audacious generalisation. He asserts that psychic energy, observable only in living things, is equally realised, though in an infinitesimal way imperceptible to us, in all other material particles which we deem to be devoid of life. The reason for this extension⁴ lies in a general principle which he accepts as scientifically certain and which may be enunciated as follows: "Every natural anomaly is never other than the exaggeration to the point of perceptibility, of a property which extends everywhere in an imperceptible state."⁵

From that general rule he deduces that consciousness which quite obviously appears in Man, "has a cosmic extension and, as such, is haloed by spatial and temporal prolongations." "In a coherent perspective of the world, life inevitably implies a pre-life extending indefinitely prior to it." In short, the most minute material particle should already contain in itself that exterior and interior we observe in ourselves. In it, like an embryo, will be a germ of consciousness, of spontaneity.

Moreover, the "law of complexity and of consciousness" already observed in living things, will, with due regard to proportion, be applicable to all other corporeal natures, even those of the utmost simplicity. The embryo of consciousness, already real in the most elementary particles, will progressively intensify in atoms and then in heavier and heavier molecules: "at all levels, a consciousness is all the more complete, in that it accompanies a richer and more organised material edifice". "Spiritual perfection and material synthesis are merely the two facets or parts of a selfsame phenomenon."

Formation of the created universe in three stages

The formation or genesis of the created Universe Cosmogenesis is thus to be envisaged as a continuous progression of quantitative complexity and of internal qualitative intensity. A global and ascending process, it comprises three stages, separated one from another by two 'leaps', or much more profound qualitative transformations.

The initial leap is the passage of the non-living to the living. Hitherto, the internal and psychic energy⁶ of atoms or of molecules had merely become more intense and heated, without profound essential change, as molecular complexity increased. But that heating process culminates in a critical point whence it cannot further intensify without its undergoing a profound and radical transformation: rather like water heated to 100 degrees Centigrade which, further heated, must be transformed into vapour. But the complexification of molecules continues, tending to intensify psychic energy still more: pre-life becomes life in its most elementary but already observable form. And that life, in its turn, progressively intensifies, in pace with the still unrelenting progress of complexification. This is the second stage of psychic energy: the development of sense-life (biogenesis). But this second stage also has its critical point of intensification. Organic complexity still pursuing its uninterrupted course, animal energy is, in its turn, transformed, producing a new and final manifestation, that of consciousness: the power of reflection, thought. That form is indeed final, for reflection is the power of total concentration on one's self; and is, as such, independence of matter to which it had hitherto been bound. Thus the domain of mind or spirit is at last attained.

Must the ascent of evolution cease with the appearance of Man and of thought? Will not the human brain still tend to grow, becoming more complex, thus entailing an intensive and continuous progress of thought, and even reaching a fresh critical point determining the appearance of a superman or supermind, whose superior activity we cannot even imagine?

Fr. Teilhard dismisses that hypothesis, for the individual consciousness has henceforth reached a perfect state of reflection, fully centred upon itself. Its development and substance alike, are now liberated from material conditions. Evolution's biological drive will not, doubtless, be arrested, but will assume a quite different form. No longer are the body-cells to combine in a superior organic synthesis, constituting a heavier and more complex brain: on the contrary, the psychic and spiritual centres⁷ are now to combine in a social and scientific synthesis. These personal "complexifications of thought" which succeed those of body-cells, exhibit two entirely novel characteristics.

Universal grouping of Humanity: Omega Point

In the first place, not just certain privileged human minds, and these only, are about to combine as a superior spiritual organism: rather are all centres of thought, all men, called to this universal grouping of Humanity. Only those who freely refuse to associate will be brushed aside. But the most novel characteristic of this spiritually unified grouping is that it no longer tends to constitute a whole which still ascending and growing in perfection, eventually ends by transformation into a superman or super humanity. So to understand convergence would, in effect, end in a kind of pantheism, through which all human minds would lose, each his own distinctive personality in the unique personality of the supermind resulting from their union. The point to which all human minds are tending towards mutual encounter, so far from being the result of their union, cannot itself be other than a personal mind, transcending and pre-existent to all others. This will be an absolute centre-point of assembly, who will gather them together in his superior personality without their losing their respective personalities. Fr. Teilhard calls 'Omega Point'⁸ this Centre of natural convergence of all minds. This Omega Point, itself personal and spiritual, above and prior to all evolution, can in the end be only what the metaphysicians call God. Thus at the limit of scientific investigation there appears the existence of this God, not in virtue of the principles of efficient or final causality, but as a simple consequence of scientifically established evolution. That evolution can come to fruition only as a movement towards this Centre of convergence which it necessarily demands. The physical science of evolution, without appeal to metaphysics, nor to the principle of causality, thus proves the existence of God, from Whom that evolution is totally suspended. Metaphysics could, doubtless and without difficulty, recognise this Omega Point as the efficient and final cause of all things: but the author of "Le Phénomène Humain" deliberately remains outside that perspective.

It must here be added that this gathering of conscious beings about Omega Point takes place simultaneously in two ways: on the one hand by the individual association of each personal mind with God accomplished for every man, at the moment of his bodily death. But it is also accomplished in the course of world history with, as its setting, the human collectivity in evolution, by virtue of the fact that man now living in greater and greater numbers, crowded together on an earth of limited area⁹ are more and more dependent on each other. Human thought necessarily and biologically tends to 'socialisation', that is, to become a great collective reflection, of which the terminus, ideally, should be a perfect community of thought and love. As, progressively, Men achieve unity, that collective thought becomes richer and more intense. A day will come when it also reaches its critical point which, says Fr. Teilhard, will demand, not a transformation, but a collective evasion of all Humanity beyond matter and towards Omega Point: that will be the end of the world.

On the Religious Plane in the Light of Revelation

Thus ends the scientific synthesis constructed in the purely natural order in "Le Phénomène Humain". In the volume entitled "Le Milieu Divin", Fr. Teilhard adopts an entirely different standpoint: that of a Christian, as such, who takes the truths of the Faith for granted. The subject studied is present-day man, supernaturalised. The author's intention is to show how by the fact of the Incarnation, Christ is for us, in the concrete, that celebrated Omega Point, glimpsed by Science as the ultimate centre of cosmic evolution.

The sacred character of all reality and of all activity, as such

Because of the Incarnation, the immensity of God, present throughout the Universe by His action upon all things has become a "presence of christification": all creatures and their activities, upheld and moved by God, co-operate in the perfect production of the Mystical Body of Christ. A syllogism in due form constitutes the fundamental basis of that statement ("Le Milieu Divin," p. 41-42).

"In our universe, every soul exists for God, in Our Lord. But in another way, all, even material reality surrounding each of us exists for our souls. Thus all sensible reality surrounding each of us, exists through our souls for God in Our Lord."

Each of these propositions could, of course, be so explained that an acceptable conclusion might be drawn from it provided natural or intrinsic finality¹⁰ and supernatural or extrinsic finality¹¹ be clearly distinguished.

But the author takes all these propositions in their full and intrinsic meaning and concludes that in virtue of the Incarnation, all created reality becomes sacred. The profane no longer exists. Thenceforward all human activity whatever the intention of the agent, constitutes, of itself, a positive contribution to the building up of the Mystical Body of Christ: "Our every task by its repercussion, direct and more or less remote, upon the spiritual world, co-operates in perfecting Christ in His mystical totality". Whence he concludes:

"All is sacred to him who discerns in each created thing that portion of chosen being, subject to the attraction of Christ in process of consummation. With God's help, discover and acknowledge the connection, even physical and natural, that links your toil with the building up of the heavenly Kingdom. Behold heaven itself smile upon you and through your labours draw you to it; and in leaving the Church for the City's uproar, you will still feel that you continue to be immersed in God" ("Le Milieu Divin", p. 56).

Here we are at the very heart of 'the mystique of action'. Doubtless, the author does not exclude other considerations, for he subsequently attributes considerable value to various forms of passivity and renunciation, and in particular, to the final renunciation implied in corporeal death: all that, likewise serves to unite us to God. But he is most insistent upon the essential, intrinsic and positive value of action, as such, and of its fruits, even those on the natural level. That action constitutes the initial stage of the spiritual life, contributing to the realisation of the Kingdom of God, even independently of the agent's intention. A supernatural intention merely perfects an act which is in itself sacred.

One must, therefore, be rid of the Manichaean prejudice that tends to set God and the World, love of God and love of the World in opposition. Going to the world and loving it, we go to God and love Him. It is the World that leads us to God.

The world compared to the Sacred Species

Expressing his thought in another way, Fr. Teilhard asserts that the Incarnation has sacramentalised the entire world. All natural actions are exalted by God, the first and universal Cause. They can, therefore, co-operate with a work of grace. He goes so far as to compare the World with the Sacramental Species, beneath which God hides His Real Presence from our eyes. "My God, he writes . . . lest I succumb to the temptation of cursing the Universe — make me adore it because I see You hidden in it. The great, liberating word O Lord, that word which simultaneously reveals and acts, repeat it to me, O Lord, 'Hoc est Corpus Meum'. Truly the huge and sombre thing, the chimera, the tempest — if we so will, is You . . . These, fundamentally, are but the Species or Appearances, the matter of the same Sacrament" (Milieu Divin, pp. 172-73).

The end-result of all Man's labours, of all human striving in the temporal world, particularly scientific and technological enterprise, is henceforth simply a contribution to the realisation of the final return and the total victory of Christ. We are not in pursuit of two distinct ends: in pursuing the human and temporal end, we are, ipso facto, working for the supernatural end.

Furthermore, our "expectation of heaven cannot survive unless it be incarnated" in a temporal enterprise. That expectation is offered us as "an immense and totally human hope" implying the exercise of human means and the persistent quest for their perfection. Thus "we should . . . participate in the authentically religious aspirations that make the men of today so powerfully feel the immensity of the World, the greatness of the mind, the sacred value of each new truth . . ." "The progress of the Universe and in particular of the human Universe is neither rivalry with God nor a waste of the energies we owe Him. The greater Man becomes, the more shall Humanity be unified, conscious and master of its strength, as also, the more beautiful creation, the more perfect shall adoration be; and the more shall Christ find for His mystical extensions a body worthy of His Resurrection . . . We shall never know all that the Incarnation still expects from the powers of the World." (Milieu Divin, pp. 199-201).

In other writings Fr. Teilhard gives us to understand that Christ cannot return to earth prior to the realisation of the scientific and technological progress necessary to the unification, concentration and socialisation of all Humanity, so that it be ripe for its collective encounter with Omega Point whom we know to be Christ.

I have been at pains to present an objective statement of this attempt at a synthesis, wherein all kinds of incongruous elements, whether natural, supernatural, physical, sociological or biological jostle each other, any one of which, taken separately, has indeed an authentic value in terms of being and of truth. What surprises and may, perhaps, even disturb the reader is the confusion, as also the lack of balance which that combination entails. In many of the passages I've quoted it is possible to find a measure of truth: but the inter-relations, the setting, the relative value assigned to each element is astonishing and may well lead the reader into error.

Having traced out this system in broad outline, I now propose to deal with its main features, which, whether by their ambiguity, their lack of balance, their sequence, or, finally, through certain erroneous formulations, make of that seemingly attractive whole, a serious danger against which we have been warned by the Church.

II
Critical Examination on the Philosophical Plane

I shall begin by focusing on certain points on the philosophical plane, in the natural order. We shall afterwards see the difficulties that can be raised from the viewpoint of Faith and of supernatural theology.

a) The Notion of Creation

An initial point already remarked by several of Fr. Teilhard's critics concerns the notion of creation and the use he makes of it in his evolutionist synthesis. The two works we have chiefly quoted say little, and only incidentally, of creation. But in several of his pamphlets he explicitly broaches this subject-matter and his pronouncements are rather disquieting.

For the Thomist philosophy, creation is, in the strict sense of the word, the production of things at the point prior to which neither they nor their components existed. This is total causality of being as being. But Fr. Teilhard conceives of creation in a sense much broader and vaguer, rather difficult to grasp precisely. He identifies the act of creation with that of the unification of hitherto multitudinous elements. God not only creates the world in the first instant at which it exists and begins to evolve, He also continues to create it throughout the entire course of evolution in the sense that He is, by His unceasing activity, the first cause of the growing complexity of things. To create is, properly speaking, to unify, to unite.

When he attempts to apply this concept of creation — union to the very origin of the world, Fr. Teilhard is obliged to identify nothingness with pure multiplicity: "Where there is total disunion of the cosmic stuff, there is nothing." Thus to say that creation is the union of the multiple is, in regard to the multiple as a whole, equivalent to saying that creation is production starting from nothingness.

But here a grave metaphysical error has intervened. This error consists in conceiving of the (pure) multiple as prior to unity, whereas the only real multitude is one consisting of many real units. Unity is necessarily prior to real multiplicity. A multitude not comprising real units would not be a multitude. How are we to speak of uniting, or better still, of unifying a non-existent multitude? Where there is no real multitude, there is no real union.

Fr. Teilhard has betrayed the secret of his thought on this point in a few lines transcribed by Fr. de Lubac who thereby strives to justify him. These lines tell us that if we can conceive of the creative act as an act of union we are enabled to do so by "rejecting the long-standing evidence of commonsense as to the real distinction between movement and the movable and we cease to imagine that the act of union is exercisable only on a pre-existent substratum." Here we detect Fr. Teilhard's fundamental philosophical error: it is that of Bergson and of his philosophy of pure becoming, of movement without a subject that moves. The close relationship of Fr. Teilhard's thought with Bergsonism has been justly noted: they differ in one respect only, that for Bergson a Creative Evolution is the essential reality of the world; the world is self-creating through self-development, self-expansion.¹² For Teilhard on the contrary, a "Creative Union", that is, a concentration, an assemblage, a complexification, builds up the world.¹³ Thus (for him) the world is in a perpetual process of creation, because it is in a perpetual process of concentration upon itself, under the influence of God.

b) The Creation of Human Souls and of the Angels

That vague and inaccurate idea of creation enables Fr. Teilhard to evade a very grave problem posed by every spiritualist philosophy: that of the creation of the human soul. It is an established philosophic doctrine, admitted today by all theologians, that the human soul is immediately created ex nihilo, by God, at the instant of its union with the body. In regard to the soul, Fr. Teilhard does not reject the word 'creation' provided it be taken in the broad sense of 'unitive action' only. God creates the human soul by his continuous action upon living organisms in process of evolution. That action, unific of corporeal cells procures a transformation of psychic animal energy into reflective and spiritual energy. If the word 'creation' is retained here, the common doctrine of the Church is simply jettisoned. He does indeed maintain that there is a special act of God at the instant when the soul is produced, because at that instant the effect of Divine causality is special and new: but that act is not 'creation ex nihilo'; the soul is produced from a pre-existent reality.

Delving more deeply into Fr. Teilhard's thought, we are besides, about to establish that in his evolutionist synthesis, not alone does God not create souls, He cannot create them.

The impossibility of the creation of souls, given Teilhard's scientific outlook

In this system, creation is, in effect, so identified with union that (I quote Fr. Teilhard):

"In no way through powerlessness . . . but in virtue of the very structure of the Nothingness He contemplated, God, in creating, could have acted in one way only: by exerting His magnetic influence and using the play of vast numbers, He, little by little, arranged and unified an immense multitude of elements, at first infinitely numerous, extremely simple and barely conscious, then gradually less numerous, more complex and finally endowed with the power of reflection."

In other words, God could create only if He began by assembling extremely simple elements on which He subsequently and progressively imposed an evolutive and compressive concentration. Such a concept of creation forever excludes God's creating pure spirits like the Angels directly ex nihilo, as also His creating a human soul from nothing. These are beings much to rich in perfection: deriving from infinitesimally tiny material elements they could never come to be, save at the end of a lengthy process of evolution.

It is doubtless for this reason that in Fr. Teilhard's Creation-Evolution no Angels are to be found: never does he make any clear reference to them. But if no Angels exist, what becomes of the entire biblical record, what above all of the first man's temptation by a fallen Angel? And what, in direct consequence, becomes of the entire theological doctrine of Original Justice and of Original Sin?

c) The Absolute Necessity of Creation

Before I end this commentary on creation, I must also refer to a passage in the pamphlet "Le coeur de la Matière" where creation is presented as a "mysterious product whereby the absolute Being perfects and completes Himself," as though God were not of Himself the plenitude of being, as though to be perfect He had need of His creation. Another pamphlet, "Comment je vois," pushes this paradox still further with this strange observation: "There is no God (up to a certain point) without creative union." It is understandable that Fr. Teilhard should himself be astonished at his own audacity. In "L'Union creatrice" he writes that his concept . . . "insinuates that creation was not absolutely gratuitous, but looks like a work of quasi-absolute self-interest. All that (he adds) redolet manicheism um . . .". This is true. But (he continues) is it possible in all sincerity to avoid these dangers — or rather these paradoxes — without having recourse to purely verbal explanations?"

Here we must answer: Yes, it is quite possible: St. Thomas and his school had expounded a legitimate notion of creation ex nihilo, which, while it certainly involves a natural mystery, is in no way a purely verbal explanation. And the First Vatican Council has defined as of faith, the perfect freedom of God in the accomplishment of that creation, whose point of departure was nothingness; a creation which unmistakably relates to creatures both corporeal and spiritual and to man composed at once of body and soul.

One of Fr. Teilhard's most fervent disciples, M. Claude Tresmontant, sums up his master's thought on creation in these terms:

"In creating the World, God completed Himself. God had engaged in a struggle with the multiple (the antique Chaos) finding Himself at the end of that operation richer and at peace: AN ANCIENT GNOSTIC IDEA which is to be found in the works of Böhm, Hegel and Schelling."

Does that simple statement not provide us with adequate proof that on this point Fr. Teilhard's thought, such at least, as M. Tresmontant interprets it, is no longer within the confines of the Catholic Faith?

d) Consciousness Common to All Matter

I have dwelt at length on Fr. Teilhard's errors about creation. I shall briefly point out two further doctrinal deviations that also belong to philosophy. The first relates to his philosophy of knowledge and of consciousness which latter is only a privileged form of knowledge. "Le Phénomène humain" as we have seen, presents the fact of consciousness as a form of energy which, certainly actualised in Man, ought to exist in a lesser degree in all corporeal beings.

But a sound philosophy of knowledge and consciousness leads to a diametrically opposite conclusion. Philosophy, in effect, shows that the power of knowing, at all levels of its realisation, is based upon immateriality, that is to say, upon a certain superiority, a certain independence of matter. He who knows transcends himself, so that, in a certain way, he also becomes that which he knows. I cannot here develop this point of Thomist psychology. I merely remark that if 'knowing' of itself, constitutes a transcendence and a liberation in respect of matter, it becomes impossible to apply to knowledge or to consciousness, the famous physical law¹⁴ according to which, every form of energy met within a single corporeal being should occur in all other bodies.¹⁵ Immateriality, supra-materiality cannot be a property common to all matter. Fr. Teilhard's error consists in placing psychic energy and more especially consciousness on the same plane as physical and purely transitive energies which are, in effect, common to all bodies. That is a serious error, pregnant with consequence, for the immateriality that every act of knowledge requires is the point of departure whence the philosopher may subsequently rise to the notions of spirit and of spiritual reality, to demonstrate their existence in the setting of creation.

e) Confusion of Spirit with Matter

That consequence is likewise discernible in Fr. Teilhard's work when he treats of the relationships of spirit and matter. Finally, and this is the last philosophical error to which we shall point in his works, he suppresses the radical distinction between created Matter and Spirit.

Here is a passage which clearly implies this kind of confusion. He has just been speaking of Spirit and he specifies the sense in which he understands that word:

"Not, he says, Spirit by escape from Matter, nor Spirit in incomprehensible juxtaposition with Matter (Thomism) but Spirit emerging (by a pancosmic operation) from Matter."

This word emergence frequently recurs in his writings, as describing the coming to be of Spirit in the womb of Matter, whence it is in some sense extracted. By recourse to a physical image he considers Spirit as Matter which has become incandescent:

"All round the Earth, the centre of our perspectives, he writes, souls in some way constitute the incandescent surface of Matter immersed in God" (Milieu Divin, p. 152).

Elsewhere he is clearer still: "In the concrete, there is neither Matter nor Spirit: there exists only Matter becoming Spirit."

Speaking of the human soul, are we not correct in declaring that, in fact, Fr. Teilhard rejects any true creation (ex nihilo) of Spirit? But, if the Spirit or Soul of which he speaks derives from Matter, is extracted from it, it is, no longer truly Spirit. Whatever in its origins depends intrinsically upon Matter, also depends upon it in its being and forever remains a material perfection or determination.

III
Critical Examination on the Plane of Theology and of Faith

We may now leave the philosophical domain and enter that of faith and of theology. Pointing out the unfortunate consequences of integral evolutionism in that area, presents no difficulty.

a) Confusion of the Natural with the Supernatural

The first and principal consequence is the confusion of the natural order with the supernatural order of Grace. Though, in his writings, Fr. Teilhard does frequently use the terms 'Grace' and 'Supernatural', he expressly rejects all forms of Pelagianism. By repeatedly recalling the necessity for divine co-operation and assistance throughout the growing activity of creatures, he imagines he avoids the Pelagian error. But in his synthesis he invariably fails to distinguish supernatural Grace from the divine assistance created nature needs throughout the entire ascent of its natural evolution towards the end-point of its concentration. Nevertheless, such assistance, however divine and indispensable, is not in virtue of that fact alone, a supernatural grace. Affirming this, is not, therefore, to affirm Grace. Let us consider this point of capital importance in greater detail.

We have already stated that "Le Phénomène humain" is bent on showing, on the purely natural and scientific plane, that the created Universe that set out from the most diffuse multiplicity, had progressively risen through the stages of life and thought to the famous 'Omega Point', that personal and personalising centre, in whom all human persons would henceforth constitute a single universal person, without loss of individuality. On Fr. Teilhard's own admission, the only way in which this ultimate concentration of spirits can be understood, if an absurd Pantheism contrary to the Faith is to be avoided, is to see in it the union by an immediate vision,¹⁶ of created spirits with the transcendent Spirit who is God.

Fr. Teilhard's natural and scientific concept of the created world in evolution is therefore, the reunion of all souls in the immediate vision of God; and this he sees as the goal appropriate to evolution.

Is the supernatural naturalised, or the natural supernaturalised?

We are thus compelled to choose between two hypotheses, one as unacceptable as the other.

Either we admit, as do all Catholic theologians, that the immediate vision of God is an act of the divine order, and for all created natures, is essentially supernatural. In that event, cosmic evolution of which that act is the appropriate conclusion, the raison d'être, the key, is itself also entirely of the supernatural order. This makes creation, totally, in all its elements, a supernatural reality and nothing any longer remains on the natural plane. Unfortunately, in such a perspective, the expression 'supernatural' itself loses all meaning, since the natural no longer exists; for the supernatural is defined only by reference to the natural. Without the natural, the supernatural makes no more sense than does a first floor without a ground floor. Such a solution, in fact, converts the natural, whole and entire, into an unthinkable pseudo-supernatural.

Or, and this is the second hypothesis and one which seems more in harmony with Fr. Teilhard's statements: we are to affirm against the unanimous teaching of Catholic theology, that the immediate vision of God is not a supernatural act; and in this event, the entire supernatural order of Grace collapses. The creature in evolution towards its natural goal, doubtless, needs the permanent assistance of God to reach its goal, but this assistance also remains proportionate to the nature it postulates: it is no longer truly Grace. This second solution lowers the entire supernatural order to the natural plane.

Therefore, whether the natural be supernaturalised, or the supernatural, naturalised, the inevitable result is confusion of the two orders.

b) A Naturalist Construction of the Mystical Body of Christ

That serious confusion is not limited to the plane of the Beatific Vision, it impinges, if not on the very mystery of the Hypostatic Union itself, then at least upon its connections with the created world of which it is the summit.

Here Fr. Teilhard is quite well aware that it is no longer Science, but divine Revelation alone, that is the cause of our knowing the transcendent mystery of the Hypostatic Union. This, the personal and substantial union of a human nature with the Person of the Word, infinitely transcends the entire order of more creaturehood. Nevertheless, the supernatural fact of the Incarnation having come to pass, the Incarnate Word in Fr. Teilhard's system of integral evolutionism, is automatically and most accurately substituted for 'Omega Point', the personal centre of the entire natural evolution of the world.

That evolution which is, of course, concentrated round a divine personal goal, of which Science afforded us no more than a very obscure knowledge, is, in pursuit of its appropriate natural development, self-directed towards the Person of the Incarnate Word. At the same time, that evolution is itself none other than the formation of the Mystical Body of the total Christ, which doctrine was so vigorously taught by St. Paul. What appeared in the scientific view as a 'cosmogenesis' only," the Apostle revealed as a Christogenesis.¹⁸ Fr. Teilhard also writes, and emphatically at that: "Christ is the goal even of the natural evolution of beings: Evolution is holy." Evolution in its totality is christified. Elsewhere he was to affirm that the bonds linking souls with Christ for the construction of the Mystical Body are physical and natural bonds: "Without rejecting anything of the powers of liberty and consciousness that comprise the physical reality proper to the human soul, it is imperative, he writes, that we perceive between ourselves and the Incarnate Word, the existence of bonds as rigorous as those that in the World direct the affinities of elements towards the building up of every natural whole." Thus, the Mystical Body becomes a natural, biological whole, in which, of course, through the intermediary of Men, the entire universe is concentrated.

Physical supernaturalism: the 'cosmic' dimension of Christ

Let us specify the 'novelty' of Fr. Teilhard's system, by reference to the traditional Thomist theology of the Mystical Body.

For St. Thomas, the faithful who are in a state of grace,¹⁹ alone constitute the actual membership of the Mystical Body. What unites them with Christ's holy Humanity is its supernatural instrumental causality, permanently exercised in their regard, producing, conserving and increasing in them His supernatural gifts. Between Christ and ourselves, there are indeed real bonds, in this sense physical: those of a veritable and concrete efficiency. The total Body of Christ is, in that sense, not a mere social grouping, held together by purely juridical and moral ties. It is a real whole and in that sense physical. But these physical ties that bind us to Christ are not of the natural, still less of the biological order. They are spiritual ties, transcending by their very nature, all that is proper to or required by creatures and they belong to the divine order. Further, the origin and development of these, completely transcend the laws disclosed by the positive sciences. It is by a life of supernatural grace that Christ lives in us, incorporating us in a certain wholly supernatural and, of necessity, accidental manner, with His own Personality.

For Fr. Teilhard, the Hypostatic Union has established the Incarnate Word as physical and biological centre of the world's entire natural evolution. Through the mediation of souls that have, he says, emerged from the material Cosmos, all the World's physical energies should converge upon Christ, submitting to His attraction and influence. Nor does he fear to affirm that the Humanity of Christ exerts a constant and universal influence on all the natural activities of creatures, to bring them to Himself. In the "Milieu Divin" he was to attribute to Our Lord's Humanity a presence in the world as vast as the very immensity of God.

In his "Esquisse d'un Univers Personnel", he even writes that "To be Alpha and Omega, Christ, without losing His human dimension, ought to become co-extensive with the physical immensities of duration and of space." He was to go further still in his pamphlet "Le Christique," when he speaks "in a true sense" of a "third nature of Christ, neither human nor divine, but cosmic." No theologian could ever accept such formulations as these. To publicise them for consumption by an uninformed laity is to be guilty of the grossest imprudence, for these will naturally tend so to interpret such words as to be led straight into a heresy.

In the face of this disconcerting mode of expression, we cannot but recall Maurice Blondel's critical observations, when, as early as 1919, some of Fr. Teilhard's writings were submitted to him. That famous philosopher sounded a warning against "a too naturalistic and too physical manner of picturing to one's self the universalising function of Christ . . ." "We should not set up as a principle of explanation what our intellectualist mentality, our anthropomorphic images may suggest to us" . . . "A physical supernaturalism is a nonsensical expression." And in a second note he concludes his observations with a remark whose application to Fr. Teilhard we have already seen: "It is important that the natural be not supernaturalised, nor the supernatural naturalised, even by our manner of stating and putting such notions to use.

c) Subordinating the Faith and Certain Mysteries to a Scientific Opinion

Fr. Teilhard's lumping together of natural evolution and the essentially supernatural work of sanctification and salvation, has, besides, had the effect of binding our Faith in the Incarnation and our incorporation with Christ to a scientific theory, that is at the very least debatable.

In the evolutionist synthesis, in effect, unless the Mystical Body itself takes its place as centre and spearhead of an advancing cosmic evolution, Christ's Incarnation does not succeed in gathering men together in the unity of the Mystical Body. According to Fr. Teilhard, the traditional theology established when the universe was (supposedly) fixist, would be incapable of explaining the data of the Faith relevant to the construction of the Mystical Body. This is incapable of realisation without Evolution and it can reach its culmination only at the moment when natural cosmic evolution shall have finally reached its goal. He formulates this necessary coincidence as follows:

"Thus, in advance of us, a universal Centre is to be discerned, where all things come to a head, where all are accounted for, where all are conscious of and at the disposal of all. Well then! It is at this physical pole of universal Evolution that, in my opinion, the fullness of Christ must be located and recognised. For in no other kind of Cosmos and in no other location but this, can any being however divine, exercise the functions of consolidator and of universal animator that Christian dogma acknowledges in Jesus. In other words, Christ needs to find a summit in the world for his consummation, just as he had needed to find a woman for His conception" (Comment je crois).

The sense of this assertion is unmistakable: the dogma which is of faith can be verified only in a world of integral evolutionism. Elsewhere he says: "Christ has need of evolution: He is saved by it." The Incarnate Word Himself, had He come into another world lacking evolution, or were he situated otherwise than at the centre and end of that evolutionary process, could not have brought the world to completion, that He might lead it to the unity of a Mystical Body. The Christian mystery formulated by St. Paul is thus necessarily bound to the scientific truth of integral evolutionism. Without it the Faith becomes absurd, impossible.

From Galileo's judges to Teilhard The danger of such an association is patent: it repeats the error of certain mediaeval theologians who tied their faith to the geocentric system of the world imagined by Ptolemy. It was this unjustified liaison that provoked Galileo's condemnation, when, in the name of Science, he wished to abandon the hitherto generally accepted cosmogonic opinion. Fr. Teilhard falls into the same trap today, when he binds the Christian mystery to a certainly most fashionable scientific idea of the world which, however, may yet be subject to many adjustments, or even be abandoned in favour of some other hypothesis. Truly our Faith in the Mystery of Christ and His Church relates to a transcendent object which should be maintained on a level above and beyond all scientific theories however fashionable.

Not only does Fr. Teilhard not avoid this danger, he clings so rigidly to it, that one eventually wonders whether he has not allowed his scientific beliefs such precedence over his Christian Faith, that this may well seem diminished thereby.

Scientific faith and Christic faith

In his pamphlet "Comment je crois," Fr. Teilhard speaks successively of two kinds of faith:

One of these which he calls 'psychological faith,' might more appropriately be named 'scientific belief,' and consists in the affirmation of truths alien to direct scientific experience, but which he accepts as the prolongation or extrapolation of that experience.

"By faith, he writes, I mean all adherence of our intellect to a general perspective of the Universe . . . The essential note of the act of psychological faith is, in my opinion, perceiving as possible and accepting as more probable, a conclusion which by its spatial, amplitude, or its temporal remoteness, spreads far beyond the scope of all analytical premises. To believe is to effect an intellectual synthesis."

It is with this purely natural scientific or psychological faith that Fr. Teilhard believes in the integral and irreversible evolution of the Universe, as also in the terminal point of concentration essential to that evolution: the personal and transcendent Omega Point.

Beyond that psychological faith, Fr. Teilhard admits of a 'Christic' faith, the adherence accorded the Christian mystery contained in the documents of the supernatural Revelation of the Incarnate Word.

In the simple statement of these two quite distinct 'faiths', there is nothing that, in itself, clashes with orthodoxy. But such cannot be said of the relationship Fr. Teilhard establishes between them. For him, in effect, psychological or scientific faith could be more fundamental and secure than faith grounded in divine Revelation. Nay, the former is the very condition of the latter. Let us hear what he has to say on this:

"If in consequence of some internal upheaval, I had successively lost my faith in Christ, my faith in a personal God, my faith in the Spirit, I should, it seems to me, continue to believe in the World. The World (the value, the infallibility and the goodness of the World) such in the last analysis, is the first and only thing in which I believe. It is by this faith that I live and it is to this faith, I feel this to be so, that at the moment of death, I shall, beyond all doubt, abandon myself . . . To this obscure faith in a World, one and infallible, I abandon myself, wheresoever it may lead me."²⁰ (Comment je crois).

All Fr. Teilhard's writings show that this psychological faith he accords to the World is none other than his adherence to integral evolution. Who cannot see the imprudence, nay more, the error he commits in making his Faith in Christ, that is to say his theological Faith, conditional, in a certain sense, upon a natural faith incapable of offering any absolute guarantee? For the Church, it is not scientific interpretations, however well established, it is objective, evident and unimpeachable certitudes that can alone constitute the preambles to the Faith.

d) Circumstances and Date of the Parousia

Before I bring this critical study of Fr. Teilhard's Christology to a close, an additional word must be said of his concept of the Parousia and of the second coming of Our Lord. A lyrical chapter of the "Milieu Divin" is devoted to these. He is careful to note that "As to the time and modalities of that formidable event, it would as the Gospel warns us, be vain to speculate."

In the "Phénomène humain," however, and in several other essays, Fr. Teilhard is much less reserved. In these he does not hesitate to give precise details of the end towards which Humanity's evolution at present in progress, naturally tends. In a passage evoking the progressively closer association of the "particles of thought" as he calls human souls, he writes:

"When by a sufficient agglomeration of a sufficient number of elements, this movement which of its essential nature is convergent, shall have reached such a degree of intensity and quality that to be further unified, Humanity taken as a whole, should in its turn, as had happened to the individual forces of instinct, reflect "upon itself at a single point" (that is to say, abandon its organico planetary support to whirl outwards from its centre coming to rest upon the transcendent Centre of its growing concentration); then, for the Spirit of the Earth, this shall be the end and the consummation . . . the end of the world: an upsetting of the balance, detaching the finally completed Spirit from its material Matrix, so that it rests with its entire weight upon the Omega-God. The end of the World, the critical point, at once of emergence, of emersion, of maturation and of evasion." (Phén. humain, p. 320).

Such is the description of the end of the World which should consummate the World's natural evolution and in the event of God's being Incarnate, should denote the second coming of Our Lord. A note on p. 343) tells us that:

"For the believing Christian . . . the final success of hominisation (and therefore of cosmic involution) is positively guaranteed by the 'resucitating virtue' of the Incarnate God in His creation."

The virtue of Hope naturalised

In these conditions it becomes clear that Our Lord's return does not appear to be imminent. In other passages, Fr. Teilhard himself estimates in millions, the number of years still required for the completion of Humanity's collective evolution! Is this any longer to see things in the light of the Gospel? And as to the mode of final hominisation by collective detachment of each human soul from its Material Matrix, is it still possible to reconcile this with the dogma of the resurrection of the body?

Nevertheless, in the "Milieu Divin," Fr. Teilhard bids us await this return of Christ, and complains that we have ceased to do so. He bids us renew in ourselves the desire and hope for the great Advent. Then he indicates in precise terms, how we must set about this renewal. This will consist:

"In the added interest our minds discover in the preparation and consummation of the Parousia. From what source is that interest itself to be derived? From our perceiving a more intimate connection between Christ's triumph and the successful accomplishment of the task that 'human striving' seeks to fulfill in this world . . ." "Thus we should . . . participate in the authentically religious aspirations that make the men of today so powerfully feel the immensity of the World, the greatness of the spirit, the sacred value of each new truth. Thus shall our generation learn to look forward."

This completely reduces the (supernatural) virtue of Hope to the natural level. Looking forward to Christ's return is equivalent to an ever-growing interest in Science and Progress; we are to place our hopes in these. Once again, as in every other area of religious thought, the natural and supernatural are lumped together without distinction.

e) The Redemption Understood as Struggle

Fr. Teilhard's point of departure in treating of the Redemption is his own concept of sin and suffering. For him, sin is not primarily an offense committed against God, in consequence of which the sinner may obtain pardon only through satisfaction due by him, in justice. It is above all a deficiency, a diminution, a disunion.

As for suffering, this is what he has to say about it in his pamphlet "La vie Cosmique":

"In the classical view, suffering is primarily a punishment, sacrifice is the effect it produces; the result of sin, it atones for sin . . . Suffering is actually the primary consequence of the labour and toil development entails."

According to these views, Christ's Redemption is seen as not so much satisfaction offered to God for the sins of men, as the painful expenditure of effort in the creation and gathering of men round their divine centre. Moreover, in the "Milieu Divin", we read that:

"The royal way of the Cross is precisely the road of human endeavour, supernaturally rectified and extended" (p. 118).

The words "supernaturally rectified" implicitly leave room for an orthodox interpretation, but the main emphasis is still upon human endeavour; and the adverb "precisely" insists on that aspect as primordial. And this idea, as developed on the succeeding page of the same work, is anything but reassuring:

"In short, Jesus on the Cross, is at once the symbol and reality of the immense and age-old labour which, little by little, exalts the created spirit, to lead it back into the depths of the divine Milieu. It represents (in a true sense it is) Creation, which, upheld by God, re-ascends the slopes of being . . . sometimes wrenching itself free and so transcending them, always compensating by its physical afflictions, for the setbacks occasioned by moral lapses" (p. 119).

Here again the final clause seeks to safeguard the essence of traditional doctrine: but that essence is relegated to the background. True proportion is falsified. The redemptive, satisfactory and sacrificial character of the Mystery of the Cross is blurred in favour of the struggle implied in an ascending evolution.

The Mass, an offering of Cosmic Evolution

This deviation is particularly striking in one of Fr. Teilhard's most celebrated writings: his "Messe sur le Monde". The fundamental meaning of the Mass appears as the offering up of human endeavour:

"I shall, O my God, lay upon my paten the due harvest of this renewed effort (of the earth) . . . These, my chalice and my paten, are the depths of a soul opened wide to all the (natural) forces that, in an instant shall rise up from every point of the Globe and converge towards the Spirit . . . I conjure up those whose anonymous multitude forms the innumerable mass of the living . . . Above all, those who in truth or athwart error, whether in their study, laboratory or factory, believe in the Progress of things and who shall today passionately pursue the light . . ."

In the ultimate, the Mass is no more than the offering up of an ever progressing cosmic Evolution. In this semi-naturalistic view of the mystery (let us not forget that it is a question here of natural Evolution). Fr. Teilhard eventually contrives to bind all the mysteries of the Faith by a chain of necessity, in which no scope for divine freedom can any longer be discerned. Let's read these lines from his pamphlet "Comment je crois":

"There is no God (up to a certain point) without creative union. There is no creation without incarnative immersion. (Here he confuses two realities, nevertheless quite distinct: the universal presence of God in virtue of His immensity, owing to Creation and the coming of the Son of God, into the World through the Hypostatic Union). There is no Incarnation without redemptive compensation. In a Metaphysics of union, the three fundamental mysteries of Christianity no longer appear otherwise than as the three facets of one and the same Mystery of Mysteries: that of Pleromisation. And simultaneously a renewed Christology comes to light as the axis not alone historical and juridical, but structural also of all theology" (Comment je crois).

A new form of gnosis

But does this renewed Christology really remain that of the Faith? Does it continue to be the loving and perfectly gratuitous initiative of a God rich in mercy, Who becomes Man to wrest us from the abyss of sin? Is it not rather A NEW FORM OF GNOSIS, one of those many and ever vain attempts to rationalise the content of the Faith, to enable us to penetrate that content, not even by recourse to the first principles of Metaphysics, but — and this is worse — by the methods of the physical and natural sciences and these alone?

IV
Father Teilhard's Spirituality

There remains for consideration a final aspect of Fr. Teilhard's religious thought, an aspect of particular concern to us, and which doubtless, has contributed most to the launching of a wave of enthusiasm amongst lay people, ill-informed of the requirements of theology. At issue here are the consequences of his doctrine from the viewpoint of the spiritual life.

a) The Sacred Value of all Human Endeavour

Teilhard has himself repeatedly returned to this point. He leaves the impression of wishing to establish a new school of spirituality, based upon the principle of cosmic evolution. The essence of his outlook is expressed in the first two parts of the "Milieu Divin". It is the first of these entitled "the divinisation of activity" that contains the most original, as also the most questionable aspect of his essay. The object studied there is the difinitive value in the eyes of God of Man's purely natural work.

Work as Christian Doctrine sees it

It is a fact that: "The Church has always been at pains to dignify, ennoble and transfigure, in God, the duties of one's state in life, the quest for natural truth, the development of human action."

On the other hand it is certain that any natural human action merits eternal salvation only in so far as it is governed and motivated by Charity. St. Paul's hymn in praise of Charity is his first letter to the Corinthians expressly says this: "If I have not Charity I am but sounding brass and tinkling cymbal . . . I am nothing . . . it profits me nothing."

But from that absolute need for Charity, that our acts may be supernaturally meritorious, it does not follow that natural work and its appropriate fruits are wholly worthless and devoid of interest. Such work still remains an exigency of Man's nature and its fruit is a concrete good. Nor does Grace destroy Nature. So far from suppressing our natural obligations supernatural Charity cannot but reinforce them by making them subordinate to a higher end. Holy Scripture and especially St. Paul, repeatedly point out the Christian's obligation to work: 1. That he may not be a burden to his fellows; 2. That he may meet the needs of those unable to provide for themselves (the ill, the young, the aged etc. . . .) Rather broadly understood this second motive can go far indeed, for it enhances the value of all human labour that in one way or another serves the common good.

There is general agreement moreover, that the purely natural fruits of a given task have a special value in Christian eyes, in as much as they may eventually be used by others in the service of a supernatural work. Considered purely as a means to an end, they may then contribute to the building up of the Mystical Body of Christ. It is obvious, therefore, that a sound theology of work never regards it, even in its natural reality, as devoid of value and interest.

The Corporeal World an enrichment of the total Christ

Somewhat forgetful of these well-established data of universal doctrine, Fr. Teilhard consequently reproaches the Masters of the spiritual life with minimising the value both of our natural efforts and of their fruits and he attributes this mode of expression to them:

". . . earthly ends are in themselves worthless. One may of course, love them for the opportunity they afford of proving one's fidelity to the Lord . . . on earth, things are provided only as material to keep one occupied; and so engaged and starting 'from scratch', one proceeds to make ones own mind and heart . . . the worth and what becomes of the fruits of the earth is hence of small account . . ." (Milieu Divin, p. 38).

Moreover, for the author of the Milieu Divin this contempt for the human is revolting, and he propounds a spirituality of endeavour such as to modify this outlook and to abolish the artificial opposition too often established between God and the World. So far from diverting us from God, the World, in drawing us to it, can and ought to lead us to Him.

Doubtless Fr. Teilhard himself acknowledges the priceless value of a charitable intention and the essential need for it if human enterprise is to achieve perfection. But he asserts that independently of that intention every human endeavour, always and of itself, contributes to the completion of the Mystical Body, since its effect is, in part, invariably of definitive value. "All endeavour cooperates in perfecting the World in Christo Jesu", he writes, in the heading of a paragraph (on page 41) where that idea is developed and proved. The argument in due form adduced to that end — and already quoted above — may be summarised as under:

Throughout our earthly life our spiritual being is nourished by the world of sense. From that world our souls have already emerged, enriched by its entire past. They have, from their origin, been ceaselessly besieged by the flood of cosmic influences which they themselves arrange and assimilate. Through these influences they perfect and even 'make' themselves.²¹ But this natural process of our souls' perfection should enter with them into the constitution of the Mystical Body. Hence it should be said that the entire corporeal world contributes to the final enrichment of the total Christ. The more we shall have known the world and, by our science and technological activity, contributed to its growth and adornment, the more shall we, in consequence, have contributed to the perfection of the total Body of Christ.

Universal progress, concentration, spiritual socialisation

Elsewhere he adds this further consideration: by the universal progress which brings in its train a constant spiritual concentration and socialisation of souls, we work effectively for the bringing to be of that unification and deepening of universal human reflection, which, on its arrival at its critical point, shall accomplish the fullness of Humanity and by that very fact the fullness of the Mystical Body. It is thus that "by the collaboration He arouses, Christ achieves His consummation and attains His fullness and of this EVERY creature is a point of departure" . . . "By our every enterprise we work, each in his own small way, but really, for the establishment of the Pléroma that is, each makes his own tiny contribution to the completion of Christ."

Such is the foundation on which Fr. Teilhard rests his proof of what we may call his "mystique of human endeavour". In these terms, he himself develops that idea:

"The union of God with the World, in the domain of action, has just been accomplished before our very eyes. No; God does not distract our attention prematurely from the labour he has imposed upon us, since He presents Himself as touchable by this very labour. No; he does not cause the detail of our earthly aims to vanish in the intensity of His light, since the intimacy of our Union with Him is precisely a function of the very completion we shall give Him in the least of our labours . . . God, in that most living and incarnate in Him is not far from us, is not beyond the sphere of the tangible; but He awaits us at every instant in the action; in the work of the moment. He is somehow at the point of my pen, of my pick-axe, of my (artist's) brush, of my needle — of my heart, of my thought — Thrusting home to its final, natural limit, the bolt, the blow, the point on which I am engaged, thus shall I grasp the Goal²² towards which my will tends at its deepest level." (Milieu Divin, pp. 53-54).

These affirmations addressed to Christians who mean to live as Christians, assure them, if taken literally, that by natural labour and by it alone, however motivated, Man, by the mere fact of work well done and brought to completion, attains to God, that is to say, to Christ. Human endeavour thus assumes a position of primary importance, the initial stage, one can say, on the road to perfection. It is the necessary point of departure, which, while not always the sole means to the realisation of one's final end, already puts one in touch with it.

Fr. Teilhard does not, of course, intend to reduce the entire development of the spiritual life to this. He makes ample allowance thereafter, for the detachment that prevents forgetfulness whether of the God who stands at the end of our life of action, or our total absorption in work on the natural level. For he then returns to main-line traditional spirituality which he sets forth in most attractive terms. Excellent this, had he not so stressed the 'active' phase, in his view, the initial movement towards a complete spirituality. "In the Christian life, human endeavour should take its place as a holy and unifying operation."

What is one to think of this spirituality of natural endeavour?

What precisely must one think of this 'spirituality'? That the world of sense does contribute to the natural perfection of souls may be conceded. One may even concede that these acquired natural perfections will, in a certain way, be preserved in eternity, thus contributing, though in a secondary and accidental fashion, to the beauty of the Mystical Body. This consideration provides a valid reason for due appreciation of human labour, provided, however, it be clearly seen that that reason remains, in itself, of the natural order.

Nor, above all, must we lose sight of those other quite certainly known theological truths that concern the supernatural progress of souls towards, and their relationship with God in Christ.

And, to begin with, never by natural effort or labour can we attain to God, the final, supernatural end of our lives, nor can such incorporate us into the unity of the Mystical Body. For our supernatural virtues, gifts and acts and these only, are our vital links with Christ.

One must especially insist upon the total disproportion that exists between all our natural perfections and those that, in this world, confer Grace and eventual celestial glory upon us. Moreover, each holy soul's contribution to the beauty and enrichment of the Mystical Body, consists, first and foremost, in that degree of Grace and Charity we shall have attained at the end of our earthly lives and in the degree of beatific vision and fruition corresponding to it. Assigning to natural endeavour and to its appropriate effects, a value comparable or even equivalent to the value of these transcendent gifts, would be a danger and an error.

Human progress and the gifts of Grace

Furthermore, we, unlike Fr. Teilhard, shall avoid the idea or insinuation that our spiritual progress and the degree of our union with God are in some way proportionate to our purely human progress. Let's hear him on that point:

"We little know in what degree or in what form, our natural faculties are going to be incorporated into the final act of the divine vision. But we can scarcely doubt that in this world, with God's assistance, we may make our eyes and heart such that in their final transfiguration they shall become the organs of that power of adoration and capacity for blessedness that is peculiar to each one of us". (Milieu Divin, p. 47).

The context of these lines speaks of the natural improvement of souls under the influence of the corporeal world: in such a context, the assertion they contain, even with the interpolated clause "with God's assistance"²³ is theologically inadmissible. A little further on, we again find an assertion no less surprising:

"All growth to which I contribute, whether in myself or in things, results in some increase in my ability to love and in some degree promotes Christ's blessed mastery over the Universe (Milieu Divin, p. 52).

Not at all; for supernatural Charity is not an acquired but an infused virtue. Should our power of loving Christ increase, this can derive only from a gift of Grace.

What of Original Sin?

Finally, we shall take note of a major fact which in the Teilhardian perspective is very seriously diminished: to wit, Original Sin which has destroyed the balance of our nature, both corporeal and spiritual.

This disequilibrium, inveigles us, as by instinct, towards the allurements of the world of sense, at the expense of our ascent towards God. Doubtless, through creatures, Man can and ought to attain to God. But creatures may well draw us to them, particularly if we devote ourselves to them passionately and without reserve, as Fr. Teilhard would have us do. Hence the need of our always, at every stage of our lives, giving first place to the reception of Grace and to the exercise of the supernatural virtues. These alone are capable of correcting our nature and of attaching us to God in a stable and permanent way.

That is why the first steps in the spiritual life cannot be a natural striving to know the world better and to perfect it, but a renunciation and an abandonment to God, Who by His Providence will lead us by such and such a way, foreseen by Him as ours. And the form of life, of itself most perfect is not the active life, in particular, that preoccupied with the world's temporal progress, but the contemplative life devoted chiefly to the knowledge and love of the Uniquely Necessary. This, at least, is the constant teaching of the Church.

Reasons for that spirituality's success

Fr. Teilhard's new-style spirituality will NOT FAIL TO PLEASE MANY OF THOSE WHO, WITHOUT RELINQUISHING THEIR ATTACHMENT TO THE WORLD, STILL DESIRE TO ATTAIN TO GOD. Its popularity amongst all WHO EVALUATE HUMAN LIFE IN TERMS EXTERNAL ACTIVITY and its immediate and perceptible results, is understandable. These today are the many. In comparison with the Faith and a sound theology of Grace, this attitude, however, represents a subtle form of activist naturalism that may lead to serious illusions. When Fr. Teilhard writes that "In virtue of Creation still proceeding, CONTINUED, the Kingdom of God seems AS THOUGH DIRECTLY CONCERNED with the natural Progress of the World,"²⁴ he misconceives the deep meaning of the Redemption. Fr. Philip of the Trinity who quotes this passage, rightly adds that: "Christ did not come on earth to activate the natural progress of the world AS IT WERE DIRECTLY. And had He come for that purpose, He should have utterly failed."

b) Loving Christ "Like the World that Has Captivated Me"

I shall bring those reflections to a close with Fr. Teilhard's statement of the effect upon the World that results from his exaggerated emphasis on human endeavour. Whenever he expresses his love for Christ, a love, the much-sought end indeed of all spiritual life, he uses, on the plane of love, a form of expression that seems to concede to the World, as we have seen, a priority analogous to that he had already given the World on the plane of Faith. This is what he writes in "La Messe sur le Monde":

"So long as I could merely see or dare to see in You, Jesus, the Man, the Moralist, the Friend, the Brother, of two thousand years ago, my love remained timid and constrained . . . Above and beyond any Element of the World, the World itself had ever captivated my heart, and never to any other should I, in all sincerity, have yielded. Then for long I had wandered, even as a believer, knowing not what I loved. But now that the superhuman powers conferred upon You by the Resurrection have become manifest, You shine forth for me, Master, through all the potentialities of the Earth and I, in consequence, acknowledge You as my Sovereign and to You I yield myself with delight" (Cf. Hymne à l'Univers, p. 33).

Reading these lines, we may ask ourselves whether Fr. Teilhard's love for Christ was not motivated by his notion that Christ contains the World, the principal and primary object of Teilhard's love. Were this so, would such a love of Christ still remain Charity in a theological sense? If we love Christ above all things, is not this first and foremost because He is God, the Son of God and, therefore, Infinite Goodness and worthy of our love to an infinite degree? And can we be believers, possess the Faith, without our knowing that He Whom we love is God? Let us hear these further flights of fancy, that despite their lyricism, seem to place love of the World before that of God:

"Jesus . . . I love You like a World, like the World that has captivated me — and it is You, as I now see, that men, my brothers, even the unbelievers, sense and pursue through the magic of the great Cosmos (extract from "La Vie Cosmique" in Hymne à l'Univers, p. 80).

Likewise in his initial reply to Maurice Blondel, he had written:

"Christ should be loved like a World, or rather like the World, that is to say, as the physical centre imposed upon all that should survive of Creation" (Archives de Philosophie, tome XXIV, Cahier, p. 135).

Did we possess others of his works, that restored us explicitly to a traditional and truly theological perspective, we could no doubt, interpret these lines as examples of linguistic clumsiness and exaggeration. Fr. Teilhard's work does, however, unfortunately abound in such exaggerated forms of expression. And indeed, these do seem to epitomise his essential procedure in matters spiritual: going to the World, and going to Christ only because He is the centre of the World's evolution. Does not this mode of procedure limit us to loving nothing but the World, or loving wrongly for the World's sake?

Let us beware of imputing to Fr. Teilhard the extreme though logical end of that road on which he plays guide. Is not this, however, one of the dangers against which the Church has warned his uninformed readers?

Monitum — Qaedam vulgantur opera, etiam post auctoris obitum edita, Patris Petri Teilhard de Chardin, quoe non parvum favorem consequuntur.

Praetermisso judicio de his quae ad scientas positivas pertinet, in materia philosophica ac theologica satis patet praefata opera talibus scatere ambiguitatibus, immo etiam gravibus erroribus, ut catholicam doctrinam offendant.

Quapropter Emi ac Revmi Supremae Sacrae Congregationis S. Officii. Ordinarios omnes necnon Superiores Institutorum religiosorum, Rectores Seminariorum atque Universitatum Praesides exhortantur ut animos praesertim juvenum, contra operum Patris Teilhard de Chardin ejusque asseclarum pericula efficiter tutentur.
— Datum Romae, ex Aedibus S. Officii,
die 30 junii 1962.

Warning — Certain of Father P. Teilhard de Chardin's works, even those posthumously published, have had a wide circulation and a far from unfavourable reception.

Without judging their content so far as it relates to the positive sciences, it is sufficiently manifest that in matters philosophical and theological, the said works swarm with ambiguities, or rather with errors so grave as to be injurious to Catholic Doctrine.

Hence the Eminent and Reverend Fathers of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office request all Ordinaries, Superiors of Religious Institutes and of Seminaries, as also Rectors of Universities to provide an effective defence of minds, particularly those of the young, against the dangers occasioned by Fr. Teilhard de Chardin's works and those of his followers.
— The Holy Office Rome,
30 June 1962.

End Notes

1. That is to say the sensible appearance.
2. Which he assumes as scientifically demonstrated.
3. Which is common to us and to all bodies, even the non-living.
4. A kind of extrapolation.
5. He cites the analogous case of radio-activity which to all appearance is an anomaly proper to certain bodies in which it is effectively verified and measured, but which is, in fact, a property of all bodies.
6. Still imperceptible to us.
7. Those who have acquired thought.
8. Let us put it more simply: the final point.
9. Which area becomes even more restricted in proportion to the growing speed of travel.
10. Inscribed in the very nature of things.
11. Deriving from a superior agent who uses something to serve his purpose.
12. Like a fireworks display shooting outwards from a cluster of rockets.
13. One of Teilhard's pamphlets, in fact bears just that title: L'Union Créatrice.
14. Which besides, is unproven.
15. At least in an infinitesimal degree
16. In theology we call this the ?????
17. The formation of a world concentrated round the personal and absolute Omega Point.
18. The formation of a universe physically united in Christ.
19. Or those, at least, who have supernatural faith.
20. This passage is so intemperate that it compels us to ask ourselves what would happen to a reader so captivated as to take such assertions literally and make them his own. Basing his religious Faith upon his faith in the world, would he not end by discarding his religious faith? What, in effect, constitutes the faith, as such, is not as much one's actual adhesion to such and such truths as the motive for one's acceptance of them: in the matter of theological Faith, this motive is God's word which reveals and bears witness to these truths. Once acceptance is based on some other motive — faith in the world, or the postulate of evolution — acceptance may still be at one with the Church as to the object admitted, but it is no longer belief solely on God's word; Faith has vanished. This should give cause for reflection to those too hastily enthusiastic about Teilhardian apologetics. The very enlightening words of St. Thomas on this point may be read with profit in the debated question "De Caritate", Art. 13 ad. 6n.
21. Faithful to the thought of Bergson, the author seems to admit that our souls are constituted by their acts.
22. With a capital G.
23. Which here expresses a natural assistance only.
24. Notes sur la Notion de Perfection Chrétienne.

In his work on "The Philosophical and Religious thought of Teilhard de Chardin", Dom Georges Frenaud, has provided an excellent work of authoritative reference in the areas of philosophy and theology. His authority is no less profound than the fundamental certitudes of Thomist doctrine, the teaching of the Popes and the directions of the Congregation of the Holy Office.

Wisely, and as far as possible, Dom Frenaud has not allowed himself to be drawn into the side-tracks of treating of the "charisma", the illusions, the fantasies, the talents and the verbalist genius of that forms the subject matter of this book.

The author has separated the man from the matter. He has done his home-work and studied his files. He knows the case history fully. He knows why, in 1950, Pope Pius XII, had issued the encyclical "Humani Generis"; he knows why in 1962, the Congregation of the Holy Office had issued a Warning (Monitum), to all Ordinaries, Superiors of Religious Institutes, Rectors of Seminaries and Principals of Universities, exhorting them to "safeguard the minds, especially of the young, against the dangers of the works of Father Teilhard de Chardin and his supporters, because 'leaving aside any judgment in so far as the positive sciences are concerned, it is sufficiently manifest that in the matter of philosophy and theology the aforementioned works swarm with ambiguities, or, rather with errors so grave as to offend Catholic doctrine'.

Dom Frenaud is also aware that in so far as Fr. Teilhard de Chardin is a theologian he is so only per accidens and that, he, or rather his writings are widely recognised as the source from which stems what is euphemistically termed 'the new theology'. This 'new' is difficult to define. It has to do with evolution, human society in that context, justification of revolt against authority, loosening of moral standards, and the absence of the problem of evil. It has many facets but the most serious is the resolve of its often influential exponents — in keeping with the example set by Teilhard — to remain within and use the worldwide organisation of the Catholic Church to project their trendy, progressive and heretical concepts.

Dom Frenaud begins with "The Phenomenon of Man", perhaps the best known of the Teilhard series. He takes little note of its lyrical confusions, its liberal fantasies and its (almost) 'star-war' absurdities. He goes to the bone and destroys the plausible structure in the clean cut of common sense, Thomist logic and plain sanity. When he has finished, 'Teilhardism' for the ordinary lay mind has ceased to impress.

In his closing pages, Dom Frenaud points to the 'short term'. He indicates that the Teilhardian new-style spirituality should "please many of those who without relinquishing their attachment to the world still desire to attain to God . . . In comparison with the Faith and a sound theology of Grace, this attitude however, represents a subtle form of activist naturalism that may lead to serious illusions." For instance "When Fr. Teilhard writes that 'in virtue of creation still proceeding, the Kingdom of God seems as though directly concerned with the natural progress of the world', he misconceives the deep meaning of the Redemption."

Translation from the French by John J. Peterson is lucid, satisfying and very readable. He has served the author well.

Finally, and apart altogether from the problem of 'Teilhardism' Dom Georges Frenaud's book will add enormously to the layman's understanding of the teachings of St Thomas Aquinas and their applications to modern problems.

This item 7726 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org