GIVEN ITS STATUS AS A CORE DOGMA
WITH TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Published in The Furrow, an Irish pastoral monthly, February 2024
Hilda Geraghty
Abstract: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s life’s work aimed to reconcile science and Christianity, Despite the Church’s initial rejection, Teilhard’s views on evolution have found some acceptance. His reinterpretation of the Fall story emphasizes humankind’s ongoing journey and the universal need for redemption, reshaping traditional dogmas for people of today.
The great quest of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was to integrate the new ever-expanding worldview of science with the classical dogmas of Christianity. Over a lifetime, in which he brought to the challenge both his own genius and a rare combination of different disciplines, he arrived at a solution that truly satisfied both his mind and his heart. However, quite early on (when he was forty-one) the views he was working out about the dogma of Original Sin were conveyed to the Church in Rome. These views were rejected to such a degree that, through his Jesuit order, he was banned from publishing anything other than scientific articles. It was a ban that was renewed repeatedly over all his holistic writings, so that while he continued to write in the background of his scientific career in China over twenty-five years, his ideas could only be circulated among friends.
CHANGING VIEWS IN THE CHURCH
However, some change was happening in the Church. One quiet but major shift in official teaching over the twentieth century was the acceptance that creation is a work in progress, and still incomplete. An evolutionary view of the universe is the very essence of Teilhard’s understanding, and he would have greatly welcomed this shift in official teaching from a static to a dynamic approach. While not naming evolution as such, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) states that creation‘did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created ‘in a state of journeying’ (in statu viae) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be.’ (1)
The Church has finally moved beyond a literal interpretation of the account of creation in Genesis 1. The worldview of the Catholic faith has, to a degree, embraced the findings of science, which had become incontestable.
A NEURALGIC ISSUE
However, as the American theologian John Haught writes, ‘In spite of Vatican II’s acknowledgement that our understanding of the world has now moved from a static to an evolutionary one, a metaphysics of the eternal present [static] still rules over contemporary Christian theology, ethics and spirituality.’ (2)
Specifically, there was no movement in the interpretation of Original Sin, despite an uneasy shifting between what is figurative and what is historical fact. According to the Catechism,
‘The account of the fall in Genesis uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.’ (3) ‘The ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil symbolically evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely recognise and respect with trust.’ (4)
It openly admits that there are unsatisfactory loose ends: “Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand.” (5)
As alluded to above, this was the issue that had got Teilhard into trouble. He found that his new cosmic-evolutionary interpretation of Original Sin had touched a nerve. So much so that still, almost forty years after his death, the Catechism in 1992, warns, “The Church, which has the mind of Christ, knows very well that we cannot tamper with the revelation of original sin without undermining the mystery of Christ.” (6)
This is because the two Adams, – the Adam of the garden, father of humanity and the New Adam of Christ the Saviour, father of the new redeemed humanity, were seen in parallel, one plunging humanity into disaster, the other saving and restoring it. It was a neat symmetry, and to question the very story itself was to rock the foundation on which the faith was built.
A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF ORIGINAL SIN
However, at home in the aeons of geological time, Teilhard, the palaeontologist, was strongly aware that the findings of science were incompatible with a historical interpretation of the story of the Fall in Genesis. He writes, “The more we bring the past to life again by means of science, the less we can accommodate either Adam or the earthly paradise…As natural scientists see it, humankind probably emerged from one and the same animal group. Its appearance, however, must have been gradual…Still less [is there] a place in our historical picture, for the earthly paradise….We now see that everything in the universe, physically, chemically, and zoologically, holds together too much as a single whole for the permanent absence of death, suffering and evil …to be conceivable outside a general state of the world different from our own… Looking as far back as the mind can reach, we find the world dominated by physical evil, steeped in moral evil…– we find it in a state of original sin… In combining them [the science and the Genesis account] on one and the same plane we are certainly victims of an error in perspective…. Everything happens as though there were no Adam and no Eden.” (7)
“…We must so expand our ideas that we shall find it impossible to locate original sin at any one point in our whole environment, and will realise simply that it is everywhere, as closely woven into the being of the world as the God who creates us and the Incarnate Word who redeems us.” (8)
EVIL IS NO ACCIDENT
In a later writing on Christianity and Evolution, he affirms, “In these circumstances, evil is not an unforeseen accident in the universe. It is an enemy, a shadow which God inevitably produces simply by the fact that he decides on creation. New being, launched into existence and not yet completely drawn into unity, is a dangerous thing, bringing with it pain and alienation. For the Almighty, therefore, to create is no small matter: it is no picnic, but an adventure, a risk, a battle to which he commits himself unreservedly. Can we not see what breadth and clarity is beginning to be added to the mystery of the Cross?” (9)
WHAT TO DO, THEN, WITH THE FALL STORY?
Teilhard suggests that the narrative expresses, under the form of a single act, “…the perennial and universal law of imperfection which operates in humankind because it is in process of becoming… all creation brings with it, as its constant risk and shadow, some fault; in other words it has its counterpart in some redemption. Seen in this way the drama of Eden would be the very drama of the whole of human history concentrated in one symbol deeply expressive of reality. Adam and Eve are images of humankind on their way towards God. The beatitude of the earthly paradise is the salvation constantly offered to all, but rejected by many, and so arranged that nobody can gain it except by unifying their being in our Lord.” (10)
SCRIPTURE OFFERS A NEW APPROACH
Returning to the theme many years later, he adds, “The same obligation to rethink the dogma of original sin is imposed on us from a third quarter of human thought: it comes not from science, not from theology, but from Scripture. The most recent advances in exegesis insist that what we should look for in the first chapters of Genesis is not ‘visual’ information about man’s history but teaching about his nature.” (11)
In other words, the Fall story is not showing what a pre-historic pair of humans actually did, but an illustration of what human nature is like: as yet imperfect beings in a process of growth and becoming, forever caught in the drama of choice, who are responsible for their own happiness or lack of it. It holds up the mirror of truth before us, as beings who don’t listen to their conscience (the voice of God), reject constructive limits, fall for appearances, yield to temptation, give way to greed, make excuses, blame others, relate lustfully, play God, and in so doing break or damage our relationships with God, others and the natural world. In a word, we humans are beings who need to learn how to use our freedom in loving partnership with God. The ‘death’ we incur by not doing so is not physical, but, at a deeper level, separation from God, source of all life. A true story indeed! – but on quite another plane from history, that of spiritual truth.
THE REAL ADAM AND EVE
We therefore need to abandon the notion of ‘our first parents’ getting us all into trouble; Adam and Eve are a representation of each and every one of us. All we need to do is to read the story in reverse for its meaning to be substantially the same, yet no longer in conflict with history and science. Paradise and intimacy with God lies up ahead, to be reached as we evolve in and through Christ, rather than in a once-upon-a-time past. This explanation also remedies the sense of monumental injustice we might feel at the idea of two primeval humans having the power to blight the entire human race forever more.
Released from the chains of history, the ancient story suddenly becomes surprisingly relevant! It takes place all the time in our lives, in one guise or another! ‘Original Sin’ could simply be renamed ‘Universal Sin’, or maybe to sound less negative, ‘Universal Imperfection’. The idea of a fall from grace is unhelpful. Rather than a fall it is a chronic unwillingness to rise. Paradisial human perfection and intimacy with God is not something we once had, but the ideal of what we could have. It is only fully attainable in Christ, our Saviour, who restores all broken relationships through his forgiveness from the cross, inviting us to do the same in turn and remodel the world into the unified Whole it is called to be.
ENLARGING THE CHRISTIAN DOGMAS
Teilhard goes on to defend his views. “One thing is quite certain, that the traditional attitude towards God of spiritually- minded Christians is retained whole and entire in views that appear to be so novel. In these views, I believe, it reaches the fullness of its intellectual and mystical development. Creation, Fall, Incarnation, Redemption, those vast universal events no longer appear as fleeting happenings taking place sporadically in time – a grossly immature view which offends our reason and contradicts our experience. All four of those events become co-extensive with the duration and totality of the world; they are, in some way, aspects…of one and the same divine operation. The incarnation of the Word (which is in process of continual and universal completion) is simply the final term of a creation which is still continuing everywhere, and does so through our imperfections. (“The whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now.”) (12)
Elsewhere he remarks, “A price has to be paid for the struggle [out of imperfection/sin into unifying love]. The earth groans in travail with Christ. Like a wagon that creaks and grinds, progress advances painfully, bruised and tearful. Suffering holds hidden within it, in extreme intensity, the ascensional force of the world.” (13)
With deep insight Teilhard reconciles science and the Fall narrative by locating them on different planes, and by enlarging the Christian dogmas to cover the dimensions of time, space and wholeness as we now understand them.
SNAIL PACE OF THEOLOGICAL CHANGE
He laments in another writing, ‘There are times when one almost despairs of being able to disentangle Catholic dogmas from the geocentrism [everything revolving around Earth] in the framework of which they were born. And yet one thing in the Catholic creed is more certain than anything: that there is a Christ ‘in whom all things hold together.’ (Col 1.17) All secondary beliefs will have to give way, if necessary, to this fundamental article. Christ is all or he is nothing. (20th July, 1920) (14)
Today, over one hundred years since Teilhard wrote those lines, the sad fact is that, for many people, Christ has become nothing. For the ever-growing ranks of the ‘spiritual but not religious’ he is no longer needed as a Saviour. Spirituality for them is freed from religion. Creation took place a long time ago, any need for salvation comes from an ancient myth about disobeying God, Incarnation is a Christmas tableau, and Redemption is Christ appeasing an offended God above and beyond this world. They don’t need this. They want a spirituality that helps them to live well NOW, that gives hope and motivation for the future. And NOW demands a faith-spirituality that urgently engages with this world. It needs to drive forward collective, and not just individual, change in our behaviour at every level, in a new holistic understanding of Incarnation and Redemption that includes all of life and how we relate to our mother Earth. “No longer simply a religion of individuals and of heaven, but a religion of humankind and of the earth- that is what we are looking for at this moment, as the oxygen without which we cannot breathe.” (15)
THE SYNODAL PATHWAY ASKS FOR RENEWAL
Let us hope that the Synodal pathway helps the Church move towards this. Some findings of the Dublin Synodal report indicate needs of this kind:
‘Young people want to be taught the truths of the faith clearly. They are concerned about the lack of good teaching, catechesis, sacramental preparation.’ (from Teen Synod Participants)
‘Parishes are now more conscious that change is required to transform the world for the better, in the spirit of Laudato Si’.
‘Parishes also articulated a fear that the Church is gradually disengaging from society and going into a cocoon of its own.’
‘Whole generations are falling away from faith because of poor faith formation of young people and adults.’
However, if we can gather people together to teach them the core dogmas of their faith, how convincing and inspiring will those dogmas be, as currently expressed by the Church? That is the question, and it is urgent. “The world will never be converted to hope of heaven, unless first converted to the hopes of the earth.”
CONCLUSION
If it would still evangelise the world, the Church needs to offer a BIG, BIG FAITH, a ‘Super Christ,’ to use Teilhard’s expression, who encompasses all of reality, as he once did in the minds of believers of former times, when ‘reality’ was smaller. Its core doctrines of Creation, Fall, Incarnation and Redemption are like beautiful, ancient buildings that need plumbing, wiring and Wi-fi if today’s generations are to live in them, – that is, a new interpretation in the light of our new knowledge, that makes them relevant and credible. This is precisely what Teilhard’s whole body of work is offering, – a faithful interpretation of the classical faith, but transformed for modern mentalities into a faith credible for today and tomorrow.
This is what makes him so invaluable. His version of the faith is radiant, driving us to go out and take responsibility for making this beautiful world, and ourselves, into what God wants it/us to be. His God is not only transcendent in the traditional sense, but also immanent in the relational Whole of the universe, from particles to galaxies, to be found there and worshipped, until all become one and evolution/creation is finally completed. It is a spirituality that teaches us how to love and live the world in Christ, in a new way, both now and for eternal life. The newly-discovered cosmic, evolutionary nature of Christ, still only grasped by a few, must be widely proclaimed if the world is ever to believe in him again.
Christ is all or he is nothing.
References
(1) Catechism of the Catholic Church, Veritas, 1994, Dublin 302, p 71
(2) The Cosmic Vision of Teilhard de Chardin, John F. Haught, 2021, p 1
(3) CCC, 390, p87.
(4) Ibid., 396, p89
(5) Ibid., 404, p 91
(6) Ibid., 389, p 87.
(7) Note on some possible historical representations of original sin, in Christianity and Evolution, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, A Harvest Book, Orlando, Austin, New York, San Diego London, first Harvest edition 1974. Pp 45-47.
(8) Ibid., p 54
(9) Ibid, p 84.
(10) Ibid., pp 51-2.
(11) Ibid, p 191,
(12) Writings in Time of War, p 65, as quoted in Teilhard de Chardin, A Book of Hours, Kathleen Deignan, CND and Libby Osgood, CND, Editors. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 10545, 2023.
(13) Christianity and Evolution, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, A Harvest Book, Orlando, Austin, New York, San Diego London, first Harvest edition 1974. Pp 45-47.
(14) Activation of Energy, p.240, as quoted in Teilhard de Chardin, A Book of Hours, Kathleen Deignan, CND and Libby Osgood, CND, Editors. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 10545, 2023.
(15) From Toward the Future, p 50, in Christianity and Evolution, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, A Harvest Book, Orlando, Austin, New York, San Diego London, first Harvest edition 1974. Pp 45-47.
Seeing whole 