The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin

Extract

La Pensée religieuse du Père Teilhard de Chardin was first published at Paris in 1962. It has been admirably translated by René Hague and forms an authoritative commentary. It is authoritative because Père Lubac had been a close friend of Père Teilhard de Chardin for over thirty years and had discussed his thought with him and because it is by Père Lubac with his clarity and his gift for understanding other viewpoints than his own.

In his first chapter ‘The Essential Core’, Père Lubac distinguishes between two groups of Père Teilhard’s writings ‘the first in which the line of thought is still scientific or, one might prefer to say philosophical, is developed from the data of experimental science; the second, more strictly mystical and religious, is often explicitly based on the data of Christian revelation. Central to the first is The Phenomenon of Man, to the second Le Milieu Divin.’ Inevitably Père Lubac places his emphasis on the group that centres on Le Milieu Divin and attempts to penetrate ‘to the heart of Teilhard’s mystical teaching’. In what sense was Père Teilhard a mystic?

Père Lubac’s eighth chapter is entitled ‘Scientist, Prophet and Mystic’. In it he describes Père Teilhard as a scientist of the first order. This is perhaps a simplification. From the time of his scholasticate and his first unfortunate association with Mr Dawson and the Piltdown Skull, Père Teilhard’s primary subject of study was prehistoric archaeology and it was this that finally made his name in China.