Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

God is the personal Omega toward which evolution converges

A personal GodStated explicitly

Teilhard de Chardin thinks of God from evolution. In The Human Phenomenon, the law of complexity-consciousness leads the universe to converge on an Omega point, which cannot be an abstraction: it must be already actual, transcendent and personal, because only a personal centre can unite persons without dissolving them. His faith identifies this Omega with the cosmic Christ, in whom all things are recapitulated: in How I Believe he sums up his journey as faith in the world, in Spirit, in immortality and in personality. The Divine Milieu describes this God present in all matter and in every action. The Absolute is for him hyper-personal: more a person, not less, than the human.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

To be more is to be more united: union differentiates the person

A self cultivated in relationshipStated explicitly

Teilhard de Chardin thinks of the self within evolution. In The Human Phenomenon, reflective consciousness appears when the universe, growing more complex, centres upon itself: the human being is evolution become conscious of itself. But that personal centre is not perfected by isolating itself, but by uniting: «to be more is to be more united» sums up the work, and its law is that true union does not confuse, it differentiates. The person is fulfilled in a process of centration, decentration in the other and super-centration in God. The self is not a closed substance, but a growing centre whose fullness lies in the convergence of all in Omega.

Why do we suffer?

Evil is the statistical price of a world in evolution

Karma and the soul's learningStated explicitly

Teilhard de Chardin places evil within evolution. In the appendix to The Human Phenomenon on the place and part of evil, he explains that a universe advancing by trial and error toward unity inevitably produces disorder, failure, decomposition, loneliness and anguish: evil is the statistical by-product of a creation under way. The Divine Milieu adds the other half: the «passivities of diminishment» —illness, old age, death— can be taken up in communion with God, who does not will them for themselves but transforms them. Suffering is the cost of growth and can become an energy of union.

What happens after death?

Death is the final diminishment, in which God takes us

Eternal life and resurrectionStated explicitly

Teilhard de Chardin believes in personal immortality and thinks of it on a cosmic scale. In The Human Phenomenon he argues that a universe that has produced consciousness cannot end in nothingness: evolution requires the irreversibility of the personal, which is preserved and consummated in Omega. In The Divine Milieu, death is the last and most radical of the passivities of diminishment, the one that strips us of everything; and his prayer asks that, at that moment, it be God who, from within, detaches us from ourselves in order to take us into him. Individual death is set within a collective consummation: humanity as a whole maturing toward its encounter with Christ.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

God divinises both our activities and our passivities

Through grace and loveInferred from their doctrine

Teilhard de Chardin does not conceive salvation as flight from the world, but as the divinisation of everything human. The Divine Milieu distinguishes two sides: activities, in which the human being cooperates with creation and, with right intention, builds something that Christ gathers up; and passivities, of growth and of diminishment, in which God acts upon us. Both, lived in communion, unite us to God. Salvation is personal and collective at once: all of humanity, converging on Omega, prepares the fullness of Christ. Human effort counts, but what divinises is God's presence in all things, received in faith.

Is a teacher necessary?

Leaving the current of Catholicism would be a biological error

Community and traditionStated explicitly

Teilhard de Chardin suffered for decades the censorship of his Jesuit superiors and of Rome: he was removed from teaching in Paris and forbidden to publish his philosophical and religious works, which appeared only after his death. Even so, he refused to leave the order or the Church. In the text «On my attitude toward the official Church», collected in The Heart of Matter, he justified this with a characteristic formula: it would be for him a biological error to break away from the religious current of Catholicism, because it is in that living trunk that Christian consciousness continues to grow. He claims no personal teacher, but belonging to an evolving organism, with its tensions, which he hopes will eventually take up his vision.

Is the world real?

For one who knows how to see, nothing here below is profane

Manifestation of the divineStated explicitly

Teilhard de Chardin loves matter as the place of the divine. In The Divine Milieu he states that, by virtue of creation and still more of the incarnation, nothing here below is profane for one who knows how to see; God is found at the tip of the pen, the pick, the paintbrush or the needle. The world is neither a static backdrop nor an illusion: it is a cosmogenesis, a process of increasing complexity which, in The Human Phenomenon, moves toward consciousness and unity. In The Mass on the World, celebrated without an altar in the Ordos desert, he offers to God the labour and suffering of the whole Earth. The world is the divine becoming visible, on its way toward Christ.

What is love?

Love is the energy uniting beings toward Omega

Longing and unionStated explicitly

Teilhard de Chardin gives love a cosmic reach. In The Human Phenomenon he holds that love, in its biological reality, is the affinity of one being for another, present in rudimentary form throughout matter and fully conscious in the human being; it is the only force capable of uniting beings so that they complete one another without destruction, because it takes hold of them by what is deepest in them. Humanity will only be able to converge if it learns to love beyond its immediate circle, and that is possible only if there exists a loving and lovable centre toward which everything tends: Omega, which he identifies with Christ. Love is the energy that drives evolution toward its consummation.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

Freedom grows with consciousness: evolution passes into our hands

Real free willStated explicitly

Teilhard de Chardin sees freedom as a fruit of evolution. In The Human Phenomenon, as matter grows more complex, interiority grows, and with reflective thought appears a being capable of foreseeing, choosing and orienting itself: evolution, which advanced by groping, becomes conscious of itself and passes partly into human hands. Hence his insistence on the collective responsibility to build the Earth and on the «zest for living», without which humanity might refuse to go forward. Convergence toward Omega is no mechanical fate: it requires that human freedoms consent to unite. Providence acts through that freedom, not in its place.

Why meditate or pray?

Offer on the altar of the Earth the labour and pain of the world

Ritual and self-cultivationStated explicitly

Teilhard de Chardin's most famous prayer was born from the impossibility of celebrating: in 1923, in the Ordos desert, with no bread, no wine and no altar, he composed The Mass on the World, in which he offers to God, on the altar of the whole Earth, the labour and suffering of the world. The liturgy expands to cosmic scale: the consecration reaches matter, which becomes the body of Christ. The Divine Milieu proposes a prayer united to action: purity of intention turns every work into communion, and daily faithfulness is the way of entering into contact with God. To meditate is to learn to see the divine in all things.

Can reason know the ultimate?

Science and faith converge in seeing the whole phenomenon

Faith and reason help each otherStated explicitly

Teilhard de Chardin was a palaeontologist and a Jesuit, and sought to unite both vocations. The Human Phenomenon presents itself as a scientific work, neither theological nor metaphysical: an attempt to see the whole human phenomenon, consciousness included, within evolution. That gaze leads, by extrapolation from the facts, to the hypothesis of an Omega point; Christian faith recognises Christ in that Omega. In Science and Christ and How I Believe he argues that scientific research, carried through to the end, does not lead away from God but raises the questions that revelation answers. Reason prepares and faith consummates, without either absorbing the other.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

Building the Earth is cooperating in God's work

Engage with the worldStated explicitly

Teilhard de Chardin rejects the spirituality that sees the world as an obstacle. In The Divine Milieu he holds that human effort —research, work, technology, art— is not indifferent to salvation: through right intention, every work contributes to the world's consummation in Christ, and nothing that is built is lost. In The Spirit of the Earth and the essays collected in The Future of Man he calls humanity to become aware of its unity and to build the Earth, joining forces across nations and races. The Christian must not flee the world, but be the first to work for its progress, knowing that it is ordered to something greater.