Continuing with the topic of the reconciliation between divine creation and evolution, I'd like to mention the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, one of the most important spiritual thinkers of the 20th century. Teilhard (1881-1955) was a Catholic priest and an anthropologist. He was a part of the team that discovered Peking Man. Because of his progressive ideas, he was forbidden by the Catholic Church from publishing his writings during his lifetime. However, many theologians at the time of Vatican II embraced his ideas, which are again gaining in popularity in our own time as well.
Most significantly, Teilhard held a spiritual view of evolution. In his view, the evolutionary process is powered by the drive toward complexity and self-consciousness, as well as by natural selection. This force he called "the Cosmic Christ," "the Omega Point" (the last letter of the Greek alphabet), who stands at the end of time, luring all things into union with himself through the power of love. However, human beings help “Christ the Evolver” and “God the Evolver” by adding new joys for God to experience. For the Omega Point is not only standing at the end of time; it also resides within the process of evolution itself. Here is what he says:
“As a direct consequence of the unitive process by which God is revealed to us, God in some way ‘transforms self’ when incorporating us. So, it is no longer a matter of simply seeing God and allowing oneself to be enveloped and penetrated by God. We have to do more: we have to disclose God (or even in one sense of the word ‘complete’ God) ever more fully, all around us, and within our own selves. God is in process of ‘changing’ as a result of the coincidence of God’s magnetic power and our own Thought. As the ‘Quantity of cosmic Union’ rises, so the brilliance increases and the glow of God’s coloring grows richer. God can in the future be experienced and apprehended (and can even, in a true sense, be completed) by the whole ambient totality of what we call Evolution. This is still, of course, Christianity and always will be, but a Christianity reincarnated for the second time. Christianity, we might say, squared in the spiritual energies of Matter.”
“You know that for some time now the principal interest in my life is no longer simply Fossil Human, but the Human of tomorrow; or, more exactly, ‘the God of tomorrow,’ since I am more and more convinced that the great event of our time is a kind of change in the face of God in which the pure ‘God of above’ of yesterday is being combined with a kind of ‘God of ahead’ in extension of the Human. More and more I see growing in me the evidence not of ‘God who is dying,’ as Nietzsche said, but ‘God who is changing,’ so that the Upward movement is now reinforced by a Forward movement never before considered by the religions.”
In this revolutionary view, it is ultimately an aspect of GOD that is evolving within the process of evolution, taking on new experiences within the life of each kind of creature that evolves. At the same time, Teilhard understands that God is also transcendent to the process, standing at the end of time, luring all things into the ultimate Goal of the evolutionary process: Divine Union!
Photo: Spirea, Eunice Lake and Mount Rainier; Mount Rainier National Park, WA; July 29, 2013
Most significantly, Teilhard held a spiritual view of evolution. In his view, the evolutionary process is powered by the drive toward complexity and self-consciousness, as well as by natural selection. This force he called "the Cosmic Christ," "the Omega Point" (the last letter of the Greek alphabet), who stands at the end of time, luring all things into union with himself through the power of love. However, human beings help “Christ the Evolver” and “God the Evolver” by adding new joys for God to experience. For the Omega Point is not only standing at the end of time; it also resides within the process of evolution itself. Here is what he says:
“As a direct consequence of the unitive process by which God is revealed to us, God in some way ‘transforms self’ when incorporating us. So, it is no longer a matter of simply seeing God and allowing oneself to be enveloped and penetrated by God. We have to do more: we have to disclose God (or even in one sense of the word ‘complete’ God) ever more fully, all around us, and within our own selves. God is in process of ‘changing’ as a result of the coincidence of God’s magnetic power and our own Thought. As the ‘Quantity of cosmic Union’ rises, so the brilliance increases and the glow of God’s coloring grows richer. God can in the future be experienced and apprehended (and can even, in a true sense, be completed) by the whole ambient totality of what we call Evolution. This is still, of course, Christianity and always will be, but a Christianity reincarnated for the second time. Christianity, we might say, squared in the spiritual energies of Matter.”
“You know that for some time now the principal interest in my life is no longer simply Fossil Human, but the Human of tomorrow; or, more exactly, ‘the God of tomorrow,’ since I am more and more convinced that the great event of our time is a kind of change in the face of God in which the pure ‘God of above’ of yesterday is being combined with a kind of ‘God of ahead’ in extension of the Human. More and more I see growing in me the evidence not of ‘God who is dying,’ as Nietzsche said, but ‘God who is changing,’ so that the Upward movement is now reinforced by a Forward movement never before considered by the religions.”
In this revolutionary view, it is ultimately an aspect of GOD that is evolving within the process of evolution, taking on new experiences within the life of each kind of creature that evolves. At the same time, Teilhard understands that God is also transcendent to the process, standing at the end of time, luring all things into the ultimate Goal of the evolutionary process: Divine Union!
Photo: Spirea, Eunice Lake and Mount Rainier; Mount Rainier National Park, WA; July 29, 2013
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