Science and the Bible by Bolton Davidheiser Chairman, Science Division Biola College PIERRE TE ILHARD DE CHARD IN
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O ne of the most controversial fig ures of our time is Pierre Teil olic priest, who died in 1955. Such outstanding scientists as Julian Hux ley and George Gaylord Simpson praise him highly, although he is famous for his philosophical and theological writings and not for his scientific work. These writings are so heretical that the Catholic church forbade their publicaton during his lifetime. But less than ten years after his death his biographies total more than 1200 titles; the French govern ment has struck a medallion in his honor, bearing his profile and his “ axiom” : “ Everything that rises con verges” ; a seminar about him has been conducted in a Catholic university by a professor who said, “ Teilhard will become the church’s new philosophi cal system” ; and it is reported that an expert on the second Vatican council predicted that its outcome “ will eith er reflect the Teilhard spirit or it will accomplish nothing of impor tance.” As a boy of six or seven he began to collect objects of metal, such as nails and discarded cartridge shells, and worshipped them as idols. He later confessed that despair over whelmed him when he discovered that iron rusts, and to console himself he searched for more durable idols. This was not just the idle musing of a child, irrelevant to his later views, for he admitted that his entire spirit ual life seemed to him to be a de velopment of this childhood belief. An instance of this is seen in the criticism he receives for his ascribing of consciousness to inanimate matter. Evolution is the heart of Teilhard’s philosophy and theology. He holds that “ Evolution is a central condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow, and which they must satisfy if they are to be think able and true. Evolution is the light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.” In an essay he described Christ as a presence ir radiating evolution. To those Chris tians who fear the evolutionary ap proach he has this to say: “ Though frightened for a moment by evolu tion, the Christian now perceives that
what it offers is nothing but a mag nificent means of feeling more at one with God and giving himself to him.” Of himself he says, “ It gives me great strength to know that the whole effort of evolution is reducible to the justification and development of the love of God.” According to Teilhard, evolution started with inanimate matter at a point which he calls Alpha, and it is converging to a point which he calls Omega. Omega is the culmina tion of all evolution — inanimate, animate, and spiritual — and it is equivalent to God. The force which is drawing everything to this con vergence at Omega is love. He says that this love draws even inanimate objects and that it is more funda mental than the love for wife, chil dren, friends, or country. He holds that eventually all mankind, indi vidually and collectively, will achieve perfect union with God. His descrip tion of the ultimate, translated trom French into English, is as follows: “Now when sufficient elements have sufficiently agglomerated, this essen tially convergent moment will attain such intensity and such quality that mankind, taken as a whole, will be obliged . . . to reflect upon itself at a single point; that is to say, in this case, to abandon its organo-planetary foothold so as to pivot itself on the transcendent center of its increasing concentration. This will be the end and the fulfillment of the spirit of the earth.” On Easter Sunday in 1955, Teil hard was commenting on the splen dor of the day, when he fell to the floor unconscious. When he regained consciousness he said, “ . . . But what happened? I don’t remember any thing . . . This time it is terrible.” He died before a physician or priest could be summoned. A Russian translation is being pre pared which will make Teilhard’s philosophy acceptable to the Com munists, and it will have a preface written by the author of a book called “ God is Dead.” Teilhard himself said that a synthesis of the Christian “ God- up-above” and the Marxist “ God- up-ahead” is the only God whom we can worship today “ in spirit and in truth.”
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