Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born in 1881, and died in 1955. He was a French Jesuit priest, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher. But he was also a spiritual father of the New Age movements. He was the fourth of 11 children of a librarian and naturalist, Emmanuel. His mother, Berthe, was the great-grandniece of Voltaire, a famous Enlightenment writer and hater of Christianity. Pierre’s spirituality was awakened by his mother. When he was 12, he went to a Jesuit college, became a novitiate, and made his first vows in 1901. In 1902, the French premiership began an anti-clerical agenda. Religious associations were forced to submit their properties to state control, which obliged the Jesuits to go into exile in Britain. Teilhard did much of his early work on their island Jersey, but he was a world traveler, and Paris and New York were also his home bases later on.
He was
Darwinian in outlook, and his early teaching on Original Sin was so unorthodox
that he got himself banned by the Superior General of the Society of Jesuits in
1925. But that didn’t stop him. He still
prepared to teach in China on evolutionary geology, also a no-no—so he was
fired by his Jesuit Superiors in 1926 from any teaching at all.
He still
went to China and dove into paleontology.
He took part in the discovery of Peking Man in 1926. The problem is, Peking Man likely did not
confirm evolution. The site contained
fragmented skull bones, teeth and tools, supposedly from rock layers 750,000
years ago. This was trumped up as a missing link to apes. But in a 1959 book, a Catholic Chinese
missionary, Patrick O’Connell, accused the scientists involved with fraud. He claimed that the actual skulls (which
disappeared in 1941) were just baboons, but the photographs and casts and
measurements were tampered with to make them appear more human. This was from his observations of the site;
his theory had enough evidence that it was circulated by Duane Gish, Christian
creationist scientist in 1979. (P.S.
Neither Wikipedia nor Catholic writings have anything negative to say about the
Peking Man; it has not been proven as a fraud).
But it is also noteworthy that de Chardin was also previously at the
scene of Piltdown Man, discovered in 1912.
But this was definitely a proven fraud, and, since the evidence didn’t
disappear this time, it was confirmed as a hoax in 1953. It was really an “altered mandible and some teeth of an
orangutan deliberately combined
(there’s the fraud) with the cranium of a fully developed, though small-brained, modern human.” Shall we hint that the M.O. of the crime was
very similar to the Peking Man, and both were under de Chardin’s watch? Both of these “proofs,” though they were likely
hoaxes, were offered for the defense at the “Scopes Monkey Trial” in 1925. To show you how the U.S. has changed, Mr.
Scopes, a science teacher in Tennessee, was sued because he taught evolution,
when Creationist teaching was the only one legal in Tennessee at the time. Scopes, with the help of the Peking and
Piltdown exhibits, and the help of the famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow,
was judged not guilty, and in fact, he was offered a new teaching contract—so,
he got off easy, partly based on this “evidence” at the time.
Getting to
theology, one of de Chardin’s controversial theories was a mixture of science
and religion, seldom done at the time, since most “approved” scientists were
agnostic. He conceived of the “vitalist”
idea of the Omega Point. Omega Point, to him, means that “everything in the
universe is fated to spiral towards a final point of unification…the Omega
Point resembles the Christian Logos.” Logos is another word for Jesus Christ,
but de Chardin’s version of Logos was quite different. His” theory” was presented publicly in
1922. This was also reflected in a book
he wrote in 1919, “The Spiritual Power of Matter.” Vitalism is the belief that “living organisms
are fundamentally different from non-living entities (in that they) contain a
non-physical element.” That mysterious
element he referred to as the “vital spark,” which some equate to the soul (he
was cagey on this, but that was ultimately proven to be his intent). But he maintained that plants, since they are
a living organism, have a conscious soul.
In the 18th and 19thcenturies a similar theory of
vitalism was actually discussed among biologists. They tested the hypothesis but found no
support (Benjamin Franklin and Franz Mesmer actually studied it). It is now regarded as a pseudoscience.
Perhaps
his biggest works was The
Phenomenon of Man, 1959 (English). This posthumously
published book set forth a sweeping account of the evolution of matter to
attain humanity, then upward again to an ultimate goal of a reunion with Logos.
In the book, Teilhard abandoned literal interpretations of creation in
Genesis in favor of allegorical and theological interpretations. This is an example of one of his false teachings: In Matthew 5:17,
Jesus actually said:
I have come, not to
destroy, but to fulfill the law
Teilhard blasphemously
re-interpreted His quote as: "I have come not to destroy, but to fulfill
Evolution.”
Unlike other
Darwinians, he believed that evolution occurs in
a directional, goal-driven way. He believed in the following evolution
procession: evolution of matter into a geosphere, into a biosphere, into
consciousness (in man), and then to supreme consciousness (the Omega
Point). No mention of the crucifixion,
and no mention of our Rapture to get to that “Omega Point.” Oh, yes, he does mention Salvation—but it’s a
collective and universal one, as we all evolve to get there. As he says, “no evolutionary future awaits
anyone except in association with everyone else.” Also, evolution was "the natural
landscape where the history of salvation is situated.” He uses two Bible verses to defend
himself: Colossians 1:17b:
And He (Christ) is before all
things, and in Him all things consist (KJV, “hold together”).
And I Corinthians 15:28:
Now when all things are made
subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put
all things under Him, that God may be all in all.
In one
speech, he asserted that these Scriptures were “pan-Christicism,” or that
Christ was tolerant of other ways to get to Omega Point besides orthodox
Christianity. This is now two
re-definitions of Jesus Christ and His purpose he has come up with. His tinkering with Christ to achieve his
ideal should engender a fear of God in him, but it doesn’t. He wrote further
that Christ, to him, does not have two natures:
He has three. He says Christ is not only man and God; he also possesses a third
aspect—indeed, a third nature—which is cosmic. The Body of Christ is not simply
a mystical or ecclesial concept for Teilhard; it is
cosmic. Teilhard describes this cosmic amassing of Christ as
"Christogenesis." I.e., according to Teilhard, the universe is
engaged in Christogenesis as it evolves toward its full realization at Omega, a
point which coincides with the fully realized Christ. It is at this point that God will be "all in all."
You can
see where he is taking this:
pantheism. God/Christ is in all
things, now and in that perfect future; in human and even plant, since ALL
living organisms have “vitalism.” This
is multiple blasphemy, but it is politically on point for the extremes of the
environmental and New Age groups.
Since
all evolution involves mutation, he has a warped thinking on that score as
well. As apologist Dr. Martin put it, “From his
correspondence, it is clear that Teilhard was not overly shocked by bloodshed,
and regarded violence as necessary to Evolution, and seemed to have enjoyed
war--what he saw of it. Death, bloody or otherwise, was what he called a
"mutation." As he said, "it would be more to my purpose to be a
shadow of Wagner than a shadow of Darwin." That means he prefers
G6tterdiimerung (i.e., world-altering
destruction marked by extreme chaos and violence), than slow, ordinary
Darwin. I might add, here, that many cults speak in this apocalyptic way,
hoping that at the end of the violence, a new and better society can be raised
from the ruins. In some cults, its disciples die in suicidal events, like
bombings, to hurry-up this better end. The ruling elite of the Nazis also
believed that; it was their way to the Perfect Man.
Teilhard
rejected all fundamental Christian beliefs, since believing it means he must
accept that mankind’s evil and violence has erupted from Adam and Eve’s
Original Sin—not the things that he wants to blame (below) for these
depredations. When he saw the famous cyclotrons (atom-bomb accelerators) at the
U.C. Berkley campus, he was filled "not with terror but with peace and
joy" at these tremendous "wombs of change." It was apparently
not the specter of Doomsday he saw there, but the possibility that Doomsday
would be the womb of the Omega Point—which would give us a new, better
world.
Yet always and everywhere he spoke and
behaved as the visionary with a rock-solid certainty about the future. But, for
all of that, there is not one line of his that indulges the same infectious
enthusiasm for things the Jesuits were trained for: celebrating the Sacrifice of the Mass; for
making reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; for removing sins from sinners;
for teaching children their catechism; or for consoling the oppressed. All of
him was wrapped up in his version of the "winsome doctrine," in the
impersonal glory that would come to every man with the arrival of the
"Ultra-Human." He bemoaned
that "no religion explicitly and officially offers us the God we
need." (As if what “we need” has
any bearing on Him or His sovereignty.)
He asserted that no faith should be placed any longer in the
supernatural, but only in man becoming more than man by his own innate drives.
He was critical of God’s revelation of Himself in His Word (especially the Old
Testament): he called such a God a "monstrous idea." He also derides
the church: she needed to abandon
"juridicism” (this is very modern woke theology, considering the current
Bible phase most quoted by non-believers, “Thou shalt not judge”), along with getting
rid of moralism, and all things “artificial” in order to live in the very
function of the call to love, by a (man-created) God who so elevates our
energies. I don’t know how, but he even perverts the meaning of the Cross: he
says that the Sign of the Cross was not suffering and death transformed into
eternal life and glory, but the Cross is Evolution's triumph. I don’t see the
connection. And he had a swipe at marriage and family in his day, too: He thought God's order to Adam and Eve
"to increase and multiply" no longer applied. We should now use eugenics to aim at the optimum in
birth, not the self-control in reproduction. Eugenics was later found to be
fake science, and in fact, racist.
Hitler passionately believed in eugenics. Teilhard was a man ahead of his time in not
only also prophesying birth control, but asserting that we have "the
absolute right to try everything to the end--even in the matter of human
biology (sexuality, euthanasia, conception in vitro, homosexuality).” Another
of his comments that was scarily dead-on for the wokes today was this: he
wanted to offset the excessive "masculinity of Jehovah."
It’s
hard to believe that he wrote most of this in the 1950s.
Teilhard,
as I said, had a profound influence on the New
Age movements as
well. To quote Henry Morris, CEO of
Institute for Creation Research: “Although New Agers have a form of religion,
their "god" is Evolution, not the true God of creation. Many of them
regard the controversial priest, Teilhard de Chardin, as their spiritual
father.” New Agers have been around for decades,
stomping on Christian fundamentals, but that is the subject of another whole
paper.
He
further posits that creation
would not be complete until each "participated being is totally united with God through Christ
in the Pleroma (don’t you just love all the new words?--very
intimidating). Pleroma is defined as the
“totality of divine powers.” (Gnostics like to use the word too. Gnostics have been around for thousands of
years, stomping on Christian fundamentals.
But that is the subject of another paper). Note that we are all going to have these
divine powers at the Omega Point; we are all going to be like God. (Satan’s favorite lie, Genesis 3). At that Point, “the cosmos will be
transformed; and the glory of it all will be established.” In one of his conferences, he said that
Mankind will acquire “the sudden
appearance of a collective humane conscience."
Further,
he said “spiritual development is moved by the same universal laws as material
development.” Since evolution, our
material development, is “indisputably” moving us up, he has the same optimism
of our spiritual development. He expresses that
God is “pulling” is to the Omega Point.
Further evolution, he says, will eventually provide us with “a
unification of consciousness.”
Let’s
not forget his ideal of unity in another way too: His alienation from capitalism and his
orientation to "the people" meant that evolution should also apply to
social justice in the distribution of goods, an equalization of property that
capitalism made impossible (he says). "Human society has been more and
more caught up in a yearning for true justice ... a liberation from the bonds
[of poverty and dependence brought on by capitalism] in which too many people
are still held,” he wrote.
The
Society of Jesuits have always been in favor of social justice. Jesuits led the way in liberation theology
after his time. That’s a big part of
salvation to them. As Dr. Martin says, “both the Jesuit and Dominican Religious
Orders had allowed some of their members to become worker-priests. These men
ate and slept, lived and worked in the very same conditions as the ordinary
workman. If their fellow workers joined Communist cells, they joined. If their
fellow workers rioted in the streets or demonstrated in front of a government
building, the worker-priests did too.” They were later forcibly recalled from
this by their Jesuit superiors, but half the worker-priests refused to obey the
recall order, and opted for membership in the Communist Party instead! As the
future Pope John XXIII put it, they had “not gained one soul through this
extensive output of manpower, but the Communist and Socialist parties had
benefitted enormously.” The idea of backing a socialist
revolution was not repulsive to this Pope—just not gaining new souls for the
Church—or keeping the ones they had.
Teilhard
showed his true leanings when he was distressed at Rome's intervention:
"Under the circumstances, and in a capitalist world, how does one remain a
Christian?" he asked. "Priest-workers find in the face of a humane
Marxism not only justice but hope and a feeling for the Earth which is
stronger than 'evangelical humanity. '" For Teilhard, Marxism presented no
real difficulty. "The Christian God on high," he wrote, "and the
Marxist God of Progress are reconciled in Christ." (I did not know that
Christ was so political). Little wonder
that Teilhard de Chardin is the only Roman Catholic author whose works are on
public display with those of Marx and Lenin in Moscow's Hall of Atheism!
It
seems that accepting this theory imposes either the abandonment or the
complete transformation of all the basic doctrines of Roman
Catholicism/Christian. Creation, Original Sin, the divinity of Jesus,
redemption by Jesus's death on the cross of Calvary, the Church, the
forgiveness of sins, the Sacrifice of the Mass, priesthood, papal
infallibility, Hell, Heaven, supernatural grace-even the existence and the
freedom of God-all must be reformulated, and perhaps abandoned in large part.
But
none of that stopped him from being championed by many cardinals and even
several recent Popes. He scoffed at superiors’ many attempts to muzzle him.
Despite the amazing freedom with which he spoke and published, Teilhard thought
of himself as belonging to the "brotherhood" for whom, as he bragged,
"thinking freely in the Church these days means going underground. Come to
think of it, that's what I've been doing for thirty years." In those days,
Church vigilantes were working overtime.
In 1962 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Catholic
institution, condemned his works (see their quote below), based on their
ambiguities and their doctrinal errors.
Pope Pius XII monitored him.
However, despite being banned several times from further writing, he
still wrote. But, after all, none of his
works were placed on their Index of Forbidden Books. Though his warped theology was loved by
several priests and cardinals early on, they kept their views private. He did get one favorable public mention in
those days—an influential French priest, Henri de Lubac, in 1962 affirmed his
works. It was finally decided that his
home base should be in the United States, not Europe, because of our feeling, I
believe, that freedom should be more important than dogma. But recently, with the degradation of
Catholic vigilance (which suggests, to me, that they have lost somewhat of
their mission and purpose), the encomiums have come thick and fast. He has been honored by Boston College, by
Villanova University—both Catholic schools, the former a Jesuit school—and by
passing mention in several plays and movies.
I should point out that scientists are not excited by all
this. To quote one: “ideas that were peculiarly his were confused, and the rest
was just bombastic redescription of orthodoxy." Another called him a “charlatan.” But he is loved enough by the Episcopal
Church that he is honored with a feast day on the Calendar of Saints of the
Episcopal Church on 10 April (the day of his death).
It is only
in the presence of death did that confident optimism and surety that was the
personal mark of this man seem to fade. "Now what does he 'see'? I
wonder," Teilhard wrote after the death of a friend; "And when will
my turn come?" On the occasion of another friend's death: "What shall
I 'see'?" That he put the word "see" in quotes showed no
persuasion that he would see Jesus and the Father and the Saints. It was an
uncertain sentiment for whose lack of faith ordinary words are not sufficient.
But he still said, “Dying and death were just the means of becoming one with
the universe.” But one wonders what sort of shock Teilhard experienced when on
that Easter day at last he "saw" the God of his eternal tomorrow, the
God-man who by dying had not become "part of the universe" but
remained its sovereign Lord--this time, as Judge.
To
bring this story right up-to-date: Here
is a summary of the article published in Catholic Culture (November 2017):
“Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin, the widely influential Jesuit paleontologist and
philosopher whose writings were cited with a “warning” by the Vatican in 1962,
may finally have that blot removed from his record.
Participants
at the recent plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for Culture that
discussed “The future of humanity: new challenges to anthropology” unanimously
approved a petition to be sent to Pope Francis requesting him to waive the
“monitum” (warning) issued by the Holy Office in 1962 regarding the writings of
Father de Chardin. The participants, which included top level scientists as
well as cardinals and bishops from Europe, Asia, America and Africa, applauded
when the text of the petition was read.
They
told Pope Francis that “on several occasions” during their discussions “the
seminal thoughts of the Jesuit Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, anthropologist
and eminent spiritual thinker, have been evoked.” They said, “we unanimously
agreed, albeit some of his writings might be open to constructive criticism,
his prophetic vision has been and is inspiring theologians and scientists.”
They mentioned that four popes—Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and now
Francis—had made “explicit references” to his work. Paul VI, in a Feb. 24, 1966 speech, while expressing some reservations,
praised a key insight of the Jesuit’s theory on the evolution of the universe,
pointed to it as a model for science and quoted the author’s statement: “The
more I study material reality, the more I discover spiritual reality.” John Paul II, in 1981, through his secretary
of state, wrote a letter to Monsignor (now cardinal) Paul Poupard, head of the
Institute Catholique in Paris, in which he praised the French Jesuit in words
that were widely interpreted as a sign that his rehabilitation was on the
horizon. Cardinal
Ratzinger, now known as Pope Benedict XVI, “spoke glowingly of Teilhard's Christology” by tying it into the
Mass, no less: “the
transubstantiated Host is the anticipation of the transformation and divinization (too close to divination?)
of matter in the christological "fullness." (A partial translation in English: We will
all become divine.) Further, in a homily during Evening Prayer in
the cathedral in Aosta, in northern Italy, on July 24, 2009, when he was Pope,
he commended an aspect of the French Jesuit’s vision when he said: “The role of
the priesthood is to consecrate the world so that it may become a living host,
a liturgy. This is also
the great vision of Teilhard de Chardin: in the end we shall
achieve a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a living host. Francis
(the current Pope) became the fourth pope to have something positive to say
about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He did so in 2015 in his encyclical in a
footnote, in which he speaks about the French Jesuit’s “contribution” to the
ultimate destiny of the universe. Moreover, the petition, seemed to find
receptive ground in his address to the plenary assembly last week.”
They concluded by
expressing their conviction that “this act not only will acknowledge the
genuine effort of the pious Jesuit to reconcile the “scientific” (my emphasis) vision of the universe with Christian
eschatology, but will represent a formidable stimulus for all philosophers,
theologians, theologians and scientists of good will to cooperate towards a
Christian anthropological model that fits naturally in the wonderful warp and
weft of the cosmos.
My final word: Let’s
hope they don’t cave in to another false doctrine by giving this guy
credibility. Let’s be vigilant to obey
II Timothy 4:3-4:
For the time will come
when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own
desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what
their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from
the truth and turn aside to myths.
Note: The Warnings
issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office are:
On June 30, 1962, the
Holy Office issued a monitum (warning) regarding the writings of Father
Teilhard de Chardin. In 1981 the Holy See reiterated this warning against
rumors that it no longer applied. Following is the text of both the monitum and
the 1981 statement:
For this reason, the
most eminent and most revered Fathers of the Holy Office exhort all Ordinaries
as well as the superiors of Religious institutes, rectors of seminaries and
presidents of universities, effectively to protect the minds, particularly of the
youth" Several works of Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, some of which were
posthumously published, are being edited and are gaining a good deal of
success.
"Prescinding from a
judgement about those points that concern the positive sciences, it is
sufficiently clear that the above-mentioned works abound in such ambiguities
and indeed even serious errors, as to offend Catholic doctrine, against the
dangers presented by the works of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and of his followers.
"Given at Rome,
from the palace of the Holy Office, on the thirtieth day of June, 1962.
Bibliography
The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of
the Roman Catholic Church, Malachi Martin, 1987 (He was a Jesuit priest and
paleographer who asked to be released from certain of his Jesuit vows, seeing
that he wrote extensive criticism of their works. He died in 1999).
America, the Jesuit Review, specifically:
www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/11/21/will-pope-francis-remove-vaticans-warning-teilhard-de-chardins-writings
www.catholicculture.org/search/searchResults.cfm?querynum=1&searchid=2083717&showCount=2
https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/scopes-trial
https://www.icr.org/article/evolution-new-age
www.wikipedia.com/pierreTeilharddeChardin
https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1936-6434-6-27
Title: Peking, Piltdown, and Paluxy: Creationist Legends About Paleoanthropology https://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/bible-verses-about-false-teachers
YouTube:
Posthumanism, Omega Point, Noosphere Theory, and Teilhard deChardin
The
Holy Bible
YouTube: POSTHUMANISM, OMEGA POINT, NOOSPHERE THEORY,
AND TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
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