With the publication of Laudato Si’ in 2015, and its weighty status as a papal encyclical, renewed interest has emerged in its sources and precedents. This remarkable book goes a long way in reminding its readers of the significance of Teilhard de Chardin in charting a path for the Roman Catholic Church not only to take science seriously but also to see science as providing a complementary and more-than-ancillary language for understanding the human condition in relation to the divine. By extending the metaphor of the rock as grounding the faith of Peter to the study of real rocks, Teilhard revolutionized the Roman Catholic Church's relationship with science and modernity.
Simply put, as a young boy Teilhard looked for certainty. He did not find certainty in people or in animals. He did not find it in metal, which will rust. But he did find certainty in a rock located in a field of the family farm. He treasured that rock, which inspired him to enter the fields of geology and archaeology. He traveled the world as a scientist and even wrote the definitive geologic history of Malibu Canyon in California, visible from the Jesuit campus of Loyola Marymount University. Being what one might consider an “associative thinker,” Teilhard saw the stuff of God imprinted in the physical world. He pioneered an incarnationalist theology that values the material world as an indicator of God's presence. Unfortunately, the Church regarded his thinking to be dangerous, bordering on the pantheistic, and he was forbidden to publish his philosophical and theological works during this lifetime. His writings were circulated in mimeographed chapbooks and found a great following. He lamented in his journals about not being able to share his theological views through normal channels.
Building on Teilhard's posthumously published work, and the writings of key scholars of Teilhard, Kathleen Duffy has provided a superb overview of his key ideas and his own feelings and struggles. This very human portrait chronicles his friendships, particularly with women, most notably his cousin Marguerite Teilhard-Chambon, professor Ida Treat from Cleveland, Léontine Zanta (the first woman to receive a philosophy doctorate from a French university), artist Lucile Swan (who had hoped Teilhard would leave the Jesuit order to marry her), and Rhoda de Terra, a married woman who served as his administrative assistant. As quoted by Duffy, Teilhard wrote in his autobiographical essay “The Heart of the Matter” (59): “I have experienced no form of self-development without some feminine eye turned on me, some feminine influence at work.”
The core of Teilhard's work circulates on the premise that, in Duffy's words, “the universe seems directed toward union, toward continual differentiation, and to the production of novel forms” (63). Teilhard saw continuity between the human narrative, with all its emotionality, and the emerging of cosmos, a connection that Thomas Berry later articulated in his studies of Asian thought and the book The Universe Story, coauthored with cosmologist Brian Swimme. The American Teilhard Society and the Forum on Religion and Ecology similarly have updated the relevance of Teilhard, with some of his key themes appearing in the documentary film Journey of the Universe. Teilhard's work of seeing connections between the human and the Earth takes on an urgency in this time of ecological ravage. The human presence within the universe, rather than enhancing human–Earth relations, has become a profoundly destructive force. Teilhard helps encourage a rediscovery of the sacred in the material realm in a way that can help support needed change.
This book should be part of the collection of all university and college libraries. It will make excellent required reading for undergraduate classes and graduate seminars in systematic theology, ethics, and religion and science.
