Teilhardism And The New Religion by Dr. Wolfgang Smith

Author:Dr. Wolfgang Smith [Smith, Wolfgang]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TAN Books
Published: 2015-09-29T04:00:00+00:00

Even though "creation, incarnation and redemption are not facts which can be localized at a given point of time and space,"57 Teilhard assures us that "it is nevertheless true that all three can take the form of particular expressive facts . . . These historical facts, however, are only a specially heightened expression of a process which is 'cosmic' in dimensions."58 Thus, in Teilhard's eyes, the birth of the Redeemer is but "a specially heightened expression" of a universal cosmic process that is going on throughout the universe. But in that case one might well ask what it is that distinguishes the "historical" Christ? If it be true that Jesus of Nazareth came into existence by the same evolutionary path which (according to the Darwinists) has been traversed by us all, why should he be unlike other men? Why should he have been singled out, as it were, "to become Omega"? Are we to suppose, perhaps, that he was accidentally endowed with a bigger brain?

Be that as it may, Teilhard seems in any case to concur with the judgment of Christianity that by His Resurrection the Incarnate Christ became kyrios, Lord of the world: "It marks Christ's effective assumption of his function as the universal center,"59 Teilhard affirms. One wonders, of course, what "Resurrection" could mean to an evolutionist, and for that matter, how (under such auspices) it can be imagined that a deceased person could become a universal center. And as one might surmise, these are questions which do not seem to interest Teilhard particularly, and on which he does not care to shed much light. When it comes to such matters it would appear that he is perfectly content to invoke the authority of Christian tradition as a sufficient guarantee that his assertions are true. In Teilhard's eyes, apparently, Catholic tradition is something to be used when it serves one's purpose, and cast aside when it does not.

The Resurrection, then, is a fact: "It marks Christ's effective assumption of his function as the universal center." Now this statement (rightly understood) is of course entirely orthodox. But the next sentence, already, is not: "Until that time," Teilhard goes on to say, "he was present in all things as a soul that is painfully gathering together its embryonic elements." Not at all: "until that time" Christ was indeed present in all things, but not "as a soul that is painfully gathering together its embryonic elements" (whatever this less-than-felicitous expression might mean). As the Logos, the eternal Word of God, Christ has always been "present in all things," that is to say, immanent in the universe; this is not something that has come to pass at a particular moment of cosmic history. The immanence of God is a metaphysical fact which does not coincide with the Incarnation. Nor does it have anything to do with a pre-human "soul," or with a painful "gathering together of embryonic elements." What Christianity teaches is that Christ assumed a soul when He assumed a body:

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