The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love by Delio Ilio

Author:Delio, Ilio [Delio, Ilio]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbis Books
Published: 2013-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

A Worldly God

Richard Kearney argues for a return to God after God, a new turn to religion that signals an awakening of consciousness of the sacred in secular reality. 23 Nietzsche’s death of God was not a true death but an end to the uninvolved, apathetic Unmoved Mover. The idea that God is dead is already contained in the Christian idea of the death of God. God ceases to be an external object in order to mingle in human life, and this life is not simply a return to a non-temporal conclusion. The self-emptying of God into everyday reality is what Incarnation is about. God becomes as “nothing” so as to appear as something, a human person. Jesus himself spoke of God dwelling in the least and lowly: “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters you do for me” (Mt 25:31–46). God, Irenaeus of Lyons wrote, is the human person fully alive. Kearney states: “This is not some anthropological reduction of the infinite to the finite, but a recognition that the infinite is to be found at the core of each finite now, that the divine word inhabits the flesh of the world, in suffering and action.” 24 Christianity is less a religion of formal ritual and worship than a return to human personhood. God is not somewhere in a heavenly sphere or a type of virtual reality; God is truly in our midst, as one of evolutionary us.

Teilhard also argued for a return of God to the world by moving beyond the classic, static metaphysical understanding of God, beginning with the Incarnation as the starting point for knowing God. We are floundering and fragmenting, he indicates, because God is absent from the core of collective human life. By shrinking the Incarnation to a narrow and juridical understanding of sin and salvation, we have lost sight of its organic meaning: divine Love is so profound that God becomes as “nothing” so as to appear as “something.” God is not an intellectual idea but love expressed in personal otherness—this person of Jesus. God is the one who appears “despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; as one from whom men hide their face” (Is 53:3). God stands like a beggar at the soul’s door: “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Rv 3:20).

Teilhard’s evolutionary theology places Christianity squarely within cosmic history. He does not see Christianity as normative of all religion but normative of evolution; Christianity fulfills an essential function in evolution. The goal of Christianity is the aim of evolution itself—personal unity in love. Christianity begins with physicality and personal being. God is the name of radical love, and love becomes self-conscious in human persons: “The Father and I are one,” Jesus said (Jn 10:30). God is the depth of reality’s sacredness. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God” (Gerard Manley Hopkins), but one must be able to see this grandeur.

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