Here, the spiritual heritage of world faiths and philoso-
phies is most important, providing some of the most valuable
spiritual energy resources. Human beings are responsible for
their further self-evolution and a greater unification of the
human community, but these goals need ultimately spiritual,
rather than merely material, resources, and the greatest of
these spiritual resources is love. The noosphere as a sphere
of thought—surrounding the globe like the atmosphere as
a layer of air or the biosphere as layer of life—can also be in-
terpreted as an active sphere of love through which greater
bonds of unity, of “amorization,” are created between human
beings. Teilhard was convinced that people must study the
phenomenon of love as the most sacred spiritual energy re-
source in the same way that they study all other phenomena
in the world. Love is so central in his thinking that Teilhard’s
entire corpus can be interpreted as a metaphysic of love. Yet
he also called for a rigorously scientific approach to the ener-
gies of love, just as the sociologist Pitirim Sorokin proposed
a scientific analysis of the production of “love-energy” in the
human community, so necessary for its self-transformation.
Teilhard’s dynamic understanding of God is sometimes
compared to that of process philosophy and is best described
as panentheism. His deeply mystical approach to God is ex-
pressed in his spiritual writings, such as The Divine Milieu
and The Heart of Matter (1978). It centers above all in the
person of Christ, whom Teilhard experienced as a cosmic
and universal reality. He spoke of the “three natures” of
Christ: human, divine, and cosmic. His numerous reflections
on the universal, cosmic Christ contain important sugges-
tions for a new Christology, never systematically developed.
Teilhard spoke of the ever-present, ever-greater Christ, ex-
pressing a strongly Christocentric vision of faith that was
grounded in a pan-Christic mysticism. As he often used the
image of fire and heart, drawn from the Bible and the Chris-
tian mystics, Teilhard’s spirituality can also be described as
a fire-and-heart mysticism, at once profoundly modern and
ancient. In its affirmation of the world as God’s creation, it
belongs to the kataphatic rather than apophatic type of
Christian mysticism, expressing a strong affinity with con-
temporary creation spirituality.
Mircea Eliade saw Teilhard de Chardin’s specific genius
in celebrating the sacredness of the cosmos. However, the
cosmos cannot be seen in isolation from the social and spiri-
tual bonds of humanity, animated by the powers of all-
transforming love and seeking a higher form of union. Scat-
tered across Teilhard’s writings exists a general theory about
religion as the driving force in human evolution. Central to
the phenomenon of religion and spirituality is the phenome-
non of mysticism, experienced in a variety of forms across
different religious traditions and culminating in a mysticism
of love and action.
Teilhard’s vision of the world represents a unique blend
of science, religion, and mysticism. Central to it are the ideas
of the noosphere and the divine milieu—the first belonging
more to a secular context, the second to a deeply religious
context—as well as ideas about spiritual energy, and the
transformative powers of love. The essayistic, fragmentary
nature of Teilhard’s work, with its profusion of ideas and flu-
idity of language, marks him more as a postmodern than a
traditional thinker. Insufficiently well known, and often
cited out of context, his work contains challenging reflec-
tions on God, the world, humanity, science and religion,
ecological responsibilities, interfaith encounter, and the con-
vergence of religions. Teilhard’s work also explores a greater
unification, or “planetization,” of humanity; the place of the
feminine and love in creating greater unity; and the central
importance of spirituality and mysticism. Some of his
thoughts are insufficiently developed and opaquely ex-
pressed; others must be criticized for certain elements of ex-
clusiveness and Eurocentrism. Yet his ideas are said to have
influenced the founding debates of the United Nations, sev-
eral documents of the Second Vatican Council, Christian-
Marxist dialogue, discussions on futurology, and discussions
concerning the World Wide Web, whose patron he is some-
times said to be. Others have called Teilhard a New Age
prophet, yet such a description ignores the profoundly Chris-
tian core of his vision.
Teilhard’s mysticism of action is directed towards the
creative transformation of the outer and inner world, and it
is based on the deepest communion with God, intimately
present throughout creation. Teilhard’s powerful affirmation
of the incarnation and his brilliant vision of the universal,
cosmic Christ within an evolutionary perspective provide in-
spiring ideas for a reinterpretation of the Christian faith in
the modern world, governed by an ongoing scientific and
spiritual quest. Theologians will be interested in his under-
standing of God, Christ, and creation; scholars of religion
will gain from his reflections on the place of religion, espe-
cially mysticism, in human evolution; and scientists are at-
tracted to the newly emerging possibilities of the noosphere
and the as yet unexplored energies of love for achieving pro-
found personal and social transformation.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s religious and philosophical works
were published posthumously in French between 1955 and
1976 in thirteen volumes entitled Oeuvres (Éditions du Seuil,
Paris). Their English translations appeared between 1959
and 1978. Also published were numerous volumes of letters,
extracts from his diaries, and the collection of his previously
published scientific papers, L’Oeuvre scientifique, edited by
Nicole and Karl Schmitz-Moormann, 11 vols. (Olten, Swit-
zerland, 1971).
Teilhard presents his evolutionary system in its most complete
form in The Phenomenon of Man (London and New York,
1959), now available in a much-improved translation by
Sarah Appleton-Weber, The Human Phenomenon (Brighton,
U.K., and Portland, Ore., 1999). To understand the full in-
tent of this work, one should first read Teilhard’s classic
treatment of Christian spirituality in The Divine Milieu
(London and New York, 1960; reprint, translated by Siôn
Cowell, Brighton, UK, 2004), followed by the theological es-9034 TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, PIERRE