Saturday, November 21, 2009

(2) Cosmic Christ

Scraping through these specifics proved long and tedious.
Teilhard was really difficult to read--and sometimes equally
hard to understand. But I was persistent and came-up with
what I determined was his pattern of thought about the
Cosmic Christ.

However, right off, I must make mention that it would seem that
Teilhard's ensuing thinking about the Cosmic Christ came *after*
a special experience he admitted having. This strange experience
assumingly left him with a unique insight, wherein he began to
understand that the Jesus of History was also the Cosmic Christ.

Teilhard proceeded. As a faith-filled Jesuit he strived to under-
stand and undertake what he deemed a "unity" between Jesus
and the Cosmic Christ--and further along, a unity that included all
of humanity.

Following through with Teilhard's idea of a Cosmogenesis,
alone it presented a "faceless God." As others have discovered,
the cosmology in Teilhard's day, the cosmology of our own times,
seems impersonal. Perhaps the most that we can make of it--in
terms of familiarity--is as the Plenum or Prime Mover of the
universe.

But Teilhard stressed that, indeed, this Plenum was the Cosmic
Christ. He endowed Personality upon the universe. And he
seriously believed that this great Person came to Earth in the
form of a man--Jesus of Nazareth! Jesus became the face of
God, Western Civilization's *Imago Dei.*

Teilhard also focused on what both St. John and St. Paul--and
the later Christian Fathers--proclaimed, that Jesus was the
"Incarnation of the Logos." Again, we must remember that the
early Greek philosophers considered the Logos to be the
Godhead, the Cosmic Plenum.

At this point, I knew that Teilhard could no longer be observed
as a dispassionate scientist. After his special experience, he
followed what he perceived to be an insight into the Truth. And,
thus, he declared that the crux of his particular faith system was
that Truth.

Teilhard felt that the whole movement of the universe is converging
upon God. And as he put, "if we accept the evidence that the
Christ of revelation is identical with the Omega of evolution, then
a way out begins to shine through in the most distant future."

At this point, Teilhard delves into some interesting detail. He
believed that the eucharistic presence was the symbol and
concrete sign of Christ's "kenosis into matter." In other words
the Incarnation! And ultimately, via evolution, humanity would
share in the Resurrection of Christ.

For Teilhard "evolution" was essentially an ascent towards
humanity's reflective consciousness. He also believed that the
universe was converging towards some ultimate center--a
Supreme Center. And though millions upon millions years
away , this Great Center that Teilhard also called "Omega"
was the ultimate end of the whole evolutionary process.
And to repeat, Teilhard sincerely believed in the "evidence"
that the Christ of Revelation was identical to the Omega of
Evolution!