Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Comment to Evolution and Original Sin by Nathan O'Halloran, SJ

Nathan's summary of Teilhard's ponderings on original sin is very informative. It should be mentioned that in Teilhard's time (the early 20th century), his writings on theology were extensively muzzled by Church authorities. Pope Benedict is recognizing Teilhard's insights nearly a century late (better late than never). The Augustinian/Pauline notion of how Adam's single "gotcha" disobedience taints us all has never resonated with me -- it simplifies human creation with rigidly logical dualism. I do not reject the standard original sin doctrine, I sense it to be thoroughly incomplete.


Why not embrace Teilhard's notion that humanity was created with a profound potential for sin and separation from its Creator. "In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss . . . ." The building material for man, earthen clay, seems imbued with a great potential for darkness, although it certainly need not develop in a dark way.

Adam and Eve, the prototype original humans, were persuaded to indulge a yearning to be like gods themselves and so they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and bad, their eyes were opened, and suddenly they became so self-conscious and self-absorbed that they perceived a shame in their nakedness. An ego-centered, comparing mind that sees everything as good or bad, better or worse, worthy of envy or worthy of disdain, takes root in mankind. Life is no longer perceived as a unified harmony, and becomes something commenced in pain, lived in toil and surrendered in death and bodily decay. Adam and Eve's legacy is that each succeeding generation embraces life in this fallen way -- it is taught and reinforced by example, again and again and again. We quickly forget and abandon the unified harmony that enveloped us in utero and in infancy.

Part of the Good News is that this fallen way can be unlearned, and part of the notion of being born again is learning to perceive God's unified harmony and learning to keep the judging ego in check. Our Lord provides a great gift with his Parable of the Prodigal Son. It seems that until we descend and humbly surrender like the prodigal son, we tend to live like the prodigal's brother, in a hard-hearted delusion of virtue.

Teilhard led a life filled with great triumphs and great difficulties. It is interesting that the importance of his observations of conditions from a century ago have great relevance and recognition now.