Page 41 - AECA.org.uk ¦ Koinonia 67

and growth (which involves work and effort). These are all necessary parts of
Teilhard’s system and there is no obvious connection between human sin and
evil. The requirement produced by this to explain the origins of evil is relegated
to the following comment: ‘Is it really sure that for an eye trained and
sensitised by light other than that of pure science, the quantity and the malice
of evil hic et nunc, spread through the world does not betray a certain excess,
inexplicable to our reason, if to the normal effect of evolution is not added the
extraordinary effect of some catastrophe or primordial deviation’. 21
In a related discussion in The Divine Milieu, Teilhard sees death as the
most important physical and moral evil (similar to ‘disorder and failure’). He
sees the problem of evil as ‘reconciling failures with creative goodness and
22
power’ and tells us that this is ‘not finally explicable’. It seems that God is not
responsible for the presence of evil in the world: ‘It is a perfectly correct view
of things – and strictly consonant with the Gospel to regard Providence across
the ages as brooding over the world in ceaseless effort to spare the world its
bitter wounds and bind up its hurts. Most certainly it is God Himself who, in
the course of the centuries awakens the great benefactors of humankind, and
the great physicians, in ways that agree with the general rhythm of progress’. 23
In Appendix 10 of Origins of Religion, Men assesses the legacy of Teilhard.
He begins by affirming Teilhard’s positive view of the world in its ability to
realise Omega through the progress of love. The material world has a sanctified
state, and the Incarnation is proof of its spiritual value. Men interprets this
Omega as an eschatological vision consistent with those of Revelation and the
Kingdom of God/Heaven. He is enthusiastic about Teilhard’s view that a
creative spiritual power lies behind evolutionary processes, and that the
spirituality of humans is a convergent power that leads the universe towards a
full eschatological realisation.
24
Men, however, also recognises a certain duality in the picture
presented to us by Scripture. Both ascending and descending views are
possible, and this Men explains by the fact that ‘humankind is left with a free

21 Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man, p312
22 Teilhard, The Divine Milieu (Le Milieu Divin), p64. [Collins. London. 1960]
23 Teilhard, The Divine Milieu, p63
24 ‘двойственность’

39