He would take the lessons learned from the study of nature as the foundation
on which to reconstruct the Christian faith. He would single-handedly
remake all the dogmas of his own Catholic Church, and he would at the same
time remake the world of modern science on the model suggested by his
personal experience of God.". . .
Can science and religion be successfully remarried? Can a reunion
of these old lovers infuse new vitality to the whole of western culture,
as Teilhard passionately asserted it would, or, as his critics suggest,
does Teilhard accomplish the reconciliation of science and religion at
the expense of both partners to the marriage?" PIERRE
TEILHARD DE CHARDIN Toward a Science Charged with Faith Chapter 5 of God
and Science by Charles P. Henderson
(RECOMMENDED READING: http://crosscurrents.org/chardin/htm)
Teilhard himself wrote: "All around us, to right
and left, in front and behind, above and below, we have only to go a little
beyond the frontier of sensible appearances in order to see the divine
welling up and showing through. But it is not only close to us, in front
of us, that the divine presence has revealed itself. It has sprung up universally,
and we find ourselves so surrounded and transfixed by it, that there is
no room left to fall down and adore it, even within ourselves.
By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails
us, penetrates us and moulds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible,
whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers. In eo vivimus. As
Jacob said, awakening from his dream, the world, this palpable world, which
we were wont to treat with the boredom and disrespect with which we habitually
regard places with no sacred association for us, is in truth a holy place,
and we did not know it. Venite, adoremus" Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu: An Essay on the Interior Life (New
York: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 112.