Nineteen essays concerned with the relationship of science and religion. As a believing scientist, Teilhard wrestled with the problem of presenting to the believer a scientific picture that would enlarge his religious vision and to the scientist a statement of religious ideas that would integrate with his understanding of reality. Foreword by N. M. Wildiers; Index. Translated by René Hague.A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a Jesuit priest and paleontologist who studied chemistry, physics, botany, and zoology and received his doctorate in geology. The author of several works of philosophy and religion, he is considered by many to be among the foremost thinkers of our time. Toward the Future was first published in 1973. Christianity And Evolution By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, René Hague Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Copyright © 1969 Editions du Seuil All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-15-602818-9 Contents Title Page, Contents, Copyright, Foreword, NOTE ON THE PHYSICAL UNION BETWEEN THE HUMANITY OF CHRIST AND THE FAITHFUL IN, THE COURSE OF THEIR SANCTIFICATION, ON THE NOTION OF CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION, NOTE ON THE MODES OF DIVINE ACTION IN THE UNIVERSE, FALL, REDEMPTION, AND GEOCENTRISM, NOTE ON SOME POSSIBLE HISTORICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF ORIGINAL SIN, PANTHEISM AND CHRISTIANITY, CHRISTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION, HOW I BELIEVE, SOME GENERAL VIEWS ON THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, CHRIST THE EVOLVER, OR A LOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEA OF REDEMPTION, INTRODUCTION TO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION: SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW THEOLOGY, REFLECTIONS ON ORIGINAL SIN, THE CHRISTIAN PHENOMENON, MONOGENISM AND MONOPHYLETISM: AN ESSENTIAL DISTINCTION, WHAT THE WORLD IS LOOKING FOR FROM THE CHURCH OF GOD AT THIS MOMENT, THE CONTINGENCE OF THE UNIVERSE AND MANâ&8364;(tm)S ZEST FOR SURVIVAL, A SEQUEL TO THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN ORIGINS: THE PLURALITY OF INHABITED WORLDS, THE GOD OF EVOLUTION, MY LITANY, Index, About the Author, Footnotes, CHAPTER 1 NOTE ON THE PHYSICAL UNION BETWEEN THE HUMANITY OF CHRIST AND THE FAITHFUL IN THE COURSE OF THEIR SANCTIFICATION We may distinguish a priori (and meet a posteriori in different theological and mystical currents) three different tendencies in the ways of explaining how Christ ' vitis et vita vera, ' Christ 'caput creationis et ecclesiae', acts upon the faithful in the course of their sanctification. There are some Christians who understand Christ's saving influence primarily by analogy with our moral, juridical, categorical forms of causality; with, that is, some suggestion of the letter of the law, of something imposed from outside. Others, however, are more inclined to look at the 'natural', intrinsic, side of things, and try to explain Christ's action as experienced by us by relating it chiefly to the physical and organic causalities of the universe. These latter fall, again, into two classes: those who attach the vivifying action upon souls above all to the Word, in Jesus Christ — and those who tend to attribute as large as possible a part in this physical operation to the humanity of our Lord. It calls for no great experience of the Christian soul to see that the last of these three tendencies — that which tends to magnify (to 'emphasize') the physical links between Christ's humanity and ourselves — is particularly vigorous today. The object of this note is to indicate a possible way of understanding and establishing this thesis — accepted in practice by many Christians in their interior life — that the holiness of the Christian develops and is completed in a sort of contact (physical and permanent) with the actually human reality of Christ the Saviour. A solid basis for the demonstration, or rather the suggestions, we have in mind may profitably be sought in a consideration of the consummated mystical body (that is, the Pauline pleroma). In the first place, since the pleroma is the kingdom of God in its completed form, the properties attributed to it by Scripture must be regarded as specially characteristic of the entire supernatural organism, even if they are to be found only in an ill-defined form in any particular preparatory phase of beatification. Secondly, in no other reality is the physical and personal action of the theandric Christ made manifest to us by revelation more than in the Church triumphant. When we try to sum up the Church's teaching and the thought of the saints on the innermost nature of beatitude, we find that in heaven both Christ and the elect must be regarded as forming one living whole, disposed in a strict hierarchic pattern. Each elect soul, it is true, possesses God directly, and finds in that unique possession the fulfilment of his own individuality. But, however individual this possession of the divine, this contact, may be, they are not obtained individually. The beatific vision, which illuminates each of the elect for him