CMC
Magazine

March 1997 http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1997/mar/cunnomeg.html


Root Page of Article: Teilhard de Chardin and the Noosphere, by Rev. Phillip J. Cunningham, C.S.P.

Reaching Omega

But, citing the principle that "union differentiates," Teilhard affirms: "Thus it would be mistaken to represent to represent Omega to ourselves simply as a centre born of the fusion of elements which it collects, or annihilating them in itself. By its structure Omega, in its ultimate principle, can only be a distinct Centre radiating at the core of a system of centres." (p. 262) Consciousnesses lose their individuality but not their "person-ness." The Omega Point is a person among persons.

In concluding the main body of Phenomenon, Teilhard has the following summation: "To make room for thought in the world, I have needed to 'interiorize matter: to imagine an energetics of the mind; to conceive a noogenesis rising upstream against the flow of entropy; to provide evolution with a direction, a line of advance and critical points: and finally to make all things double back on someone. " (p. 290) Are we to conclude that the "someone" is God?

The final line of Man's Place in Nature is: "And it is at this point, if I am not mistaken, in the science of evolution that the problem of God comes in-the Prime Mover, Gatherer and Consolidator, ahead of us, of evolution." (1973, p. 121)

In Phenomenon's epilogue, The Christian Phenomenon, Teilhard admits: "The universe fulfilling itself in a synthesis of centres in perfect conformity with the laws of union. God the Centre of centres. In that final vision the Christian dogma culminates. And so exactly, so perfectly, does this coincide with the Omega Point that doubtless I should never have ventured to envisage the latter or formulate the hypothesis rationally if, in my consciousness as a believer, I had not found not only its speculative model but also its living reality." (1961, p. 294)

Teilhard, in tracing the evolutionary genesis of the noosphere, came to a "point" that he appears to have envisioned from the very beginning. Such should not be a surprise. Back in those horrendous days during World War I, when he sought to understand what was happening, Teilhard already knew where the answer was to be found. "God is vibrant in the ether. Through Him, all bodies come together, exert influence upon one another and sustain one another in the unity of the all-embracing sphere. God is a work within life. He helps it, raises it up, gives it the impulse that drives it along. I can feel God in the deep biological current that runs throu gh my soul and carries it with it. God shines through and is personified in mankind." (1965, p. 61) ^


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