The Divine Milieu (Perennial Classics)

The Divine Milieu is a classic work of Catholic theology and has no need of another recommendation. Essentially, it unpacks Chardin’s vision of matter as made for life, life as made for man and man as made for God. At the heart of matter is the Divine energy which is both the beginning and the end of this evolving process. The Christian must live so as to fulfill her role in both receiving and being a channel for divine grace in the cosmos.It’s odd then that Chardin is often held up as an antagonist to scholasticism. In one way, Chardin’s project is precisely what the medievals were about.Before the dawn of modern science, natural philosophy, as taught by Aristotle, was the account of the world that had to be reconciled with the theologian’s religion. Thus, erudite reconciliations with Aristotle were written by Maimonides for Judaism, Avicenna for Islam and Aquinas for Christianity (among others).Chardin was one of the first theologians to grapple with the facts that we live in an evolving universe, on an evolving planet and are ourselves an evolving species. Chardin wanted not just to reconcile this modern science with Christian doctrine but, more importantly, by this reinterpretation make the Christian God alive again in modern man’s imagination.Hence, the Divine Milieu which seeks to find God in this world, in this universe and at the heart of matter. While he doesn’t use much scholastic terminology or philosophy, the project is one and the same. That is, both are efforts at wedding secular knowledge with the revelations of one’s religion.It is a powerful vision, even for those do not count themselves believers. As a scientist, theologian and prose poet Chardin is practically peerless. The reentry of Jesus Christ into a post-Copernican cosmos that had seemed to shut him out is a courageous idea.Whether it will be seen as an idea whose time has come is another matter. As far as I can tell, the two communities Chardin wanted to reach—the scientific and lay Catholic—have ignored him. Now he seems to be read only by the ever diminishing community of professional theologians.I believe, however, that he is worth encountering. If everyone should be able to render an account of their beliefs to those they know, they can confront in Chardin a version of the Christian faith that is not alien to modern scientific developments. If only for that reason, Chardin should be read at least once in one’s life. That he wrote with such eloquence and devotion, both to God and his fellow man, only makes it all the more worthwhile to read him.

A very readable theology of the divinisation of our activities and passivities.The basic idea is that most Christians see their lives, their work, their play, their interests, as separate from the sanctification and unification with God that they desire. We feel like the living of our everyday lives is nonproductive (or even counterproductive) to the life in Christ that bring us to maturity and wholeness in Him. We hold faith and life in two different hands. Many believers actually begrudge their occupations, their interests, as enemies of the life of God being formed in them. This has been true in my own life. For years I would not read any fiction because I felt that life was short and I had no time for "trivial" matters like literature and poetry. My reading was self-limited to nonfiction and theology. Some people will only listen to "Christian" music. Some will watch only "Christian" television.Teilhard de Chardin was well aware of the anxiety of dualism in our understanding of life and activity. For Chardin, the main point was for us to simply see things as they really are. Teilhard believed that each soul exists for God, and each soul is linked in mystical union to the Incarnate Word. The universe, says Teilhard, exists for the soul. "Everything forms a single whole" and exists for the glory of God. "We must perceive the existence of links between us and the Incarnate Word" and the "interconnections revealed to us in every order of the physical and human world."Through this interconnectedness (sounds really Zen-like, doesn't it?), God is fulfilling St Paul's words in Romans 8.18-23. "The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God." Teilhard says, "In each soul, God loves and partly saves the whole world..." And God does this through our activities! "Owing to the interrelation between matter, soul and Christ, we bring part of the being which he desires back to God in whatever we do" (emphasis his). We do this "to build the Pleroma." (The consummation of "the mystery of the creative union of the world in God," i.e., the kingdom of God in its completed form).This is the divinisation of our activities. If we but see that we are workers together with God in all that we do, that vision brings an excitement and joy to our everyday, mundane, ordinary lives. Through living those lives God saves the world. "But it is essential to see - to see things as they are and to see them really and intensely.""By virtue of the Creation and, still more, of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.""Right from the hands that knead the dough, to those that consecrate it, the great and universal Host should be prepared and handled in a spirit of adoration."Our lives have divine responsibility. We are to give them wholly to God. Not by making them religious, but by truly seeing that there is no such thing as a division between religious and secular. The universe is the Lord's, and "the Christian knows that his function is to divinise the world in Jesus Christ." As we do this, a transparency occurs. We learn to see in all things the continual creation of God and the beauty of the ultimate unity in Christ.[He planned] for the maturity of the times and the climax of the ages to unify all things and head them up and consummate them in Christ..." (Ephesians 1.10 AMP)"...in him all things were created...and in him all things hold together..." (Colossians 1.16-17 NRSV)

It was what I expected. and very good to read

This kindle version is highly defective. I read through the first few chapters and in the end decided to leave it. Apparently two electronically different versions of the book have been mingled together with the result that every few pages one is faced with a repetition of what one has just read, except that it is presented in a different format, font, etc., etc. I would have returned the edition but did not realize that it was possible.