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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 2

James K. Baxter Joins the Teilhard Discussion

James K. Baxter Joins the Teilhard Discussion

I must say (without intent to cause a rumpus, knowing and liking both men) that I am strongly inclined to side with Pat Lawlor’s intuition rather than the Rev. Dr Duggan’s scholastic precision in their exchange of letters about Teilhard de Chardin.

It is possible that de Chardin was naïve – that is the only comment I have heard so far about him from the secular scientific camp. But he most courageously tackled three enormous problems – in The Phenomenon of Man the reconciliation of belief in God with modern scientific knowledge and theory about evolution; in The Divine Milieu the reconciliation of modern ethics of relationship with full Catholic belief; in Hymn of the Universe the reconciliation of the intuitions of artists with the same belief. No one else has tried to the same extent to find a positive remedy for these divisions of our time.

I suggest that it is unfair of Dr Duggan to say that ‘in Teilhard’s version of the Apostles’ Creed the first article is missing’ – surely we must assume unless it is proved to the hilt otherwise that de Chardin, an honourable Catholic priest, believed like other Catholics that God created the world – the point at issue is how the world was and is created. I, too, believe (though not with the absolute certainty pertaining to defined faith) that God created and creates the world by means of an evolutionary process – to put it metaphorically, that He is a democratic rather than an autocratic Ruler, allowing some degree of self-determination to his subjects. Does this make me too a potential heresiarch?

page 103

De Chardin in The Phenomenon of Man aimed, I think, at two things – that Catholic scientists should no longer labour with split minds, and that non-believing scientists should use belief as a possible implication of their theory. Dr Duggan fails to consider the desperate need for such developments.

I suggest, too, that Dr Duggan’s discounting of all Jesuit comment on de Chardin should itself be discounted. Are we to regard all Jesuit writers as incapable of freedom from some form of tribal prejudice? Again, if the use of a Gnostic term makes a man a Gnostic, then if I speak of capitalism I become a Marxist!

I believe that de Chardin was at times imprecise (but more frequently metaphorical – his language about evolution becoming self-conscious, so frowned on by Dr Duggan, might well come under the heading of that familiar figure of speech, personification), possibly at times naïve.

Let us remember, though, the many now drawn to the Church by his enormous human sympathies and practical demonstration of Catholic liberty in intellectual speculation.

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