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| Pierre Teilhard de Chardin |
In a previous post I have mentioned some myths related to the persecution of scientists as a result of their scientific ideas, for religious reasons. I mentioned, for example, Giordano Bruno and Miguel Servet, wrongly presented as martyrs of science, when in reality they were persecuted for their religious ideas, not for their scientific activities, which in the case of Bruno were practically non-existent.
The presentation of a recently published video publicizes one of these myths, also widespread: the claim that Teilhard de Chardin was repressed by his Jesuit order for advocating evolution. That this is false can easily be deduced from the fact that Teilhard was able to publish dozens of articles on the evolution of the ancestors of man in scientific and philosophical journals of impact, without being prevented from doing so by his order. One of these journals was Études, edited by the Jesuits. A curious way of repressing him for advocating evolution.
What happened really?
It is true that the Jesuits removed Teilhard de Chardin from teaching, to which
he had devoted some years, and that they forbade him to publish his two books, The Human Phenomenon and The Divine Milieu, which were not published
until after his death. But the reason was not for advocating evolution from a
scientific point of view, but because of his ideas about original sin, which
were heterodox.
Genesis, the first
book of the Bible, contains two independent accounts of the origin of man. The
first (Gen. 1:26-30), shorter and more philosophical, does not detail the way
of creation or distinguish between man and woman. The second (Gen. 2:4-3:24) is
written in a mythological style and serves as the basis for the traditional
doctrine of original sin, which can be summarized as follows:
The first human couple was created by
God from pre-existing matter, represented by the clay or mud, with which God
molded the body of the first man. When they were subjected to a test, they
failed, allowing themselves to fall in the sin of pride, the wish to be like
gods. Their failure introduced in the world physical evil (pain and death) and
moral evil (sin and the inclination to evil). Since then, all human beings
(with two exceptions) have been conceived in original sin, a state of innate
rebellion against God that incapacitates us from attaining salvation. To save
fallen humanity, the second person of the divine Trinity was incarnated in
Jesus Christ, who took upon himself all the sins of the world. From then on,
his merits can reach every human being through baptism, which erases original
sin and reconciles man with God.
In order to be in
agreement with Catholic doctrine on original sin, a theory must meet the
following two conditions:
a)
That the original
creation was exempt from guilt (in a state of grace).
b)
That, as a
consequence of personal disobedience, creation was tainted and lost its
original impassibility.
As I explained in
another post, during the early 1920s, Teilhard wrote two notes that
remained unpublished until their publication in 1969 in the collection entitled
Comment je crois. These notes,
entitled Fall, Redemption and Geocentry (1920)
and A Note on Some Historical Representations of
Original Sin (1922), were sent to the Jesuit General Superior in
Rome, and were probably the cause of his removal from teaching at the Catholic
Institute in Paris.
The solution
proposed by Teilhard de Chardin to the problem of original sin gave rise to
important theological problems: the universe would have been created in a state
of initial disintegration and subject, from the beginning, to a process of
evolution. Original sin would not have been a personal fault, but was equaled
to the original state of dispersion of the universe. This solution does not
meet either of the two conditions mentioned above, needed to be compatible with
Catholic doctrine. In Teilhard’s interpretation, the universe would have been
created from the beginning in a state of guilt, which could not be considered
the consequence of a personal sin.
I have developed
my own interpretation, which I have explained in some of my books on popular
science, such as Krishna
frente a Cristo, and I consider it orthodox (although imaginative), but I
am not going to detail it here.
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