From Teilhard to Omega

Teilhard died 60 years ago next year but his influence has only grown and it is hard to imagine in retrospect how revolutionary his ideas appeared to the Church. The contributors to this volume subtitled 'Co-Creating an Unfinished Universe' write about theology and evolution (the longest section), a new philosophical vision, spirituality and ethics, and a new vision of science. Each contribution is clearly set out, with a few points to ponder and questions for discussion. The editor takes up Ewart Cousins' phrase of a new axial period as mass communication has enabled a breakthrough in human consciousness around the globe in terms of a wider sense of community and ecological relatedness. He likens Teilhard to a desert father removed from the world in his search for human origins in China and therefore able to ponder deeply the meaning of Christianity and produce a unique body of work that speaks to new generations with a metaphysics of an emerging future rather than a pre-existent hierarchy of being.

His eternal feminine embodies the spiritual power of matter and the Earth with an end-point of manifesting divine love as the new fire – a hyperphysics enabling the emergence of more being – and hence more consciousness and greater freedom - in the process of evolution. This is also the emergence of complexity and interiority. Ursula King writes engagingly about Teilhard's zest for life, translated from the French 'goût de vivre' and implying a commitment, engagement and a general sense of aliveness but also drawing on spiritual energy embracing the powers of growth and life as well as those of diminishment and death.