Dr. David Grumett – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Philosopher and Theologian

A French Jesuit of the first half of the twentieth century, Teilhard called boldly into question classic philosophical conceptions of matter and spirit. Motivated by a eucharistic vision of spirit transforming matter and giving its ultimate purpose, he saw matter as animated by spirit and as ordered to spiritual ends. Teilhard also made a major contribution to the theological understanding of evolution, viewing this as advancing along a limited set of possible pathways towards a final unification in Christ the Omega Point that will be at once, material, spiritual, global and cosmic. This caused him to rethink received theological understandings of the creation, fall and redemption, and to articulate for a new generation the Jesuit triad of action, passion and vision.

Dr David Grumett is Senior Lecturer in Theology and Ethics in the University of Edinburgh. He is author of Teilhard de Chardin: Theology, Humanity and Cosmos (Peeters 2005) and of many articles and chapters exploring aspects of Teilhard’s thought. In 2018 he published, with Paul Bentley, the Six Propositions that Teilhard had been required to sign in 1925, the contexts of which had, until then, been kept secret.