「成形中」的基督－德日進的進化神學

The Becoming Christ - The Evolutionary Theology of P. Teilhard de Chardin

陳榆(Chen Yue)

《道風：漢語神學學刊》 10期 (1999/01) Pp. 147-166+252-253

並列摘要

A French Jesuit and palaeontogist, P. Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), spent more than twenty years in China since 1923 and made his scientific reputation as one of the co-discoverers of Peking man. He formulates a philosophical theology which is deeply rooted in the evolutionary thought of Darwin and the process thinking of Whitehead. Teilhard's evolution is a theistic one. He made penetrating observations, aiming to resolve what he called a 'religious schizophrenia' of his day -the seemingly irreparable split: the Bible and the Scho-lastics on one side, and all of philosophy from Descartes to Henri Bergson plus the natural sciences on the other. Teilhard stated clearly that evolution has meaning only in the historic Christ. His christology is cosmic and yet organic, the revealed doctrine of Christ as Alpha and Omega means to measure, in terms of millions and billions of light years, the instant in which the first creature appeared in relation to the whole eternity. The pan-en-theism of Teilhard allows him to have a 'forward' and dynamic view of spirituality, Christ is still 'forming', as the divine milieu present among us and in us. Christ, the cosmic evolutor, is both creator and creature. The incarnated Being is the evolutionary centre of the whole universe. The fact that we can't discover this undeniable truth, that the evolution of the world is an irreversible process, according to Teilhard, is because we don't 'perceive' it in a right way, that is, through the study of phenomena. No matter how scientists attempt to express the human drama in a formula, Teilhard warned that we could not enter intuitively. There he advocated a mystical notion of human consciousness in which all individuals gained access to reflection, christologically. Man only progresses by slowly elaborating from age to age the essence and the totality of a universe deposited within him. This grand process of sublimation, according to Teilhard, was an instantaneous leap from instinct to thought, a spiritualisation in human civilisation of all forces contained in the animal world. Consequently, the desire of all in-formed matter to become one, which was happened to have attracted towards the Omega point, was originated from the spiritual energy, that is, the loving power which makes a relationship possible. Teilhard, therefore, gave his evolutionary theology a foundation of being and being-with-another, and the relationship between us and the cosmic Christ.