How can we use Teilhard’s lens to rethink religion as an essential tool for evolution?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw how Maurice Blondel, early in the last century, addressed the increasing irrelevance of religion in terms of its increasing emphasis on the ‘supernatural’, and how returning its focus to the human person was necessary for our continued evolution.  His recommendation was that religious doctrines be ‘reinterpreted’ in the light of the findings of science to recover their relevance to human life.  Or, as Teilhard would have it, they need to be examined through the ‘lens of evolution’

This week we will see how Blondel’s suggestion can be implemented.

Reinterpreting Religion

Blondel is difficult to read today, but Gregory Baum offers a clear summary of his insights in his book, “Man Becoming”.  He notes that Blondel saw an impediment to the relevance of Christian theology in its tendency to focus on ‘God as he is in himself’ as opposed to ‘God as he is to us’.  Jonathan Sacks echoes this tendency, noting that the main message of Jesus focuses on the latter, while the increasing influence of Plato and Aristotle in the ongoing development of Christian theology shows a focus on the former.  Both writers point out that this historical trend in the development of Christian theology is reflected in a focus on what and who God is apart from man.  This results, as Sacks notes, in the introduction of a new set of dichotomies which were not present in Judaism, such as body vs soul, this life vs the next and corruption vs perfection.  Such dichotomy, they both note, compromises the relevance of the message.

An example of this dichotomy can be seen in the ‘Question and Answer’ flow of the Catholic Baltimore Catechism:

“Why did God make me?

God made me to know, love and serve Him in this life so that I can be happy with Him in the next.”

   This simple QA reflects several aspects of such dichotomy.

• It presents the belief that ‘this life’ is simply a preparation for ‘the next’. This life is something we must endure to prove our worthiness for a fully meaningful and happy existence in the next.  Therefore, our purpose in life is simply to make sure that we live a life worthy of the reward of heavenly existence when we die.  As such, it has no implicit meaning.
• As follows from this perspective, we can’t expect meaning and the experience of happiness in human life.
  • Ultimate meaning is understood as ‘a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved’. Understanding only happens in the next life.
  • Happiness is a condition incompatible with the evil and corruption that we find not only all around us, but that we find within ourselves
  • Life is essentially a ‘cleansing exercise’, in which our sin is expunged and which, if done right, makes us worthy of everlasting life.

As both Blondel and Sacks noted, the increasing Greek content of this perspective in Christian history slowly moves God from the intimacy reflected in Jesus, Paul, and John into the role that Blondel identifies as the “over/against of man”.  It is not surprising that one of the evolutionary branches of Western belief, Deism, would result in seeing God as a powerful being who winds up the universe, as in a clock, setting it into motion but no longer interacting with it.

Dualism and Reinterpretation

So, where does this leave us?  Most Western believers seem to be comfortable living with these dualities (not to mention the contradictions) present in their belief systems in order to accept the secular benefits of religion such as:

• a basis for human action
• a contributor to our sense of place in the scheme of things
• a pointer to our human potential
• a contributor to the stability of society

While these benefits might be real, many surveys of Western societies, especially in Europe, show a correlation between increasing education and decreasing belief.  Is it possible (as the atheists claim) that the price for the evolution of human society is a decrease in belief?  That the increasing irrelevancy of religion is a necessary byproduct of our maturity?

Or is it possible that solutions to the ills of Western society require some connection to the spiritual realm claimed by religion?  Put another way: is it possible to re-examine these claims to uncover their evolutionary values?  How can the claims of religion be re-understood (‘re-ligio’) in terms of their secular values?  Is it possible to look at them, as Karen Armstrong asserts, as “plans for action” necessary to advance human evolution?  If so, religion certainly has the potential to recover the relevancy that is necessary for any tool with the potential of moving evolution forward.

To move toward such re-understanding, we will look at the idea of ‘reinterpretation’ itself, to explore how the perspectives of Teilhard, Blondel, Armstrong, Rohr and Sacks can be applied to the process of reinterpreting our two thousand years of religious doctrine development.

Considering that our lives are built on perspectives and beliefs that are so basic as to be nearly instinctual, how can we come to see them differently?  Our histories, however, contain many stories of such transformations, and the unfolding of our sciences and social structures are dependent upon them.

The Next Post

This week we took a first look at Blondel’s suggestion of ‘reinterpretation’ as a method of recovering the relevance of religion to human life.

Next week we will look at some different approaches to how our perspective of the basic things in our lives can change: how we can implement the process of ‘reinterpretation’.