Part 1: Evolutionary Principles of Reinterpretation

Today’s Post

Last week we recognized the waning influence of religion in Western societies, and addressed the need to rethink traditional beliefs in terms of human life to tap into their wellsprings of insight and return their relevance.  We identified the concept of ‘reinterpretation’, first proposed by Maurice Blondel and expanded eloquently by Teilhard de Chardin as the essential step for such relevance.  This week we will take a first step in taking this journey by setting the stage for such new insight.

The Process of Reinterpretation

From the earliest days of human thought, humans have attempted to understand the workings of their environment, to make sense of it, and to thereby better relate to it.  The whole of human history, from both science and religious viewpoints, contains a record of such activities.  Human artifacts such as legal and moral codes document our attempts (in Teilhard’s words) to “articulate the noosphere”.

This articulation always involves searching and growing, which in turn requires the readiness to replace previous, outworn concepts with ones more consistent with a constantly expanding grasp of the universe.

With religion, according to Blondel, such ‘replacement’ consists of discarding all the superstitious, anthropomorphic and otherworldly statements of belief, much like Jefferson did in forging his assertion of human equality based on his reinterpretation of the New Testament.   In the resulting perspective God becomes the ‘core’, the “ground of being”, the ever-present agency which underlies everything as it ‘comes to be’.

In Blondel’s process of interpretation, this leads to new artifacts: statements which are made from the new perspective which emerges from our understanding that we are embedded in this process of ‘coming to be’: we are not static, we are ‘becoming’.

Teilhard expands and refines this approach by seeing the essential act of ‘becoming’ as the result of the increasing complexity over time that underpins the evolution of the entire universe   His insight provides the single thread which unites the three eras of universal evolution (pre-life, life, human life), and which is the key to explaining how humans ‘naturally’ emerge.

Teilhard understood that the evolutionary energy by which cosmic particles can unite in order to increase complexity is just as present in the human activity of love as it is in the uniting of electrons and protons to become atoms.

He decomposed our individual and collective evolution into four steps:

– we always begin with a certain plateau of understanding in the first step,

–  we then address those things which don’t work under our previous worldview in the second.,

– then in the third step we strip out those perspectives,

– and finally in the fourth step we go on to find a better vantage point, and eventually build new constructs.

 Principles of Reinterpretation

So, if we can agree on the process, what about the guidelines?  What signposts can we follow when we go about ‘stripping our conventional artifacts’?  What principles do we employ when we take on the very difficult job of attempting an objective perspective on our subjective inner prejudices and attitudes?  As mentioned in the last post, many of these perspectives are so fundamental as to be nearly instinctual.  We didn’t consciously develop them; they came with the subconscious acceptance of the beliefs and practices of parents, teachers and society in general during our formative years.  Overcoming them, therefore, requires us to lose the comfort and security of well-worn beliefs and begin a risky search for replacements.

The first step, therefore, is to follow thinkers like Blondel, Teilhard, Sacks and Rohr along this arduous path.

Blondel notes that all of us are to some extent already on this path.  The simple realization that we must constantly attempt to see others objectively and to transcend our ego and self- centeredness if we are to have deep relationships with them, is a first step along this path.  This need for overcoming ego is a basic tenet for nearly every human religion.  It is therefore a basic ‘principle of reinterpretation’.

Therefore, when we set out along the road to reinterpreting our traditional beliefs, we must be armed with such principles.  As we will see, application of these principles to the many, often contradicting statements of Western religion will permit us to recognize the ‘core’ that Teilhard identifies, and uncover their relevance to our lives. 

Teilhard’s Approach to Interpretation

Teilhard’s insights have guided us thus far in our search for “The Secular Side of God”.  Teilhard’s unique approach to the nature of reality provides insights into the fundamental energies which are at work in the evolution of the universe and hence, as products of this same evolution, are at work in our own personal evolution as well.  His insights compromise neither the theories of physics in the play of elemental matter found in the ‘Big Bang” nor the essential biological theory of Natural Selection in the ongoing evolution of living things  Instead his insight brings them together into a single, coherent, continuous process which unites the pre-life, life and human life eras of cosmic evolution.  These insights also showed how the ‘knowledge of consciousness’ which makes the human person unique in the biological kingdom is rooted in the cosmic scope of evolution.

This uniqueness, unfortunately, has been often addressed by science as an ‘epi-phenomenon’ or as just a pure accident.  Teilhard instead places it firmly on the ‘axis of evolution’, that of increasing complexity.  Doing so thus affords us a lens for seeing ourselves as a natural and essential product of evolution.

As Teilhard saw it, such a comprehensive understanding of evolution is therefore an essential step toward understanding the human person, how we fit into the universe, and how we should relate to it if we would activate our human potential.

The ‘Evolutionary’ Principles of Reinterpretation

Teilhard’s approach to universal evolution thus offers a basis for principles which will be valuable in our search for the gold of reinterpretation and relevance that is embedded in the raw ore of traditional religious thought.  He offers six insights as a basis for such principles:

• First, Teilhard notes that evolution occurs because of a fundamental characteristic of matter and energy which over time organizes the ‘stuff of the universe’ from very simple entities into ever more complex forms. This principle can be seen to continue in the ongoing evolution of the human person.

The Principle: We grow as persons because of our potential for growth, which comes to us as a particular instantiation of the general potential of the universe to evolve

• Secondly, he notes that all things in the universe evolve, and the fundamental thread of evolution can be seen in the phenomenon of increasing complexity.

The Principle: The increasing complexity of the universe is reflected in our individual increase in complexity, which in the human manifests itself as personal growth

• A third observation is that physics addresses the principle by which elements of matter are pulled into ever more complex arrangements through elemental, natural forces (The Standard Model). Without it the universe would have stayed as a formless cloud of energy.   This process continues to manifest itself in living things (Natural Selection) and can be seen today in the unitive forces of ‘love’ which unite us in such a way that we become more human.

The Principle:  Just as atoms unite to become molecules, and cells to become neural systems, so do our personal connections effect our personal growth and through this evolution of our societies

• In a fourth observation, he notes that adding the effect of increasing complexity to the basic theories of Physics and Biology also unites the three eras of universal evolution (pre-life, life, human life) as it provides a thread leading from the elemental mechanics of matter and energy through the development of ever more complex neural systems in Natural Selection to the ‘awareness of awareness’ as seen in humans.

The Principle: This ‘thread’ therefore continues its universal agency to be active in every human person in the potential of our personal ‘increase in complexity’, which of course is our personal growth.

• In his fifth observation, Teilhard, Sacks and Rohr all see this primary human skill as the subject of nearly every religious and philosophical thought system in human history. These systems all offer paradigms and rituals for understanding the nature of the reality which surrounds us as necessary for us to be able to fulfill our true human potential.

The Principle:  The evolutionary core of a religious teaching will always lead to increasing the completeness of the human person.

• In his sixth insight, Teilhard notes that “We must first understand, and then we must act”. If our understanding is correct, then an appropriate action can be chosen.  If we act in accordance with what is real, our actions will contribute to both our personal evolution (our process of becoming more whole) as well as the evolution of our society.  As Teilhard puts it,

“Those who spread their sails in the right way to the winds of the earth will always find themselves borne by a current towards the open seas.”

       Or, As Richard Rohr puts it,

“Our lives must be grounded in awareness of the patterns of the Universe.”

The Principle:  Authentic religion helps us to be aware of and cooperate with the creative energies which effect the universal phenomenon of evolution

The Next Post

This week we looked at Teilhard’s six ‘evolutionary’ principles that we can use in our search for reinterpretation of religion. Next week we will consider some additional principles from other sources that we will employ as we examine religious teachings for their relevance to human life.