Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 28:2 (May 1966)
Article: Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
Author: Cornelius Van Til

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WTJ 28:2 (May 66) p. 109

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Cornelius Van Til

“One early dawn in the ‘bad lands’ of Arizona … a dazzling flash of light, strangely brilliant in quality, illumined the most distant peaks, eclipsing the first rays of the rising sun. There followed a prodigious burst of sound …. The thing had happened. For the first time on earth an atomic fire had burned for the space of a second, industriously kindled by the science of Man.”1

When the explosion was about to happen “the first artificers of the atom bomb were crouched on the soil of the desert. When they got to their feet after it was over, it was Mankind who stood up with them, instilled with a new sense of power.”2

Here, by “intelligently concerted action” mankind succeeded “in seizing and manipulating the sources commanding the very origins of matter”. Here is a “sense of a power capable of development to an indefinite extent”.3

After “that famous sunrise in Arizona” man can no longer doubt that he not only can but “must for the future assist in his own becoming”.4

Were you afraid that morning that man would now destroy himself? If you were, then, argues Teilhard, you did not really appreciate the true significance of that Arizona sunrise. “To me it seems that thanks to the atom bomb it is war, not mankind, that is destined to be eliminated.” For now a “true objective is offered us, one that we can only attain by striving with all our power in a concerted effort” and

our future action can only be convergent, drawing us together in an atmosphere of sympathy. I repeat, sympathy, because to be ardently intent upon a common

WTJ 28:2 (May 66) p. 110

object is inevitably the beginning Of love. In affording us a biological, ‘phyletic’ outlet directed upwards, the shock which threatened to destroy us will have the effect of re-orienting us, of instilling a new dynamic and finally (within certain limits) of making us one whole. The atomic age is not the age of destruction but of union in research. For all their military trappings, the recent explosions at Bikini herald the birth into the world of a Mankind both inwardly and outwardly pacified. They proclaim the coming of the Spirit of the Earth.5

I. Teilhard’s Main concepts

A. Von Unten

In what has been said Teilhard’s spirit of optimism shines forth strikingly. It is the optimi...

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