How can Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ be used to see the evolution of morals?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw how religion is not the only cultural artifact which calls attention to the energy of evolution in our lives, and how our Western culture itself is infused with such recognition.

This week we will employ Teilhard’s ‘lens’ on sacraments in the context of human values and morals, beginning with the materialistic perspective..

The Basis of Morals

Humans do not generally agree on the best way to make sense of their existence, much less the most effective way to conduct their lives.  Among the many religious expressions, for example, there is wide divergence on understanding human ontology: do we emerge from a generally linear process of evolution or creation, or are our lives simply repetitions of previous lives?  Are we doomed to complete extinction when we die or in some sense do we continue existence on a separate plane, and if so, will we retain our personal uniqueness or be dissolved into an impersonal ‘cosmic all’?  Is there a ‘way’ to live life to the fullest, or is each life sufficiently unique and autonomous to ignore traditional behavioral guidelines?  Is the basis for morals ‘universal’ or unique for each person?  Are morals, standards for the conduct of human life, ‘absolute’ or ‘relative’?

Whichever of the many beliefs about human life we claim, such beliefs come with their own specific standards of behavior.  We have employed Teilhard’s ‘lens’ in the exploration of the concept of ‘sacraments’, in which certain beliefs about existence manifest themselves in the form of behaviors which are thought to be ‘normative’ to human existence.  In participating in these behaviors, the concept of sacraments suggests ways of acting in a way which is more resonant with the basic flow of energy by which our lives, and hence our society, and ultimately the universe, unfolds.  The idea of the sacraments suggests that there is indeed a ‘way’ to live life which is resonant to the rise of evolutionary energy within us, and which will lead to ‘fuller being’.

While this perspective is certainly resonant with our approach to the reinterpretation of religious beliefs, it is obvious that belief in the basis of morals is quite diverse across the patchwork quilt of Christianity, much less in the West and even more so in the wide ranges of belief found in other parts of the world.  It seems equally obvious that such a wide diversity of standards for behavior can be traced to the divergence on beliefs about human ontology.  If we disagree on how to make sense of our existence, frequently manifest as a difference in the belief in God, our standards for behavior will be strikingly different.

From the Materialist Viewpoint

A similar divergence can be seen in the increasing disagreement between ‘theists’ and ‘atheists’.  At least in the West there seems to be an increasing number of individuals who, instead of disagreeing on the nature of God, disbelieve in the existence of a ground of being itself.  This disbelief frequently manifests itself in denial not only of such traditional concepts as love, sin and morality, but in the existence of meaning itself.  Such a philosophical trend is often seen as the only logical conclusion which can be drawn from basing our personal accommodation of life on the provable findings of science.  Science’s theory of evolution is a case in point.

In the case of universal ontology, as a general rule science avoids the term ‘evolution’ to address the process by which its Standard Model articulates the universe’s increasing complexification as molecules emerge from clusters of bosons upwards through atomic structures to molecules.  While this model tracks this ‘rise’ of matter, for example, and implicitly acknowledges the increase of complexity which emerges in this emergence, it offers thus far no term which identifies this obvious phenomenon.  Further, many scientists vehemently object to using the term ‘evolution’ to describe the eight-billion-year process by which the universe effects highly complex molecules from bosons.  While they have no term for the process itself, they insist that the term must be restricted to the biological processes addressed by the theory of Natural Selection.

In the phase of evolution that emerges with the onset of living things, the ‘biosphere’, it is a common scientific concept that the living things which emerge are ‘selected by evolution’.   This idea is based on the theory of Natural Selection which sees the evolutionary process of living things as guided by the principle that they are chosen by the criteria of ‘survival’.  In this perspective, new entities which emerge in the history of evolution are either successful in surviving their environment and thus go on to continued procreation or they are unsuccessful and fade from the ‘tree of life’ as it continues to develop.

Many scientific thinkers extend the rationale of Natural Selection to evolution as it continues through the human species.  While generally agreeing that ‘morphological’ evolution still continues in humans (physiological changes due to changes in DNA) they posit that Natural Selection continues its work of ‘survival’ via cultural principles found in the organization of human society.  Not only does this approach offer a partial understanding of how changes take place in human society, but it also notes how such changes are occurring much faster than those found in morphology. Thus, a common approach to articulating this mode of evolution is to understand the structures of human edifices in terms of their ‘evolutionary selection’.  In other words, as envisioned by Richard Dawkins in his book, “The Selfish Gene”, a given philosophical, legal or cultural idea can be seen as a ‘meme’, which performs the same function in human culture as the gene in cellular evolution.  The evolutionary value of memes is judged by their contribution to the continuing survival of the human species.  Even in the human, evolution is still ‘selecting’ us.

In the scientific approach to making sense of things, therefore, concepts such as meaning, values and their associated standards of behavior, carry much less weight.  Although science does not directly address such things, some modes of science, such as evolutionary psychology, touch upon the ‘correct way’ to live.  Evolutionary psychology reduces the basis of human action to the precepts of Darwin’s theory of ‘natural selection’, in which each of our personal choices either act in support of the ‘principles’ of evolution or act against them.  Since the key principle of Darwinist evolution is understood as ‘survival’, human actions are considered to be ‘correct’ when they increase both our personal survival (so that we can contribute our genes to the ‘gene pool’) and that of our species (and our ‘memes’ to the ‘meme pool’) and in doing so insuring that the species does not become extinct.  Where this mode of science proposes behavioral correctness, it is effectively proposing values and morals consistent with this standard.

Further, from the materialistic perspective, since those morals and standards of behavior are relative to our unfolding understanding of evolution, they themselves unfold over time.  Therefore, since such understanding is quite diverse, personal morals can then be different for different persons.  Morals are therefore ‘relative’.  Still further, as in the case of genes, a wide diversity in memes may well be necessary to insure a rich ‘meme pool’ to enhance our survival potential.  From such a perspective, ‘relativity’ among morals is necessary to insure that human evolution produces the diversity necessary for nature to take all possible avenues of development, thus continuing the ramification that has been seen across the wide expanse of biology.

To evolve, therefore, we must ‘diverge’.

 

The Next Post

 

This week we continued to expand our view of sacraments, morals and values to the basis of ‘correct behavior’ and seen how the materialistic perspective is based on science’s proposition that the basis of biological evolution is ‘survival’.

Next week we will contrast this materialistic approach to the traditional religious view of this basis and explore how Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ can bring these two seemingly contradictory viewpoints into synergy.

   How can sacraments be seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw how human evolution proceeds through the trial-and-error process seen in human attempts to ‘articulate the noosphere’, and how successful attempts are captured in the ‘cultural DNA’ through the ‘tissue of culture’ as found in religion, philosophy, and laws.  This week we will continue this exploration by seeing sacraments as examples of human activity in which the work of grace, now seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’, now emerges as the energy of our personal and cultural evolution.

Sacraments as ‘Signs of Grace’

In the recent posts on Jesus we saw how Jesus can be seen as a ‘signpost to God’, and discussed how he emerges in evolution as ‘evolution becoming aware of itself’.

As Western religious tradition has seen it, Jesus recognized seven aspects of human life that are critical to our ‘salvation’.  Just as Jesus was a ‘signpost to God’, these aspects were ‘signposts to grace’ and took place in events in which this ‘grace’ was most focused.  They are therefore examples of aspects of human life in which this ‘evolutionary energy’ is most active.

The idea of seeing some human activity as more significant to human life is found in other religions as well.   In his book, ‘The Souls of China’, Ian Johnson addresses the trend in which many Chinese are beginning to identify themselves as Daoist, Buddhist, Christian or Muslim after decades of having religious expression outlawed.  He explains how traditional rituals help people overcome urban anomie and answer the “pragmatic but profound issue of how to behave at critical life junctures”, such as weddings, funerals, pilgrimages, social work, and meditation.

So, as we proceeded with other religious concepts in our employment of Teilhard’s ‘lens’, the key step in this search is the reinterpretation of those traditional teachings from the perspective of reinterpretation that we have developed.  The sacraments are no exception.

What Are ‘Sacraments?’

   Christianity identifies seven events in human life that are ‘occasions of grace’: events in which our lives are enriched.  Although the church places great emphasis on the action of the church hierarchy in ‘conferring’ the grace that flows in these events, our reinterpretation approach simply sees them as events in our lives to which we must ‘pay attention’ so that we can cooperate with this flow of grace in such a way that our personal evolution, our ‘spiritual growth’ is enhanced.  Paraphrasing Teilhard, when we participate in these events we are ‘trimming our sails to the winds of life’, aligning our lives to the flow of energy that arises in the axis of evolution.

Traditional church teaching identifies seven such rituals, all of which require church hierarchy for the ‘conferring’, and all of which recognize the action of grace which takes place.  These teachings place great emphasis on the both the need for the church to perform the ritual to effect the outcome of the giving of grace, and the need for our participation in them as a condition for church membership.

From Teilhard’s perspective, however, such ‘scaffolding’ can be replaced by focusing on and reinterpreting the concept of the sacraments in terms of grace as the energy of both our personal evolution and the resulting evolution of our species.  From such a perspective, the role of the church is less ‘conferring’ and more simply calling attention to the ‘signposts’.

Reinterpreting ‘The Seven Sacraments’

Baptism

Traditional church teaching sees baptism as the ‘conferring’ of the grace that will enable our eventual entry into heaven by taking away the stain of ‘original sin’.  Seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens, this ‘first’ sacrament, baptism, is that which understands human birth to be a personal extension of the evolution of the universe.  Each life is another small limb on the branch of the tree of evolution, in which the energy of evolution manifests itself yet again as an element of consciousness to be valued, cared for, fostered, and understood for what it truly is.

Like all sacraments, the ritual of baptism involves the ‘cultural tissue of the DNA of evolution’ (the church and society) which is made up of the parents, the family and the community.  The ritual not only calls attention to the unique potential of human life but does it in a way that recognizes the essential nature of the community in bringing this life to maturity.  It is a steppingstone to Teilhard’s mapping of the energy of love as the play of ‘centration’ and ‘excentration’ by which we come to be what we can be.

Confirmation

In church tradition, the sacrament of confirmation ‘confers’ the grace of human spiritual growth.  Seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’, the sacrament of confirmation goes on to ‘confirm’ the actuation of potential which occurs as we mature, recognizing that our potential for growth is assured by our cooperation with grace, ‘the energy of human evolution’.  Just as this grace is ‘gratuitous’, unearned, so our potential for maturity is assured and can be trusted if we but recognize and cooperate with its presence in our lives.

Eucharist

In the traditions of the church, the sacrament of the Eucharist, known as ‘communion’, is the central sacrament of church unity.  From Teilhard’s perspective, it is perhaps the sacrament most germane to human evolution.  In it, we participate in a symbolic communal meal, in which we recognize that we are all part of a wider community.  As we saw earlier, seeing Jesus as ‘the Christ’ recognizes the human person as an eventual product of universal evolution, and as such each of us consists of a ‘branch’ of the axis along which this process of evolution proceeds.  From this perspective, all persons are not only ‘children of God’ (products of evolution) they are ultimately united by their share of the cosmic spark by which they come to be.  By participation in this ritual, we are reminded of this essential ground of unity, and of the necessity for cooperating with the energies of love by which we can be brought into a ‘greater possession of ourselves’ as we overcome our instinctual sense of separation from others.  In Teilhard’s words, the Eucharist is the most important of the sacraments because:

 “.. it is but the expression and manifestation of the divine unifying energy applying itself little by little to every spiritual atom of the universe.”

Matrimony

The church teaches that the sacrament of matrimony is necessary for the natural joining of human persons in the process of procreation and child rearing.  In Teilhard’s perspective, it reminds us that the road to the more complete possession of ourselves that we refer to as ‘maturity’ must be undertaken in the context of relationship.  In the joining of two persons, the play of ‘centration’ and ‘excentration’ is essential to our continued growth.  It is a reminder that we can only become who we can be by engaging in relationship: our growth is assured as much by our ability to give love as it is by our ability to receive it.  In Teilhard’s vision, love is much more a structural energy which unites us in such a way as to expand our ‘person-ness’ than an emotion which draws us to each other.

Penance

The church teaches that the sacrament of reconciliation (referred to as ‘confession’ or ‘penance’) is necessary to return our soul to a state of grace by erasing the stain placed on it by our sin and thus restoring our potential for salvation.  Teilhard’s perspective recognizes that the many impediments we can build to our relationships reflect a failure to cooperate with grace, thus impeding our personal growth.  As can be seen from a casual glance at ‘self-help’ publications, alienation is a never-ending threat, whether we find ourselves in search of internal reconnection, or in search of reconciliation to repair our relationships.  And, as in all the sacraments, Penance offers the church as a media for the internal reconciliation that is necessary to overcome these impediments.

Last Rites

The church teaches that the sacrament of the sick (also referred to as the “Last Rites’, or ‘Extreme Unction’) is sort of a ‘last chance’ for cleansing the soul before death, and therefore effecting our ‘salvation’.  However, it also recognizes material benefits, such as bearing up under pain, overcoming fear and even improving how we feel.  Teilhard’s perspective calls attention to the fact that grace is present even in death.  As one theologian expressed it, “The sacrament of the sick means we do not have to die alone.”

Again, the church provides the presence of the community and recalls our common connection.

Holy Orders

The sacrament of “Holy Orders” is often referred to as the ‘sacrament of service’.  It recognizes the church’s basic role in providing the ‘tissue of the DNA of human evolution’.

As we have seen elsewhere, this aspect of the milieu of grace can be articulated in many other ways as well.  A prime example can be seen in our political systems which attempt to codify the practices by which the fabric of our society can be knotted in such a way which insures stability without eroding the personal freedom and innovation necessary to insure the increases in human welfare such as those documented by Johan Norberg in his book, ‘Progress’.

The Next Post

This week we moved from recognizing that the milieu of grace in which we live, the energy of evolution, can be articulated to locate those sparks of energy that are most relevant to our human growth, to some specific articulations expressed in the concept of ‘sacraments’.

As we have seen elsewhere, this milieu of grace can be articulated in many other ways as well, such as in our political practices which highlight the necessity to trust the basic goodness of the human person as reflected in our belief in ‘inalienable rights’ and ‘the will of the people’.

Next week we will look into the idea of ‘secular sacraments’ in more detail.

If Spirituality occurs naturally in Human Life, how can it be seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw how the energy of evolution can be seen as active in the milieu in which we live our human lives, ‘grace’.  We also saw how the concept of ‘sacrament’, refocused by Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ is simply identification of some of the ways that this energy can be encountered.  In Teilhard’s vernacular, they point to instantiations of ‘articulations of the noosphere.’

This week we will look a little more closely at the way that Teilhard viewed the ‘noosphere’, and how such articulation is necessary to light the path to the advance of evolution through our lives.

The Noosphere

As Teilhard sees it, the evolution of our planet can be seen as the appearance of ‘spheres’, layers of evolutionary products which have appeared in succession on our planet.   He sees these spheres as:

• The ‘lithosphere’, the conglomeration of molecules which pack together under the influence of gravity, the same force by which our planetary disk precipitated out into distinct planets surrounding the Sun.
• The ‘atmosphere’ which forms as the gas molecules separate from the solids
• The ‘hydrosphere’ which forms as the atmosphere evolves into water and air
• The ‘biosphere’ which emerges as some molecules become complex enough to form cells

These ‘spheres’ are well recognized by science, and their appearance in evolutionary history is well established.

To these fundamental spheres, Teilhard adds the ‘noosphere’, literally the ‘sphere of thought’.  He sees that with the appearance of the human, our planet acquires a new layer.  As humans emerge and begin to cover the planet, he sees it as obvious that the planet is in the process of assuming a new form.  Today’s controversies over such subjects as ecology and global warning are evidence of the emerging awareness of just how significant the noosphere has become.

The Articulation of the Noosphere

As we have seen, Teilhard sees evolution proceeding through the human as a continuation of the increase of complexity that can be observed to have occurred over the preceding fourteen or so billion years.  He also notes that in each phase of evolution, from the ‘inorganic’ phase, through the ‘biological’ phase, this complexity ‘changes state’ as it increases.  In his view, the energy which drives complexification itself becomes more complex.  The Standard Model of Physics is still evolving, as the emerging theories of Quantum Physics and ‘dark’ matter illustrate, and thus offers new paradigms by which complexification in this phase can be articulated.  The theory of Natural Selection is also still evolving as it struggles to address the phenomenon of the increasing complexity of living things.  However, when it comes to understanding, much less measuring, the process of how the continuation of the rise of complexity can be seen in the human person and his culture, it is much less clear.  As many thinkers have mused, making sense of ourselves while we are evolving is like traversing a bridge while we are still building it.

Teilhard notes that all religions attempt to identify ‘how we should be if we would be what we can be’.  With the strong infusion of myths, superstitions, and dualities that are inevitable over such long periods of development (arising in the prescientific world of thousands of years ago), we are left today with inconsistent and even contradictory guidelines for our continued development.  Science does not offer much help in this area.  Those expressions of belief that claim scientific foundations are simply attempts to derive meaning from empirical data and offer little support for the faith needed to deal with the daily effort of human life.

But as Teilhard sees effective human life as learning to ‘set our sails to the winds of life’, the skills of reading the wind and tending the tiller are first necessary to be learned.   As he sees it:

“And, conventional and impermanent as they may seem on the surface, what are the intricacies of our social forms, if not an effort to isolate little by little what are one day to become the structural laws of the noosphere.”

“In their essence, and provided they keep their vital connection with the current that wells up from the depths of the past, are not the artificial, the moral and the juridical simply the hominized versions of the natural, the physical and the organic?”

   It seems obvious ‘keeping the vital connection with the current’ comes down to ‘trial and error’.  Seen thusly, this is simply ‘survival of the fittest’: those things that we learn which enhance our life are collected, refined through the development of our culture, and encoded into morals and laws.  Those which don’t atrophy over time as they become seen as less valuable.

As we have seen, Richard Dawkins offers yet another insight into the issue of human evolution.  Like Teilhard, he recognizes the difference between evolution in society and as understood as ‘Natural Selection’ by biology.  In his book, “The Selfish Gene’, he proposes that evolution continues through human society by way of ‘memes’, packets of cultural information that act as the cultural parallel to biological genes.  Such ‘memes’ are echoed in what Teilhard refers to as the ‘noosphere’, which is the body of human thoughts, ideas and inventions which accumulate in human lore, rituals, books, schools, and networks over time, and is thus ‘spiritual’ in nature.

The body of insights and skills that we accumulate in our culture are, as Teilhard sees it, ‘articulations of the noosphere’.  They can be understood, as Dawkins suggests, as the ‘genetic material’ of human evolution, weaving their way into the thread of universal evolution as they prompt the continued evolution of the human person.

By this criterion, sacraments can be understood as examples of behavior that are passed from generation to generation via the cultural ‘tissue’ of religion.  Effectively they are signs of the play of evolutive energy as it flows through human life: the ‘DNA of human evolution’.

Religion is not the only place where such noospheric articulations can be found.  As we saw in our focus of Teilhard’s ‘lens’ on spirituality, a secular example can be found in a fundamental axiom of our government.  It is at the basis of the idea of a ‘representative government’, and often described as the ‘will of the people’ so essential to democratic governments.  While not finding articulation per se in the new American constitution and bill of rights, Thomas Jefferson was very clear in his concept of the validity of this ‘consensus in government’ as an ‘articulation of the noosphere’:

“I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be other that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.  I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves.”

   This exercise of ‘trust of the people to govern themselves’ is a secular example of an ‘articulation of the noosphere’.  The ‘meme’ of human equality can be seen here as one which, as Jefferson asserted, rises in the teachings of Jesus, evolves through such things as societal norms, then ‘charters’, and finally blossoms unequivocally in the laws which flow from the Constitution of the Unites States.  When we engage in such activity as the process of voting, we are implicitly connecting with one of the threads of evolution as it runs through human evolution.  This activity is effectively a ‘secular sacrament’ which, if we choose to see it, points to an underlying agency of the energy which moves us forward: ‘grace’

Grace

As we have seen, the coming to be of the universe involves an underlying energy by which things unite in such a way that results in increased complexity of the product of the uniting.  Or, as Teilhard puts it

“Fuller being from closer union and closer union from fuller being”

   We have also seen how this energy is just as essential to matter as matter is essential to it.  This is the core of Teilhard’s insight into applying the term ‘spirit’ to this agency which is the essential manifestation of this energy.  We also saw how science is beginning to address this elusive agent in its approach to ‘information’.

Traditionally, religion has addressed this agency in metaphorical terms, seeing it as a ‘flow’ of supernatural life in human affairs.  With Teilhard’s insistence that this flow is the natural manifestation of evolutionary energy in human life, he moves its focus from the emotional connection between humans to the ontological connections which effect their personal evolution.

From this perspective, the metaphor of ‘flow’ becomes stronger.  Teilhard uses it when he says,

“Those who set their sails to the winds of life will always find themselves borne on a current to the open sea.”

   The term ‘grace’ is very common in Western religion, but it finds many diverse expressions in the many forms that Western religion takes.  From our perspective of interpretation, grace can now be seen as the current into which we can insert ourselves if we are to be borne to fuller being.  Grace is simply the current manifestation of that same energy which has, for fourteen billion years, ‘raised the complexity of the universe to its current level’ (paraphrasing Dawkins).

But, as we have noted, it is very elusive indeed, as science has yet been unable to quantify it, and religion seems to require supernatural sources for it.  Teilhard insists that recognition of it is necessary for our continued evolution.  To ‘set our sails to the winds of life’ we must first learn to recognize the wind.

That’s where the idea of ‘sacrament’ comes in.

The Next Post

This week looked a little deeper into Teilhard’s insights; the evolving understanding of ‘how we should be if we would be what we can be’, which he refers to as ‘articulation of the noosphere’ and saw how such insights contribute to the continuation of the thread of evolution as it rises through the human.

We saw that such articulations are essentially the ‘cultural DNA’ of our evolution, but that their recognition is essential if we are to cooperate with them.

Next week we will move onto reinterpreting sacraments through Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’.

   If spirituality is everywhere, how can we employ Teilhard’s ‘lens’ to help us see it?

Today’s Post

In the last two weeks, we have looked at the Christian idea of ‘spirituality’ through Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’.   We saw how, when seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’, ‘spirit’ is neither supernatural nor ‘other-worldly’, but simply a word for the energy that propels evolution in the direction of increasing complexity.  Or, as Paul Davies reimagines it, it is the ‘software’ embedded in the ‘hardware’ of matter which enables matter to increase its level of complexity as it joins with other particles.

We saw how Teilhard sees ‘spirit’ as neither an ‘epi’ nor a ‘meta’ phenomenon, but instead the critical phenomenon in the evolution of the universe.  Although, as Richard Dawkins acknowledges, science has not yet addressed it per se, the religious term for the energy “which eventually raised the world as we know it into its present complex existence”, is ‘spirit’.

This week we will move on to some consequences of understanding that spirituality not only underlies the evolutionary process by which the universe becomes more complex, it saturates the milieu in which we live.

The History of Grace

Grace is one of the basic concepts of Christianity, which traditionally understands the ‘love of God’ as a tangible thing by which God interacts across the divide between supernatural divine life and natural human life.

As we will see, the Christian teachings on this interaction with God can be reinterpreted to have much in common with our reinterpreted understanding of spirituality.  Not that the traditional dualisms of supernaturalism and otherworldliness are absent in these teachings, but the idea that grace makes up the milieu in which we live is pervasive in both.

The teaching on grace, however, can also be seen to be tarnished by the gradual drift of Christianity towards a hierarchy which effects a social stability by requiring a system of beliefs necessary to secure successful promotion into heaven.  This can be seen in the Baltimore Catechism’s description of grace as a

“Supernatural gift of God bestowed on us through the merits of Jesus Christ for our salvation.”

   It goes on to say,

“The principal ways of obtaining grace are prayer and the sacraments.”

   In this teaching, grace is less a milieu in which we exist than a gift, not gratuitously given by God but ‘earned’ by Jesus and mediated by the church.

This structural connection between Jesus and Grace raises yet a new dualism: grace must have been absent in ancient history, lying dormant until Jesus arrived.  With the absence of grace, salvation must have been also absent, dooming all pre-Christians to damnation and supporting prejudice against Jews to this day.

Grace, to legacy Christianity, is a ‘gift’ necessary for our ‘salvation’ which must be ‘obtained’ by asking for it (prayer) and participation in church-provided rituals (sacraments).   To a large extent, it is seen as a commodity to be obtained from the church.

Sacraments, as defined in the Baltimore Catechism, are

“outward signs, instituted by Christ, to give grace”.

   They are only available if conferred (dispensed) by church officials.  In this teaching, the sacraments only ‘work’ (only dispense grace) if they are performed by the correct rank of church hierarchy (eg ‘Confirmation’ by bishop) and according to the established ritual (eg ‘Baptism’ by water).

The excesses of the medieval church which led to Luther’s reformation are well documented, but one of the more egregious practices that Luther attacked was the ‘selling’ of sacraments.  To the church of this era, grace had become a hierarchy-controlled commodity without which salvation could not be accomplished but from which the church could profit.

How Can Concepts Such As ‘Grace’ and ‘Sacraments’ Be Seen Through Teilhard’s ‘Lens”?

As we saw last week, spirituality is fundamental to the process of evolution, from the ‘big bang’ to (so far) the human.  Seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’, grace is simply the quantification of this energy as it is active in human evolution.  Paraphrasing Richard Dawkins, we can say,

“There must be an energy of evolution, and we might as well give it the name Spirit, but Spirit is not an appropriate name unless we very explicitly divest it of all the baggage that the word ‘Spirit’ carries in the minds of most religious believers. The energy that we seek must be that which was active in eventually raising the world as we know it into its present complex existence”.

   Just as we saw in our discussion of God, the sap of complexity rises through every branch which emanates from the ‘axis of evolution’.  The specific branch that rises though each human is fed by this sap of evolution, and it is manifest in its potential in our lives.

The long legacy of dualism that has risen in Christianity came to understand sacraments as a means by which the spiritual energy of God could be managed for delivery across the wide gulf between the supernatural and the natural, and that this aperture was opened by ‘the merits of Christ’ and therefore contributes to ‘our salvation’.

Setting aside the issue of ‘salvation’ for now, we can see how focusing Teilhard’s ‘lens’ on the concept

of the energy of evolution, and our understanding of God as ‘supremely’ natural (as opposed to ‘super’ natural) permits the idea of the sacrament to be seen in our context of ‘reinterpretation’.  While we may well be immersed in this milieu of grace, the very nature of its intangibility calls for reminders, ‘signposts’ of its activity in our lives.  Therefore, sacraments can be reinterpreted into religion’s attempt to erect these signposts.  They are, in Teilhard’s words, examples of “articulation of the noosphere’.

The Sacraments and Evolution

As we have frequently suggested, the continuation of evolution through the human species can be understood as the skill of using our unique human neocortex brains to modulate the instinctual stimuli of the ‘lower’ limbic and reptilian brains.  We have seen this skill requiring two actions.  The first action was to recognize the axis of evolution as it rises in us, and the second was to learn how to cooperate with it.  In religious terms, this is “finding and cooperating with God”.

We have addressed the concept of meditation as a process for finding God as understood by Teilhard, and how it has been carried through to the current day by psychology.  In doing so we saw how the idea of ‘finding God’ happens in the quest to find ourselves.

The second step is less obvious, and less treated by psychology.  To ‘cooperate’ with this manifestation of the ground of being in our lives, it is necessary to see how the energy of evolution is specifically manifest in our life so that we can learn how to cooperate with it and enhance its effects in us.  Effectively, to cooperate with the energy of evolution, we need to learn to recognize how the ‘articulations of the noosphere’ occur in our lives.

This is where the sacraments come in.

The Next Post

This week we saw grace as the manifestation of the ‘energy of evolution’ as it flows through our lives and addressed the idea of ‘sacrament’ as articulation of how the action of grace can be seen if we know how to look.  Next week we will look at the sacraments in more detail to better understand how the seven traditional sacraments can be seen as pointers to the action of grace in our personal evolution.