How can living the Theological Virtues lead to finding joy in the noosphere?
Today’s Post
Last week we concluded our look through Teilhard’s ‘lens’ at the three so-called “Theological Virtues”- Faith, Hope and Love- by seeing how Cynthia Bourgeault’s reinterpretation of Paul encapsulated the workings of these virtues in our most intimate relationships.
This week we will conclude our look at Values, Morals and Sacraments as ‘articulations of the noosphere’ and see how the ‘Theological Virtues’ of Faith, Hope and Love serve as attitudes, stances that we can take not only in living them out, but in experience the joy of existence.
The Articulation of the Spheres
Two things on which nearly everyone can agree are the intelligibility of reality and the human’s ability to comprehend it. Science depends on them, and religion offers a long history of human inquiry into the nature of existence and our response to it. Both require a belief that whatever the universe is, we can make sense of it.
The current state of religion is a many faceted, often contradictory, but fervently felt set of beliefs about the world and our place in it.
Science, coming into play much later, also offers an approach to understanding existence, although coming at the enterprise from an entirely different perspective. While religion relies on the intuitions developed, passed down and modified in many ways into metaphors, practices and expectations, science, at least nominally, constrains itself to a collegially empirical approach, with heavy dependence on objective data, which is itself a product of independently verifiable observations.
Both of these two spheres of thought have developed significant ‘articulations’ of their respective spheres of thought. Physics, the mainstay of the science of matter, has laboriously effected its ‘Standard Model’, which underpins many of the modern discoveries of, and applications to, the reality which surrounds us. Biology, the investigation of living things, through development of the theory of Natural Selection, has brought a profoundly deep understanding of living things, and more importantly, how we and they interact.
The Duality of the Spheres
As is commonly known, while these two profound modes of thought both address the single reality in which we all live, they are frequently seen to be in conflict. Like nearly every human enterprise, they fall into different sides of an underlying ‘duality’, a dichotomy demarked by a deeply conflicting understanding of the human person.
Physics, with its ‘Standard Model’ can be seen to have developed an ‘articulation of the lithosphere’, and Biology with its theory of Natural Selection an ‘articulation of the biosphere’. Psychology steps in as the first attempt at a secular ‘articulation of the noosphere’. But, as discussed in our look at psychology, it seems no more united in addressing the human person than are science and religion. Science would seem, in its empiricism, to be in competition with religion in its basis of intuition, for a comprehensive ‘articulation of the noosphere’.
The Unity of the Spheres
As Teilhard sees it, it is not the evolutionary perspective that provides the wedge that is evident not only between science and religion, but also among the various ways these beliefs play out within their respective spheres. He sees these dualities as due to the lack of a comprehensive and universal understanding of evolution itself. Such an integrative and universal approach to evolution would afford the possibility of bringing these cornerstones of belief into a coherence that begins to erase the dualities that plague them, leading to greater relevance to human life.
From this unique insight Teilhard sees any attempt to articulate the noosphere as requiring a perspective in which matter, life and the person can all be seen in a single context. Such an integrated perspective will provide the light on reality that we need to successfully manage our habitation of it. He understands this ‘sphere’ of human existence as needing our grasp of its structure, expressed in our beliefs of its ‘nature’ and the calls to action that such beliefs require. In his words
“The organization of personal human energies represents the supreme (thus far) stage of cosmic evolution on earth; and morality (the articulation of the noosphere) is consequently nothing less than the higher development of mechanics and biology. The world is ultimately constructed by moral forces; and reciprocally, the function of morality is to construct the world.” (Parentheses mine)
More to the point, he goes on to say
“,,,to decipher man is essentially to try to find out how the world was made and how it ought to go on making it.”
with the goal, as identified by Jesus, for us to
“.. have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)
Navigating the Noosphere
In a frequently seen quote, Teilhard remarks that
“Those who set their sails to the winds of life will always find themselves borne on a current to the open sea.”
As we saw in our treatment of ‘grace’, Teilhard sees the ‘abundant life’ to which Jesus refers as requiring us to develop the skills of reading the wind and tending the tiller. 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?”
Understanding how his three facets of life are reflected in the three aspects of Paul’s Theological Virtues is a starting place for learning how to ‘trim our sails’.
Paraphrasing Teilhard, this ‘trimming our sails to the winds of life’, is nothing more (and as he would add, ‘nothing less’) than aligning our lives with the axis of evolution. This alignment is where the ‘articulations of the noosphere’ that we have been addressing come in.
The Joy of the Noosphere
As we addressed the virtue of “Hope”, the wonderful facets of the ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ promised by Paul resonate strongly with Carl Rogers’ empirical insights into personal growth. Seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’ they are not ‘rewards from God’ for following ‘His laws’, but the direct result of first understanding the ‘noospheric articulations’ and then orienting our lives (living the Theological Virtues) to living them out. While Teilhard’s metaphor of sailing is a poetic way to contemplate the journey of life, it is significant to see his critical point that when we are employing such ‘sailing skills’, it is ‘alignment to the winds’ that makes it possible to be ‘borne by the current’. The articulations that we humans are developing (thus far still early in the construction stage) are necessary for undertaking the journey of life, but it is the quality of the life, the abundance of it, the richness of it which is enhanced by the attitudes and stances that we have seen in the ‘Theological Virtues’.
The Next Post
In the last several weeks we have been addressing the structure of the noosphere, looking at its ‘articulations’ from the perspective of sacraments, morals, and values, and from the additional perspective of how it is that we can orient ourselves to navigate it. The goal is not only navigating it successfully, but abundantly: not only are we to manage our lives, but fully partake of the joy that is possible in life.
But there is yet another aspect to these articulations and attitudes, and next week we will begin to explore it by looking at where evolution is taking us.