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object:2.04 - The Living Church and Christ-Omega
book class:Let Me Explain
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter



4. The Living Church and Christ-Omega

I. THE LIVING CHURCH

Once the fact of the Incarnation has been recognized, we are
in a position to appreciate more profoundly the nature of the
Christian phenomenon. We see beyond the teaching Church
to the living Church: the seed of super-vitalization planted
in the Noosphere by the historical appearance of Christ
Jesus. (A.E. (Oeuvres VII), p. 155.)

In this connection, we see an additional element beginning
to take shape in the actual nucleus of the cone of cosmic in-
volution. At first we had recognized that the central pheno-
menon in the Universe is Life: in Life it is Thought, and in
Thought the collective arrangement of thoughts in interrela-
tion to one another. We are now faced by a fourth choice, and
it brings us to the conclusion that at a still deeper level, at the
very heart, that is to say, of the social phenomenon, a sort
o£ ultra-socialization is in progress. It is the process by which
'the Church' is gradually formed, its influence animating and
assembling in their most sublime form all the spiritual ener-
gies of the Noosphere: the Church, the reflexively Christi-
fied portion of the world - the Church, the principal focus-
point at which inter-human affinities come together through
super-charity - the Church, the central axis of universal
convergence, and the exact meeting-point that springs up
between the Universe and Omega Point. (Comment je vois,
para. 24.)



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Apologetics

II. CHRIST-OMEGA

(Super-Christ j the Universal Christ, Christ the Evolver, the
Cosmic Christ)

For ninety per cent of those who view him from outside, the
Christian God looks like a great landowner administering
his estates, the world. Now this conventional picture, which
is too well justified by appearances, corresponds in no way to
the dogmatic basis or point of view of the Gospels. And for
this reason. The essence of Christianity is neither more nor
less than a belief in the unification of the world in God by the
Incarnation. All the rest is only secondary explanation or
illustration. In view of this, so long as human society had not
emerged from the 'neolithic', family phase of its develop-
ment (that is to say until the dawn of the modern scientific-
industrial phase) clearly the Incarnation could only find sym-
bols of a juridical nature to express it. But since our modern
discovery of the great unities and vast energies of the cos-
mos, the ancient words begin to assume a new and more
satisfying meaning. To be the alpha and omega, Christ
must, without losing his precise humanity, become co-ex-
tensive with the physical expanse of time and space. In
order to reign on earth, he must 'super-animate' the world.
In him henceforth, by the whole logic of Christianity,
personality expands (or rather centres itself) till it becomes
universal. Is this not exactly the God we are waiting
for?

I will not go so far as to say that this religious renaissance
is yet self-conscious. In all realms, the old framework resists
hardest when it is at breaking-point. But my experience of
Christianity allows me to affirm this: whatever formalisms

99



Let Me Explain

may still persist, the transformation of which I speak has
already taken place in the most living parts of the Christian
organism. Beneath a surface pessimism, individualism or
juridicism, Christ the King is already worshipped today as the
God of progress and evolution. (H.E., pp. 91-2.)

By Super-Christ I most certainly do not mean another
Christ, a second Christ different from and greater than the
first. I mean the same Christ, the Christ of all time, revealing
himself to us in a form and in dimensions, with an urgency
and area of contact, that are enlarged and given new force.

We may dig things over as much as we please, but the
Universe cannot have two heads. The universal Christie
centre, determined by theology, and the universal cosmic
centre postulated by anthropogenesis: these two focal points
ultimately coincide (or at least overlap) in the historical
setting in which we are contained. Christ would not be the
sole Mover, the sole Issue, of the Universe if it were possible
for the Universe in any way to integrate itself, even to a
lesser degree, apart from Christ. And even more certainly,
Christ, it would seem, would have been physically incapable
of supernaturally centring the Universe upon himself if it
had not provided the Incarnation with a specially favoured
point at which, in virtue of their natural structure, all the
strands of the cosmos tend to meet together. It is therefore
towards Christ, in fact, that we turn our eyes when, how-
ever approximate our concept of it may be, we look ahead
towards a higher pole of humanization and personalization.

In position and function, Christ, here and now, fills for us
the place of Omega Point.

St Paul's boldest sayings readily take on a literal meaning
as soon as the world is seen to be suspended, by its conscious
side, from an Omega point of convergence, and Christ, in

100



Apologetics

virtue of his Incarnation, is recognized as carrying out pre-
cisely the functions of Omega.

If Christ does indeed hold the position of Omega in the
heaven of our Universe (and this is perfectly possible, since,
structurally, Omega is super-personal in nature) then a
whole series of remarkable properties become the preroga-
tive of his risen Humanity.

In the first place, he is physically and literally, He who Jills
all things: at no instant in the world, is there any element of
the world that has moved, that moves, that shall ever move
outside the directing flood he pours into them. Space and
duration are filled by him.

Again physically and literally, he is he who consummates:
the plenitude of the world being finally effected only in the
final synthesis in which a supreme consciousness will appear
upon total, supremely organized, complexity. And since he,
Christ, is the organic principle of this harmonizing process,
the whole Universe is ipso facto stamped with his character,
shaped according to his direction, and animated by his form.

Finally, and once more physically and literally, since all
the structural lines of the world converge upon him and are
knitted together in him, it is he who gives its consistence to the
entire edifice of Matter and Spirit. In him too, 'the head of
Creation', it follows, the fundamental cosmic process of
Cephalization culminates and is completed, on a scale that is
universal and with a depth that is supernatural, and yet in
harmony with the whole of the Past.

We see, then, that there is no exaggeration in using the
term Super-Christ to express that excess of greatness assumed
in our consciousness by the Person of Christ in step with the
awakening of our minds to the super-dimensions of the
world and of mankind.



101



Let Me Explain

It is not, I insist, another Christ, it is the same Christ, still
and always the same, and even more so in that it is precisely
in order to retain for him his essential property of being
co-extensive with the world that we are obliged to make him
undergo this colossal magnification.

Christ-Omega: the Christ, therefore, who animates and
gathers up all the biological and spiritual energies developed
by the Universe. Finally, then, Christ the evolver.

It is in that form, now clearly defined and all-embracing,
that Christ the Redeemer and Saviour henceforth offers
himself for our worship. (S.C., pp. 164-7.)



102



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