The Divine Milieu (Perennial Classics)

Rating:
Summary: A strange mixture...
Review: ...of gems of spiritual insight alternating with painful attempts to remain within the limited scope of Christian acceptability. It angers me that so gifted and far-seeing a man was so hobbled by the very church that failed to recognize the honor he bestowed on it by becoming a priest. Anyway, worth reading for the foreshadowings that led to his opus THE HUMAN PHENOMENON. -- Craig Chalquist, creator of the Thineownself self-exploration site.

Rating:
Summary: Intense, Intense--This Can Change Your Life
Review: Annie Dillard's "For the Time Being" is a meditation on the problem of evil and the nature of love, and in that eclectic book she features the life of Pier Teilhard De Chardin, particularly the way this guy lived so passionately despite persecution and oppression by a church he loved. Dillard's beautiful vision of this man and the exerpts from his works that she quoted really got me interested in this great priest. So, when I ran onto The Divine Milieu on the clearance shelf at the bookstore, I bought it, ran home, and read it that night. It didn't disappoint.

There's no way I can do justice to the book. Teilhard was one of the most passionately loving men to live on this earth, and that comes through even in his prose. It's an intense experience reading it. This is not because it's particularly difficult but because there such an urgency, such an intensity of feeling behind it. Teilhard wants action. He wants the reader to get out of his/her seat and throw his/herself passionately into the human endeavor. I don't think you can read this work and not feel the urge to do so. Even his images are astounding. This isn't what you think of when yo think of theological writing. His is the best sort of theological writing--reaching to poetic heights.

Of course, the theology is wonderful, too. It's not just rhetoric divorced from life. In fact, that is Teilhard's primary point. Behold, the kingdom of God is here all around us, in the surrounding lives and, in fact, in all the surrounding world, and we must be working for that kingdom. We must be working in and for unity with God. Read Teilhard's work and just dive in to life.

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent
Review: Over thirty years ago, my father tried to introduce me to Teilhard de Chardin. I found myself lost in the abstractions. Only a few days ago I picked this book off the shelf of my own library and discovered in it absolutely sublime writing! Instantly my sense of the Incarnation was deepened and more fully realized, as this man spoke about the meaning of everything each individual human experiences in this world. This is a treasure. I'm not qualified to say much more except read this! And allow me to add that the writing is beautiful and utterly pure. I'm not sure what I mean by pure. Perhaps I mean that it is uncompromising in its vision. This is what I search for, what I long for. I love this.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good, if read with attention to the author's flaws
Review: Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit scientist, philosopher, and mystic who is best remembered for the persecution he suffered at the hands of overly-cautious Church authorities in the years before Vatican II. Depending on whom you ask, that persecution was either symptomatic of everything that needed to be changed in the Church (if you are a liberal) or a case of exactly what the Church needed to do more of in order to fight the Modernist virus (if you are a conservative). The truth is that neither stance is entirely correct, although the liberal interpretation leans more towards mythology than the conservative; Teilhard was not the monster some of his critics have made him out to be, but his thought has some serious blind spots.

This book, The Divine Milieu, is Teilhard's attempt to explain his mystical theology, which takes the consequences of the Incarnation to their utmost in laying out the general outline of what might be called a theology of transfiuration, in which the manner of creation's glorification in and through Jesus Christ is explored. In itself, there is nothing wrong with that, but it does leave him open to two charges: firstly, that he is a pantheist, and secondly, that his theology has no place for the reality of sin and evil, and so is not properly Christian at all, since it cannot give any reason for the Incarnation to have occured if there was no Origianl Sin to be undone.

Of the first charge, pantheism, I think Teilhard is innocent. He denounces the idea often enough, and his own main ideas are such that I think his dubious statements in some places on the disitnction between God and Creation can be attributed to a fine writer's inability to resist a good phrase, rather than bead metaphysics. Teilhard is not a pantheist, although he may be misread as one.

The second charge, however, is more serious. Teilhard says in the introduction that his book presupposes a fundamentally converted soul that has turned from sin and error. Unfortunately, he cannot keep himself from radically generalizing the kind of mystical experiences and realities he is describing, in spite of what he has to say in the start of the book. It is all well and good to talk about how a saint, truly united with God in his or her heart, could well experience the transfiguration of Creation through the omniprescence of the Creator and His love; it is quite another thing to suggest that such is the global and common experience of human kind, visible even in the movement of human history. That, alas, is what Teilhard does. He seems unable to restrain himself from trying to attribute the kind of awesome mystical life he obviously lead to everyone. This, in turn, means that he cannot acknowledge the reality of sin and evil, which are essential ideas in the Christian understanding of things.

One terrible result of this is a shockingly naive attitude towards the powers of the secular world that comes through in several places in the text. Teilhard seems to have thought that because God was directing human life and history towards a consummation that was the pefection of goodness, that anyone who had a similar idea about history moving towards a climax of goodness was implicitly a Christian, building up the Kingdom of God. This is terribly bind: it begs the question of whether or not the Christian and the secularist agree on what goodness is, and thus on what direction history is taking. On Teilhard's principles, there could be an essential consonance between Christian eschatology and the materialist determinism of Marxist-Leninism, which is patently absurd. Josef Stalin was no more an "implicit Christian" than St. Augustine was an "unconscious Marxist". Teilhard, on his own principles, could not see this, which may be why his theology was looked upon with official disfavor, as well as why it was so popular is past times with left-leaning Catholics.

In any case, this is a book to be read with **caution**. There are indeed many noble truths here, but you must be careful and critical of the author's wilder assertions. It seems that Teilhard was a great mystic who was unfortunately blinded by the brilliance with which he saw the action of Providential charity. This does not make him evil, but it does make him problematic, like some other great mystics who had questionable ideas (for example, Fenelon). In short, if you are a Catholic, or an orthodox Christian of any sort, read this book with care. There is much to be learned, but you don't want to accept every lesson Teilhard has to offer us.

JC

Rating:
Summary: An intense, moving work
Review: Written during a difficult period of Teilhard's life (and published long after its completion, like most of his works), this book weaves together a thirst for knowledge and a burning devotion. It is the result of intense self-scrutiny, and it exemplifies the power and scope shared by many texts suspected of heresy: while wishing to remain squarely within the bounds of orthodox Christianity, Teilhard stays entirely true to his vision from beginning to end and as a result dares to walk on a tightrope; it makes his effort even more moving. The Divine Milieu has its share of tensions - between activity and passivity, immanence and transcendence, involvement and detachment, sacred and profane - but every level ultimately blends in one another. In many ways, this profoundly ethical work is an extension of Teilhard's more science-minded writings, and it draws a lot of its impact from what it has been criticized for: a consideration of activities and passivities universal in its reach, since perfecting the world goes beyond exclusively Christian intentions, even as it strongly relies on Christianity's premises (this is also true of Teilhard's thoughts on evil and 'communion through diminution'). His prose, especially in such an evocative and religious work, is carried by an irresistible flow that may not completely survive in translation.

Rating:
Summary: A strange mixture...
Review: Years ago I read this book because I believed the author was ahead of his time. I did not understand much of it due to Teilhard's pencity to create his own language. Having read this book recently, I find myself understanding it more, but having the feeling that it is irrelevant. Teilhard's work in developing his version of Incarnational theology was considered very dangerous by the Catholic church and he was not able to publish during his lifetime. After his death private sources began to publish his works. "The Divine Milieu" seems quite tame today. In fact it may go over people's head because his language is difficult to understand. He sees Christ as the beginning and the end point of creation. Nothing is profane; everything is sacred because Christ is transparent throughout creation. The work of humans might seem quite insignificant, but human endeavors are epiphanies of the reality of God's presence. Teilhard uses traditional Catholic virtues and spirituality to demonstrate his views. It is difficult to see how the church in the earlier part of this century found this dangerous stuff. But Teilhard was breaking with recent tradition in inviting humans to join Christ through creation and their work. Before this Christians were invited to do good works as part of the salvation and sanctification. But the world was suspect. "The Church in the Modern World" a document from Vatican II, dispelled that notion and could be seen as a more contempoary take-off on Teilhard's present work.