Conference of Gérard DONNADIEU, organized by the Gard Association of the Friends of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the SILOË-BIBLICA Bookshop :
“The Universal Christ, The Renewed Vision of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.”
“Some devotional texts seem to suggest that the Christian faith in the Cross represents a God whose inexorable justice demanded a human sacrifice, the sacrifice of his own Son… As widespread as this image is, it is also false.” So said a German theologian in 1968 in a book that has since been widely distributed :“The Christian faith yesterday and today“. And commenting on the work of Teilhard de Chardin, he added in the same book : “It is a great merit of Teilhard de Chardin to have rethought these relationships – Christ, humanity – starting from the current image of the world, to have understood them on the whole with accuracy,…. To have made them accessible again“. Finally, when he became Pope under the name of Benedict XVI, he did not hesitate to quote Teilhard de Chardin on many occasions, to recognize him as a great Christian thinker.
How does this vision of the“ever greater Christ” of Teilhard de Chardin differ from the sacrificial conception of the Cross that has prevailed for several centuries in the West ? In what way does it also find the great intuitions of the Fathers of the Church, such as Irenaeus of Lyon, concerning Christ ; intuitions that the Orthodox tradition has known better than we do to preserve ?
Gérard Donnadieu, theologian, Engineer of Arts and Crafts, Doctor of Physical Sciences, Professor in Paris at the Collège des Bernardins and at the Jesuit Faculties, Honorary President of the Association of Friends of Teilhard de Chardin
Reference works : Le Christ retrouvé, Comprendre Teilhard de Chardin and Comprendre René Girard (Editions Saint-Léger).
