[…] As I have been repeating to all the echoes for the past year, the great event of modern times is for us to discover that, for Man, locked up in and of himself, there is an exit forward (by self-development of something beyond Man) – while, until then, we could only see a way outup (by escape in God). It is the dawn of this ” faith in Man ” which pretends to eclipse the traditional faith in God. My conviction, in these conditions, is that if the forward “(pushed to the end) cannot be understood without some ” up “on the other hand, the up “is even less understandable without a ” forward ” which means that the Christian faith can only survive and rebound by incorporating faith into human progress. And my conviction, moreover, is that if this synthesis were to take place between faith in God and faith in Man, we would see again (and in a much more universal and intense way) what has happened at times in history (for example with Buddhism, Christianity and Marxism) I mean, the spread, like a fire, of a new state of mind. And isn’t it this climate, this new atmosphere, that is still missing for our incredible technical powers to produce their natural effect of human unification ?
I wonder if, from America, you feel that you see a little more clearly in the political, economic and psychological situation of the World. Here, we continue to live as if we were falling from the sixth floor : that is, with the impression that a radical transformation is inevitable. But where, and of what species ? And there are still people who do not feel that Humanity is the collective subject of a real evolution ! […]
Fulfilling the man – Unpublished letters (1926-1952)Grasset, 1968, p. 124-125.
Selection by Guy Assens of the Carcassonne Reading Group.
To subscribe to this newsletter, please visit
www.teilhard.fr
