Theology, Evolution, and the Figural Imagination: Teilhard de Chardin and His Theological Critics

Teilhard de Chardin has been criticized by both Roman Catholic (Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Dietrich von Hildebrand) and Protestant (David Lane and Jurgen Moltmann) theologians for allegedly promulgating a heterodox, modernist version of Gnosticism that substitutes a naturalistic account of evolution for the supernatural Christian story of redemption in Christ, departs from scriptural and classical theological norms, gives primacy to scientific over theological reasoning, and articulates a vision of pure immanence. Teilhard’s theological integration of salvation and evolution in The Human Phenomenon and other works is, however, grounded in an implicitly figural interpretation of history that is both scriptural and classical in inspiration. Reading Teilhard’s early essay, ‘Cosmic Life,’ through the studies of Erich Auerbach, Leonard Goppelt, and Tibor Fabiny on figural interpretation demonstrates that Teilhard describes evolutionary history as a typological anticipation for the coming Christ, thus refuting misconstruals of his theology as gnostic, heterodox, naturalistic, and immanentalist