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The Divine Milieu (Perennial Classics)

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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.

A very readable theology of the divinisation of our activities and passivities.

The basic idea is that most Christians see their lives, their work, their play, their interests, as separate from the sanctification and unification with God that they desire. We feel like the living of our everyday lives is nonproductive (or even counterproductive) to the life in Christ that bring us to maturity and wholeness in Him. We hold faith and life in two different hands. Many believers actually begrudge their occupations, their interests, as enemies of the life of God being formed in them. This has been true in my own life. For years I would not read any fiction because I felt that life was short and I had no time for "trivial" matters like literature and poetry. My reading was self-limited to nonfiction and theology. Some people will only listen to "Christian" music. Some will watch only "Christian" television.

Teilhard de Chardin was well aware of the anxiety of dualism in our understanding of life and activity. For Chardin, the main point was for us to simply see things as they really are. Teilhard believed that each soul exists for God, and each soul is linked in mystical union to the Incarnate Word. The universe, says Teilhard, exists for the soul. "Everything forms a single whole" and exists for the glory of God. "We must perceive the existence of links between us and the Incarnate Word" and the "interconnections revealed to us in every order of the physical and human world."

Through this interconnectedness (sounds really Zen-like, doesn't it?), God is fulfilling St Paul's words in Romans 8.18-23. "The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God." Teilhard says, "In each soul, God loves and partly saves the whole world..." And God does this through our activities! "Owing to the interrelation between matter, soul and Christ, we bring part of the being which he desires back to God in whatever we do" (emphasis his). We do this "to build the Pleroma." (The consummation of "the mystery of the creative union of the world in God," i.e., the kingdom of God in its completed form).

This is the divinisation of our activities. If we but see that we are workers together with God in all that we do, that vision brings an excitement and joy to our everyday, mundane, ordinary lives. Through living those lives God saves the world. "But it is essential to see - to see things as they are and to see them really and intensely."

"By virtue of the Creation and, still more, of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see."

"Right from the hands that knead the dough, to those that consecrate it, the great and universal Host should be prepared and handled in a spirit of adoration."

Our lives have divine responsibility. We are to give them wholly to God. Not by making them religious, but by truly seeing that there is no such thing as a division between religious and secular. The universe is the Lord's, and "the Christian knows that his function is to divinise the world in Jesus Christ." As we do this, a transparency occurs. We learn to see in all things the continual creation of God and the beauty of the ultimate unity in Christ.

[He planned] for the maturity of the times and the climax of the ages to unify all things and head them up and consummate them in Christ..." (Ephesians 1.10 AMP)

"...in him all things were created...and in him all things hold together..." (Colossians 1.16-17 NRSV)

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.

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.

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.

Sublime and poetic are appropriate ways by which one may begin to classify this foundational text by the great Jesuit thinker, Teillhard de Chardin. While his ponderings were controversial in his time, they were only controversial insofar as they were taken out of context by those who existed in a philosophical milieu that was perhaps a bit ossified. In the end, Le Milieu Divin stands as a staunchly orthodox work which expresses the sublime role of sub-creational man in rigorously Catholic terms.

Firstly, the text appropriates the relationship between mankind's passivities and activities and how they are divinized. In the end, such divinization becomes possible by the transcending of the self in the Other, an act which is wholly possible in truly engrossing activity as well as the passive reception of the Other in suffering and openness. Beyond this, the brilliant Jesuit reflects on that Milieu which is the center of all Creation, in which creation finds its orientation and motion. This ultimately leads to important exposition of the Eucharist as the center of creation, as the force which lifts it up and gives it the ever-needed orientation. Chardin acknowledges the fact that the Eucharist is that very power which pulls the Earth upward to Divinity, the force in which all passivities and activities find their fulfillment.

I highly recommend this text to all who are willing to struggle with a highly "poetical" text. Chardin's thought is indeed lofty but not impractical. Indeed, the very mission of Love is at stake in this text, and a true desire to be an apostle of Love is all that is require of the reader.

I first read Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's landmark books, "The Phenomenon of Man" and "The Divine Milieu", shortly after the initial posthumous publication. At that time, in the early 1960's, I was a graduate student in Chemistry and a recent convert to Roman Catholicism. I was deeply impressed by the insight and spirituality of this author, and was delighted at the way in which he merged his faith with his scientific understanding. His theory of complexity-consciousness and discussion of the development of the Noosphere enthralled me and had an extremely formative influence on much of my later thinking and, eventually, my teaching. I became a high school teacher in the era when "Creationism" was holding forth in utter ignorance of the reality of Divinely-guided evolution, and could only wish that Teilhard's wonderful work would be more widely read and understood by both "camps" in the controversy.

Over twenty years later, with the birth of the Internet, satellite communications and cellular telephone technology, I suddenly saw the true maturation of that Noosphere that Teilhard had envisioned and in a sense prophesied, and I realized that I needed to revisit his writings. Regretfully, I could not find my original copies in my somewhat cluttered library, and decided that I would re-purchase them. I can't say how profoundly glad I am that I was able to obtain copies of these two books and others by Teilhard via Amazon.

This book has been one of the greatest inspirations and influences of my life. Tielhard bridges the gap between religion and science in a profound and wonderful explanation of how the earth, all of us, and everything that exists are part of a divine milieu, ever expanding and moving towards its next evoloution. Fantastic.

This was a hard read but it kept me interested. You can almost feel de Chardin's personal struggle but that's what makes books like this interesting to me.

...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.