_Pierre Teilhard de Chardin_. Edited by Ursula King. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1999. 173 pp.

Reviewed by David N. Cremean, davidcremean@bhsu.edu, Black Hills State University

A volume in the unnumbered Modern Spiritual Masters Series, this book collects and organizes various excerpts from writings by the twentieth-century French Catholic Jesuit Priest and mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). These writings, along with Editor Patricia King's interspersed introductory writings, work together to present a respectably thorough introduction into his life and thought and their intersections.

King is a Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Bristol College in England, where she also directs the school's Center for Comparative Studies in Religion and Gender. Among her further undertakings relevant to this volume are previous books on Chardin and on Christian Mystics.

Selections from Chardin are preceded by a 16-page introduction to the volume-- King's "The Heart of Teilhard de Chardin's Spirituality." Here King focuses on Chardin's scientifically-infused mysticism, highly influenced by his contemporary, the French philosopher Henri "Bergson, particularly Bergson's book _Creative Evolution_. Linking evolution and Christianity placed Chardin ahead of his time, causing him difficulties with the Church, which then, unlike today, opposed the theory. But the link also led to one of his central ideas, "the divine milieu," a semi- pantheistic concept that all of nature is infused with God. Yet here and at other similar junctures, King neglects to mention or underscore how closely Chardin's concepts relate to other mystical traditions, such as Native American Spirituality, Buddhism, Taoism, and so forth. She also emphasizes the formative influence of the incredibly wrenching effects World War I produced in Chardin, as in so many others of the time. But even this relatively medium-length introduction includes frequent redundancies for no apparent purpose, weakening it.

Relative to Chardin's writings themselves, the book is built around five sections,

the first four of which are thematic. These themes, in the order of their appearance in the book, consist of the following Chardinic-sounding but non-parallel phrases: "Discovering the Divine in the Depths of Blazing Matter," "Living in the Divine Mileu," "Christ in All Things,!' and "The A wakening and Growth of the Spirit in the World." These four sections seem intended to reflect a conception of what one may term King's vision of Chardin's own "four gospels," focusing on what she views as his "general worldview": "his deep personal spirituality centered on the universal, cosmic Christ" (13).

The fifth, much shorter section, is a Postscript, "The Heart of Teilhard's Faith Questioned and Reaffirmed." Consisting of two passages, the first taken from his essay "The Christic" (1955), written near the time of his death that same year, the

second from early in his career during his life-changing experiences in World War I, this section confirms King's contention that Chardin's "spiritual vision. . . remained with him all his life" (165).

Somewhat curiously, each of the five sections within the book also includes its own mini-introduction by King. As noted above relative to the main introduction, these shorter sectional introductions frequently, and arguably unnecessarily, repeat information both from the main introduction and often from each other as well. This redundancy, while harmless enough, seemingly serves no purpose other than perhaps to offer some background, explanation, and interpretation of what is to follow should a reader cherry pick only an individual section or two from the book. I found the repetition annoying, particularly since this is a relatively short book. Some of King's material, moreover, explains what is patently obvious in the Chardin excerpts themselves.

Likewise, the selections from Chardin also frequently repeat ideas found elsewhere in the same section or in other sections of King's book. This further case of redundancy might be seen as more defendable did King not write at the end of her final footnote to the introduction that "All the passages selected for this anthology have been edited. In some cases this includes substantial cuts. . . " (24).

Of course, Chardin's efforts, like those of all mystical writers, struggle to put the ineffable into words and images, a vital fact King essentially ignores. Again as with most mystics, the selections from Chardin reveal thoughts that are frequently inspired but at other times verge on or cross into the insipid. For the most part, Chardin's ideas fall into the better category. In numerous ways he was indeed a forerunner of important ideas that became increasingly important after his time, as in his advancement of ecologically-centered ideas.

But relative to his more insipid ideas are the numerous expressions of his

essentially naive beliefs in the powers of science and human society. One example among many such cases comes in an excerpt from the essay "Cosmic Life." Here Chard in proclaims, "Who knows _what astonishing species and natural

gradations- of soul are even now being produced by the persevering effort of

science, of moral and social systems--without which the beauty and perfection of the mystical body would never be realized" (52, emphasis Chardin's). While this belief and other similar ones may be defended in part as contextualizing Chardin as a creature of his time, his witnessing of the horrific abuses of science perpetuated by nation-states, particularly during the World Wars, would seem to demand a more sober consideration of science and political entities on his part, something Chardin appears perhaps to have been constitutionally incapable of. However humanly understandable that incapability might be, it appears to call to question the reliability of, at the very least, his interpretation of some of his mystical visions, if not the visions themselves. This book reminds 'us that much of Chardin's weakest material was his most futuristic, which should cause us to take extra pause when considering most of our own time's "New Ageism."

In addition, this quotation praising science and human society, coming as it does from an essay in the posthumously published _Writings in Time of War-l further highlights the weakness of some of King's editorial choices and omitted

information. The book, as she references it in her "Sources" listing in the book's front, was published in 1968. Thus, when did Chardin write this comment--during or after World War I or during or after World War II? It is frustrating for a reader to be unable to situate the works better.

This shortcoming connects with and leads into other bothersome traits about the book, ones perhaps more significant than the others mentioned previously. It includes neither a chronology of Chardin's life and works nor an index, each of which would prove helpful to many readers. Moreover, the writings King uses from Chardin are listed on page seven as "Sources"; abbreviations noted there are used to refer to the works throughout the rest of the volume, save for King's introduction, which includes, strangely enough, the only footnoted (or for that matter, noted in any fashion) material in the book. This trait works against the reader interested in quick access to titles and the contextually important dates of publication. While these shortcomings are likely due to the editorial policies of the Modern Spiritual Masters Series, they show the strong need for those policies to be changed.

Nonetheless, quirks and imperfections aside, the book provides a solid overview of Chardin, his writings, his thought. And all are worthy of wider exposure in their own right, as well as because of others who have read and were influenced by them, such as no smaller Catholic literary lights than Flannery 0' Connor and Ron

Hansen, among others. Drifting in the flood of his troubled times, as each of us drift through our own (for all times are, of course, troubled), Chardin grasped onto whatever passing logs he could--and willingly, perhaps even obsessively, shared them.