The world is charged with the grandeur of God - Gerard Manley Hopkins
The whole world is my altar - Teilhard de Chardin
We need a new way of understanding and making sense of the world we live in. A new way of perceiving and thinking, a new way of sensing and knowing. Teilhard's view is the cosmos is the theatre of divine energy. This universe on fire or ablaze echoes the Greek fathers in their patristic understanding of creation and the universe.
Some critics have tried to level the pantheism charge against Teilhard's theology but they simply did not understand him. His views not only follow the Chalcedon definition of human and divine without mixture and without confusion but his deeply synergistic understanding of spiritual transformation is deeply within the Greek fathers understanding. A union of love and a communion of the will. For Teilhard, the incarnation of Christ is making all things new, perfecting, and restoring all closely related to Irenaeus notion of recapitulation. This all leads to what Teilhard calls a theology of redemption, deification, and participation in the divine life with God (2 Peter 1:4)
Deification for Teilhard is not just participation in the divine life but the whole created order being drawn towards God. This all happens through Christ through grace. This sacramental theology becomes a transfiguration of matter itself. This is a logical extension for Teilhard of patristic theology's understanding of the Eucharist as an agent of deification. All initiative comes from God and overflows from God. This grand vision is nothing less than the unity of all creation in Jesus Christ.
Most people would not identify Teilhard's theology as either Patristic much less some kind of ressourcement of Christian theology. Even though there are some departures and new understandings at times, one should not forget that a "return to the sources" was for Christian theology to be revised and refreshed in its own context and not just repeat what others have said in the past. It is to imitate earlier Christian moves of reconciling scripture with the world and church with all of creation. What one finds in Teilhard's theology is a Christian understanding that follows the spirit and substance of tradition that is deeply sacramental and contemplative immersed in God's love.
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