In Search of the Cosmic Christ

The cosmic Christ language is not just what Christ does for humanity but for the whole of creation (the universe and cosmos).  In a very real sense , the historical Jesus is for us the cosmic Christ.  An incredible book with so many possibilities to explore is J. A. Lyons The Cosmic Christ in Origen and Teilhard de Chardin (Oxford Press, 1982).  He says that both of these creative thinkers followed St. Paul's doctrine of the world to come.  "The world to come is neither a complete break with, nor simply a restoration of this present world but rather its unimaginable transformation" (p.76).

For Origen, Christ is present everywhere throughout the whole universe.  Christ's presence is penetrating the whole of creation.  Like Origen, Teilhard believes that redemption has a greater significance that is much wider than personal or individual salvation of people.  God is rescuing the entire universe in Christ.  There is a connection between relational, universal, and the consummation in these two Christian mystical writers to Paul's three great writings on Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians. 

Teilhard sees the world not moving in endless cycles but towards a higher reality, towards higher states of consciousness.  Creation, incarnation, and redemption fulfill one movement he calls "pleromization" which is a movement towards fullness of being where God and the world are united together.  Jack Hayford many years ago said provocatively that Christians would be better calling themselves pleromatics rather than charismatics where we walk in the fullness of the Spirit.

Teilhard goes beyond some of the fathers and Origen by stressing the body of Christ is not just the church but the world, the whole cosmos.  This is neither materialism spiritualized nor is it some kind of dualism of the spiritual added into the material world.  Rather it is a transformation of the material into going beyond itself, into the super-material.

Origen speculated about universal salvation and some of Teilhard's critics suggest he also embraced universalism.  But these attempts to undermine either of these Christian thinkers and writers is based upon a selective handling of the evidence and a misappropriation of history.  Just to read there biographies would  reveal there orthodox beliefs and there faithfulness to God and church.  There are paradoxes and tensions within both Origen and Teilhard's writings which need to stand as they are. Readers should not try to make them say something more than they said or package them in a certain way to reach certain conclusions eliminating the tension that exist in their writings and reducing truth to one dimension.