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Abstract
The research involved three tasks: an analysis and an interpretation of the history of Christian spirituality, a description of the worldview and the spirituality of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and an investigation of the extent to which the worldview and the spirituality of Teilhard may contribute in formulating a direction for contemporary Christian spirituality. The methodology used to accomplish these tasks employed a chronological overview as well as a typological explanation of the history of Christian spirituality, an exposition of the evolutionary and theological dimensions of Teilhard's worldview and the twofold problematic of his spirituality, and an examination of Teilhard's contribution to Christian spirituality as reflected in the creation/redemption, desert/city, and apophatic/cataphatic motifs.
The results of the research indicated that in the patristic period there was an emphasis on the kingdom of God, the theology of martyrdom, and the beginnings of monasticism. During the medieval period, spirituality was either that of the cloisters or that of the mendicant transition. In the post-medieval phase of spirituality there was a shift from a largely monastic background to an emphasis on the role of the Christian within the world. A typological interpretation of this data revealed that there has been an overemphasis on the fall/redemption tradition in Western Christian spirituality as well as a dualistic religious orientation expressed in the desert/city motif. Apophatic mysticism seemed also to be related to the collapse of social institutions while cataphatic mysticism thrived in reaction to sterile or negative theology.
The research also posits that Teilhard's contribution to contemporary Christian spirituality is evidenced in his recapturing of the creational dimension in the study of Christology within an evolutionary worldview, in his reinterpreting of the desert/city motif wherein the believer attains an experience of God not through withdrawal from, but involvement in, the material universe and, in his proposing of a new mysticism of convergence in which the apophatic dimension of the spiritual journey is incorporated into its more cataphatic aspects.
