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Parallel Visions - A consideration of the work of Pavel Florensky and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Декември 26 2012
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| 2013-09-01, 7:53 PM |
Parallel Visions - A consideration of the work of Pavel Florensky and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Joseph H. J. Leach
Dept. of Geomatics
University of Melbourne
Parkville, Victoria 3010
Australia
Pavel Florensky and Pierre Teilhard De Chardin were contemporaries who each worked in the early part of the twentieth century to produce an integrated view of the world involving science, philosophy and theology. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born in 1881 and joined the Jesuits at an early age. He was a paleontologist of note and his interest in evolution led him to develop a new vision of creation which was evolving, of its nature, towards God. Pavel Florensky was born in 1882 and first studied as a mathematician. His interest in the sacred and aesthetics later led him to be ordained as a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church. Both men came from a technical background, both were ordained priests and both had questions raised as to the orthodoxy of their ideas. This paper will explore some of their ideas, looking at areas were there are parallels and at areas were these ideas could complement each other.
Pavel Florensky saw creation is seen as "one living being praying to its creator and Father." This one, living being he called Sophia - the divine wisdom. Sophia is a mysterious transition state between the created and the divine. She is in creation from its first being and yet is in the process of becoming. Sophia is the spiritual beauty of creation and the incorruptible, first-created beauty of creation. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin also saw creation as a living whole and one which was in the process of becoming something greater than that which we now see. His study of evolution had taught him that things begin simply and then develop into something of much greater complexity - far denser, as he saw it, with the spirit of God. Teilhard de Chardin saw all of creation as becoming divine. Its divinity growing from the seeds that were planted in it at its creation and its end point entry, through Christ, into the life of the Trinity.
I believe that each of these men had a similar mystical vision of the unity and divine destiny of all creation. each expressed it through their own culture. Teilhard de Chardin could have given to Pavel Florensky a firm footing in concrete reality and a strong Christological emphasis. Pavel Florensky could have given to Teilhard de Chardin a much greater Trinitarian focus to his understanding, the mystical framework for his ideas and the language to express them in traditional terms.
Introduction
Pavel Florensky and Pierre Teilhard De Chardin were contemporaries who each worked in the early part of the twentieth century to produce an integrated view of the world involving science, philosophy and theology. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born in 1881 and joined the Jesuits at an early age. He was a paleontologist of note, being part of the team that discovered the Peking Man, and his interest in evolution led him to develop a new vision of creation which was evolving, of its nature, towards God. He died in obscurity in 1955 and his major works were only published after his death [1]. Pavel Florensky was born in 1882 and first studied as a mathematician. His interest in the sacred and aesthetics later led him to be ordained as a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church. The communist authorities sent him to a gulag for his views and eventually shot him in 1937 [2].
Both men came from a technical background, both were ordained priests and both had questions raised as to the orthodoxy of their ideas. Pavel Florensky had a life long interest in geology [3] and Teilhard de Chardin had a fascination with physics. Both sought to bring the insights of modern science to bear on the question of creation and its relationship with God and both has a deeply mystical vision of the unity of creation and its destiny in God.
Pavel Florensky used the traditional language of the Russian Orthodox Church in new ways and spoke of the divine in creation as Sophia. Teilhard De Chardin often made up his own words, which could confuse both his supporters and critics alike, and spoke of the divine destiny of creation as the emergence of the Noosphere.
These men never met and probably never knew of each other's existence. Pavel Florensky's work had not been translated from Russian during the life of Teilhard De Chardin. (indeed it is still not widely known in the west) and most of Teilhard's work was not published until after his death in 1955. They were also separated by geography, by different cultural backgrounds, and by denominational allegiance and yet it is a great pity that they did not have the chance to communicate or collaborate with each other. It is impossible to guess what result any collaboration between the two of them would have produced. However, I would contend that they shared a similar vision of creation and each of them had strengths which could have reinforced weaknesses in the other's thought. This paper will explore some of the ideas of these two men, looking at areas were there are parallels and at areas were these ideas could complement each other.
Sophia
Pavel Florensky saw creation is seen as "one living being praying to its creator and Father [4]." This one, living being he called Sophia - the divine wisdom - although Sophia was also that which united creation and caused creation to pray. To understand the concept of Sophia it is important to understand that, for Florensky, contemplating and knowing something involves an act of communion - "a real unity of the knower and the known". That which is known becomes part of he who knows. The contemplation of beauty, therefore, involves a communion with God, from whom all beauty comes.
Consider the following quotes:
God is precisely the Highest Beauty, through communion with whom everything becomes beautiful...beauty is Beauty and is understood as Life, as Creativity, as reality. [5]
Everything is beautiful in a person when he is turned toward God and everything is ugly when he is turned away from God [6].
This communion with God involves God becoming part of the observer's being and the observer entering, to some degree, into the life of God. It involves a process of theosis - of deification. The person who comes to know beauty enters into the loving unity of the Trinity and becomes divine. What is true of individual men as part of creation, is also true of the whole of creation. It is part of the destiny and original nature of all creation to be joined with this divine reality and yet it is the divine which must enable and empower this transformation. When the transformation is complete and creation fully enters into the divine life of God, it will not cease to be, it will not be absorbed into the divine, but will become most truly itself. It is in the context of this process of theosis that we must understand Sophia.
Sophia is a mysterious transition state between the created and the divine. She comes from God and is in creation from its first being and yet is still in the process of becoming. Sophia is the spiritual beauty of creation. She is the incorruptible, first-created beauty of the universe. Sophia can be thought of as creation becoming divine and that part of creation which has already entered into the divine life or which has never left the divine presence. Sophia is thus the passage for men (and of men) into the community of the Trinity and thus has a special dependence on the Word of God. Independent of the Word, Sophia collapses into fragmented chaos but with Word, Sophia is the creative agent in the transformation of all creation.
Pavel Florensky's Problems
Fr. Florensky has been accused of gnosticism [7]. It is a bit hard to make sense of this charge in terms of classical Gnosticism (which required an overcoming of the �grossness' of matter in order to return to the �purity' of spirit) so we need to look at the specific problems identified. There are essentially two specific charges made against Fr. Florensky. The first is that in his concept of Sophia, creation is turned into a new kind of spiritual being and the second is that this spiritual being is then added as a fourth hypostasis to the Trinity. These problems are compounded by the feminine form of the noun. This has been used by some feminist groups to talk about the feminine aspect of God and even of the 'goddess [8]'. I will not discuss this last point since it is so clearly a misunderstanding of the concept of Sophia and Fr. Florensky can hardly be held responsible for people misunderstanding and misusing his ideas.
Many authors have argued, that these charges can not be sustained if you consider Fr. Florensky's work in the context of the tradition from which it sprang. I leave that for others, who are more familiar with the particular tradition than I, to judge. In this paper I will argue that elements of Theilhard's work would also have helped give an orthodox, sacramental context for the concept of Sophia which would avoid these problems. They could also minimize the misuse of the Sophia concept.
The first charge, that Fr. Florensky spiritualises matter or turns creation into a new kind of spiritual being, may never have arisen if Fr. Florensky had Teilhard's experience in the natural sciences, particularly with the science of paleontology and the theory of evolution, so that he was able to clearly speak of matter as matter, as 'photographable' reality, and yet also speak of divinization. Teilhard was very concerned with the concept of evolution, of matter becoming more complex and therefore denser with the potential for the divine. The universe was thus dynamic, always in the process of becoming divine, while Fr. Florensky's vision could sometimes be seen as rather static. [9] This emphasis on the process of becoming could have tied Florensky's concept of Sophia more closely to the traditional understanding of Theosis.
The second charge, that in Sophia Florensky is adding a new, feminine hypostasis to the Trinity, could be avoided by Teilhard's strong Christological emphasis. For Teilhard, creation was not only undergoing a process of divinization through Christ and in Christ by the power of the Spirit but the end point, the 'Omega Point', was Christ. Creation's destiny was to enter the divine life of the Trinity but always through Christ. There could be no question of Sophia being seen as adding another person to the Trinity but rather Sophia could be seen as the action of the Trinity with the Son bringing all creation to the Father by the power of the Spirit.
The Cosmic Christ
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin also saw creation as a living whole and one which was in the process of becoming something greater than that which we now see. The new creation which was being called into existence he called the Noosphere. The seeds of the Noosphere were inherent in creation and goal of all the subsequent history of the universe (the formation of matter, the development of life and intelligence) was to realize the development of the Noosphere. His study of evolution had taught him that things begin simply and then develop into something of much greater complexity. His insight was to see this as a process whereby the universe became denser, as he put it, with the spirit of God. The more complex the universe became the more it was able to manifest, to perceive, and to communicate the infinite depths of the divine. The divine force was seen to be driving this evolution. It was this divine force which gave things their true nature. For Teilhard things were not only characterized by their outward nature but also by their inner nature. There was a �within' to the things of this world. This could be glimpsed in the heart of man. If man had a spiritual core to his being and man was a part of the universe, then all the universe must also have this spiritual nature at the heart of its being. As he wrote in The Phenomenon of Man:
It is impossible to deny that deep within ourselves, an interior appears at the heart of beings, as it were seen through a rent. This is enough to ensure that, in one degree or another, the 'interior' should obtrude itself as existing everywhere in nature from all time. Since the stuff of the universe has an inner aspect at one point of itself, there is necessarily a double aspect to its structure...in every region of space and time... co-extensive with their Without, there is a Within to things [10].
This �Within' is formed by love and love acts as its motivating force, even in inanimate materials. Again from The Phenomenon of Man:
Love...is a general property of all forms of life...In mammals, so close to ourselves, it is easily recognized...Lower down on the tree of life, analogies are more obscure until they become so faint as to be imperceptible. But...If there were no internal propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level - indeed the molecule itself - it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up...Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being. This is no metaphor; and it is much more than poetry [11].
This inner nature was divine in origin and reached towards a divine destiny. Although they are not the same, the parallels between the Noosphere and Sophia are clear.
Teilhard viewed the development of the Noosphere strongly in Christological terms. Christ was the beginning through whom all creation was called into being. Christ was the end point, the Omega point, towards whom all creation was growing. It was the spirit of Christ which formed the �within' of things and held them to their proper course and would not let them fall into chaos. In this, as in much of his writing, there is a clear Eucharistic parallel: the incarnation, the reality of Christ in the Eucharist and the reality of Christ in the heart of the world are all part of the same reality.
Though the phenomena of the lower world remain the same - the material determinisms, the vicissitudes of chance, the laws of labour, the agitations of men, the footfalls of death - he who dares to believe reaches a sphere of created reality in which things, while retaining their habitual texture, seem to be made out of a different substance. Everything remains the same so far as phenomena are concerned, but at the same time everything becomes luminous, animated, loving...Through the workings of faith, Christ appears, Christ is born, without any violation of nature's laws, in the heart of the world [12].
Christ for Teilhard de Chardin was always Christ Pantocrator, whom he called the Cosmic Christ - the eternal Word of God. In and through this Cosmic Christ, Teilhard de Chardin saw all of creation as becoming divine: its divinity growing from the seeds that were planted in it at its creation. Its end point can only be entry, through Christ, into the life of the Trinity.
Teilhard's Problems
Teilhard faced serious questions over the orthodoxy of his thought and was refused permission to publish while he was alive. This was done, at least in part, to protect him from some conservative elements in the church who would certainly have attacked him had his ideas been published while he was alive. There are three basic problems with Teilhard's thought. The first was one of language and essentially a result of misunderstanding while the second and third concerned the nature of evil and the incarnation and are thus far more substantial. In all of these cases, Fr. Florensky's thought could have helped place these ideas in an orthodoxy framework.
The first problem with Fr Teilhard's work is that he was trained as a scientist and he wrote in the language of science. He was not a theologian nor a Scripture scholar nor does he seem to have read widely in philosophy. An analysis of the Scripture used in his work strongly suggests that most of his biblical knowledge came from liturgical sources: the daily office and the lectionary [13]. Ultimately this can be seen as an advantage since he was not overly influenced by the rigid and degenerate scholasticism that had a strangle hold on Catholic theological thought at the time. Indeed a case can be made for him being one of the agents who eventually broke that stranglehold. However, this did cause misunderstanding when his work was analysed by scholastic theologians.
The problem was that what Fr. Teilhard was trying to communicate was a mystical vision of the unity and inner reality of creation but he communicated it in the analytical, technical language of science, even to the point of drawing diagrams. It was this combination of mystical insight and technical language which confused his critics. They tried to study his work as if it were analytical theology. Fr. Florensky's ideas of Sophia would have given Teilhard a traditional language within which to express his ideas and would have made clear the nature of the ideas as more mystical vision than analytical theological thesis.
The second problem which has been raised in connection with Teilhard's work is the nature of evil. Teilhard was working to reconcile evolutionary theory with Christianity and tended to downgrade evil to the level of mistake. Moreover, it was often through such mistakes that progress towards divinisation was made. He could see this happening even in such great evils as the trench warfare of World War I and the potential horrors of nuclear war. This made it sound as if God was the author of evil. Teilhard would respond that God neither planned nor desired any of these things but that they could not hinder the progress of divinisation and would ultimately be seen as helping to bring it about.
The third problem was related to this. If creation was inevitably progressing towards a divine destiny then why did Christ need to die? Why was salvation necessary? Teilhard's vision was very Christocentric but his Christ was always Christ the Pantocrator, whom he termed the Cosmic Christ, rather than the suffering, crucified Christ which was the more familiar image in the western church. Florensky faced a similar problem but was able to overcome it by emphasizing the cardinal change cause by the incarnation which penetrated all previous and subsequent reality with ontological meaning: "Of course, not figuratively, but in truth, geographically, we coordinate ourselves in space with respect to Golgotha, the heart of all hearts, the first principle of all coordinative principles."
In the case of both of these problems, an appreciation of the understanding that the Orthodox Church has developed of the related concepts of Theosis and Sophia, which both informed Fr. Florensky's work and were further developed by him, could have helped to clarify these problems and place them in context.
Conclusion
I believe that each of these men had a similar mystical vision of the unity and divine destiny of all creation, though each expressed it through the language and thought patterns of their own culture. There is, perhaps, a parable for the eastern and western church in the fact that these two men did not meet and share their ideas just as it has been many years since the churches of the east and the church of the west have truly sat down together. It is only together that the full richness of our shared patrimony can be expressed. Teilhard de Chardin could have given to Pavel Florensky a firm footing in concrete reality and a strong Christological emphasis which would have helped him to overcome the accusations of Gnosticism. Pavel Florensky could have given to Teilhard de Chardin a much greater Trinitarian focus to his understanding, the mystical framework for his ideas and the language to express them in traditional terms. All of which would have made his ideas far more palatable to his own order and church. However, they did not meet and it falls to later scholars to bring about the required fusion of ideas from the east and the west.
I would like to give the last words to Teilhard de Chardin but they are words that come from the very beginnings of his thought. They were written as he found himself a young, newly ordained priest and yet also a soldier in the French army. In the mud of the trenches of World War I he had no way of properly celebrating the sacred liturgy.
Since today Lord, I your priest have neither bread, nor wine, nor alter, I shall spread my hands over the whole universe and take its immensity as the matter of my sacrifice. Is not the infinite circle of things the one final Host that it is your will to transmute......Take up in your hands, Lord, and bless this universe that is destined to sustain and fulfill the plenitude of your being amongst us. Make this universe ready to be united with you: and that this may be so, intensify the magnetism that comes down from your heart to draw to it the dust of which we are made [14].
Notes:
[1] Sproxton V. Teilhard de Chardin� SCM Press, London, 1971.
[2] Bychkov, V. The Aesthetic face of Being: Theology of Pavel Florensky, tr. R. Pevear and L. Volokhonsky, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1993.
[3] Bird, R. The Geology of Memory: Pavel Florenskii's Hermeneutic Theology. in Pavel Florenskij: tradition und modern. Eds. N. Franz, M. Hagemeister, F. Haney. Frankfurt et al.: Peter Lang, 2001. 83-95.
[4] Quoted in Bychkov, V. The Aesthetic face of Being: Theology of Pavel Florensky, tr. R. Pevear and L. Volokhonsky, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1993, p. 35.
[5] Ibid, p. 26.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Archbishop Seraphim Sobolev The New Teaching concerning Sophia the Wisdom of God, Sofia, 1935, p. 121.
[8] (e.g. Rudolf Steiner R. and C. Bamford, eds., Isis, Mary and� Sophia: Her Mission and Ours, �Steinerbooks, MA, 2003.)
[9] Bird, R. The Geology of Memory: Pavel Florenskii's Hermeneutic Theology. in Pavel Florenskij: tradition und modern, eds. N. Franz, M. Hagemeister, F. Haney. Frankfurt et al.: Peter Lang, 2001, p. 14.
[10] Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, William Collins and sons, London, 1955. Bernard Wall Trans. p. 56.
[11] Ibid, p. 264ff.
[12] Teilhard de Chardin, Pensees 64 published in Hymn of the Universe, William Collins and sons, London, 1965. Gerald Vann Trans.
[13] Sproxton V. Teilhard de Chardin� SCM Press, London, 1971.
[14] Teilhard de Chardin, Writings in Time of War, as quoted in Sproxton V. Teilhard de Chardin� SCM Press, London, 1971, p. 47.
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