ABSTRACT
One of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's important perspectives that is relevant to the relationship to the Earth and the Universe as responsible human beings, is summed up in his multifaceted concept of 'Building the Earth'. He was uniquely shaped both intellectually and spiritually by nature and education from early youth. He believed that the scientific discovery of evolution was of great theological importance, because it shed a totally new light upon a theological problem that St Paul addressed in his letters, the relationship of the cosmos to Christ. Thomas King, a Jesuit theologian and Teilhardian scholar, distinguishes several kinds of mysticism and indicates a fundamental difference between Teilhard and many earlier scholars. Towards the end of World War I Teilhard expressed in an essay a deeply felt, urgent pastoral need for 'evangelization of a new age'. He spent his spare time and holidays studying the geology of the bedrock along its shores, and constructing a map of its geological structure.
