ABSTRACT
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a visionary figure of the twentieth century that has passed on to posterity several seminal insights of theological and scientific import. He was a nature mystic, with an integrated spiritual vision, which the church and culture of his day seemed unable to comprehend or appreciate. Communion, naming that foundational interrelatedness whereby everything in creation needs everything else to grow and flourish, also owes a great deal to Teilhardian thought. Scholars have made various attempts to categorize Teilhard as an evolutionary theorist. He certainly does not fit the classical or neo-Darwinian categories, with their emphasis on the survival of the fittest. The Christian faith community today espouses an understanding of faith considerably different from that of his day. Although he distinguishes between the Eastern and Western approaches, one detects a sense of evolution from the one to the other rather than any kind of dualistic separation.
