SCImago Journal & Country Rank

The paper analyses P. Teilhard de Chardin’s anthropological views and his vision of the problem of original sin in the light of Christian worldview. The article suggests considering the basic principles of Teilhard’s anthropology and his contrasting of two models of understanding of original sin. The analysis results in obvious conclusion that the primary intention of his philosophy lies in transformation of the Christian doctrine according to the evolutionary world view borrowed from natural science. For Teilhard, it is important that the world is initially in a state of multiple fragmentation, because in this way it removes the responsibility for the existence of evil in this world from God on the one hand, and on the other, makes evil an integral part of evolution, thereby creating a reality where people need expiation of original sin, and this redemption is given to them by God. The primacy of natural science in relation to the religious worldview is most obvious in an attempt to expand the allegorical method of interpretation and, in fact, to turn it into the main method. It is the scientific outlook that is the starting point in his reasoning and the problem he set up in the field of the worldview dialogue may be reduced to the question of how to modify the religious worldview in accordance with the scientific one, but not to the question of interpreting scientific methods and facts in a religious-apologetic way.

Key words: worldview dialogue, religion, science, exegesis, original sin, transformism, evolutionism, teilhardism

DOI: 10.22250/2072-8662.2017.2.58-63

Download the paper (PDF)

About the author

  

Egor S. Shushakov Postgraduate student at the Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University;

build. 4, 27 Lomonosov prospect, Moscow, Russia, 119192; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.