During most of the two thousand years that Christianity has existed it has not been friends with science, and science has not been friends with it. From the Church condemning Galileo, to the Enlightenment thinkers declaring faith “a spent project,” science and Christian faith have been more foe than friend. Happily, this has changed.

Today Christian theology has been able to not only accept the legitimate findings of science but it has been able to integrate them healthily into a vision of salvation history. As a salient example of this we might look at the theological synthesis given us by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955).

Teilhard was a prominent scientist, a paleontologist recognized internationally for his scientific work. He was also a person of exceptional faith, a mystic, a Jesuit priest, and a gifted spiritual writer.

At the time he was doing his scientific work and writing his first theological treatises, the concept of evolution was still almost universally rejected by all the Christian churches, who saw it as in opposition to the story of creation in Genesis. Indeed, the Roman Catholic authorities forbid Teilhard to publish his theological writings, and for several decades his theological writings were circulated only privately among his Jesuit colleagues. Eventually, with the advent of Vatican II and a general (cultural and religious) softening of resistance to the concept of evolution, Teilhard’s theological treatises were allowed by Church authorities to be published; albeit they still came with a warning label as dogmatically unsafe.

What is that worldview? To my mind, it is one of the great syntheses of science and Christian faith that has yet been written. In essence, what Teilhard did was to take the findings of science, particularly the concept of evolution, and meld it with a Christian vision of salvation history to produce a framework within which to more deeply understand science, the Christian faith, and the place of Christ in history.

In brief, he fused, as a perfect fit, the scientific notion of creation and evolution (what we might today call the Big Bang hypothesis) with a Christian vision of salvation history and the place of Christ in that history.

Here, in brief, is his synthesis: God is love and fifteen billion years ago, God created the universe (ex nihilo) out of love. However, God didn’t create it as a finished product, as described in Genesis, but as a cosmic infant that would evolve and grow through some billions of years to reach maturity.

Biblically, initial creation, as described in Genesis, was a “formless void.” In an evolutionary view, it took more than six days for human beings to appear; it took fourteen to fifteen billion years. And creation unfolded this way: After the initial creation (the Big Bang), God, at the center of everything, began to draw all things to Himself through love, and through billions of years, as creation responded to that invitation, it increased continually in complexity, consciousness, and unity, moving freely in love towards God.

And this went through four stages, always with God at the center, drawing creation into the mystery of love:

First, geology, earth, rocks, and water formed (“Geogenesis”). Second, from these, eventually life comes forth (“Biogenesis”). Third, some millions of years later human beings with self-reflective consciousness and free will emerge (“Noogenesis”). But, for Teilhard, there is still a fourth stage, the coming of Christ (“Christogenesis”).

 For Teilhard the birth of Christ is the penultimate culmination (spiritually and cosmically) of the evolutionary process. The unfolding of evolutionary history eventually brings us Christ, not just as the historical Jesus but also as a cosmic reality. For Teilhard, Christ is both a person and a cosmic structure within the universe which, like the person of Jesus, invites everything (humans, animals, plants, rocks, water) to an “omega point,” namely, to a community of love inside of God.

This might sound complex, but perhaps it can be explained more simply by folding Teilhard’s vision of creation into the early Christian hymn in Ephesians, 1,3-10. Here science and Christian faith (not least about the centrality of Christ) blend seamlessly:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. … In love hepredestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ … God has given us the wisdom to understand fully the mystery, a plan he was pleased to decree in Christ. A plan to be carried out in Christ, in the fullness of time, to bring all things into one in him, in the heavens and on earth.

Salvation history and evolutionary history both point to the unfolding mystery of how God is bringing all things into unity through Christ. Teilhard wonderfully folded the cosmic history of this planet into the mystery of Christ.

Science and Christian faith are friends, not foes.