Lubac - Sin Shatters Single Divine Image, Jesus Assumes and Redeems It

In these conditions, all infidelity to the divine image that man bears in him, every breach with God, is at the same time a disruption of human unity. It cannot eliminate the natural unity of the human race—the image of God, tarnished though it may be, is indestructible—but it ruins that spiritual unity which, according to the Creator’s plan, should be so much the closer in proportion as the supernatural union of man with God is the more completely effected. Ubi peccata, ibi multitudo.¹ True to Origen’s criterion, Maximus the Confessor, for example, considers original sin as a separation, a breaking up, an individualization it might be called, in the depreciatory sense of the word. Whereas God is working continually in the world to the effect that all should come together into unity, by this sin which is the work of man, “the one nature was shattered into a thousand pieces” and humanity which ought to constitute a harmonious whole, in which “mine” and “thine” would be no contradiction, is turned into a multitude of individuals, as numerous as the sands of the seashore, all of whom show violently discordant inclinations. “And now”, concludes Maximus, “we rend each other like the wild beasts.” “Satan has broken us up”, said St. Cyril of Alexandria for his part, in order to explain the first fall and the need of a redeemer.”' And in a curious passage, in which the recurrence of an ancient myth may be discerned, Augustine explains the matter similarly in a symbolical manner. After establishing a connection between the four letters of Adam’s name and the Greek names for the four points of the compass, he adds:

Adam himself is therefore now spread out over the whole face of the earth. Originally one, he has fallen, and, breaking up as it were, he has filled the whole earth with the pieces.

That was one way of considering evil in its inmost essence, and it is a pity perhaps that the theology of a later period has not turned it to greater account. Instead of trying, as we do almost entirely nowadays, to find within each individual nature what is the hidden blemish and, so to speak, of looking for the mechanical source of the trouble which is the cause of the faulty running of the engine—some exaggerating the trouble, others inclined to minimize it—these Fathers preferred to envisage the very constitution of the individuals considered as so many cores of natural opposition. This was not taken as the first or only cause of sin, of course, but at least as a secondary result, “equal to the first”, and the inner disruption went hand in hand with the social disruption. . . .

Let us abide by the outlook of the Fathers: the redemption being a work of restoration will appear to us by that very fact as the recovery of lost unity—the recovery of supernatural unity of man with God, but equally of the unity of men among themselves. “Divine Mercy gathered up the fragments from every side, forged them in the fire of love, and welded into one what had been broken. He who remade was himself the Maker, and he who refashioned was himself the Fashioner.” Thus does he raise up again man who was lost by gathering together once more his scattered members, so restoring his own image. Like the queen bee, Christ comes to muster humanity around him.² It is in this that the great miracle of Calvary consists:

There were at that time all kinds of miracles: God on the Cross, the sun darkened. . . the veil of the temple rent. . . water and blood flowing from his side, the earth quaking, stones breaking, the dead rising. . . Who can worthily extol such wonders? But none is to be compared with the miracle of my salvation: minute drops of blood making the whole world new, working the salvation of all men, as the drops of fig-juice one by one curdle the milk, reuniting mankind, knitting them together as one.³

For a change of metaphor there is that in which Christ is likened to a needle the eye in which, pierced most painfully at his passion, now draws all after him, so repairing the tunic rent by Adam, stitching together the two peoples of Jew and Gentile, making them one for always.⁴

Divisa uniuntur, discordantia pacantur:⁵ such from the very beginning is the effect of the Incarnation. Christ from the very first moment of his existence virtually bears all men within himself ⁶—erat in Christo Jesu omnis homo. For the Word did not merely take a human body; his Incarnation was not a simple corporatio, but, as St. Hilary says, a concorporatio. He incorporated himself in our humanity, and incorporated it in himself. Universitatis nostrae caro est factus.⁷ In making a human nature, it is human nature that he united to himself, that he enclosed in himself, and it is the latter, whole and entire, that in some sort he uses as a body. Naturam in se universae carnis adsumpsit.⁸ Whole and entire he will bear it then to Calvary, whole and entire he will raise it from the dead, whole and entire he will save it. Christ the Redeemer does not offer salvation merely to each one; he effects it, he is himself the salvation of the whole, and for each one salvation consists in a personal ratification of his original “belonging” to Christ, so that he be not cast out, cut off from this Whole.

Not in vain does John assert that the Word came and dwelt among us, for in this way he teaches us the great mystery that we are all in Christ and that the common personality of man is brought back to life by his assuming of it.  . . . The Word dwells in us, in that one temple he took through us and of us, so that we should possess all things in him and he should bring us all back to the Father in one Body.⁹

1 Where there is sin, there is multiplicity. Origen, In Ezech., hom. 9, n.1: “Ubi peccata sunt, ibi est multitudo, ibi schismata, ibi haereses, ibi dissensiones. Ubi autem virtus, ibi singularitas, ibi unio, ex quo omnium credentium erat cor unum et anima una. Et, ut manifestius dicam, principium malorum omnium est multitudo, principium autem bonorum coangustatio et a turbis in singularitatem redactio” (Baehrens, p. 405). [Google translate: Where there are sins, there is multitude, there schisms, there heresies, there dissensions. Where there is virtue, there is singularity, there is union, from which all believers were one heart and one soul. And, to say more plainly, the beginning of all evils is multitude, but the beginning of good things is narrowing and reduction from multitudes into singularity.]

2 Hippolytus, In Cantic. I.16.

3 Gregory Nazianzen, Orat. 45 c. 29 (PG 36, 662-64).

4 Paschasius Radbertus, In Mat., lib. 9 (PL 120, 666).

5 What was divided is united, discord becomes peace. Fulgentius, Ad Monimum, lib. 2, c. 10 (PL 65. 188).

6 Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus, assertio 15 (PG 75, 293-96).

7 He became the flesh of our universal humanity. Hilary, In Psalmum 54, n. 9 (Zingerle, p. 153).

8 He assumed in himself the nature of all flesh.

9 Cyril of Alexandria, In Joannem, lib. 1 (PG 73, 161-64).

Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: A Study of Dogma in Relation to the Corporate Destiny of Mankind (1947; tr. 1958), 33-40

Lubac - Humanity created, fell, redeemed as a whole

The supernatural dignity of one who has been baptized rests, we know, on the natural dignity of man, though it surpasses it in an infinite manner . . . . Thus the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ, a supernatural unity, supposes a previous natural unity, the unity of the human race. So the Fathers of the Church, in their treatment of grace and salvation, kept constantly before them this Body of Christ, and in dealing with the creation were not content only to mention the formation of individuals, the first man and the first woman, but delighted to contemplate God creating humanity as a whole. "God", says St Irenaeus, for example, "in the beginning of time plants the vine of the human race ; he loved this human race and purposed to pour out his Spirit upon it and to give it the adoption of sons."¹ For Irenaeus again, as indeed for Origen,² Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, for Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus, Hilary and others, the lost sheep of the Gospel that the Good Shepherd brings back to the fold is no other than the whole of human nature; its sorry state so moves the Word of God that he leaves the great flock of the angels, as it were to their own devices, in order to go to its help. The Fathers designated this nature by a series of equivalent expressions, all of a concrete nature, thus demonstrating that it was in their view a genuine reality.

They seemed to witness its birth, to see it live, grow, develop, as a single being. With the first sin it was this being, whole and entire, which fell away, which was driven out of Paradise and sentenced to a bitter exile until the time of its redemption. And when Christ at last appeared, coming as the "one bridegroom", his bride, once again, was the "whole human race".

Our early Fathers' habitual manner of thought must be borne in mind if we would understand certain strange ways of speaking—whatever their precise origin—that are met with in such writers as Methodius of Olympus, who appears to make of Christ a new appearance of Adam himself brought back to life by the Word.³ If several of them held so strongly, as we know, that Adam was saved, one of the reasons for it was undoubtedly that they saw the salvation of its head as the necessary condition of the salvation of the human race. "This Adam, within us all", says one of the homilies of Pseudo-Epiphanius.⁴ And another homily, of Pseudo-Chrysostom : "By the sacrifice of Christ the first man was saved, that man who is in us all." ⁵ Is not this also the inner meaning of the legend according to which Adam, who had been buried on Calvary, was baptized by the water which flowed from the side of Jesus? Surely, too, the many liturgical texts about the descent of Christ into " hell", where the first man is alone mentioned, are, like the works of art which correspond with them, indications that that same way of thought continued until much later. 

Before embarking on the study of this human nature, from its beginning until the end of the world, the Fathers made a fundamental examination of it in order to perceive the principle of its unity. Now this principle appeared no different to them from that on which rests the natural dignity of man. Was it not shown to them in Genesis, where it was taught that God made man in his own image? For the divine image does not differ from one individual to another: in all it is the same image. The same mysterious participation in God which causes the soul to exist effects at one and the same time the unity of spirits among themselves. Whence comes the notion, so beloved of Augustinianism, of one spiritual family intended to form the one city of God. . . . 

Clement of Alexandria, in pages brimming over with poetry, after exposing the baseness of the pagan mystery cults, extols the mysteries of the Logos and displays the "divine Choregus" calling all men to him :

Be instructed in these mysteries and you shall dance with the choir of angels before the uncreated God, whilst the Logos will sing the sacred hymns with us. This eternal Jesus, the one high priest, intercedes for men and calls on them: "Hearken," he cries, "all you peoples, or rather all you who are endowed with reason, barbarians or Greeks! I summon the whole human race, I who am its author by the will of the Father! Come unto me and gather together as one well-ordered unity under the one God, and under the one Logos of God." ⁶

1  Adversus Haereses, passim.

2  In Genesim, horn. 2, 5 ; 9, 3; 13, 2 (Baehrens, pp. 34, 92, 114).

3  Methodius of Olympus, Symposium, 3, c. 4-8 (French trans. by Farges, pp. 42-52). [also see this post]

4  Homily 2 (P.G. xliii, 460—I).

5  In Pascha, sermo 2; cf. sermo 1 (P.G. lix, 725 and 723).

6  Protreptic, c.12.

Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: A Study of Dogma in Relation to the Corporate Destiny of Mankind (1947; tr. 1958), 25-33

Note: Most footnotes have been omitted, and those included have different numbering than original.

 

Lubac - Salvation not only "individual"

The joy of Jesus can be personal. It can belong to a single man and he is saved. He is at peace, he is joyful now and for always, but he is alone. The isolation of this joy does not trouble him; on the contrary: he is the chosen one. In his blessedness he passes through the battlefields with a rose in his hand. . . .  

My joy will not be lasting unless it is the joy of all. I will not pass through the battlefields with a rose in my hand.¹

What Christian has not encountered such an accusation? How many souls have not encountered upon their course this stone of stumbling? . . . 

"How," they ask in particular, "can a religion which apparently is uninterested in our terrestrial future and in human fellowship offer an ideal which can still attract the men of to-day?" . . . 

 "[The Christian] withdraws from the converse of men, exclusively preoccupied with his own salvation, which is a matter between God and himself" [as opposed to] "the modern man who . . . cannot detach himself from other men: fully conscious of the solidarity which unites him with his fellows, which makes him in a sense dependent on them, he knows that he cannot work out his salvation by himself".² 

. . .

In answer to all this we may quote this simple assertion of a believer and a theologian: "Fundamentally the Gospel is obsessed with the idea of the unity of human society."³ This shows the full extent of the misunderstanding. We are accused of being individualists even in spite of ourselves, by the logic of our faith, whereas in reality Catholicism is essentially social. It is social in the deepest sense of the word: not merely in its applications in the field of natural institutions but first and foremost in itself, in the heart of its mystery, in the essence of its dogma. It is social in a sense which should have made the expression "social Catholicism" pleonastic. 

Nevertheless, if such a misunderstanding has arisen and en-trenched itself, if such an accusation is current, is it not our own fault? We can leave on one side what is only too obviously groundless in certain objections, those which are bound up with a purely extrinsic and secular conception of Catholicism or of salvation or based on a complete misunderstanding of Christian detachment. Nor need we insist on the failings, serious though they often are, which may have given rise to these misunderstandings: the selfish piety, the narrow religious outlook, the neglect of ordinary duties in the multiplication of "devotions", the swamping of the spiritual life by the detestable "I", the failure to realize that prayer is essentially the prayer of all for all. These are all deviations to which all believers, being human, are exposed, and which it is easy to criticize. But are they in fact sufficiently recognized as such? Does not neglect of dogma increase the extent of moral failure? And if so many observers, who are not all lacking in acumen or in religious spirit, are so grievously mistaken about the essence of Catholicism, is it not an indication that Catholics should make an effort to understand it better themselves? 

1  Jean Giono, Les vraies richesses, 1936, pp. v and viii.

2 Les affirmations de la conscience moderne, 3rd edn., 1906, pp. 108-9 ; and p. 56: "Our morality is less and less Christian just because it is more and more social". p. 108 : "the Christian, like the Stoic, is sufficient unto himself".

3 E. Masure, conference in Semaine sociale de Nice, 1934, p. 229.

Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: A Study of Dogma in Relation to the Corporate Destiny of Mankind (1947; tr. 1958), 13-16

Note: Most footnotes have been omitted, and those included have different numbering than original.

De Lubac - Teilhard and the divine presence (3)

Pere Teilhard might, again, have said with St John of the Cross, "the centre proper to each of us, the centre of the soul, is God".* His own words, indeed, are better and more accurate, "The centre of centres", and, again, "Centrum super centra". Such was for him, "at the heart of the world, the heart of a God". No doubt he was more familiar with The Book of St Angela of Foligno, which he had read before 1916, since he quotes it freely in La Vie Cosmique and refers to it again in the Milieu mystique. He was later to quote it again in the Milieu Divin, probably after re-reading it in the translation his friend Pere Paul Doncoeur† brought out in 1926. "I saw", says St Angela, "that every creature was filled with him"; and again, "I see him who is being, and I see how he is the being of all creatures." He translated this classic doctrine into his own words when he spoke of the "transparency of the universe", to the eye of faith—which is for him the "milieu divin". He placed it, of course, in its proper perspective, too, when he explained that it is impossible to set God "as a focus at the summit of the Universe without, in doing so, simultaneously impregnating with his presence even the most insignificant evolutionary movement "; it is impossible, therefore, to see in this "supreme consciousness" a "higher pole of synthesis" without at the same time asserting its "omnipresence" and "omni-action".‡ This means that the immanence of God is seen as deriving from his transcendence, and is thus the exact contrary of immanentism. 

Elsewhere Teilhard adds, "God the eternal being in himself, is everywhere, we might say, in process of formation for us". Here, every word should be weighed. One should not concentrate only on the second half of the sentence, and, above all, the words "for us" should not be overlooked. It will be noted, too, that, in the correlative assertion of a dynamic immanence, the idea of divine transcendence is in no way over-shadowed. "The majesty of the Universe" does not obscure for him "the primacy of God." While Pere Teilhard, in the hope of rousing the Christian of today from a lethargy he believes hostile to the spread and even the maintenance of his faith, urges him to "discern, below God, the values of the world, at the same time he is careful to urge the humanist of today to "discern, above the world, the place held by a God ".§ And it is with the same care to maintain the correct relation between immanence and transcendence that he speaks of Christ: "The risen Christ of the Gospel can never hold, in the consciousness of the faithful, his primacy over the created world that, by definition, he is to consummate, except by incorporating in himself the evolution that some people seek to oppose to him."

Here his teaching echoes his prayer: "Lord, grant that I may see, that I may see You, that I may see and feel You present in all things and animating all things." "If so many souls have been touched by his message", writes Jean Lacroix, "it is perhaps primarily because he knew how again to make of the universe a Temple."||

If man, as Teilhard understands him, is to fulfil his destiny, he must add the voice of his consciousness and, throughout all his activity, of his freely given homage, to the hymn that rises up to God from all creation. That is why we may speak of "Pere Teilhard's cosmic liturgy": and why, too, The Hymn of the Universe was a happy choice of title for a miscellany of prayers and meditations selected from his writings.¶

* The Living Flame, I, 3. 

† La Vie Cosmique, p. 57; "God is everywhere, God is everywhere (St Angela of Foligno)." Le Milieu Divin, p. 116; "The Creator and, more specifically, the Redeemer have steeped themselves in all things and penetrated all things to such a degree that, as St Angela of Foligno said, 'The world is full of God'." Cf. The Making of a Mind, p. 130. 

‡ L'Atomisme de l'Esprit (1941); Oeuvres, VII, p. 61. Cf. Robert Bellarmine, De ascensions mentis in Deum, gradus 2: "Were another world to be created, God would fill that, too; and if there were to be more worlds, or even an infinite number of worlds, God would fill them all. . . . with his omnipotence and wisdom, he is present everywhere" (Montpellier ed. 1823, pp. 40-1). 

§ Quelques reflexions sur la conversion du monde (1936), p.2. L'Energie humaine (1937); "... above creation ..." (VI, p. 10). In 1952, a San Francisco newspaper printed a report from a French newsagency [sic] to the effect that "the God of Pere Teilhard was becoming a God immanent in the evolution of the world". On 3 Aug., Teilhard wrote from New York to Pere Andre Ravier, "What annoys me in this business is the offhanded way it makes me jettison a divine 'transcendence' that I have, on the contrary, spent all my life in defending—though seeking at the same time, it is true (like everyone, but by using the new properties of a universe in process of cosmogenesis) to reconcile it with an immanence which everyone agrees must be given a progressively more important and more explicit place in our philosophy and religion." 

|| Le Sens de l'atheisme modern (1958), p. 28. Cf. letter of 7 Aug. 1923: "With himself, Man brings back to God the lower beings of the world. Sin consists in falling back among them;—virtue in carrying them along with him." 

¶ Some hasty readers have referred to this as "Hymn to the Universe", a mistake that points to a serious misunderstanding of Teilhard's thought. I have also seen it called "Hymns to the Universe". A similar mis-reading is referred to later (pp. 95,188). 

Henri de Lubac - Teilhard: the man and his meaning (1965), p. 26-28  

The penultimate paragraph and its accompanying footnote remind of something Bishop Barron has said about God's intention that humanity have a priestly role in offering the natural world to Him as sacrifice. I'll try to find the video where he talked abut that and reference it here.

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De Lubac - Teilhard and the divine presence (2)

Pere Teilhard de Chardin lived, with great intensity, this prime truth, constantly recalled in Scripture and Christian tradition, by the Fathers of the Church and the great scholastic theologians, no less than by the mystics. With all these, he held that God is both "further than everything and deeper than everything". His master St Ignatius Loyola, in particular, had taught him to "contemplate God as existing in every one of his creatures. He 'venerated an omni-presence', resting on and losing itself in the peace a deep intimate union." St Teresa would have been delighted to meet him on her road, to save her from the "half-baked doctors, always so ready to take exception" who would not leave her in peace, as she entered into her mystical life, to believe that God is present in all beings; Teilhard could have set her mind at rest by assuring her that God's intimate presence is not an impossibility but a solid fact. He could have told her, in the words of St Thomas Aquinas, that "God must be present in all things, and that in an intimate manner". Here, again, is what a Thomist theologian has to say, whose only concern is to state the most fully traditional teaching: 

Many of the objections and difficulties we meet in connection with our relationship to God, arise from our considering God as a stranger, as someone other than ourselves. This, to put it plainly, is simply untrue. Our habitual concepts tell us only about personalities exterior to and therefore foreign or strange to our own. When we are concerned with God, we must realize that we are concerned with a being who is certainly distinct from us, but who is at the same time the reason for our own being. ... If I take myself, suppressing all my imperfections and magnifying to infinity my own poor perfections, even those most personal and peculiar to myself, the most incommunicable, then I have God. That is why theologians can say, "God is not another, he is virtually and eminently myself, he is an infinite myself, pure act." Deus est virtualiter ego ipso, as John of St Thomas puts it. It is thus that, while completely rejecting pantheism, we retain anything legitimate that may be contained in its tendencies."*

If this is indeed bold doctrine, which of the two writers expresses it the more boldly? However, St Thomas, too, was already accused of pantheism,† and for this same reason. Some contemporary critics of Teilhard's thought accuse him of a "deception", on the ground that beneath his repeated affirmations of the personality of God there lies an "unacknowledged pantheism"; without realizing it, they are continuing to bring forward last century's accusation against scholasticism in general and St Thomas in particular of an "implicit pantheism", the reason behind which was an inability to envisage any true personal monotheism except in the position of a God who is "cut off from the world". The only difference is that the earlier critics did not put forward their objection in the name of orthodox Catholicism; they maintained, on the contrary, that such a "cosmic pantheism", the fruit of all "metaphysical theology", was "essential to consistent Catholicism".‡ Their unconscious disciples might well bear that in mind. 

* Pierre-Thomas Dehau, O.P., Divine intimite et Oraison, in La Vie Spirituelle, May 1942, pp. 412-13. Sec also J. J. Surin, Guide Spirituelle (ed. M. de Certeau, 1963), pp. 138-9. 

† The half-truth that explains, though it does not justify, this accusation has been pointed out by M. Etienne Gilson (La Philosophie au moyen age, 1922, II, p. 144; 1925 and 1930, p. 302): "In Thomism itself there is a sort of virtual pantheism that a mere relaxation of strict doctrine would allow to come out into the open but that would thence cease to be Thomism. On the other hand in Eckhart, we find, if not a deliberate, avowed, pantheism, at any rate what is in fact, though disavowed and denied, pantheism". (In the 1944 edition, pp. 698-9, this view is less forcibly expressed). 

‡ Charles Renouvier, De l'idee de Dieu (L'annee philosophique, 1897, pp. 3-15); Philosophie analytique de l'histoire, vol. 3 passim; Histoire et solution des problemes metaphysiqus, p. 166; Correspondance avec Charles Secretan, p. 11. Cf. Marcel Mery, La critique du Christianisme chez Renouvier (1952), I, pp. 308, 361, 399; II, pp. 218, 226-8, 380, 405. 

Henri de Lubac - Teilhard: the man and his meaning (1965), p. 24-26 

I had no idea that there was an historical Catholic/Protestant controversy connected to this, although it makes sense if the Incarnation is at the foundation of the Catholic (in this this case Thomistic) position. I included that last convoluted footnote so I could follow up and see if I can find any of the documents related to that discussion.

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De Lubac - Teilhard and the divine presence (1)

We know that in his formulation of the Christian faith Pere Teilhard, seeking for greater fidelity to the thought, the tactical sense, and the very words of St Paul, would have liked to win acceptance for the expression "Christian pantheism",* as opposed to all the "false pantheisms", whether new or old, Eastern or Western, crude or subtle. Sometimes he risked using the words, explaining them, however, in a way that made any wrong interpretation impossible. Occasionally one feels that it went against the grain to have to refrain from doing so. There are other passages in which he simply contrasts the Christian or the "guest of the divine milieu" with pantheist. In any case, quite apart from the actual terminology, there can be no doubt that of all contemporary thinkers it was Teilhard who was the most outspoken opponent of pantheistic concepts of Godhead. He vigorously rejected every type of "pantheist bliss". In every doctrine, whatever might be said for it in other respects, that describes the "final state" as "a faceless organism, a diffuse humanity,—an Impersonal" he denounced its "betrayal of the Spirit". On one occasion he spoke of the "triumphant joy", retained even in his "worst hours", that he drew from his faith in the transcendence of God. At the same time he held that "we must love the World greatly if we are to feel a passionate desire to leave the World behind"... He knew also that "the false trails of pantheism bear witness to our immense need for some revealing word to come from the mouth of Him who is"... He sought, too, to do more than reject or refute pantheism: by establishing the "differentiating and communicating action of love",† he neutralized its temptation.

What perhaps introduces some confusion into this subject is that too many people in our modern West, even including some who are extremely firm in their faith and heedful of the spiritual life, are apt to forget the divine Presence and the divine Action in all things—even indeed at the natural level. It is here that a superficial cult of the spiritual has done a great deal of damage. Just as many, when they have to consider their final end, can only oscillate "between the concept of an individual survival that leaves beings isolated from one another, and a reflection that absorbs them into the one", so the divine transcendence is too often conceived, or rather imagined as itself, too, being purely exteriorized. As Pere Abel Jeanniere has said, "Among many who are opposed to the thought of Teilhard we find an underlying mental attitude which allows no possibility of distinction except in separation and mutual exteriority." It was of these people that the author of the Milieu Divin was thinking when he said: "Of those who hear me, more than one will shake his head and accuse me of worshipping Nature." In fact, "however absolute the distinction between God and the world (since everything in the world—and the world itself—exists, even at this present moment, only by divine creation), God is present in the world and nothing is more present in it than the God who creates it: for 'it is in him that we live, and move, and have our being'". Deus non creavit, et abiit (St Augustine.) 

* Cf. Mgr. Lucien Cerfaux, Le Chretien dans la Thiologie pauhnienne (1962), p. 212, on 1 Cor. Is. 28: "The ancient Stoic formulas, pantheist in tone, the identity of the one with the whole, God all in all, are Christianized. Personal monotheism asserts itself. ..." Or again, Edgar Haulottc, S. J., L'Lsprit de Yahme dans l'Antsen Testament (in the symposium L'Ilomme ileums Dieu, 1964, I, p. 28) on Acts t 8.24-9: Paul "puts the language of the Bible into words that can be understood by the Epicureans and Stoics to whom he is speaking. ... He relieves 'the whole', 'the one', 'the origin', 'life', 'breath', from the implication they have in Stoic thought with impersonal cosmic forces; instead, he brings these realities into the same circuit, so to speak, as the personal creative force of God." 

† One cannot help seeing here a kinship of thought with Maurice Blondel. In the same year as Pere Teilhard was writing Le Christ dans le Matiere, Blondel was writing to Pere Auguste Valensin: "I can no longer remember very well the arguments you remind me of in connection with the Catholic antidote (through the Eucharist) for the terrible evil of pantheism. I was trying, no doubt, to show the strength of that pernicious doctrine, precisely because of the profound sense it shows of the problem of in some way getting the finite and the infinite to cohere and live together. And it is to escape both a baneful immanentism and a frigid, unintelligible, incommensurable, transcendentalism that one can find (as a Catholic, not spontaneously as a philosopher) an illuminating sweetness in the Verbum Caro, which affirms the distinct absolute reality both of God and of the creature, and their most intimate union" (5 April 1916). Earlier, on 30 Oct. 1915, Blondel wrote: "It is the first and last temptation of all who refuse to receive the word of God."

Henri de Lubac - Teilhard: the man and his meaning (1965), p. 21-23

I'm reading Lubac's book alongside The Divine Milieu to help myself process the harder bits of Teilhard as I go. The very sound of the phrase "Christian pantheism" is shocking, if not actually scandalous, but I find the concept as described by Lubac and Teilhard both uplifting and edifying. The incorporation of the Incarnation into the argument by Blondel in the second footnote is key, I think, since the whole thing must hang on that.

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