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This interpenetration, Teilhard believed, would unite even those men with apparently implacable hostilities. Man, he wrote in 1949, "is not yet zoologically mature." Perhaps, he suggested, the Christian faith and a God-rejecting belief in man need each other to reach their full development; the God rejected by Marx might prove to be a "pseudo-God," an image created by man, that would be stripped away to reveal the true divine reality. In Teilhard's eyes, the real division of mankind was between those who welcomed the future and those who feared it.
The Pioneer. Many scientists are disturbed by Teilhard's works, which often shift disconcertingly from geological and biological realities to metaphysical conjecture. Nonetheless, his influence and impact have continued to grow, and he remains the contemporary Christian thinker who speaks most tellingly to the secular mind. An international committee of intellectuals, including Metahistorian Arnold Toynbee, French Minister of Culture André Malraux and Biologist Sir Julian Huxley, is sponsoring the publication of his collected works; the three Teilhard volumes previously published in the U.S. have sold 150,000 copies.
In Rome, which has so often scorned its own prophets in life and embraced them in death, there are signs of a thawing attitude toward Teilhard. Although the faithful have twice been warned against dangers in his work, Popes John XXIII and Paul VI have privately acknowledged his greatness. His fellow Jesuits have pioneered in the further study of Teilhard's thought; last August, for example, Fordham University held a well-attended conference on his work. Says Father Robert Francoeur, a biologist and executive coordinator of the newly formed American Teilhard de Chardin Association: "Teilhard was a pioneer in many areas of thought—the nature of creation, the relationship of body and soul, original sin, the meaning of man's personality. Of course, some of his terms have to be clarified. But in general his vision seems valid, and a coherent system is being developed out of it."