We often think that mysticism is a thing of the past, that the great mystics like Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich or Teresa of Avila are resigned to times long gone, and that mysticism died in the Reformations, the Enlightenment, or the Quietist Controversy.

However, there are important mystical elements of all major world religions today including Christianity, and many 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century figures exemplify mysticism.

This series looks at three figures who have been described as modern or postmodern mystics and who are known to greater and lesser extents: Zilpha Elaw, Etty Hillesum and Teilhard de Chardin.

This third session of our Autumn 2024 series on Modern Mystics explores the mysticism of the 20th-century Jesuit theologian and scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

While his work was critiqued both by his Jesuit contemporaries and by the Catholic Church, he is a voice increasingly drawn upon today, including by Pope Francis.

Teilhard de Chardin is a figure often drawn upon in a range of theological and spiritual conversations today, indeed being often discussed by Pope Francis and being a popular figure in discussion of spiritual direction. However, the Jesuit priest’s work was deemed suspicious by his Jesuit superiors within his own lifetime and even condemned by the Roman Curia in 1962. Combining his scientific work and his theological and philosophical work, and drawing from a range of sources from the Christian mystical traditions, Teilhard created a unique theological outlook, including his coining of the phrase Christogenesis which espouses that God is present in everything and everyone, and that Christians have a responsibility to live this out in the world. This webinar begins with a lecture by Professor Ilia Delio on Teilhard and his mysticism, before we have a chance to discuss a section of Teilhard’s writings that will be pre-circulated, followed by a Q&A session with Professor Delio on Teilhard and modern mysticism. Professor Delio will focus on Teilhard’s holism in evolution thinking particularly about what Teilhard calls ‘bifacial matter’, the inside and outside of matter and think particularly about Teilhard’s portrayal of the rise of consciousness in evolution and why artificial intelligence expressed a crisis of consciousness.

This webinar begins with a lecture by Professor Ilia Delio on Teilhard and his mysticism, a discussion of selected writings by Teilhard (to be circulated before the course), followed by a Q&A session with Professor Delio on Teilhard and modern mysticism.

About the course leader

Ilia Delio OSF is a Franciscan Sister of Washington DC the Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair of Theology at Villanova University and writes at the intersection of theology and the sciences, holding doctorates in both areas. She is the author of more than 20 books including Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology and Consciousness, a finalist for the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize; and The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love, for which she won the 2014 Silver Nautilus Book Award and a 2014 Catholic Press Association Book Award in Faith and Science. Her most recent book is The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin and the Relational Whole. She is founder of the Center for Christogenesis, an online educational resource for promoting the theological vision of Teilhard de Chardin. She is also a Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion.