Teilhard's Struggle: Embracing the Work of Evolution by Kathleen Duffy (review)

In Teilhard's Struggle: Embracing the Work of Evolution, author Kathleen Duffy explores a new dimension of the person of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit priest and paleontologist who produced a synthesis of science and religion. By focusing on how Teilhard dealt with struggle throughout his life, Duffy demonstrates the power of Teilhard's spirituality while also conveying the relevance and importance of his work in the world today.

Having diligently combed through Teilhard's letters and biographies, the author examines each of Teilhard's major life challenges. She stresses that while Teilhard faced struggle and impasse throughout his life—with his physical and mental health, in his personal and professional relationships, with the church, and with the nagging ban on publishing—he sought to engage these challenges in ways that were unitive rather than divisive.

Evolution was the foundational paradigm by which Teilhard understood the world; it taught him that growth requires struggle. Looking to Teilhard's creative approach for guidance, Duffy emphasizes the necessity of each person's participation in evolution's work by prayerfully, actively, and intentionally engaging the struggles of the world today.

Duffy begins by revisiting Teilhard's 1919 essay, "The Spiritual Power of Matter" in which he encounters Matter, personified. In this mystical experience, he tells of an encounter with the Divine through matter. From this encounter, Teilhard understood that the journey to God and cosmic evolution were paths to wholeness that require struggle, for evolution's work is tireless and presses on despite the odds against it.

What follows is an intimate look into Teilhard's engagement with struggle throughout the course of his life as a person, scientist, mystic, and friend. The author's style is particularly creative, as she overlaps details from Teilhard's story in the different chapters about various dimensions of his person, life, and work. She goes on to unpack his experiences as a believer and as a Jesuit who remained faithful to the church and to the world, despite the ways these relationships perpetually challenged him. Finally, Duffy produces her analysis of Teilhard's approach by breaking down his interior response to struggle while also incorporating his strategies from other experiences of impasse in his life.

Beyond being an example of top-level scholarship, the author's work is thoughtful and pertinent on a personal and social level, for it wrestles with a difficult yet universal topic. Duffy offers readers a tangible method for dealing with struggle, derived from Teilhard's lived example of persistence and faithfulness to his inner vision. Her time, energy, and intentionality are present within every page. She demonstrates a personal commitment not only to the work but more so to the prophetic message of Teilhard to cultivate greater consciousness of the divine in the world. In sharing her unique perspective as a molecular-physicist, the author articulates a perspective on Teilhard that is intricate, yet understandable and relatable. Duffy does not credit the exceptional poetic justice with which her writing evokes and animates the emotion and natural drama of Teilhard's journey, all the while maintaining her own unique voice.

Teilhard's Struggle is an essential piece within the canon of Teilhardian literature, as well as within associated topics of the New Cosmology, Nouvelle théologie, and Christian spirituality. Duffy presents a systematic, professional, and pastoral approach to the life and work of Teilhard that is appropriate for undergraduates and graduate students because it addresses a ubiquitous topic that takes various forms of experience and understanding within each stage of life and growth. Likewise, the author's newest work belongs in the hands of every true scholar and fan of Teilhard alike, as it provides a living, breathing portrayal of a human being who yearned ceaselessly to participate in a greater reality. Teilhard's Struggle speaks to the heart of all those who desire to embrace evolution's work, endure the flames of struggle, and in that...