Teilhard de Chardin's vision of the body of Christ is communicated to us in his writings. However, his Christological insights are not presented systematically; they are to be found in a variety of contexts, amidst ideas on a wide range of subjects. It could be argued that if we were to extrapolate all these reflections and put them together we would find Teilhard's vision. But it is not that simple. You cannot reconstruct visions like jigsaws; they come entire and complete. One of the ways in which such completeness is communicated to us is through metaphorical language. Teilhard drew upon an ancient Christian metaphor to communicate his vision: that of ‘Christ's body’. As a way of approaching Teilhard's vision I shall look, first of all, at the origins of this metaphor, and at some of the ideas which helped Teilhard revision the ‘body of Christ’ for the twentieth century.

THE NEW TESTAMENT

The major source for Teilhard de Chardin's Christology is the New Testament, and in particular, St Paul. One of the most commonly cited references in the New Testament quoted by Teilhard is Colossians 1:17b, ‘in him all things hold together’, and the one he stated to be his ‘fundamental article’ of belief.