he does share the weaknesses of the evolutionary optimism of his times, not least, as we shall see, an inability to factor into his thinking the fact of radical evil (it was, interestingly, an early work on original sin, or rather its absence, that first brought him critical attention in his own church). Teilhard and his supporters have appealed to the Pauline idea of the cosmic Christ, as in Colossians 1:15–20, but Paul’s thinking there and elsewhere hardly supports the structure Teilhard wishes to erect. In the long run—and of course it was to the long run that he appealed—he may appear as
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