Christian Dimension

What Will Man Become?

By Joseph C. Neiman

When we look at the evolution of man and of the world, we can speculate about the future in most exciting terms. What will man become?

Scientists have found fossil remains of pre-human men in Africa, China, India and other places around the world. Pre-men, called pithecanthropus and Australopithecus and similar scientific terms, were animal – like in that they did not have the mental abilities which we have and which we generally agree belong to only man: consciousness, reasoning, emotions, and so forth.

At a given point in their evolution, these pre-men became man. God caused them to break into a new mode of living. He gave them what we call a soul. Man, the high point of evolution now walked upon the earth. He is the stage of life, which has become aware of its own life and has had the ability to shape that life.

This point in evolution is all the more significant when we look at the total movement. At first God drew matter or elements into existence by the power of His creative love. Gradually these elements formed into the continents and the seas. Then at a special point, life appeared on the earth. It was simple one-celled plant life but never-the less the world took on a new dimension for there was matter without life and then life appeared. Eventually this life became animal life especially in the sea. Animal life was more flexible and acquired different characteristics than plant life but they both can be grouped together into what is called the biosphere, that is, the life mode of existence.

As descried above, man appeared later. His appearance on the earth gave the world an additional level of existence: the noosphere or the thinking level of life. So there was matter or the lithosphere, life or the biosphere, and the man, the noosphere. What will come next?

Having come from lifeless matter to thinking man, will evolution proceed further? Will there be an ultra-man as there was a pre-human man? Some think yes. One man in particular has presented some challenging views on this subject: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

He sees that Christ extends to man a beginning of the level of life which will come and which he calls the Christosphere. This would be a level of closer union with God, the eternal magnet who draws the evolutive movement toward Himself. Christian life now on earth is beginning of the sharing of this fuller mode of life when man will be fulfilled in God.

Even without faith, scientists in looking at evolution see that the process started with lifeless matter, moved to life then to man. They must also posit what will man become: Faith can help provide an answer.

Osceola County Herald, Thursday, November 1967