The noosphere is a philosophical concept developed and popularized by the Russian-Ukrainian Soviet biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, and the French philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Vernadsky defined the noosphere as the new state of the biosphere and described as the planetary "sphere of reason". The noosphere represents the highest stage of biospheric development, its defining factor being the development of humankind's rational activities.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher. He was Darwinian in outlook and the author of several influential theological and philosophical books.
The Omega Point is a supposed future when everything in the universe spirals toward a final point of unification. The term was invented by the French Jesuit Catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). Teilhard argued that the Omega Point resembles the Christian Logos, namely Christ, who draws all things into himself, who in the words of the Nicene Creed, is "God from God", "Light from Light", "True God from true God", and "through him all things were made". In the Book of Revelation, Christ describes himself thrice as "the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end". The idea of the Omega Point is developed in later writings, such as those of John David Garcia (1971), Paolo Soleri (1981), Frank Tipler (1994), and David Deutsch (1997).
Spiritual evolution, also called higher evolution, is the idea that the mind or spirit, in analogy to biological evolution, collectively evolves from a simple form dominated by nature, to a higher form dominated by the Spiritual or Divine. It is differentiated from the "lower" or biological evolution, and thought to be foreshadowed by enlightened beings who have already evolved to this advanced stage.
Henri-Marie Joseph Sonier de Lubac, better known as Henri de Lubac, was a French Jesuit priest and cardinal who is considered one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century. His writings and doctrinal research played a key role in shaping the Second Vatican Council.
Robert Charles Zaehner (1913–1974) was a British academic whose field of study was Eastern religions. He understood the original language of many sacred texts, e.g., Hindu (Sanskrit), Buddhist (Pali), Islamic (Arabic). At Oxford University his first writings were on the Zoroastrian religion and its texts. Starting in World War II, he had served as an intelligence officer in Iran. Appointed Spalding Professor at Oxford in 1952, his books addressed such subjects as mystical experience, Hinduism, comparative religion, Christianity and other religions, and ethics. He translated the Bhagavad-Gita, providing an extensive commentary based on Hindu tradition and sources. His last books addressed similar issues in popular culture, which led to his talks on the BBC. He published under the name R. C. Zaehner.
Lucile Swan was an American sculptor and artist.
Thomas Berry, CP was a Catholic priest, cultural historian, and scholar of the world’s religions, especially Asian traditions. Later, as he studied Earth history and evolution, he called himself a “geologian.”
John F. Haught is an American theologian. He is a Distinguished Research Professor at Georgetown University. He specializes in Roman Catholic systematic theology, with a particular interest in issues pertaining to physical cosmology, evolutionary biology, geology, and Christianity.
Fr. Robert Faricy, S.J. was a Jesuit priest and theologian who was an Emeritus Professor of Spirituality and lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was an Emeritus Professor of Spirituality at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
The Phenomenon of Man is an essay by the French geologist, paleontologist, philosopher, and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In this work, Teilhard describes evolution as a process that leads to increasing complexity, culminating in the unification of consciousness. The text was written in the 1930s, but it achieved publication only posthumously, in 1955.
Michael William Higgins is a Canadian academic and writer. He is the principal of St. Mark's College and president of Corpus Christi College, both at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. Higgins and his wife Krystyna, a professional piano accompanist, liturgical musician and freelance editor, have four adult children---Rebecca, Andrew, Sarah and Alexa.
Thomas Peter Rausch is the T. Marie Chilton Professor of Catholic Theology and professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, having received his doctorate from Duke University.
Supermind, in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of integral yoga, is the dynamic manifestation of the Absolute, and the intermediary between Spirit and the manifest world, which enables the transformation of common being into Divine being.
Joseph A. Bracken, S.J. is an American philosopher and Catholic theologian. Bracken is a proponent of process philosophy and process theology of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. Much of his work is devoted to a synthesis of revealed religion and Christian trinitarian doctrines with a revised process theology. Bracken introduced a field theoretic approach to process metaphysics.
William Hart McNichols is a Catholic priest and artist from the United States.
John Allen Grim is the co-founder and co-director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University, alongside his wife, Mary Evelyn Tucker. He teaches at Yale University, where he holds appointments in the Yale School of the Environment, the Divinity School, and the Department of Religious Studies. He has also taught at Sarah Lawrence College and Bucknell University.
The cosmic Christ is a view of Christology which emphasises the extent of Jesus Christ's concern for the cosmos. The biblical bases for a cosmic Christology is often found in Colossians, Ephesians, and the prologue to the gospel of John.
Ursula King is a German theologian and scholar of religion, who specialises in gender and religion, feminist theology, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
