The Cosmic Christ

the long version

The ""cosmic Christ"" of whom Father Maloney writes is not the abstracted, ethereal being of post-entine theology, but the vital, all-pervasive Man who is capable of giving form and meaning to every human act, from offering one's life in a noble cause to sweeping the kitchen floor. And this authentic Christ, as conceived by the Evangelists and the Fathers, and resurrected in our own time by Teilhard, is the Christ offered by Father Maloney as the unconscious object of the present-day's restless quest for ""life."" As promising as the thesis is, the fact that its formulation and presentation takes on a historico-theological form mitigates substantially against its cogency. Rather than emphasize the practical applications of his conclusions, the author traces the genesis of this new-old Christ (Paul, John, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, etc.) through the Christology of Teilhard. Interesting though the work may be from the speculative standpoint, it smacks too much of a doctoral effort to be accessible to any but the professional theologian -- and one gathers that it is today's ""restless youth,"" of whom Maloney speaks in his Introduction, and not the theologians, who are in need of a truly cosmic Christ. That is not to say that this is a wasted effort; it is merely a misdirected one.