From earth to heaven : Teilhard's politics and eschatology.
Although the eschatology of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin has a utopian phase comparable to that of Karl Marx, it is actually a two-stage exchatology, progressing from socialist principles reminiscent of the Marxist millennium to the abandonment of earth in humankind's union with the Omega-God. Teilhard and Marx shared socialist goals for the future and also entrusted their realization to totalitarian-minded elites. Yet Teilhard's theological presuppositions forbade the use of violence and prescribed the theological evolution of a higher form of consciousness. This Omega, however, will be more than the sum total of human consciousness. It is the God or Absolute Future who, in the final reckoning, protects man from his own utopian (e.g. Marxist) absolutist systems.