[This is one lesson: When it comes to our moment in eternity, we are all provincials. De Chardin and Schoonenberg were both “universal men” in the middle of the 20th century. We must read them with a sense of forgiveness, for imagining that they were “universal”. After all, modern Western intellectuals in the 20th century posed as “universal” thinkers.
Such an idea was presumptuous. Maybe, we ought call it “scandalous”.
The issue is not that modern Western intellectuals were monstrously wrong.
Nor is the issue the fact that that Schoonenberg cannot account for his scholastic and modern claims. He knows that the claims are true because they resolve centuries of controversy. He knows that they are true because of scientific advance. But he cannot account for them.]