waterboy,
<<Teillhard, as Sells points out, does not represent mainstream theology.>>
Well, this might be true if you exclude Catholic theology from what you consider “mainstream”, see for instance

http://www.traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_034_RatzTeilhard.htm.

His work can indeed be seen as a 'mystical' interpretation of 'creation'. However, I am not sure if one can say that his “appeal is still limited“. The speculations about the Omega Point by the cosmologists John Barrow and Frank Tipler (The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, OUP 1988), or the “selfish biocosm” of James F. Gardner (Biocosm, 2003), both inspired by Teilhard de Chardin, are probably just that, speculative, but hardly of limited appeal. Teilhard’s (and others’) interpretations might be “generally of little interest to the wider theological community“, depending on what you define as the wider theological community, see the link above.

Waterboy said – “Teilhard does not represent mainstream theology.” Where is “mainstream theology”? Who are “mainstream theologians”? On what or on whom are they centred? By what or by whom are they inwardly informed? We need to avoid “idolizing” the LOGOS of one’s preferred, most comfortable THEOLOGY instead of remaining ever open and obedient [attentive] to the God or THEOS of reality. Theology is “faith seeking understanding.” It starts with the gift of faith and then tries to account for the hope that is within us (1 Pet.3:15; Acts 26:6). What is faith without hope – and without love? To hope is to remember. Tertullian asked, “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” Christian faith is based not on philosophical speculation but on the Christ who survived physical [bodily] death and disintegration 2000 years ago. Dominican Thomas Aquinas changed the WATER of philosophy into the WINE of theology by adding the Blood of Christ and the fire of God’s Holy Spirit. Thus – Christian spirituality is not just a matter of words but of power, energy, dynamism [Greek `dunamis’] (1 Cor.4:20). Pope Paul VI asked – whatever happened to “the energies of the Gospel” and “the dynamism of Christian faith” [Octogesima Adveniens nn.37, 48]? Do those “mainstream” theologians burn with the Spirit of Christ [Vat II Laity n.2]? If not - why not? Consider St Symeon (949-1022), the “New Theologian” – the “Mystic of Fire and Light!” [George Maloney SJ 1975].

Waterboy – Teilhard’s “role in Piltdown” – 1913 [aged 32] 95 years ago – “brought discredit to him in the scientific community and therefore also in the theological community. At any rate he is more of a 'scientific' mystic than a theologian. He is therefore widely misunderstood.”

What is a “scientific mystic”? We need to be wary of the “second death” – the second kind of death – spiritual death. Unspiritual persons can accept nothing spiritual but see it all as nonsense (1 Cor.2:14). Like other true mystics, Teilhard (1881-1955) was “doomed” [!] “to seem the stranger” [“Hymn of the Universe” 1966 p.67; Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ 1885].

Roch/George

Here is the Catholic Church's official attitude to Teilhard:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/dechardin.txt
In essence this attitude is shared by academics in the Anglican and Uniting Church's in Australia. He has some following in the US but mainly with 'pop' theologians rather than with the teaching academia of the Church. Given the official attitude of the his own Church and his reputation as a mystic rather than a theologian I think it is fair to say that 'he does not represent mainstream theology'.

Do not get me wrong! For my part I find his writing sublime but as poetry not as theology.

In April 1942 the Apostolic Delegate to China asked Gabriel Allegra to review “Le Milieu Divin” – written by Teilhard in 1927. Allegra refused his “Nihil Obstat.” He then admitted - “leaving aside” [or “prescinding from”] any scientific aspects [in which he admitted incompetence] - he had found nothing “wrong.” In fact – “All you are saying is part of the tradition of the Franciscan School. It re-presents the great contribution that John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) made to Christian thought.” Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) “exulted” in that “Felix Culpa” [“happy fault”] that caused God the Father to send God the Son down to earth 1200 [now 2000] years ago in response to the “Original Sin” that “Eve” committed 100,000 or more years before! In Scotus's view, Christ had been in the world from the beginning [15 billion years ago?] – as expounded by Paul and John. Scotus called that the PRIMACY of Christ.

On 30 June 1962 – 103 days before Vatican Council II opened on 11 October – the “Holy Office” issued its infamous “monitum” warning the world’s Catholic Bishops that - “prescinding from” [“leaving aside”] “points concerning the positive sciences” – certain unspecified “ambiguities” and “even serious errors” had been found in certain unspecified “works” of Teilhard. That “warning” was re-issued by the Press Office on 20 July 1981 in the midst of celebrations [especially in Paris] for the Centenary of Teilhard’s birth on 1 May 1881.

Forced to “recant” – to “deny” that Earth spins and moves annually around the sun – Galileo allegedly murmured “Eppur si muove!” Likewise, whether latter-day “mainstream immobilists” like it or not, all mankind and all creation are “on the move” – as Teilhard said [2] – in the wake of Christ’s ascension from the beginning or ALPHA Point [15 billion years ago?] to the end or OMEGA Point of time – albeit by way of the Cross and Christ’s broken Sacred Heart or genetic cor.
[1] Gabriel Allegra 1971 “My Conversations with Teilhard on the Primacy of Christ” p.26
[2] 1920 “A Note on Progress” pp.11-24 in “The Future of Man” 196

Unlike Galileo, Teilhard was able to survive without recanting his unorthodox view. Basically, his notion was about the existence of a spiritual reality that suffused all matter (man and animals included) and had evolved into a "noosphere" ( his term for a layer of human awareness or consciousness that enveloped the earth like some psychic biosphere). His orthodox critics found that his vision destroyed the distinction between man and nature, and veered perilously close to pantheism where, in the final analysis God has, in a certain theistic sense at least, been dissolved.

Teilhard appears to shows a concept where God which has grown organically out of science itself. He also echoes the same sentiment of Einstein with, '..Humanity is no longer imaginable without science. But no more is science possible without some religion to animate it'. Undoubtedly, biologist Stephen Gould, is in total disagreement - he could also legitimately state that in the final analysis, Teilhard returns to the Bible and finds within the Scriptures of his own tradition a God who is most compatible with a world in continual evolution. Two great founders of modern science, Newton and Darwin, however, have done the same thing.

Undoubtedly, Teilhard makes a gallant attempt to reconcile the supernatural elements in Christianity with the facts and implications of evolution - but is modern science now less inspired without the old theism? Probably not - but a God of some description is found and does remain.


Cont'd..

...Cont'd
A common religious explanation within Christianity has been that God made the world perfect but that man messed it up. The general acceptance now is that the world has evolved, and this explanation doesn't fit the old religious model. Darwin's teaching was felt to be an attack on the very heart of Christian philosophy, with theistic belief a distinct part of it. There was a defense, not only of the theological content of the Mosaic account of creation, but also fought for was the original static theory of life. When the first Christians adopted a static world-view, they simply reflected a view which was universal and which remained essentially unchallenged until the scientific revolution.

I do believe there is great insight in the mythical legend of Jacob where he wrestled and even fought with God until he emerged the morning after with a clearer sense of his own destiny. In a type of reversal, one can certainly also see the atheistic thinking of astronomer Fred Hoyle to be eventually shaken through his intuitive thinking re: the carbon atom, "...A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.." His later thoughts, before his death, echo that there is much, much more than what meets the eye: that humanity is still in the early hours of its awaking to a wondrously vast universe. Hoyle's thoughts remain - with many of his scientific colleagues now disowning him as he has also challenged their world-view with a differing one.