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Matthew T. Riley's essay returns to the beginnings of ecotheology, but only in order to tell the tale differently and expose the overlooked place of the animal in it. Ecotheology in its early stages largely coalesced in response to the accusations leveled at Christianity by Lynn White, Jr. in his 1967 article, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Riley argues, however, that the White of the popular ecotheological imagination is a reductionistic construct. Reading White's seminal article in the context of his larger body of work reveals a profound theological vision of “a spiritual democracy of all God's creatures,” human and nonhuman alike. White was not just a critic of Christianity, Riley contends, but a prophetic Christian voice.

J. Baird Callicott questions the basic premise of Lynn White Jr.’s essay “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” where White attributes the environmental crisis to Genesis where God created man in his image, gave man dominion over the rest of creation, and commands him to subdue the Earth. Callicott examines White’s very epistemic assumption: that what we do depends on what we think. On this reckoning, we need to rethink the nature of nature, human nature, and the relationship between humans and nature in order to save the world from ecological disaster. But Callicott reminds us that the Lynn White Jr. of Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962) also proposes a theory of technological determinism to explain the fate of the West. So which is it? Is the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton the product of Christian theology or mechanical technologies? Perhaps nature is more affected by things than ideas. If so, environmental philosophers have to give up the pretense that they alone can save the world from environmental destruction because they alone are expert at uncovering underlying conceptual presuppositions. Revolutionary developments in real material things are just as important as revolutionary ideas.

Environmental philosophy has ignored the holy beauty that should be its starting point. The Byzantine icon shows how to approach this numinous beauty that the earth harbors, and this is argued through several parallels. First, both icon and earth are inherently material. Second, both are non-mimetic, presenting realities beyond themselves rather than representing them. Third, both icon and earth are transactional and interactional, disclosing themselves not to detached inspection but to meaningful interaction. Fourth, while the icon presents a face, so too does nature face us. Five, both are contextual, requiring contextual narratives to become meaningful and intelligible. Six, when grasped noetically or contemplatively, both icon and earth present a vision of paradise, displaying divine energy or activity (energeia). Contrary to Lynn White’s critique, environmental problems came not from Christian thinking, but from our rejection of traditional Christianity, which sought to merge heaven and earth, the visible and the invisible.

The same bias that allows Lynn White Jr. to posit Western Christianity as normative for the Christian tradition as such allows Western interpreters of Dostoevsky to regard the affirmation of nature’s holiness in his writings, deeply resonant of Russian Orthodoxy, as nevertheless somehow pagan and aberrant. In fact, Dostoevsky’s characterization of nature draws upon central features of Orthodox spirituality as a whole: its emphasis upon divine energies at work in the world; its teachings concerning divine logoi uniquely inherent in each thing; its belief that creation represents the first icon of God, albeit obscured through human fallenness; its view of nature as cosmic liturgy, and redemption as cosmic in scope; and its claim that these truths can be apprehended through the ascetic purification of the heart. These insights are articulated eloquently in the writings of St Isaac of Syria, who in fact exerted a strong influence on Dostoevsky’s own thinking.

Heidegger argues that modern technology’s view of nature as stock or inventory is the outcome of Western metaphysics as “onto-theology,” in which Christianity played a central role. Lynn White offers a historiographical variant, claiming that our environmental problems, of which global climate change is perhaps most manifest today, derive from the putative Christian view of nature as subject to human dominance. This chapter argues that ancient Christianity, especially as articulated in the Orthodox East, has a far different view, from which we could learn today. Here nature is seen as manifesting divine energies (energeiai) that the purified mind (nous) can contemplate noetically, even though the divine essence (ousia) remains transcendent and mysterious. Western Christianity ignores this distinction. Beginning with Augustine (and culminating in Ockham) God becomes increasingly remote from creation. The analogia entis is a last, unsuccessful attempt to retrieve the divine immanence that has endured in the Christian East.

It was Heidegger who first advocated a de-structuring (Destruktion) or deconstruction of the Western tradition as necessary for a retrieval of more originary layers (the phenomena themselves) that had become sedimented and concealed. In his early work, Heidegger de-constructed the Greek concept of nature under the influence of the early Luther, who had rejected the “theology of glory” implied in the tradition of seeking God in nature (and its subsequent elaboration as onto-theology) as concealing the theology of the cross, which alone was salvific. Here, the beauty of nature becomes a temptation. Drawing upon Thomas Traherne and John Muir, it is argued instead that there are other layers of nature efficacious within the Western tradition, layers similar to those at work in the Orthodox East, and which at the same time the same time rebut Lynn White Jr. claim that Western Christianity brought about the environmental problems we face today.

Byzantine spirituality transforms the ancient Greek sensitivity for manifestations of divinity in nature, demonstrating richly that criticisms of Christianity (such as Nietzsche’s and White’s) for not appreciating nature are misdirected. The noetic contemplation of nature (thēoria physikē) first articulated by third century Cappadocians is brilliantly developed in the philosophical and theological work of Pavel Florensky, and its manifestation in lived spirituality is powerfully presented in the recorded talks of Elder Paisios and Elder Porphyrios, both monks of twentieth century Greece. Cautions in ancient Christianity concerning the beauty of nature are directed not toward its contemplation or even its aesthetic appreciation, but toward the dangers of possessiveness and idolatry in response to natural beauty, whose holiness consists in its saturation with divine energies. Indeed, its appreciation for the goodness and beauty (kalos) of nature was influential in ancient Christianity’s affirmation, against Gnosticism and some modes of Platonism, of materiality itself.