In his presentation at the Rockefeller Lectures and in his book...

In his presentation at the Rockefeller Lectures and in his book, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man, Nasr emphasized the need for Christians to return to a theology of nature as understood in the “intellectual light of the early Church Fathers, the Christian metaphysicians of the Middle Age, such as Erigena and Eckhardt, or in the sense of the theosophy of Jacob Böhme.”31 He also stressed the need to learn from Oriental traditions that still studied metaphysics.32 They are steps needed so that Christians today may both regain the Christian understanding of the metaphysical domain of reality, and reestablish more of the early Christian recognition of the sacred connection between humanity and the rest of God’s creation.

Other thinkers, such as Mircea Eliade, Dom A. Graham and G. D. Yarnold, have voiced the same or a similar message.33 Previous…