Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Machine generated contents note: -- Preface -- Introduction: The Noetics of Nature -- 1. Whence the Depth of Deep Ecology? Natural Beauty and the Eclipse of the Holy -- 2. Nature's Other Side: The Demise of Nature and the Phenomenology of Givenness -- 3. Layers of Nature in Thomas Traherne and John Muir: Numinous Beauty, Onto-theology, and Polyphony of Tradition -- 4. Sailing to Byzantium: Nature and City in the Greek East -- 5. The Resurrection of Nature: Environmental Metaphysics in Sergei Bulgakov's Philosophy of Economy -- 6. The Iconic Earth: Nature Godly and Beautiful -- 7. Seeing Nature: The©oria Physik©e in the Thought of St. Maximus the Confessor -- 8. Seeing God in All Things: Nature and Divinity in Maximus, Florensky, and Ibn 'Arabi -- 9. The Glory of God Hidden in Creation: Eastern Views of Nature in Fyodor Dostoevsky and St Isaac the Syrian -- 10. Between Heaven and Earth: Did Christianity Cause Global Warming? -- 11. Nature and Other Modern Idolatries: Kosmos, Ktisis, and Chaos in Environmental Philosophy -- 12. Traces of Divine Fragrance, Droplets of Divine Love: the Beauty of Visible Creation in Byzantine Thought and Spirituality -- Notes -- Index.

Contemplative or 'noetic' knowledge has traditionally been seen as the highest mode of understanding, a view that persists both in many non-Western cultures and in Eastern Christianity, where 'theoria physike, ' or the illumined understanding of creation that follows the purification of the heart, is seen to provide deeper insights into nature than the discursive rationality modernity has used to dominate and conquer it. This book challenges both the primacy of the natural sciences in environmental thought and the conventional view that Christian theology is somehow responsible for the environmental crisis.