Cosmology, Ecology, and the Energy of God

Chapter 3 Solar Energy :Theophany and the Theopoetics of Light in Gregory of Nyssa

42 c h a p t e r 3 Solar Energy: Theophany and the Theopoetics of Light in Gregory of Nyssa T. Wilson Dickinson In the seemingly material problems that surround the word energy, I cannot help but hear the metaphysical echo of the Greek term energeia.1 In the faint resonance I hear between these two terms there seems to emerge a rather unlikely pairing: that of the looming ecological crisis and that of the ancient disciplines of philosophy and theology. Though at first this pairing might seem forced, in this essay I argue that the possible melodious performance of these two unlikely partners might very well provide a way forward. While many will propose that solar energy might be the most promising resource to avoid looming ecological catastrophes, I explore the transformative possibility that a different kind of solar energy—that of the theopoetics of light—could have. In a context in which the shortage of energy threatens to destabilize any semblance of geopolitical order but the previous misuse of energy also threatens to destroy the ecological stability of the earth, the lengthy consideration of this ancient and theological resonance within the term energy may sound like the idle chatter one might expect from theologians and philosophers. The pragmatically oriented person might charge that by giving in to these theological curiosities in the face of real problems that Theophany and the Theopoetics of Light in Gregory of Nyssa 43 threaten the conditions of possibility for our lives, I have run away from the physical world so as to find everlasting stability in the metaphysical. Though I imagine I cannot entirely escape the risk that my inquiry will ultimately be found guilty of such accusations, I am not so sure that the metaphysical can so easily be separated from the physical. I am sympathetic to the Heideggerian claim that the processes of modernization are perhaps the outgrowth of a metaphysical tradition that has become radicalized .2 The echoes between the English energy (with all of its technological , journalistic, and informational overtones) and the Greek energeia (with its metaphysical and theological pitch) might be more significant than a shared linguistic resonance. Perhaps the crises of energy are as much the result of “material” and “practical” situations as they are the consequence of a common outlook. The crises currently surrounding energy might not only threaten the preservation of our lifestyles and ways of thinking, but perhaps these problems are derived from them as well. In light of this connection, it seems that the emerging energy crisis and the corresponding ecological crisis need to be addressed by a theological and philosophical shift in thinking. In invoking the dual sense of energy, I am not attempting to argue for a causal relationship between the two, nor will I attempt to show the underlying logic of our contemporary situation through its ancient roots. Instead, I am wondering how the cacophonous resonance of these two terms might reveal both a shared problem and the possibility for a transformation or an alternative performance of this score. The hope is that this can be done without reducing this “practical” problem to a “theoretical” issue. I am wary of imagining that all that is required in the face of destruction, scarcity, and suffering is righting the course of the metaphysical ship. To do so would seem to imagine that theology and philosophy are the intellectual captains of the ship, or, to shift into a more contemporary technological metaphor, that the practical applications of the world are underwritten by a kind of theoretical “binary code.” While I would want to argue for a privileged position for theology and philosophy, I would want to do so by emphasizing the role they play as practices, as performances. Though my concerns here are deeply theoretical , they are understood as such not because they are intellectual or metaphysical rather than sensible or physical, but because of the resonance that the ancient Greek word for theory, theoria, has with vision. In its older usage theoria was largely understood in relation to the practice of witnessing and testifying to foreign and religious events and spectacles.3 Viewed in this manner, theoretical discourse exceeds intellectual abstraction as it is part of an active embodied practice. What is at stake here is a matter 44 T. Wilson Dickinson of optics, of how one looks at the world, but it is an optics that cannot...