EmilyCain, <i>Mirrors of the Divine: Late Ancient Christianity and the Vision of God</i> . New York: Oxford University Press, 2023, viii + 209pp. $98.00

In this thorough and careful volume, Emily Cain delves into the intersection of science and theology in Christian authors from late antiquity to explore how they struggled ‘to construct Christian agency, identity, and epistemology’ (p. 3). She traces the (surprisingly eclectic) engagement of these authors with the theoretical physics of their day to articulate what it means for human beings to see and know things and, most importantly, what it means for human beings to see and know God. Ultimately, that sight and knowledge depend on ‘a deeply embodied and subjective understanding of the world’ (p. 10). Chapter 1 arranges a lot of background information. It sketches the theoretical physics of sight articulated by ancient philosophers, distinguishing between extramission, or visual ray theory, on the one hand, and intromission or atomism on the other. To radically oversimplify: vision is primarily an active power in the former, while the latter understands it as fundamentally receptive. This chapter also looks at sight in the Hebrew Scriptures, where vision is transformative and ‘routinely fails when it is unaided by the divine’ (p. 38), and in the New Testament, which forges a ‘link between the eyes and one’s spiritual health’ (p. 39). The following two chapters consider the work of Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria. Tertullian blends extramission and intromission by understanding God as seeing ‘with active visual rays’ while humans ‘see with passive receptive eyes’ (p. 56). As a result, God is not contaminated by what he sees, whereas human beings can be if viewing something sinful. In Tertullian’s hands, this distinction develops into a gendered hierarchy of moral blame that shifts ‘responsibility for sin further and further way from God, first onto humanity, and then finally onto women’ (p. 64). Clement is more concerned with getting a Christian identity up and running with an explanation for why Christians know and see the world differently from others. In doing so, he envisions ‘baptism as cataract surgery’ (p. 66). Cain provides a fascinating glimpse into ancient medical approaches to cataracts while showing how Clement blends both atomist intromission with Platonic epistemology. He argues that because Christians receive ‘deified eyes’ (p. 80) in baptism, they become ‘able to perceive God, like by like, by means of the divine light now within’ (p. 83). Chapter 4 shifts the conversation from an emphasis on direct vision to indirect vision, with mirrors and reflection becoming the dominant metaphor. Cain once again provides insightful background information on the history and ancient science of mirrors, along with discussions of scriptural references to mirrors as well as the place of mirrors in Plotinus’s thought. Key takeaways from this chapter are that there are both moral and immoral ways of using mirrors (thematized as ‘mirrors of vanity’ and ‘mirrors of philosophy’ (p. 91)), and that mirrors provide a means to catch a glimpse of the spiritual world as well as functioning as ‘a kind of philosophical transport’ into that world (p. 104). With the stage reset, Cain turns to Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine of Hippo in Chapters 5 and 6, respectively. ‘The mutable mirror of the soul is Gregory’s primary metaphor for his vision of God’ (p. 114), Cain argues, residing at the intersection of Gregory’s belief that God’s power has a transformative impact on those who see it and Gregory’s commitment to the notion that human beings must choose where to look. 1 Corinthians 13:12 is also central in Gregory’s thought, indicating that the image of God reflected in the mirror of the self lacks clarity. Thus, the human being must ‘metaphorically polish the mirror’ (p. 120), perfecting the self as part of the lifelong process of being transformed by the vision of God. Theologians refer to this aspect of Gregory’s theology as theosis or theopoesis, although Cain does not engage that larger conversation. This is not a purely individual task, importantly, and Cain emphasizes that Gregory depicts a ‘great chain of mirrors of creation’ – reflecting the self, God and others – in which the ‘mystical ascent [is] distinctly communal’ (pp. 127–8). Coming to Augustine, Cain makes something of a bold claim: ‘Augustine was consistently inconsistent in his writings about sensory perception’ (p. 134). She traces Augustine’s engagement with both Platonic and Stoic physics of perception while developing his own theological anthropology. The result is Augustine’s articulation of a ‘paradoxical human who is able to look for, yet not able to fully see, the vision of God’ (p. 144). Augustine agrees with Nyssen that human beings must choose where to look, but Augustine believes that looking at God is something that human beings are unable to choose to do. Furthermore, since human beings cannot choose to see God, their vision of the world is distorted because they cannot see it as properly ordered in relation to its creator. To compensate for this weakness of active human sight, Augustine introduces a receptive account of human hearing. If the strength of human eyes fails, faith nevertheless comes by hearing. On this basis, human beings can begin looking for God. And, although human beings will never fully see God in this life, one is nevertheless ‘transformed by the process’ of faithful looking for God (p. 156). Chapter 7 and the conclusion reflect on larger trends identified by the work, including geographical distribution and chronological development, as well as opportunities for further research into related topics – such as ‘the depiction of bodily weakness as a source of spiritual strength’, particularly in connection with our own contemporary understandings ‘of health and disability’ (p. 193). Cain also highlights that each of the Christian thinkers examined ‘employ at least two theories to describe visual perception’ (p. 176). Furthermore, they combine ‘contradictory visual theories… [in attempting] to explain the unexplainable’ (p. 179). These thinkers were less concerned with making sure that they had their physics right than they were with producing compelling visions of the spiritual life and cogent articulations of Christian experience. In what ways does theological engagement with science in our own day become trapped in intellectual maelstroms as a result of not following these ancient examples offered to us by Cain’s intriguing and illuminating study?