In traditionalist philosophy, pontifical man[note 1] is a divine representative (vicegerent of God) who serves as a bridge between heaven and earth.
Nasr used the term pontifical in its etymological sense to convey that the human being is the gateway between Heaven and Earth, living on a circle of which he is always conscious and to which he strives to reach in his life.
[3] In legends, Prometheus is portrayed as a hero, a demigod, or Titan prepared to endure endless torment to impart light to an ignorant and suffering humanity, even if it means defying the divine authority.
[3] Gai Eaton, commenting on Nasr's views of humanity, says that Pontifex is a notion that is similar to the khalifat fi l-arḍ or "[divinely-appointed] vicegerent on Earth" and symbolizes the same underlying premise.
[4] According to David Burrell, Nasr regards Promethean man as a product of the thirteenth-century Aristotelianization of Western philosophy, which some attribute to Averroes.
[7] Nasr agrees with Gilbert Durand's notion of "the disfiguration of the image of man in the West" in developing the picture of Promethean humanity.
...The Promethean model, in contradistinction to what he terms “Pontifical Man” – the understanding that mankind is the lynchpin between the cosmos and the Sacred – is both unethical and sacrilegious.
[16] For Nasr, such a man never forgets that he is God's viceroy (khalifat Allah), who exists in a world that he recognizes as having an origin and a center,[14][3] whose "primordial purity and wholeness he seeks to emulate, recapture and transmit".
[17] Pontifical man recognizes his divine responsibilities as a mediator between heaven and earth, as well as "his entelechy as lying beyond the terrestrial domain over which he is allowed to rule provided he remains aware of the transient nature of his own journey on earth", whereas Promethean man rejects this function and declares independence from the divine.
[20] With his roots in transcendental reality, man has an insatiable desire to be reborn in the spiritual realm with its limitless possibilities, free of the constraints of contingency and finiteness that encircle him.
[23] Oblivious to his origin and purpose, Promethean man has caused havoc on the world over the course of five centuries, disrupting the natural order, and has lost sight of what it actually means to be a human, because he only seeks to achieve perfection by reforming his earthly finite existence.
[22] Pontifical man is both the mirror of the Center on the periphery and the echo of the Origin in subsequent cycles of time and generations of human history.
[24] According to Mehdi Aminrazavi, the Promethean and Pontifical man symbolize two distinct "modes of being", each with its own method of cognition.
According to Sulayman S. Nyang, Nasr sees man as a "pontifical being", yearning for a meeting with the source of his life and existence.