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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2021
The sophiology of Sergius Bulgakov has exerted a significant amount of influence over Anglophone theology over the last decade. Theological figures as significant as Rowan Williams, John Milbank and Paul Fiddes, to name but a few, have positively engaged with and utilised Bulgakov's sophiology within their own theological contributions. Thus, for many, Bulgakov's sophiology has proven to be a fecund source of theological inspiration, especially when articulating the relationship between God and the world. However, historically, Bulgakov's sophiology has been criticised by many Orthodox theologians, who argue that Bulgakov's proposals are theologically flawed and challenge traditional orthodox readings of Christian doctrine. Despite the controversy surrounding Bulgakov's use of Sophia, very few comprehensive, critical studies of Bulgakov's sophiology, spanning its historical development, exist. This article seeks to fill this void at a time when Bulgakov's sophiology is enthusiastically adopted by many without an accompanying critical lens.
1 This project has been greatly aided by the fantastic translations of Bulgakov's dogmatic works, commenced at the beginning of this century by Boris Jakim.
2 See Mackinnon, Donald, Explorations in Theology (London, SCM, 1979), p. 26Google Scholar; and Williams, Rowan, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 63–79Google Scholar; Williams, A Margin of Silence: The Holy Spirit in Russian Orthodox Theology/Une marge de silence: L'Esprit Saint dans la theologie orthodoxe russe (Québec: Editions du Lys Vert, 2008); cf. Williams (ed.), Sergei Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999). See also Louth, Andrew, ‘Sergei Bulgakov and the Task of Theology’, Irish Theological Quarterly 74/3 (2009), pp. 243–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hart, David Bentley, In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2009), p. 123Google Scholar; Valliere, Paul, Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Orthodox Theology in a New Key (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2001)Google Scholar; see also Poole's, Randall, Valliere's, Paul, and Cassedy's, Steven essays in Hamburg, G. M. and Poole, Randall (eds), A History of Russian Philosophy 1830–1930: Faith, Reason, and the Defence of Human Dignity (Cambridge: CUP, 2010)Google Scholar.
3 Milbank, John, ‘Sophiology and Theurgy: The New Theological Horizon’, in Pabst, Adrian and Schneider, Christoph (eds), Encounter between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy: Transfiguring the World through the Word (Farnham, Ashgate, 2009), pp. 45–85Google Scholar.
4 Ibid., p. 45.
5 Dunn, David, ‘Radical Sophiology: Father Sergej Bulgakov and John Milbank on Augustine’, Studies in Eastern European Thought 64/3–4 (Nov. 2012), p. 228Google Scholar.
6 Pabst, Adrian, Metaphysics: The Creation of Hierarchy (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2012), p. 390Google Scholar.
7 See Desmond, William, Is There a Sabbath for Thought: Between Religion and Philosophy, (New York, Fordham University Press, 2005), p. 18Google Scholar.
8 See Jenkins, Willis, Ecologies of Grace: Environmental Ethics and Christian Theology, (Oxford: OUP, 2008), p. 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 See Collins, Paul M., Partaking in Divine Nature: Deification and Communion (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 2010), p. 79Google Scholar.
10 See Montoya, Angel F. Mendez, The Theology of Food: The Eucharist and Eating (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), ch. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 See Martin, Michael, The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2015)Google Scholar.
12 Fiddes, Paul, Seeing the World and Knowing God: Hebrew Wisdom and Christian Doctrine in a Late-Modern Context (Oxford: OUP, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I owe a debt of gratitude to Oliver Davies for drawing my attention to this work and the significant role it could play within my argument.
13 In addition to the works already cited, see Nichols, Aidan, Wisdom from Above: A Primer in the Theology of Father Sergei Bulgakov (Ware: Gracewing, 2005)Google Scholar.
14 See Lossky, Vladimir, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1974), p. 112Google Scholar; see also Lossky, Spor o Sofii: ‘Dokladnaia Zapiska’ prot. S. Bulgakova i smysl ukaza Moskovskoj Patriarkhii (Paris: Brotherhood of St Photius, 1936); Florovsky, Georges, Ways of Russian Theology: Part 2 (Vaduz: Vaduz Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), p. 251Google Scholar. Cf. Williams, Sergei Bulgakov, p. 173; and Valliere, Modern Russian Theology, p. 488.
15 For a detailed account of these events see the collection of essays in St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 49/1–2 (2005).
16 Louth, ‘Sergei Bulgakov and the Task of Theology’, p. 245.
17 Theokritoff, Elizabeth, ‘Creator and Creation’, in Cunningham, Mary B. and Theokritoff, Elizabeth (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology (Cambridge, CUP, 2008), p. 68Google Scholar.
18 O'Regan, Cyril, Gnostic Return in Modernity (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001), esp. p. 36Google Scholar; Sergeev, Mikhail, Sophiology in Russian Orthodoxy (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2006)Google Scholar; Zwahlen, Regula, Das Revolutionäre Ebenbild Gottes: Anthropologien der Menschenwürde bei Nikolas Berdjaev und Sergej Bulgakov (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2010), esp. p. 275Google Scholar. See also Aron Dunlap, ‘Counting Four: Assessing the Quaternity of C. G. Jung in the Light of Lacan and Sophiology’, Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 2008, pp. 193–233.
19 But see also Bulgakov's 1910 essay, ‘Priroda v filosofii VI. Solov'eva’, Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii 105 (1910), pp. 661–96, where he engages with the notion of Sophia as a ‘world soul’ that is inherent within the ‘historical process’ of the world.
20 Bulgakov, Sergius, The Philosophy of Economy: The World as Household, trans. Evtuhov, Catherine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 Ibid., p. 126.
22 Ibid., p. 128.
23 ‘A general theory of knowledge is impossible unless we make the leap toward acknowledging the existence of a general transcendental subject.’ Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., pp. 130, 132, 139.
26 Ibid., p. 131.
27 Ibid., p. 140.
28 Montoya, Theology of Food, pp. 102–3.
29 Bulgakov, Sergius, Unfading Light: Contemplations and Speculations, trans. Smith, Thomas Allan (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2012 [1917]), p. 31Google Scholar.
30 Ibid., p. 104.
31 Ibid., p. 105; on this distinction see also Sergius Bulgakov, Sophia, p. 77.
32 Bulgakov, Unfading Light, p. 105.
33 Bulgakov, Sergei, Sophia: The Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1993), p. 77Google Scholar. This volume is a revised edn of Sergei Bulgakov, The Wisdom of God: A Brief Summary of Sophiology, trans. Patrick Thompson, O. Fielding Clarke and Xenia Braikevitc (New York: Paisley Press, 1937).
34 E.g., ‘philosophical antinomism’ is an epistemological theory of Florensky's that he first outlined (albeit briefly) in the letter on ‘contradiction’ in his magnum opus, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters, trans. Boris Jakim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997 [1914]).
35 Bulgakov, Unfading Light, p. 184.
36 Sergius Bulgakov, Icons and the Name of God, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2012 [1931]), pp. 35–6.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., p. 154.
39 Bulgakov, Unfading Light, p. 196.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid., p. 217.
42 Ibid., p. 219.
43 He does this in a short treatise from 1925, ‘Ipostas’ i Ipostasnost’: Scholia k Svetu Nevechernemu. Gallaher, Brandon, ‘Protopresbyter Sergii Bulgakov: Hypostasis and Hypostaticity: Scholia to The Unfading Light’, St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 49/1–2 (2005), pp. 5–46Google Scholar. Bulgakov did not help matters by adopting Florensky's controversial phrase ‘fourth hypostasis’ to characterise Sophia in Unfading Light, p. 217. For Florensky's notion of Sophia see The Pillar, pp. 231–84.
44 Bulgakov never provides a detailed account and acknowledgement of his methodology: there are only scattered references and its constant presence in the background of his theology.
45 For instance: ‘The dogma of divine-humanity is precisely the main theme of sophiology, which in fact represents nothing but its full dogmatic elucidation’ (Bulgakov, Sophia, p. 17).
46 See Brandon Gallaher and Irina Kukota, ‘Protopresbyter Sergii Bulgakov: Hypostasis and Hypostaticity: Scholia to The Unfading Light’, St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 49/1–2 (2005), p. 17; see also p. 32.
47 Bulgakov, Unfading Light, pp. 107–9. See also Sergius Bulgakov, The Comforter, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), p. 360.
48 Bulgakov, Unfading Light, p. 110 (emphasis added). Bulgakov affirms this contention even more explicitly in his later work. See, for instance, Sergius Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), p. 120.
49 Sergius Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), p. 44.
50 Bulgakov, Icons and the Name of God, p. 29.
51 Ibid., p. 30.
52 Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, p. 121.
53 Ibid., p. 123.
54 Ibid., p. 122. See also Bulgakov, Bride of the Lamb, p. 31.
55 For instance: ‘since there is nothing, and can be nothing, that could have a relation to God and be not-God, this relative being of the world, too, is a divine being’ (Bulgakov, Icons and the Name of God, p. 30).
56 Brandon Gallaher, ‘There is Freedom: The Dialectic of Freedom and Necessity in the Trinitarian Theologies of Sergii Bulgakov, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar’, Ph.D. diss., Regent's Park College, Oxford, 2011, p. 107.
57 See Gavrilyuk, Paul, ‘Bulgakov's Account of Creation: Neglected Aspects, Critics and Contemporary Relevance’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 17/4 (2015), pp. 450–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
58 Ibid., p. 456.
59 See Lossky, N. O., ‘On the Creation of the World’, O tvorenii mira Bogom’ Put 54 (1937), pp. 3–22Google Scholar.
60 Austin Farrer, A Science of God? (London, SPCK, 2009 [1966]), p. 80.
61 McCabe, Herbert, God Matters (London, Continuum, 2005), p. 58Google Scholar.
62 Milbank, ‘Sophiology and Theurgy’, p. 50. This is almost identical to Bulgakov's own sophiological project.
63 For an account of Milbank's use of Bulgakov within his own sophiology, see: Richard May, ‘The Wisdom of John Milbank: A Critical Appraisal of Milbank's Sophiology’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 73/1 (Feb. 2020), pp. 55–71.
64 Bulgakov, Sergius, The Burning Bush, trans. Smith, Thomas Allan (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans), 2009, p. 15Google Scholar.
65 See Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Études historiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946); de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Crossroad, 1998 [1965]).
66 Bulgakov, The Burning Bush, p. 15.
67 Ibid., p. 20.
68 Ibid., p. 27.
69 Ibid., p. 30; cf. p. 58 and Sergius Bulgakov, Jacob's Ladder, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), pp. 31, 42, 66, 67, 82, 87.
70 Bulgakov, Sophia, p. 42.
71 von Balthasar, Hans Urs, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), pp. 192, 382Google Scholar.
72 It is important to note that this metaphysical fall is not something akin to the ‘angelic fall’. It is clear in Bulgakov's angelology that it is Sophia or the ideal creation that falls; the angels and humanity simply make up two modes of existence for the one Sophia. See Bulgakov, Jacob's Ladder, p. 28.
73 ‘God's providence in the natural world is the Divine Sophia herself, acting in the natural world as a force of internal movement’ (Bulgakov, Bride of the Lamb, p. 201).
74 Sergius Bulgakov, The Burning Bush, p. 107.
75 Ibid., p. 105.
76 Bulgakov, Sergius, The Friend of the Bridegroom, trans. Jakim, Boris (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 12–13Google Scholar.
77 Ibid., p. 5.
78 Ibid., p. 4.
79 Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, p. 89.
80 Ibid.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid., p. 90.
83 Ibid., p. 94.
84 Ibid., p. 97.
85 Ibid., p. 101.
86 Ibid., p. 103.
87 Ibid., p. 105.
88 Ibid, p. 112 (emphasis added).
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid., p. 114.
91 Ibid., p. 116 (emphasis added).
92 Ibid., p. 126 (emphasis added).
93 Bulgakov does later acknowledge that his system is akin to a certain ‘pious’ form of pantheism which he believes amounts to panentheism. See Bulgakov, The Comforter, p. 199.
94 Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, p. 186.
95 Ibid., p. 188.
96 Ibid., p. 381.
97 Ibid., p. 396.
98 Ibid., p. 420.
