Thank you for this careful response, and thank you also for the very high praise, for which I am grateful, considering how foreign I am to the work of Bulgakov. I noticed two critical points. The first concerns the issue of analogy, specifically the analogia entis. Let me assure you that I did not mean those statements to be invested with so much meaning. You’re certainly right to point out the problems with an oversimplified conception of the analogia entis. But the question is whether my statements in the essay are warranted. And on that point I think they are.

Let me explain. First, your statement that Thomistic analogia “is more Greek than Latin, based as it is on the Greek doctrines of participation and Biblical Creation,” is highly misleading. Appealing to positions that were established prior to the division between East and West hardly accounts for a doctrine being “more Greek than Latin”!

Second, the fact of the matter is that the doctrine of analogy wasn’t really developed into the form we associate with the word today until the period of High Scholasticism. Certainly, that does not mean the doctrine has a single, fixed meaning. But it does mean that we can refer to the “scholastic doctrine of analogy” without committing serious theological violence. Scholars have to be free to make these kinds of statements for the simple reason that it is unreasonable to expect people to offer a detailed history of analogy every time the concept is raised. And I would have expected a little more charity on this point, since it was clear that I was merely making a suggestion rather than an argument. Moreover, this is a blog post, not a published essay.

Third, and most importantly, Bulgakov is thoroughly opposed to Latin and scholastic ideas. His rhetoric against scholasticism and Latin theology is apparent throughout the text I read. He is also opposed, I assume for related reasons, to speaking about philosophical ontology. As an Eastern theologian shaped by mystical and sophiological frameworks, the idea of an analogy of being would be utterly foreign to Bulgakov. That’s not to say he couldn’t appropriate the doctrine, but there really is nothing like it in the texts that I read. Maybe he has something like it elsewhere. The key seems to be that Bulgakov knows of no philosophical concept of “being.” What he knows is divine life and the “Divine Sophia.” He knows of a Divine Sophia which grounds and includes the creaturely Sophia. While I think one could plausibly speak of a participation of being, maybe even an analogy of being, the fact remains that Bulgakov does not prefer this kind of theological language. I would even suggest that the very notion of a doctrine of analogy is foreign to Bulgakov. These are all concepts that have thrived in the soil of Western, post-scholastic theology, not in the more doxological, mystical, sophiological soil of modern Eastern theology.

Well, it seems that I have explained my comments too much. All I really meant to say is that Bulgakov offers resources for an Eastern parallel to the analogy of being that we find most prominent in the Western tradition. Bulgakov nowhere elaborates upon such clues, at least as far as I can tell. But he certainly offers fertile ground for further reflection.

The second criticism is that I have approached Bulgakov from too Barthian a position, or perhaps that I have not appreciated Bulgakov’s unique form of christocentrism. Or perhaps those are two sides of the same point. In any case, all I can say is that I am in basic agreement with Barth. Honestly, I do not have any interest in the “mystical approach of the East,” nor would I ever want to ascend “beyond the limits and constraints of the material, historical, order.” For me, it is precisely in the material and historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth that we find God. The history of Jesus Christ is what determines the being of God and the being of humanity. Bulgakov’s mystical-sophiological approach leads him to affirm panentheism (or a “pious pantheism”), and that is precisely where I do not want to go. I am interested, perhaps exclusively so, in a concrete, historical event that existentially encounters us in the power of the Holy Spirit. Yes, this is Barthian, but I also happen to think it’s right. On this issue, I would hold up Barth’s exegesis (or even my exegesis) over against Bulgakov’s, who does very little biblical interpretation in his work on pneumatology. I found quite a bit of it rather speculative in nature, and that’s precisely what I want to excise from theology. Call me a Western Protestant, but at least I admitted that up front!
Let me express again my gratitude to you for your very kind and thoughtful response. I heartily welcome the dialogue. Let me also point you to the “extended edition” of my essay over at my blog. You’ll find a much longer exposition of Bulgakov’s thought and more critical comments. I suspect you’ll appreciate the former (much of which I had to cut for the conference edition) but have more issues with the latter. And that’s to be expected. I welcome your feedback about the longer version at my blog. Thanks again for the charitable dialogue.

I still sense there is something specifically peculiar to Bulgakov going on here (that I still don’t fully understand) that is very important to him (in his sense of what Spirit is and does). It feels new to me, like I haven’t encountered it before. (While panentheism is familiar in many respects.)

By the way, your section about how “The Holy Spirit is the ‘ontic foundation of the world’ in a way ‘that corresponds to the action of the Third Hypostasis in the Divine Sophia’ (200)” — given Bulgakov’s mariology — reminds me of the “spirit of God” brooding over the face of the deep (in Genesis 1) like a mother bird over a nest…incubating life and bringing in forth into its fullness of being.

Thanks so much for directing us to the Annunciation Icon at your website. It is unforgettable.

Scott Sharman,

A question about this section of your discussion: “Motherhood,” Bulgakov explains, “is the tangibleness of what is being begotten or already born.”11 Fathers create existence, but Mothers give life.

On a hasty reading, this might sound quite gnostic. What is “tangible,” after all, is literally what we can touch and hold, and so it almost sounds as though what Mary provides in bearing Christ is merely the material or physical (bodily or fleshly)) element in the mix. I know this is not what Bulgakov (or you) meant. And I have noticed that he always speaks of “life” and of the “Spirit” as though there is a special “thickness” and substantiality always pertaining to them. (Perhaps this is also related to the way the Spirit renders the Son of God more “tangible” to the Father? Or something like that?)

Could you say a little more about this “tangibility” that Mary provides?

M S Compton

Joshua–
I may have provoked you into a dichotomy inadvertently. The example of Williams was meant to suggest that on occasion, a rigorous history of a heretic can say something more profound than “we’ve been wrong about this guy.” Lots of scholarship may try to make this case about, for example, Pelagius, but not much of this work will change the way we read Augustine’s critiques of Pelagius and Pelagianism–what he’s writing against is still bad, regardless of whether it’s a fair treatment of his opponent. Williams changes how we read Origen and Athanasius, and the whole question of the Son’s origin, by looking critically at the substance of Arius’s thought. Bulgakov pulls off something that important: his treatment of Apollinarius makes us reconsider the entire landscape of Patristic theology, and especially Cyril.
So there’s no reason, I hope, to take my comments as an attack on historical criticism (though I’m not sure how one could be guilty of an “ad hominem” against an intellectual methodology!). It’s simply to say that rarely does anyone manage to make theological hay out of critical-heresiological seed…

Henry–I think I may have said this above, but it’s the only response that comes to me at the moment: you’re right, to my mind, about the potential anthropomorphic dangers of some of the divine sophia language. His point, though, is entirely non-anthropomorphic–that there is a relationality in God that is eternally constituted, and we only enter into this story as a reflection of who God has been eternally. It’s a crucial, post-Hegelian destination— but there may be too much Fichte lining the path.

When I wrote that (rather quickly, as I am trying to go through replies on here right now), what was in my mind was the way the iconophiles (like St Theodore the Studite) defended images. For example they would point out that when the Apostles saw Christ, they saw him with his image before him; that an image is proper to his person and not a mere accident. Thus what is imagined in an image (such as an icon or a statue) is a part of the prototype itself… but if creaturely Sophia is an image of God, then that image (creaturely Sophia) would be a part of who God is in eternity.

I hope that makes some sense (I am not sure if I helped or hindered things with this quick reply).

I think the question of whether or not Bulgakov is starting a new Christological tradition depends upon whether or not someone takes up where he left off or not. That he is trying to engage traditional Christology does not, in itself, indicate he is not trying to engage a new tradition: he is pointing out how the old tradition is at once valid but incomplete, insufficient, and he made it clear many times that there is the need for a positive Christological development. For him that comes within the lines of “Godmanhood.” He wants to re-examine the relationship between humanity and divinity, and I think that is his strong point; there is much to offer in it. However, it also seems to have one weakness: it’s very anthropomorphic, and that, I think, comes into the issue I have of his notion of Sophia and creaturely/divine Sophia… throughout his writings I just get a very anthropomorphic reading of God by how he sets out to understand the nature of God. It’s an issue I find with most of the theological tradition, and not just him, but I think it comes out in a unique way in his writings.