In the hands of Bulgakov Sophia is described under two general forms, Divine Sophia and Creaturely Sophia. Divine Sophia goes under many names, one being that of the ousia, the Being, of the very Godhead, in distinction to the persons, the hypostases of the Father, Son and Spirit:

The first part of the dogma, that is, the doctrine of the relationship between the three hypostases with their hypostatic qualities and distinctive features, has been to a certain extent elucidated in the process of the Church’s dogmatic creativity.  But the other side, the doctrine of the consubstantiality  of the Holy Trinity, as well as the actual conception of the substance or nature, has been far less developed and, apparently, almost overlooked.¹

It is important here that we do not think that Bulgakov is saying something like that Sophia is the divine Trinity taken as a whole, in the way that the encircling of the divine AUM in Hinduism is an actual fourth state. In fact, Bulgakov reminds us that this very position, in the thought of Gilbert de la Porrée, was ruled out by the Council of Rheims in 1147. The church concluded then that, “Divinitas sit Deus et Deus Divinitas, God is Divinity and Divinity is God.”² Bulgakov, in a typically nuanced way is claiming that this does not rule out the fact that the nature of Sophia, who is “not God, but divinity,”³ has not been fully thought out. What makes Bulgakov’s claims about Sophia different from Porrée’s heresy, is that Bulgakov is not attempting to redefine the nature of the Trinity, or even the nature of created being-he is not trying to add something to God-but he is claiming that there is a border zone (or better, a background), an intermediate concept, that has simply not been discussed, or in the name of fighting against heresy, has been simply thrown out with the heretics, a matter of tossing the baby with the bathwater.

In this same vein Bulgakov also uses the language that Sophia is the “nature” of God, the very world in which the Godhead lives. And that nature is the Love which defines the Godhead, but a love which is of a different description than the Love of the Trinitarian persons for each other-”But besides that which is personal there can be a love which is not. . . . in the love of the Godhead for God.”⁴ What he is saying is that in the love of any of the persons of the Trinity for each other there is a personal love, but this does not rule out the fact that there is also an impersonal face, or even grounding to this Love, and that this is Sophia, the very environment in which God lives, or in the words of Augustine (speaking of sapientia creata, created wisdom), “the rational intellectual mind of God’s pure city, our mother, the heavenly Jerusalem, a city of Freedom, which lasts eternally in heaven.”⁵

The distinction that Bulgakov makes is quite fine, and shows the degree to which he was committed to bringing Sophianic thought into the folds of orthodoxy. The following reveals the extent to which he was determined that Sophia not be viewed as a 4th:

The nature of God (which is in fact Sophia) is a living and, therefore, loving substance, ground, and “principle.” But, it might be said, does this not lead to the conception of a “fourth hypostasis”? The reply is “certainly not,” for this principle in itself is non-hypostatic, though capable of being hypostatized in a given Hypostasis, and thereby constituting its life.  But, it might still be urged, would this not result in “another God,” a sort of totally “other” divine principle within God? Again we reply, no; for no one has ever attempted to maintain such an idea in connection with the divine Ousia in its relation to the hypostases, while the very conception of Ousia itself is but that of Sophia, less fully developed.((Bulgakov, Sophia: The Wisdom of God, 35-36.))

and also, from a book often considered his magnum opus:

As divinity, Sophia is nonhypostatic (is not a “fourth hypostasis”), but she is eternally hypostatized in the Holy Trinity and never exists nonhypostatically or extrahypostatically.  She belongs to the divine trihypostatic Person as this Person’s life and self-revelation.  She exists in herself, but not for herself.⁶

In his position that Sophia is not a person he allows her to be the provenance of all the members of the Trinity, to be “hypostatized” in the movement of the Father, Son, and Spirit, without being solely identified with one of the members, which he said happened with the early fathers who, in fighting the Arians, shared with their enemies the point of view that the Wisdom mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures always referred to the Logos: “The Arians and the anti-Arians who attempted to equate wisdom with the Son, by their very attempt deny wisdom both to the Father and the Holy Spirit.”⁷ In a sense we can say that Wisdom is an attribute of the Godhead, but Bulgakov wants her position to be more elevated than that-she is more like a fundamental attribute without which God would not be God. At times he describes Wisdom and Glory as being like the right and left hands of God, intimately tied up in the very relatedness of the members of the Trinity to each other, where the action of the Son is revealed as Wisdom and the work of the Spirit is to crown creation with Glory.

Inasmuch as she expresses the essence of God, Sophia is also intimately linked with God’s creativity, for Bulgakov was adamant that creation was not simply an arbitrary or accidental event that resulted from a divine whim:

The notion, freely accepted by Aquinas and others, that God, by virtue of this “freedom” of His, could have refrained from creating the world must be rejected as not appropriate to His essence.  If God created the world, this means that he could not have refrained from creating it, although the Creator’s act belongs to the fullness of God’s life and this act contains no external compulsion that would contradict divine freedom.⁸

Even though Bulgakov was adamant that God does not need the world and that God is completely satisfied in the love that flows between the three persons, this love is of the nature to spill out beyond itself-as the nature of the ocean is to transgress its shores-and God desires to share this love with something that is not God, namely that which He has made: “The Godhead in its divine liberality, in self-renouncing love, longs for what is not itself, not divine, and so goes forth from its selfhood in creating.”⁹ Love, for Bulgakov as well as for other theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas and Pseudo-Dionysius, was fundamentally ecstatic, in that it causes God to God to reach out beyond God’s self to create and relate to non-divine reality, at the same time as it allows created beings to reach beyond their own limits and be united to their creator. So while Bulgakov is perhaps not saying anything that certain of his predecessors, both East and West, haven’t already said, the conclusions he draws are, I believe, novel. The fact that ecstatic love is the nature of God, and that the creation we know is the result of this nature means, for Bulgakov, that in some way this creation has always existed with God, not as a separate person or hypostasis but in some way as a living reality, a heavenly Jerusalem, uncreated and eternal.
In 1935 the Sophiological aspects of Bulgakov’s theology was judged heretical by the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church Abroad (not, incidentally, Bulgakov’s own jurisdiction). They felt that Bulgakov made Sophia a fourth member of the Godhead, turning the trinity into a quaternity. Many of Bulgakov’s arguments concerning the “hypostatizable” nature of Sophia are the result of this condemnation, and his struggle with the Orthodox authorities no doubt forced him to articulate his views in different ways. The following long quotation is perhaps one of his most creative attempts to find a way to express the fundamental distinction between Trinity and Sophia, in a way that would remain within the bounds of orthodoxy:

The entire Holy trinity in its tri-unity “is Sophia” just as all the three hypostases are in their separateness.  But we should be clear in this connection what we mean by “is.” The connecting word “is” here unites the tri-hypostatic subject with the predicate. The subject is a Hypostasis which, according to its nature, possesses being and which discloses this being in its nature.  Nevertheless this predicate, as the content of the subject’s natural life, does not contain within itself the Hypostasis as such, but only reveals it.  And Sophia, in this sense, once more, is not a Hypostasis, but only a quality belonging to a Hypostasis, an attribute of Hypostatic being. Therefore we should point out a very important peculiarity of such statements as the following; The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Trinity “is” either Ousia or Sophia. Such a statement cannot be reversed. We cannot on the basis of the foregoing argument affirm the converse in which the place of the subject would be occupied by the Ousia-Sophia, and the place of the predicate by the hypostases; for instance: “Ousia-Sophia is the Father, Son, etc.”  Such as statement would simply be untrue for it would contain the heresy of impersonalism as regards the Holy Trinity.¹⁰

This passage, it seems to me, is simply a commentary on I John 4:8, which states that “God is Love.” God is, of course, Father, Son, and Spirit, but that is not to say what God is. What God is is Love, and not just the personalized aspects in which the Father is the Lover, the Son is the Beloved, and the Spirit is Love (as per Augustine). For in a sense, the nature of Love disappears, or is obscured, when it is acted out by these persons. Bulgakov’s point is that there still remains an essence of Love that has yet to be sufficiently thought out or revealed. Bulgakov has a very high understanding of the importance of history, such that that the image of perfect love was given in the event of the cross, but this has not yet been sufficiently understood. History is simply the process of coming to understand what that Love means, and of course, as in the new command of John 13:34, how we are to participate in that love by loving God and by loving others: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”¹¹

1. Bulgakov, Sophia: The Wisdom of God, 24.
2. Ibid., 36 fn
3. Ibid., 30.
4. Ibid., 35.
5. Augustine, Confessions, 292.
6. Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002), 39.
7. Bulgakov, Sophia: The Wisdom of God, 31 fn.
8. Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, 31.
9. Bulgakov, The Unfading Light, 133.
10. Bulgakov, Sophia: The Wisdom of God, 52-53.
11. It should be noted that in earlier writings he actually did consider Sophia to be a fourth hypostasis. He says in The Unfading Light (1917) that “Sophia possesses a personality, a face; it is a subject, a person, or, to use the terminology of theology, a hypostasis.  It is of course distinct from the hypostases of the Holy Trinity, it is an individual reality of another order, a fourth hypostasis. It does not share in the intra-divine life: it is not God, and so does not turn the Trinity into a quaternity of hypostases.” Bulgakov, The Unfading Light, 135.

Rarely is new research on heresiarchs of the ancient church of any real theological interest.  Whether or not Augustine was right about what Pelagius meant is an archeological matter, since he was certainly right about the disasterously contractual conception of grace that his “fictive Pelagius” offered.  One of a small handful of exceptions to this rule is Rowan Williams’s Arius, which digs deeply into the source materials of fourth century Christology in order to deliver a punchline not so much about what we are to do with Arius, but about the relation of a creative theologian to the church, especially the church in a time of great doctrinal ambiguity.

As another exception to this rule, though, we must surely count Bulgakov’s reassessment of Apollinarius, part of a beautifully-crafted 88-page essay on Patristic Christology.   As Mr. Bruce points out here, this now seventy-five year old thesis holds up remarkably well alongside the recent work that has been done on Apollinarius, which must now cause teachers of Christology to stop assigning him that remarkably naïve notion that the human nature of Christ was void of a human soul.  In fact, as Bulgakov shows, the bishop of Laodicia understood quite well that what is not assumed is not healed, and so that a body and soul must both be assumed by the Logos.  What he lacked, however, was consistency of language and a thoroughly worked-out anthropology, leading later readers to make a rather insane caricature of his position in order to show the sanity of Cyril’s. Bruce points out very helpfully the crude scholarship of 19th century dogmatic histories on this point, and this makes Bulgakov’s rise in popularity over the last decade even more timely, since only now are these broadly sweeping and almost universally inaccurate tomes finally being exiled from seminary and undergraduate lecture halls.

What do I mean, though, in suggesting that this return to a new appreciation for a 4th century heretic is of theological interest?  What emerges in Bulgakov’s essay is a new approach to what is the pearl in the oyster of Patristic theology, the set of teachings culminating in the articulation, in Leontius of Byzantium perhaps, of the enhypostatic humanity of Christ.  In Christ there is a full human nature, but not a human person, since the unity of the Logos asarkos is also the unity of the Word made flesh.  This is how Chalcedon arrives at its definition of a hypostatic or Personal unity that conjoins two natures without compromising their integrity.  And this must, it seems, be seen as the crucial move of all Patristic Christology, gathering together the New Testament witness to a Christ who, in being lifted up, can draw all unto himself, and within whom all can be made a new creation

This teaching also leads, it should be added, toward that scholastic development which, since de Lubac, we are beginning to see as one of the most important developments in the history of Christian thought:  the location of human perfection in participation in God’s nature, rather than in an autonomous completion of our own.  This is, we must now say, a direct inheritance from the Christology of the Fathers.  If Christ’s human nature is completed only by becoming personal or hypostatized in the Logos, then a Christian anthropology must assume that humans have no natural perfection, only a natural desire to become perfect through a sharing in the “hypostaseity,” to borrow Bulgakov’s most dizzying neologism, of Jesus.

Before returning to the theological import of reattaching this orthodox stream to Apollinarius, I want to linger for just a moment on this notion of the relation of nature and hypostasis in God and in the world, which is of course where the controversies of Bulgakov’s sophiology emerge. I agree with Mr. Karlson, who finds the overuse of Fichtean idealism through the Divine Humanity Trilogy to be a weakness.  I am not convinced, as I think he is not, that God is a “tri-hypostatic Person,” since this seems to collide incoherently with Bulgakov’s own use of Person as the hypostasis of the Logos.  However, I do not take this to mean that “Bulgakov perhaps went too far in trying to connect God with creation by using Sophia as a common principle between the two.”  While this might be a fair evaluation of the Bulgakov of Unfading Light, I cannot see it as warranted by the dogmatic works.  Tertium quid non datur, as Bulgakov well knows.  What sophiology constructs instead is, within the Godhead, a nature that tends toward divine hypostatization, and so also a created nature that tends toward this same intermingling with the divine hypostases, though here only through its incorporation in the Incarnate Word.  This means that the fundamental distinction for theology can no longer be thought of as that which divides God and the world-or, if it is, we must remain unsure of where to draw this boundary, since it is not a barrier, but a kind of four-dimensional frontier, whose edges, along with the persons they mark off from one another, all fade into distensive pixels.  Indeed, the divine humanity, eternally hypostatized in God, is itself this very frontier.  And while Bruce makes the very important point that there is a commonality between Barth and Bulgakov on the refusal of a full speculative abstraction from the incarnation, this sophianic metaphysics surely gives a quite unBarthian coloring to the refusal in Bulgakov’s dogmatics.

Returning to the matter of Apollinarius’s reassessment, it might be important to ask whether Bulgakov is actually making a run at  “a new Christological tradition” as Karlson suggests.  I think he is not, simply because the “old” Christological tradition is one in which language was constantly stretched and teased in order to speak faithfully to the union of distinct natures - this, I think, is only one of the enduring aspects of von Balthasar’s book on Maximus the Confessor, which is the text, I believe, that Karlson refers to at the opening of his piece. Christology dies when the church ceases to contemplate its way into the hypostatic union, and a certain rigidity to much post-Chalcedonian Christology amounts to just such a death.  I do think, it bears mentioning, that Bulgakov is wrong about Maximus’s role in this inheritance, and that he skirts far too quickly over the rigor of Maximus’s reflections on the two wills in Christ in order to set up his own sophianic solution, a dodgy method that Bulgakov employs even more consistently in Bride of the Lamb.

The larger point, though, remains sound.   We teach Patristic christology badly if we assume that the real breakthrough was the “discovery” of the new meanings of persona, hypostasis, phusis, and ousia in the fourth and fifth centuries.  Cyril uses these terms; however, as Bulgakov shows with such alarming persuasiveness, his use of them amounts more to an ecclesiastical posturing than to proper theological reasoning:  “antimony clothed in apophatics” (Lamb of God, p. 25), which those mindful of Bulgakov’s radical notion of the participation of human intellection in divine reason will recognize immediately as a damning evaluation.  So, his surprising but seemingly sound conclusion:  “Apollinarius is superior to St. Cyril, however, in consistency and clarity of thought:  the unity of the life of Christ and the resulting sanctification of the human essence (communicatio idiomatum) are, in their own way, sufficiently well grounded in Apollinarius’s Christology, something one cannot say about St. Cyril’s Christology” (28).

In short, if Christianity holds Christ to be the one who crafts a unity of time and eternity that allows temporal creatures to share in God, then the key theological move is the removal from Christ’s person of anything natural or temporal that would perfect his humanity, prior to its ecstatic perfection in the Logos.  And this, it seems, is precisely the doctrine sketched, however inadequately, by Apollinarius the heretic.

Back in 1952, Hans Urs von Balthasar had some rather shocking words to say about Christology: “And what a dryness there is in the doctrine about Christ, which likewise has made scarcely any progress since Chalcedon, where an abstract formula has to answer for the central mystery. Once again the formula is excellent, but only if it is a skeletal structure that enables the living flesh of the word of revelation to stand and walk.”¹ Not many years before, Sergius Bulgakov made a similar point. While Chalcedon must be recognized as normative, it should not have ended Christological discussion. Its declaration was mostly negative: it stated who and what Christ was not, but left much room as to who and what Christ is.  The expectation was that there would be theological development. To be sure, there were few theological developments at II and III Constantinople, but they were minor, and beyond them, there really has not been any significant development in Christology.²  It was not meant to be this way.

Bulgakov believed that Christian theologians have far too long neglected this dogmatic problem. Christology, as it is today, provides answers which no longer satisfy the questions brought to it by believers and skeptics alike. Century after century, fundamental questions have remained unanswered, making it understandable as to why people end up floundering in their faith. But the task is more than a little daunting: would it not be indicative of pride if someone thought that they could accomplish what previous generations could not do? Any attempt to engage a new Christological territory will require one to do so with little guidance, making it likely that they will end up making more than a few mistakes in the process. And, for the theologian, this should be a major concern, because they should know that such errors often turn into heresy. Even if someone avoids theological pitfalls, and their insights are orthodox, it does not mean their disciples or critics will interpret them correctly, and so it is possible that their insight, even if valid, will not do as the theologian hoped: help the Christian faith.

It is in this context we must understand what it is that Bulgakov was trying to do as he brought Christology together with Sophiology, especially in his controversial, and difficult, text, The Lamb of God.  He knew that what he was saying was, in many respects, new. It was speculative, and therefore, dangerous. Yet, he believed what he was doing was necessary if Christian theology were to do what it was meant to do. He knew that he would have to combine the limited, technical terminology of the past with his own understanding of the faith, and create, as it were, a new Christological tradition. This would mean he would create a new, and therefore, questionable vocabulary to go along with his ideas. He must have known how easy it would be for someone to misinterpret what he said. If Christology did end up developing beyond its present stage, and the terminology he used would not be employed by future theologians, or if those words end up being used with a different meaning, it would be easy for some future reader to misinterpret what he said through an anachronistic reading of his text. That was something he knew he would have to work against because he saw, historically, that is what happened with Apollinarius of Laodicea.

Apollinarius, as a friend of St Athanasius, was a fervent opponent of the Arians. He understood that the Christological crisis of his time required one to provide a positive understanding of the relationship between the divinity of the Logos with the humanity which the Logos assumed. While he made mistakes, Bulgakov believed he did the best he could with the limited theological means he had, and in this way, he helped direct the production of necessary Christological reflections.³ Bulgakov didn’t want to dismiss the significance of those mistakes; after explaining what he thought Apollinarius meant, he still had some harsh words to say about Apollinarius’ thought.⁴ But behind it all, Bulgakov thought that Apollinarius was ultimately trying to say something similar to what was eventually produced at Chalcedon:  “Thus, Apollinarius’s significance in Christology can be defined as follows: (1) He was the first to pose the problem of the unity of the God-Man as composed of two natures, although his solution to this problem was imprecise. (2) He understood this problem as an anthropological one, and with his doctrine of the composition of the God-Man he anticipated the Chalcedonian schema, although his own answer to this problem was imprecise owing to the imprecision of his terms and the insufficient clarity of his anthropological thought. (3) He as the first to pose the problem of the interrelation of the Divine and human essences as the basis of their union in the God-Man, although he himself did not go beyond ambiguous and obscure propositions on this subject; here, he had neither predecessors nor successors in patristics.”⁵

When Apollinarius described the incarnation, he said that the Logos worked as the nous of Jesus Christ. Historically, most people read this to say that the Logos acted as the consciousness of Christ; therefore, Apollinarius believed Jesus lacked a human consciousness. Bulgakov ingeniously pointed out that we are reading too much in this, and that, instead, was Apollinarius saying something other than this, something which he had no way to do in his time, and that is to find a way to describe the hypostatic union. Bulgakov suggested that Apollonarius used the term nous in the way which later generations would use the term hypostasis.⁶ Bulgakov’s brilliant re-examination of Apollinarius demonstrated the kind of historical-critical research needed to adequately judge such an important, yet controversial, figure. Only in recent times has such a hermeneutic been possible, and it allows us to re-read the past without as much anachronism as others tended to engage.⁷ And Bulgakov’s ideas help us better understand Apollinarius’ relationship with St Athanasius. Finally, they let us know as to why, even after his speculations were condemned, his ideas continued to have a profound amount of influence on the development of Christology, especially upon St Cyril of Alexandria.⁸ Apollinarius’ insights, while not without faults, moved Christology forward, and because of it, rightfully belonged at the beginning of Bulgakov’s Christology, which itself was the start of his great trilogy.

Perhaps we should take Bulgakov’s comments about Apollinarius as a way for us to look at and understand Bulgakov’s writings as well. He noted that key questions of Christology revealed themselves through Apollinarius, and the Church has yet to sufficiently deal with them. Chalcedon’s response is the best that we have had, and it purely gives a rough outline as to what the relationship between Christ’s humanity and divinity is not. Obviously Bulgakov did not want to deny the value of mystery; he knew that there would be a limit as to how much we can comprehend about the incarnation. However, he thought, and with good reason, that what has been revealed is more than has been discussed and examined, and we could develop a better understanding of the God-man if we took the time and effort. It is also clear how great an impact such a theological enterprise would have on dogmatic theology. Even the barest minimum of speculation could end up revealing a hidden insight and move us forward to some real theological solutions, the kind which might impact all kinds of fields, including ecumenism. And thus, Bulgakov, who offered more than a few such speculations, should be mined for what he has discovered.

Not all that Bulgakov suggested will prove itself as a positive theological advance. It is no secret that Bulgakov faced in his lifetime criticisms which continue to influence how people treat his work as a whole. Some concerns were quite valid; his adaptation of 19th century idealism certainly provided troubling speculations which probably will have to be abandoned.⁹ However, many criticisms against him have been immature, and were incapable of stating what Bulgakov was believed. Sometimes he did employ terms which could be misinterpreted. Understanding uncreated and created Sophia as the distinction between God and humanity can easily be misread as a return to Gnosticism. Those who want an easy way to condemn Bulgakov, without actually thinking along with him, often do just that: he discussed Sophia, the Gnostics discussed Sophia, therefore, Bulgakov is a Gnostic. Guilt by association is an easy fallacy to use; its rhetorical force is impressive and quite convincing to those who do not already comprehend its faults. Yet the real reason why Bulgakov engaged Sophia, to be sure, was to re-engage a proper biblical and patristic term, one long abandoned and not sufficiently brought forward into Christian dogmatics. He used it to provide the category of being with positive content for theological use.¹⁰ Bulgakov perhaps went too far in trying to connect God with creation by using Sophia as a common principle between the two; but his approach allows us to reconsider what it means to speak of the analogy of being and what kinds of biblical images can be and should be used when engaging it. And this, Sophia as being, became the foundation for Bulgakov’s Christology. It was the start of something new, and while the terminology might not be the same, others have begun to follow his lead, showing us that his ideas could very well be the start of a positive Christological revolution. Those interested in Christology should look at the questions he raised as well as his solutions to them, not to judge them, but to learn from them. It’s too early to give a thorough judgment on Bulgakov’s theological enterprise, because its influence is only beginning, and we do not know where it will end up.¹¹ Obviously, he wasn’t infallible, and we shouldn’t expect him to be. We will find he made mistakes. That fact alone, however, should not deter us from learning from him; even theologians like St Athanasius can be shown to have made them as well.¹²

1. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Razing the Bastions. Trans. Brian McNeil, C.R.V. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 29.
2. Sergius Bulgakov, The Lamb of God. Trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2008), 194-6.
3. cf. Paul Valliere, Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Orthodox Theology in a New Key (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2000), 297-8.
4. “Apollinarius delineated the problematic in all its acuteness when he posed the question of whether the fullness of the humanity in Christ implies instability as an inalienable property of His humanity, with this instability containing the threat of changeability. Frightened by this threat, Apollinarius abandoned the straight path and instead took the path that consisted in diminishing the fullness of the human essence in Christ in order to protect Him against instability. He thereby desired to insure that Christ was atreptos (without change). But Apollinarius had exaggerated the instability; he had bought the illusory insurance at too high a cost — the cost of doing violence to Christ’s humanity and thus destroying the divine-human work,” Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 296.
5. Bulgakov, ibid., 17-18.
6. “Thus, in Apollinarius’s Christology, pneuma or nous corresponds to the divine hypostasis, which is inseparably united with the divine nature,” ibid., 11.
7. Of course, we must never believe we can fully reconstruct the past and all of its thought patterns.
8. Nestorius made use of this fact in his criticism of St Cyril; see, for example, A. Grillmeier. Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451). Trans. J. S. Bowden (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), 374.
9. This becomes quite apparent to the reader of his essay, “The Eucharistic Dogma,” where he is quite vague as to what he believes is being consumed when one partakes of communion. He is much clearer, and orthodox, in other places, but here he said, “In this world and for the life of this world, the bread and wine remain bread and wine. Their transmutation is not a physical but a metaphysical transmutation; it transcends this world. This transmutation does not exist for this world, which is why the eucharistic elements retain all the properties of natural matter even after transmutation,” Sergius Bulgakov, The Holy Grail & The Eucharist. trans.Boris Jakim (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1997), 110. “The meaning of this sacrament consists not in the fact that believers eat a particle of the body and blood in its natural form, but in the fact that they take communion of the one, indivisible body and blood of the Lord, being united with Him bodily and therefore spiritually,” ibid., 110-11.
10. That is, through Sophia, he established a way to provide positive content to God’s being, and through it, ours. “This coincidentia oppositorum finds its expression on this account in a relation of type and antitype, an identity in distinction, and distinction in identity. This is the primary and ultimate antinomy of sophiology. And this sophiological antinomy only serves to express the still deeper antinomy from which all theological thought springs and to which it inevitably returns: that of the identity and distinction of God and the Absolute. Absolute being, self-existent and self-sufficing, while maintaining all its absolute character, yet establishes as it were alongside or outside of itself a state of relative being, to which it stands as God. The Absolute is God, but God in not the Absolute insofar as the world relates to him. We find this theological antinomy reflected in a whole series of paradoxical relationships: God and the world, the divine and the creaturely Sophia, the type and the anti-type,” Sergei Bulgakov, The Wisdom of God. trans. Patrick Thompson, O. Fielding Clarke, and Xenia Braikevitch (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1993), 76-77.
11. All one needs to do is look through Balthasar’s Christological writings to see how significant Bulgakov’s dogmatics ends up being for Balthasar, especially as it relates so some of his most controversial theological ideas, such as Christ’s descent into the lowest depths of hell.
12. It would be easy to read much of what St Athanasius wrote in an Apollinarian fashion, and it is clear his theology held much in common with what we find in the writings of his friend, Apollinarius, with even some of the same mistakes.

Apollinaris is usually remembered for his misguided attempt to explain the union of the Christ’s two natures. The result was the heresy that bears his name: a Christology which denies that Christ had a human nous, but rather that the divine Logos took its place in the incarnation. His detractors, such as the Cappadocians, have understood this to result in a tertium quid, a God-man mixture who was neither human nor divine (ironically the very thing that Apollinaris was striving to avoid).

This portrait of Apollinaris found in the tomes of Dogmengeschichte has been challenged of late. One notable example is the work of Kelly McCarthy Spoerl, who since the early 1990s, has produced several publications which have called into question the received interpretation of Apollinaris and have brought fresh attention to his life and work particularly his influence in development of Trinitarian theology and pneumatology.¹ The main thrust of Spoerl’s work is that Apollinaris played a major role in the development of Trinitarian theology, even pre-empting the Cappadocian solution, pointing to the need of a more thorough reconsideration of the entire span of his thought. Brian Daley has summarized the results of this reassessment well: “The fragments and the whole treatises of Apollinarius that still exist… offer a portrait of Christ that is less bizarre, less classically docetic… more coherent and persuasive in strictly theological terms, than modern Dogmengeschichte may lead us to suppose.”²

This contemporary reassessment is bolstered by Bulgakov’s Christological treatise, The Lamb of God.  Bulgakov rather astonishingly begins his Christology with an appreciative analysis of Apollinaris. He does so, in part, because he describes the theme of his dogmatic trilogy, of which the Lamb of God is the first volume, as a theology of the “Divine-humanity.” Bulgakov’s Christology is rooted in the concept of “theandric energy,” a term first used by Pseudo-Dionysius and further developed by John Damascene, which he contends is well suited to address problems left unresolved after Chalcedon.³ Bulgakov sees the Dionysian idea of divine-human action as the key to the mystery of the incarnation and furthermore argues that this idea was already latent in the Christology of Apollinaris.  He argues that Apollinaris was the first to recognize the unresolved issues in Christology, namely the problem of the Divine-humanity, and that his doctrine is of “exclusive significance” for it defines “the entire path followed by the theological thought of the epoch of the four ecumenical councils.”⁴  Part of Bulgakov’s development of divine-human activity is the allegation that the Cappadocians misunderstood the “fundamental Christological idea” of Apollinaris and that a reconsideration of his thought is beneficial for the future development of Christology.⁵

Bulgakov is not concerned, primarily anyways (and nor is this all too short paper), with providing an accurate historical depiction of all of the details of the 4th Century Christological conflicts.   His concern is to find resources to mine for his constructive theological project - the development of a modern Orthodox dogmatics. For this purpose he reads Apollinaris through a post-Chalcedonian lens and gives to the supposed heresiarch new life and relevance.

One of the chief reasons Bulgakov began with a reexamination of Apollinaris is the heresiarch’s axiom: “For it is impossible for two principles with intelligence and will to be united into one principle.”⁶  Bulgakov sees this idea as containing the general premise of the understanding of the union that became the orthodox teaching at the Council of Chalcedon.  This axiom points the way to the proper understanding of the union of the divine and human natures and does so while avoiding the dualism latent in Antiochene theology.  Bulgakov contends that Apollinaris affirms the subjectivity of Christ as a complex unity, which is a “perfectly, orthodox, Chalcedonian idea. However, one must not forget that Apollinarius expresses his thought with a totally different terminology, or even without terminology.”⁷  “As a result Apollinarius was not understood by his contemporaries.  In his history his name is associated solely with a strange and obscure psychological theory of the human essence of Christ.”⁸

Bulkagov finds in Apollinaris’s reference to “the man from heaven,” a way of referring to Christ as a single subject referent, a synthesis of the divine and human, in a way which anticipates the fundamental idea of Chalcedon.  With Apollinaris he thinks it essential to affirm that Christ is different from us, that he is not a mere human being, but a human being assumed into the fullness of the of the hypostasis of the Word.⁹  He does so because he wants to be able to speak of Christ as a unio hypostatica, a single ontological reality, in which the divine hypostasis has united itself to human nature.  In Apollinaris he found the doctrine of the Divine-Humanity that is presupposed as the general foundation of all Christology:

The Union of the Divine and human essences in the God-man is not an external, ontological arbitrary act of the unification of two things that cannot be united, of two things that are totally different and alien to one another.  Rather it is the ontologically grounded and pre-established union of the Proto-image and the image, of the heavenly man and the earthly man.  On the subject of this union, patristic theology did not know any answer except a general reference to God’s omnipotence.  Apollianrius’ achievement is that he perceived here a special problem that he expressed in the doctrine of the interrelation of the heavenly man and the earthly man, that is, the doctrine of the Divine-humanity.  In this respect Apollinarius is a solitary and misunderstood figure in patristic theology; evidently he himself did not completely think through his highly significant idea.¹⁰

Thus, Bulkagov appeals to Apollinaris because he sees implicit in his thought the idea that the incarnation is not only part of the eternal will of God, but part of the eternal being of God.  The incarnation was not a rescue operation resulting from the unfortunate fall of man into sin, but part of God’s eternal and essential being-for-humanity.  This is indeed something of which patristic theology knew very little and it is not something that, for example, the Cappadocians or even Apollinaris, can be expected to have foreseen.

All this is not to say that Bulgakov views Apollinarian Christology uncritically.  Indeed, he refers to it as a “failure” (along with the Christology of Theodore and Cyril), for although it begins with the correct principle (the unity of Christ), the Christology of all three fail to transcend the dialectical tension between the two natures.¹¹   Apollinaris fails in that he diminishes the humanity of Christ in order to protect divine immutability.  The protection of the Logos was bought at the price of Christ’s humanity: “the cost of doing violence to Christ’s humanity and thus destroying the divine-human work.  For Christ’s humanity it is necessary to assure human (i.e. creaturely) freedom and thus the possibility of his being tempted…”¹²  And again, “Apollinarius understood the [union] statically and mechanically, as the coercion of spirit over flesh, whereas it should be understood dynamically and kenotically, as authentic divine life, contained in the human essence in virtue of kenosis.”¹³

There is not space in a short Blog-Conference paper of this sort to deal with all the grand depth of Bulgakov’s constructive Christology, though I hope this short summary will push readers to read The Lamb of God and to engage it critically.  My own interest in Bulgakov, as a modern protestant, is that his Christology bears several similarities (at least formally, but I am inclined to argue materially also) with thinkers like the Hegel and Schelling (whom we know he read and was influenced by) but also Barth (see the forthcoming publication of Bruce McCormack’s Scottish Journal of Theology Lectures: The Humility of the Eternal Son: A Reformed Version of Kenotic Christology, Cambridge).  The focus not only on kenoticism, but also on the incarnation as part of the eternal being of God, is witness to a higher degree of camaraderie with contemporary Protestant theology than might have been expected (though there are of course debates here as well, especially among the Barthians).  While I have no naïve expectations that this will lead to any sort of ecumenical concord it does witness to the unity which we share in our common Lord, Jesus Christ.

Bulgakov, Sergius. The Lamb of God. Translated by Boris Jakim. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.

Daley, Brian E. “‘Heavenly Man’ and ‘Eternal Christ’: Apollinarius and Gregory of Nyssa on the Personal Identity of the Savior.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10, no. 4 (2002): 469-88.

Dorner, Issak. Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi. 4 vols. Stuttgart; Berlin: G. Schlawitz, 1846-56.

Gemeinhardt, Peter. “Apollinaris of Laodicea: A Neglected Link of Trinitarian Theology between East and West.” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 10, no. 2 (2007): 286-301.

Harnack, Adolf von. Dogmengeschichte. 6th ed. 4 vols. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1922.

Lienhard, Joseph T. “Two Friends of Athanasius: Marcellus of Ancyra and Apollinaris of Laodicea.” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 10, no. 1 (2006): 56-66.

Lietzmann, Hans. Apollinaris von Laodicea und Seine Schule: Texte und Untersuchungen. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1904.

Loofs, Friedrich. Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte. 2nd ed. Halle-Saale: Max Niemeyer, 1890.

Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works. Translated by Colm Luibheid. Edited by Paul Rorem, The Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1987.

Raven, Charles E. Apollinarianism: An Essay on the Christology of the Early Church. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923.

Schaff, Philip, and Henry Wace, eds. Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Second Series. 14 vols. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Reprint, 1997.

Kelley McCarthy Spoerl, “A Study of the Kata Meros Pistis by Apollinarius of Laodicea” (University of Toronto, 1991).

__________. “Apollinarius and the Response to Early Arian Christology,” Studia Patristica 26 (1993).

__________. “The Liturgical Argument in Apollinarius: Help and Hindrance on the Way to Orthodoxy,” The Harvard Theological Review 91, no. 2 (1998)

__________. “Apollinarius on the Holy Spirit.” Studia Patristicia 38 (2001): 571-592.

Voisin, Guillaume. L’apollinarisme: étude historique, littéraire et dogmatique sur le début des controverses christologiques au IVe siècle. Louvain; Paris: J. van Linthout; A. Fontemoing, 1901.

1. See e.g., Kelley McCarthy Spoerl, “A Study of the Kata Meros Pistis by Apollinarius of Laodicea” (University of Toronto, 1991); “Apollinarius and the Response to Early Arian Christology,” Studia Patristica 26 (1993); “The Liturgical Argument in Apollinarius: Help and Hindrance on the Way to Orthodoxy,” The Harvard Theological Review 91, no. 2 (1998); “Apollinarius on the Holy Spirit.” Studia Patristicia 38 (2001): 571-592.  See also, Peter Gemeinhardt, “Apollinaris of Laodicea: A Neglected Link of Trinitarian Theology between East and West,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 10, no. 2 (2007): p. 502, Joseph T. Lienhard, “Two Friends of Athanasius: Marcellus of Ancyra and Apollinaris of Laodicea,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 10, no. 1 (2006).
2. Brian E. Daley, “‘Heavenly Man’ and ‘Eternal Christ’: Apollinarius and Gregory of Nyssa on the Personal Identity of the Savior,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10, no. 4 (2002): p. 469.
3. See, Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, ed. Paul Rorem, trans. Colm Luibheid, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), p. 265. See also, John Damascene, “Exposition of the Orthodox Faith,” in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Second Series, 14 vols. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark; reprint, 1997), vol. 3, pp. 67-68.
4. Sergius Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), p. 3. Concerning the centrality of Apollinaris for the path of conciliar Christology, Bulgakov is in agreement with the tradition of modern Dogmengeschichte, which he new incredibly well. See for example the relevant sections of: Issak Dorner, Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi, 4 vols. (Stuttgart; Berlin: G. Schlawitz, 1846-56), Friedrich Loofs, Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte, 2nd ed. (Halle-Saale: Max Niemeyer, 1890), Guillaume Voisin, L’apollinarisme: étude historique, littéraire et dogmatique sur le début des controverses christologiques au IVe siècle (Louvain; Paris: J. van Linthout; A. Fontemoing, 1901), Adolf von Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, 6th ed., 4 vols. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1922), Charles E. Raven, Apollinarianism: An Essay on the Christology of the Early Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923).
5. Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, pp. 13, 209.
6. Hans Lietzmann, Apollinaris von Laodicea und Seine Schule: Texte und Untersuchungen (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1904), Frag. 2, p. 204. Cf. Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, p. 5.
7. Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, p. 7.
8. Ibid., p. 8.
9. Ibid., p. 11.
10. Ibid., p. 17 (emphasis original).
11. Ibid., p. 40.
12. Ibid., p. 296.
13. Ibid., p. 310.

With Halden Doerge I must claim my limited knowledge of of Sergi Bulgakov. In fact, this is my first venture into his corpus. This said, I must claim my perspective as liturgical and ecclesiological. By this I mean that I approach Doerge’s article as a student of liturgy, ultimately asking how liturgy shapes an ecclesisological vision. Doerge interestingly leaves this in the hands of others as he notes at the close of his article when he confess he does “not sink very deep into the riches of Bulgakov’s ecclesiology,” The effect of this omission is to leave open the place and function of the Church in this “Christification” of the world. Even though Doerge notes that Bulgakov’s “ecclesiological vision is thoroughly cosmic in scope,” he does not draw the link between the liturgical prayer, sacrifice, and praise and the kenotic “self-oblation” of Christ.

Theologies of the Eucharist have often asked how the prayers of the Church, including the oblation inherent in the Eucharistic liturgy, relate to the sacrifice of Christ. In the West at least this leads to conversations about time and space, namely that the Church’s repetition of the sacrificial meal continues the incarnation in various times and places. Bulgakov’s move to see the World, and not the Church itself, as the Grail of the Christ’s blood seemingly removes this quandary. Yet, it begs the question what what the Church is doing in the world, and what it does in its times of worship. Is the Eucharist then a commemorative prayer whereby the Church recalls the transformation of the world which has already been done, or is there something transpiring in the liturgy?

This response is not to diminish Doerge’s helpful, and intriguing, synthesis of Bulgakov’s vision of cosmic transfiguration. I simply wish to draw out the ecclesiological implications of such a vision. If I might venture a guess as to the solution to my question, I would begin with the epicletic emphasis in Orthodox liturgies and Bulgakov’s pneumatology and sophiology. Yet, as I said in my opening sentence, I must plead my ignorance of Bulgakov and defer to the following conversations. Thank you Dan for hosting such a fruitful conversation and Halden for a provocative look at Bulgakov.

Sergei Bulgakov is unique among Orthodox theologians, Russian and otherwise for all manner of reasons, not the least of which involves his distinctive ecclesiology. Bulgakov’s The Bride of the Lamb provides perhaps the most innovative work in Orthodox ecclesiology in the twentieth century. In what follows, I will attempt to make a provisional exploration into the fabric of Bulgakov’s ecclesiology looking particularly at a constellation of coordinates that are operative in the shape of his thought. I hope to explore the way in which Bulgakov’s ecclesiological thought is a dynamic theological articulation, which circulates between the nodal points of the Eucharist, eschatology, and the world. Bulgakov’s ecclesiology is, through and through informed by a dynamic conceptual interplay between these three major foci. My aim in this essay is limited simply to the observance of some of these dynamics. I hope that in so doing I will illuminate some of the key contributions of Bulgakov to the ecumenical task of exploring the nature of the church and its place in the shape of redemption.

It should be noted at the outset that I am no expert on Bulgakov and those more knowledgeable about his thought than I will certainly be in a good position to correct any imbalances and misapprehensions in what follows. In the interest of space and focus, I am here taking my cues from two of Bulgakov’s works alone, his shorter dogmatic treatises, The Holy Grail and the Eucharist and his massive treatment of ecclesiology, The Bride of the Lamb. In both of these works Bulgakov binds together an integrated view of the redemption, originating in the Christic self-oblation of the Lamb.

The first thing to be noted in approaching this endeavor is found in Bulgakov’s treatment of “The Holy Grail.” Herein, Bulgakov engages in a form of inquiry that is rightly described by the translator as “mystical lyricism” (The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, p. 9). Here Bulgakov attempts a “dogmatic exegesis” of John 19:34 which recounts Christ’s side being pierced by the spear of Longinus and the blood and water flowing forth from the wound. Bulgakov recounts the standard legends of the Holy Grail, which culminate in the Arthurian poems of the Middle Ages, but then goes on to theologically reimagine the idea of the Holy Grail from a radically different point of view. According to Bulgakov, the Holy Grail is not a chalice, which caught the blood and water from Christ’s side, but rather is the world itself into which Christ’s shed blood and water flowed.

The blood and water that flowed from Christ’s side on the cross of course represent baptismal water and Eucharistic blood in Bulgakov’s view. However, he makes a radical point of distinction here. There is a crucial difference between Christ’s poured-out blood and water and the elements of the Eucharist and the waters of baptism shared in in the church. The differentiation is not a substantial one, but a differentiation of mode. For Bulgakov, “the blood and water that came out of His side were not Eucharistic in intent” (The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, p. 33). What is crucial for Bulgakov is that the blood and water which poured from the wound of Christ, though identical to the Baptismal and Eucharistic elements substantially, is different in that it is not offered to the faithful for communion, but rather is poured out into the substance of the world as such (see The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, pp. 34ff). The blood and water that are poured out into the Holy Grail, the world, are not given “for the communion of the faithful but for the sanctification and transfiguration of the world” (The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, p. 34).

Here is Bulgakov’s key point, the Eucharistic and Baptismal elements, Christ’s blood and water are poured out on the cross and remain in the world. Bulgakov insists that this outpouring of Christ’s wound on the cross indelibly alters the fabric of the world, binding it forever to Christ, sanctifying it and preparing it for its final transfiguration at the parousia. For Bulgakov the very metabolism of the world, its cosmological fabric is transmuted by the flowing forth of Christ’s water and blood into it. There is a real sense for Bulgakov that Christ’s own human substance remains diffused into the world through his self-oblation. The world, in Christ’s outpouring is “Christified”, permanently bound to Christ, united with him and impelled on by this union towards its eschatological transfiguration by the Spirit. Indeed, for Bulgakov it is the fact of Christ’s blood and water pouring into the heart of the world that even makes it possible for the earth to sustain, to bear the Pentecostal coming of the Spirit whose eschatological epiphany is recounted in radically apocalyptic terms. The biblical images of the sun turning to darkness and the moon to blood in the day of the Lord (cf. Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2:17-31) are the manifestation of this pneumatological intensity, which the world can only endure on the basis of its Christic reconstitution through being transfigured into the Holy Grail. (see TThe Bride of the Lamb, pp. 419-421)

In short, for Bulgakov, Christ’s passion and resurrection radically transfigures the reality of the world in a distinctively eschatological and Eucharistic manner. The world is, in a sense Eucharisticized and Baptized by the blood and water of Christ’s body in a manner that inclines it to, and sets it on the path toward its eschatological destiny. Christ imparts his divine humanity to the world itself, allowing his blood and water to remain in the earth. In so doing he binds himself to the world, making it a place upon which his presence can rest in its epiphanic, eschatological fullness. “This blood and water mad the world a place of the presence of Christ’s power, prepared the world for its future transfiguration, for the meeting with Christ come in glory” (The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, p. 44). Thus, for Bulgakov, “the reception and the sending down of the Holy Spirit into the world depend upon the Incarnation, upon the profound, radical transformation of the world’s natural being”. Only thereby does “the world become capable of bearing the Pentecost, of receiving the fire of the Holy Spirit without being consumed by it.” (The Bride of the Lamb, p. 419).

What Bulgakov here presents is a vision of redemption that is at once apocalyptic and Eucharistic (see The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, p. 45). In Christ’s passion the world is constituted anew as the place of his presence, on which his Spirit rests, impelling the world towards it eschatological future, the transfiguration of creaturely reality in the union of the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem (see The Bride of the Lamb, p. 522-524). The whole shape of the world, constituted by Christ’s blood and water is Eucharistic. It is this construction of the world in and through Christ’s blood and water that make the coming transfiguration of the world into a cosmic redemption rather than a cosmic holocaust. Christ’s suffusion of the world with his very humanity renders the world a place capable of bearing the weight of the divine glory even as it transfigures the world in a purgative cleansing fire. The world is destined to “undergo a catastrophic trancensus: on the one hand, it will perish in a cosmic fire; on the other hand, it will be transformed inwardly.” (The Bride of the Lamb, p. 417) Thus, the Christic outpouring of Christ’s humanity into the fabric of the world is what renders possible the Pneumatic mission of the Spirit to renew and transfigure. “It is precisely the Holy Spirit who accomplishes the transfiguration of the universe: the energy of the Holy Spirit destroys the sinful, imperfect old world and creates a new world, with the renewal of all creation. This is the power of the Fire that burns, melts, transmutes, illuminates, and transfigures.” (The Bride of the Lamb, p. 421)

For Bulgakov this dynamic vision of the redemption of the world, which is at once Trinitarian, Eucharistic, and apocalyptic is grounded in the ecclesial reality which exists in the world, seen preeminently through the sacramental life. It is the church that is the center of God’s eschatological outpouring of purgative, transfiguring grace, which proclaims and anticipates the eschatological destiny of the redemption, the marriage supper of the Lamb. Bulgakov’s ecclesiological vision is thoroughgoingly cosmic in scope, seeing in the Eucharistic life of the church the future of the world, which was pre-accomplished in Christ’s kenotic outpouring of his humanity into the world, constituting it as the Holy Grail, the chalice of God’s grace, transfigured by the fire of the Spirit and offered up to the Father as a divine sacrifice of praise.

These observations, of course, do not sink very deep into the riches of Bulgakov’s ecclesiology, most notably they fail to explore the connection between Bulgakov’s configuration of eschatology, Eucharist, and world and his Sophiology, which begs exploration and analysis. That is a task I leave to others and to ensuing conversation.

In the previous post, I mentioned two experiences that helped bring Bulgakov back to the Orthodox Church.  In this post, we encounter the third experience, viz., the death of Bulgakov’s  four year old son in the summer of 1909.  At his son’s funeral, Bulgakov had a strong sense that “his child lived in the life of the Resurrection” (p. 602).  This experience moved him to re-read Soloviev’s works in which the theme of wisdom (created and uncreated) is prominent.  Bulgakov develops his theme of “the Wisdom of God as the foundation and goal of all earthly reality” and begins to employ it in his writings on economics and philosophy.  In his book, The Philosophy of Economy (1912), Bulgakov argues that even though our labor is toilsome, the economic process is meaningful because it participates in the Divine Wisdom.  Moreover, our struggles in nature also involve (besides pain and difficulties) joy and beauty, if we, as followers of Christ, realize that human beings possess a “hidden potential for perfection [and so must] work to resurrect nature, to endow it once again with the life and meaning it had in Eden.”¹  For Bulgakov, the most mundane human activities have value and are redeemable “by the Christian message of the fall and resurrection of man and, with man, nature.  We have a common task and it is universal resurrection out of fall, bringing resurrection-life into everything” (p. 603).

By 1917, Bulgakov was recognized in Russia as a gifted Orthodox intellectual and was elected a member of the Russian Church Council-a council which had the massive responsibility of picking up the pieces after the fateful February Revolution (1917).  However, with the subsequent October Revolution and the rise to power of the Bolsheviks, the Orthodox Church came under great persecution, and Bulgakov, now ordained as a priest, was forced the following year (1918) to flee (p. 603, 604).  He found a temporary place of rest in the Crimea, but this was soon taken over by the Bolsheviks in 1922.  As a result, Bulgakov, as were many intellectuals, was forced to leave and eventually made his way to Paris where he lived his remaining years (1925-1944).  In Paris, Bulgakov became a founding member of the theological institute, Saint-Serge, where he taught for a number of years (p. 604).  During his time in the Crimea, Bulgakov briefly entertained becoming a Catholic; however, this period of doubt ended in a strengthening of his own Orthodox roots. Nonetheless, Bulgakov was extremely ecumenically minded and interacted with a number of Anglicans and other Protestants. Describing Bulgakov’s ecumenical activities, Nichols writes:

“In 1927 he helped found - in England - the Anglican-Orthodox Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, and in the years 1933 to 1935 published some remarkable articles in English in the journal of that Fellowship, arguing that Orthodoxy remained in what he called an “invisible, mysterious communion with Catholicism” (p. 604).

Although Bulgakov was well-known as a theologian-in part due to the publication of his “Little Trilogy”:  The Friend of the Bridegroom, The Burning Bush, and Jacob’s Ladder-in 1935 Bulgakov was charged with heresy by two Russian jurisdictions (both of which were not his own jurisdiction, the Exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarch for Western Europe, in which Bulgakov remained in good standing) [p. 604, 605].  The charge against Bulgakov, which he strongly denied, was that “Sophia, the Wisdom of God, is in effect a fourth person of the Holy Trinity” (p. 605).

In the years 1933-1936, Bulgakov wrote his “Great Triology”:  The Lamb of God, The Comforter, and The Bride of the Lamb.  He became ill with cancer of the throat in 1939 and died on July 12, 1944, not long after the completion of his final book, The Apocalypse of John.

Nichols, Fr. Aidan.  “Wisdom from Above? The Sophiology of Father Sergius Bulgakov,” New Blackfriars 85, (2004): 598-613.

1. C. Evtuhov, The Cross and the Sickle, p. 147, as found in “Wisdom from Above,” p. 603.

An Introduction to Sergei Bulgakov, by Cynthia Nielsen

Part I

My brief introduction to Bulgakov is based on Fr. Aidan Nichols article, “Wisdom from Above? The Sophiology of Father Sergius Bulgakov”¹ -an article that is worth reading in its entirety.  Bulgakov, who was to become an important 20^th century theological figure in both Orthodox and Latin theological circles, was born in 1871 in a rural town in south-central Russia.  Bulgakov’s father was an Orthodox priest, and his family line included a number of priests (p. 599).  Although his early education was religiously focused, as a young teen Bulgakov underwent a faith crisis and in 1888 publicly proclaimed himself an unbeliever at the age of 18.  Two years later, he enrolled at the University of Moscow, where his interest in and commitment to Marxism grew with an ever-increasing intensity (p. 599).  Entailed in Bulgakov’s embrace of Marxism was the idea that human beings are essentially material beings, “albeit an expression of the nobility and complexity matter could attain” (p. 599).  In 1897 Bulgakov published his first work, “On Markets in the Capitalist System of Production,” and even so, he had already begun to experience some uncertainties with regard to central Marxist claims.

As Nichols explains, there were three significant experiences (two of which are described below) that played crucial roles in bringing Bulgakov back to his Orthodox faith. The first occurred ”in 1894 when holidaying in the Caucasus mountains on the border between the present day Georgia and the Russian Federation.  It was an experience of the beauty of the mountains as somehow more than material-a pointer to a beauty that transcends matter […].  A few years later, in the period 1898 to 1900 while he was studying abroad (by this point, incidentally, he had married), he underwent the second experience which led to his re-conversation to the faith.  And this was by way of response to the spiritual purity he glimpsed in a painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael.  Known as the “Sistine Madonna”, he saw it displayed in Saxony, in the City of Dresden art gallery.  On his return from Germany to Russia, his Marxism was definitely shaken, and his master’s thesis on capitalism and agriculture, which he presented at this time, is generally regarded as the work of someone already leaving a distinctively Marxian viewpoint behind” (p. 600).

With the completion of his thesis, he was able at the age of thirty to obtain a teaching position in political economics at the University of Kiev.  In addition to teaching, Bulgakov was also very active in politics and served in 1907 as a deputy to the Second Duma (p. 600).  During this time, Bulgakov began to doubt the ability of Russia’s newly introduced constitutional reforms to truly change people’s lives.  As Nichols observes, the changes in Bulgakov’s views ”coincided with a change of direction in the aspirations of the Russian intelligentsia generally.  They become more interested in the creative powers of the human mind-an interest which, in philosophy, is often connected with the school of thought called “Idealism”.  They also began to look more sympathetically at religion and especially at the Russian heritage of Orthodox Christianity.  Such intellectuals hoped for a reform and renewal of the Church. That was partly because they expected so deeply rooted an institution to have some effect in transforming the rest of society.  Bulgakov’s own personal developments mirrors these trends.  He moved from Marxism to Idealism, without, however, denying his earlier interest in the economy and the potential of matter.  And then he moved from Idealism to a rediscovered Orthodoxy, without, however, denying his earlier convictions of the importance of human creativity, the uniqueness of the human subject, the person who says “I”.  This happened at an exciting time in Russian cultural and intellectual life, a time historians have dubbed Russia’s “silver age” (pp. 600-601).

Bulgakov’s contribution to Russia’s short-lived Silver Age was to help reawaken interest in Dostoevsky by giving a famous lecture on the novel, The Brothers Karamazov.  Ironically, or rather providentially, Bulgakov’s efforts to draw attention back to Dostoevsky occurred during the same time that Dmitri Merezhkovsky-a highly influential literary critic-was also promoting Dostoevsky’s works among the intelligentsia of St. Petersburg.  According to Merezhkovsky, Dostoevsky’s work points to the religious principle that should govern human culture, viz., “Godmanhood”-a principle of grace by which God raises humanity into union with Himself and, which stands opposed to the principle operative and ruling in the West, “mangodhood” (p. 601).  Bulgakov, in his essay “Church and Culture” -an essay written prior to his return to the Church-stressed Christianity’s mission to culture, claiming that there are no “religiously indifferent” or neutral zones; “[t]here must be nothing that is in principle ‘secular’”.²  In essence, Bulgakov’s essay was a challenge to the Church, “for the Church had in effect abandoned its task of being yeast to the leaven of the rest of culture and [had] withdrawn into the ghetto of its own rituals” (p. 602).  As a number of Silver Age intellectuals grew weary of the claims made by the then predominant anti-religious voices of Russian intelligentsia, they published a collection of essays entitled Signposts, which served both as a kind of manifesto as well as a critique of their predecessors.   One of the new (religiously attuned) intelligentsia’s main points of contention focused on how a true and lasting transformation of culture is possible.  According to the authors of the Signposts essays, genuine transformation of society must include, and in fact presupposes, conversion of human hearts to the Good.

1. As found in New Blackfriars 85, (2004): 598-613.
2. As found in “Wisdom from Above?” p. 602.  Republished in S. Bulgakov, Dva grada (Two Cities), Moscow, 1911, p. 309.

“We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”- T.S. Eliot

I have admired the greatness of Eliot as a poet, but never expected to use a bit of his work for a meditation of education such as this. However, it seems to me that this quote from Eliot is filled with profundity and enormous implications for our practice as educators and continuing students. I must say from the outset that my reflection on this quote is not an exegesis of Eliot’s poetry (though certainly such an venture is a worthy endeavor and has been embarked upon by interpreters much more able than I), but rather a contemplation of these words as they stand on their own, detached from the context of his work in which it is originally embedded.

I will begin with a memory. A couple years ago I made the routine visit to my hometown of Jamestown, TN where I was born and raised in the same house until I went away to college at the age of eighteen. While home on this visit I distinctly remember riding in the car with a family member, perhaps my dad. The road that we were travelling upon was a route that I had taken hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times in my life. It was the road from my family’s home to the center of town. About a mile into this route is a field, off to the left, which has cattle and much green grass in its midst. It is perhaps ten acres or so. What was so distinct about the memory is that, to my amazement, I noticed something about the field that I had never noticed before. What I saw was a patch, or perhaps angle on a patch, of trees that I had never noticed before. What struck me with such awe was the fact that I had been travelling this stretch of road almost everyday for the first eighteen years of my life and many times in the ensuing years and had never noticed this patch of woods! It taught me, or perhaps reminded me in a deeper way, that no matter how much we have partaken of God’s creation there is always more to see, touch, taste, and feel.

This “always more-ness” of creation is rooted in the fact that creation derives its being through participation in the Being and Life of the infinite Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So there is always more to any creature than just themselves. If we have eyes to see,ears to hear, and skin to touch we will find that creation and its creatures are iconic gateways into the infinite depth of God from which they draw life. Because this infinite depth just that, infinite, there will always more to contemplate, to learn about a person, a tree, a sunset, etc. For us as educators this means that we must never approach a class or subject we are teaching our students in such a way that we work under the assumption that we comprehensively “understand it” and intend to lead students to this same comprehensive understanding. Rather, if we are teaching the Interior Castle by Theresa of Avila, for instance, we must lead our students into the depths of Theresa’s text as fellow sojourners who are all students of Theresa. For Theresa’s text provides an iconic gateway into the life of the Triune God. We may lead students into the depths of Theresa a hundred or more times in our lives as educators but there will always be “another patch of trees to see.” There will always be the light of new dimensions, angles from which we have not ventured a look at Theresa’s castle, a fresh harmony we have yet to hear in her music.

I think this is perhaps some of what Eliot’s turn of phrase means for our craft as educators. We are to lead our students into continual exploration of the depths of our discipline, for there will always be new vistas, or at least clearer vision of what we are beholding. When we behold this new depth of our subject matter we must pray for the grace to always and ever “arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.” No doubt that we and our students will find ourselves at times at the point of satiation, believing like the (cynical) laughing Sarah and Abraham, that we “know the deal.” Geriatric age couples do not have children and one does not encounter fresh dimensions of truth in texts that have been read for hundreds of years and which we have read over and over. And yet this small imagination of Sarah, Abraham, us, and our students shows not a lack in the depths of our subject matter, but a failure in our ability to imagine and encounter a world in which we will ever journey into fresh knowledge. This is so for this world, and the disciplines of study which lead us into exploration of this world, find their being and life in the Being and Life that is beyond all category of being and description…the infinite ocean of love and joy that is the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As teachers and learners may we be given grace by this God to “not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”