More Bulgakov at The Land of Unlikeness

I am struggling with the sheer positivity of Bulgakov’s vision. He is inspiring to me but I have to admit I feel like I’m an Englishman in deep Russian water. And I’m not even English! but I adore clotted cream. . . . it occurred to me reading today that there is no greater pride than to imagine that our sin could keep us from God, or God from us (”Breath returning to its birth”). (The image is from the tower in Herbert’s Prayer I, see Janet’s comment on the previous post). But the question is: how can we safeguard hell and freedom from the smashing positivity of God’s love? I also remember that in Lacan anxiety is a rememoration of being too close to the real. I almost said being loved too much, but that’s not it, but maybe the difference between those two would help. Love definitely is ringed in with the real, but it does not defend itself from it. Or perhaps it’s silly, un-sophialogical, to think that because our embrace with God is written in the Book of Embraces that this removes our freedom. Perhaps our freedom is more like God’s, insofar as God is never free to not love. This is all wretchedly written. . . .

4 Responses to “More Bulgakov”

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1 DWM
September 23, 2007 at 10:08 pm

AD, great reflection son Bulgakov. It’s helpful for me that you’ve posed the question about the power of god’s love in relation to human freedom. It reminds me of reading I’m doing right now on Lubac and some of the ressourcement theologians and the philosophers that influenced them like Blondel and Gilson in their reading of Thomas. They debate the neo-scholastics, especially Cajetan, for positing a pure human nature, to which the supernatural must be appended as if only miraculous. Nature, they argue, is made for the supernatural and is always operating in relation to it in a less dichotomized way that as a closed off whole. Anyway, maybe in comparison to de Lubac and his Surnaturel, we can come to some way to work with this aspect of Bulgakov. Just a thought.
2 Scott
September 23, 2007 at 11:57 pm

I haven’t read Gilson on this topic re: nature and grace, but it seems a vital point for St. Thomas that (sanctifying, operative, et al) grace is not co-extensive or identical with human nature. Given this sheer fact for Thomas, I’d have a hard time being persuaded that human nature just is graced without any further act by God other than God’s creative and sustaining acts toward the creature. The way forward, it seems for Thomas, is by talking about the immaterial features of human nature (to the despair of a materialist theology of Christ and knowledge of God) which are the powers of intellect and will. The object of these are the true and the good (for Thomas), and these are obtained by right discursive reasoning and willing in accord with right reasoning (e.g. by syllogism). But, when God throws down the cards about God’s triunity, incarnation of Christ, _new_ acts toward creatures: acts of grace culminates in the resurrected life and with a thoroughly new act by God toward the creature which is the beatific vision. So, with all of this, it’d seem that for Thomas to say a human is a ‘new creation’ really does mean ‘new creation’. But the crucial ‘through line’ (to use a Hollywood script writing term out there) has to do with continuous identify of the particular human from old to new creature–this means that e.g. Peter’s old identity is re-shaped with a new (ontological) identity.

The question is, are God’s new creative acts that God does on Peter anticipat-able if we only knew the old Peter? Well, no. Not unless we already knew about the ‘new’ Peter. By knowing about the ‘new’ Peter we can see any continuity with the ‘old’ Peter, and therefore can in some sense say his human nature anticipates Peter’s new life; but this is only an epistemological (or hermeneutical) point, the ontological fact is that it’s a totally new act of God toward Peter which we couldn’t predict on the basis of the ‘old’ Peter (unless we knew something in addition to just knowing the ‘old’ Peter, e.g. something about God’s engagement with Israel, and ultimately with humans in Christ).
3 Janet Leslie Blumberg
September 24, 2007 at 3:39 pm

One of John Gardner’s novels get at A.D.’s paradox. The little boy looks up at his father and says, “I don’t love you.” And his father smiles at him and then laughs in delight.
And we realize that this son is not able not to love his Daddy. That’s of course the motive force of Herbert’s “The Collar.”
And as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word
Methoughts I heard one calling, “Child,”
And I replied, “My Lord.”
For myself, because I did not have relationships of basic trust during my own childhood, experiences of God’s love make me wildly angry and upset my stability in a different way, a combination of fear and fury (”okay then, so where were you when I needed you before?”) By the way, God was there when I needed God before, but in nature and in animals, not humans. (But this is just a side trail to the matters at issue.)
4 Nicholas
March 18, 2008 at 6:18 pm

A.D. wrote:

“it occurred to me reading today that there is no greater pride than to imagine that our sin could keep us from God, or God from us”

that is poignant. I’ve never thought of it that way. Thanks!