The Bulgakov Blog conference starts today. We begin with a piece written by Cynthia Nielsen of Per Caritatem. Cynthia was gracious enough to let us repost her excellent introduction to Bulgakov. Following her format, I will post this in 2 parts, with the second part following this evening.
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 20th 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.
I look forward to your Bulgakov Blog conference–the essays look great!