The Land of Unlikeness

Bulgakov and Apollinarius
by Henry Karlson
The Catholic University of America

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.↩