The Land of Unlikeness

Hypostatic Motherhood and the Mother of God
by Scott Sharman, University of Toronto

It is no secret that Fr. Sergei Bulgakov was a controversial theologian. He remains so today. In the eyes of some of his colleagues,¹ and in the judgment of the synods of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR),² Bulgakov was guilty of more than just controversy; he was a heretic, seen to be propagating such heavy-hitting errors as Gnosticism, Pantheism, Arianism, and Origenism.³ Though less known than these official proceedings, the criticisms of Archbishop John Maximovitch were equally strong, and more specifically targeted. In his 1933 The Orthodox Veneration of the Birthgiver of God, Maximovitch denounces Bulgakov for his ‘over-deification’ of the Mother of God, arguing that anyone holding such a Mariology cannot be considered a member of the Orthodox Church.⁴ While there remains some uncertainty regarding the final canonical status and authority of such assessments,⁵ statements of this kind continue to cast shadows over Bulgakov’s legacy.
In order for Bulgakov to be more fully received, both within his own tradition and by a wider audience, his reputation is in need of some rehabilitation. Studies of his work which engage the various heretical indictments that he faced from his contemporaries must be part of that rehab. Such efforts to advance Bulgakov’s placement among the major Christian theologians of the 20th century are already well on their way.⁶ One area of Bulgakov’s thought that has received comparatively little attention is his Mariology. For this reason, my reflection will confine itself to that subject.⁷ I will argue that in order to properly understand Bulgakov’s Marian thought, we must pay attention to two things: the way he conceives the inner-Trinitarian relationship of the hypostasis of the Spirit to the hypostasis of the Son, and, even more importantly, the way he describes the Virgin’s connection to this Divine relationship. As we will see, the orthodox nature of Bulgakov’s Mariology is maintained, ironically, through his constructive use of prior heresy.

Hypostatic Motherhood
Bulgakov’s thinking on the sexes is very much a product of its age. While I agree with Paul Valliere⁸ and others that there are certain anticipations of feminist theology in his work, there are also the inevitable gender stereotypes that come with the period.⁹ That being said, it is critical to making sense of what Bulgakov means by ‘Divine Motherhood’ for us consider what he thinks about human Mothers. Conceiving a child, for Bulgakov, happens at the initiative of the Father. It is the Father who generates a new being; the Father who gives existence to a child. The Mother, in his view, is essentially passive in conception, simply receiving the already generated being into her womb. What is unique to the Mother, however, is her ability to give the child life.¹⁰ “Motherhood,” Bulgakov explains, “is the tangibleness of what is being begotten or already born.”¹¹ Fathers create existence, but Mothers give life.

This immediately calls to mind the Trinitarian sections of Bulgakov’s major dogmatic treatises. The Father, Bulgakov argues, is revealed by the two ‘sophianic’ hypostases – Son and Spirit. The Son is the “Wisdom of God,” the “content” of the divine nature. He is the hypostatic self-revelation generated by the Father.¹² The Spirit is the “Glory of God,” the one who “reposes” on the Son to “manifest” or “beautify” this content. She is hypostatic love, giving life to the relationship between Father and Son.¹² Though Trinitarian motherhood language does not appear in The Comforter or The Lamb of God, it is explicit in The Burning Bush. Bulgakov writes:

“The Father, namely as Father of the Son, the Second Hypostasis, is the issuer, proboleus of the Holy Spirit, the Third Hypostasis, which already supposes (of course not chronologically but ontologically) a First and Second Hypostasis. The Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father towards the Son, finds the already generated Son, but by Himself He realizes Him for the Father. In this sense He is, as it were, hypostatic motherhood.”¹³

Mariological Adoptionism

Various types of Christological ‘adoptionism’ have appeared throughout Church history. A representative example is found in Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. 350-428), and especially in his Christological treatise, On the Incarnation.¹⁴ Theodore does not deny that God is uniquely present in Jesus. His preferred way to understand the nature of this presence, however, is by the concept “indwelling.”¹⁵ God is present in Jesus. However, this presence is not a presence “in essence,” but rather of “good pleasure” – i.e. God is present by virtue of the particularly intimate relationship which he has with righteous individuals.¹⁶ Jesus, of course, is the pre-eminent righteous person. In him, God dwells in the fullest possible sense – what Theodore calls indwelling “as a Son” – thereby uniting himself with Jesus to such a degree that it becomes possible for us to count him one person with God.¹⁷ Bulgakov is well aware of the conciliar judgments made against the various adoptionist Christologies in the 4th and 9th centuries. He characterizes the heresy as an “impaired” explanation of the divinity of Christ.¹⁸ Bulgakov goes on, however, to propose that this line of thinking may in fact bear some fruit in answering a different question. “When applied to the personality of the Mother of God and her relation to the Holy Spirit,” he writes, “the idea of adoption, of her full sanctification, can have its lawful application.”¹⁹

Bulgakov assures us that he is not speaking of “a personal incarnation, a hominization of the third hypostasis.” This “does not exist,”²⁰ and would be unfitting given the nature of the Spirit. Yet, “there can be such a human, creaturely hypostasis, such a being which is the vessel of the fulfillment of the Holy Spirit.”²⁰ In other words, a human person who completely reveals the Spirit through their actions is a possibility. “Such a being,” Bulgakov tells us, is seen in “the Most Holy Virgin.”²¹ In her life we observe a progression – “thresholds in her spiritual increase and glorification.”²² The Church acknowledges these successive steps in its liturgical celebrations: her Nativity, entrance into the Temple, Annunciation, and the Nativity of Christ, as well as her involvement at the Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost, and finally in her Dormition.²² These are all stages in the Spirit’s indwelling of her; they are part of her adoption by God. At a moment in time she becomes “not a personal incarnation of the Holy Spirit,” but rather, “His personal, animate receptacle, an absolutely spirit-born creature, the Pneumatophoric human.”²¹

The adoption of the Virgin by the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit allows us to give full weight to the meaning of Mary’s title Theotokos. Mary of Nazareth is not the Mother of the humanity Jesus of Nazareth alone. To insist that she is treads close to Nestorianism. Bulgakov provides us a means of understanding the meaning of ‘Mother of God’ in a far more radical way. Mary is brought into a real participation in that eternal motherhood that reposes upon the Son and gives him ‘life’ before the Father. She is “in truth,” so Bulgakov boldly claims, “‘the real’ Theotokos.”²³

Bulgakov elaborates on this Spirit-Mary relationship by making reference to another failed Christology – that of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople (ca. 386-145). Bulgakov categorizes Nestorianism as an “impermissible heresy for Christology”²⁴ because it sees Christ as two persons. He asserts that Jesus is one person, “the divine hypostasis of the Logos,” which is the “unifying and governing center in the one harmonious life of the two natures.”²⁴ Yet while Nestorius was confused in his speculations concerning Christ, again Bulgakov thinks we can salvage his thought for Pneumatology,30 and thus also for Mariology.

A true ‘Incarnation,’ says Chalcedon, renders the ‘one person two natures’ composition of Christ.²⁴ “Mary is not a Godman,” Bulgakov states, “for in her a creaturely human nature with a creaturely hypostasis has been preserved, and the sole Godman is the Lord Jesus Christ, in two natures, divine and human.”²⁵ “She,” he continues, “was already a human being, possessing a creaturely human hypostasis” which she “could not lose.”²⁶ Therefore Mary always “remains a human being, not only in her nature but also in her hypostasis.”²⁷ Even though her human hypostasis “becomes transparent for the Holy Spirit” and is “completely divinized,” she is always, at maximum, simply the “living creaturely revelation” of the Holy Spirit.((The Burning Bush, 156-57.))

Conclusion
We saw in the introduction Archbishop John Maximovitch’s claim that Bulgakov’s Mariology goes astray in its ‘over-divinization’ of the Mother of God. While there can be little debate that Bulgakov’s profound association of the Virgin and the Holy Spirit is unprecedented, and that it creates the basis for an exceptionally high Marian devotion, I think the fact that ‘adoption’ is the concept used to explain the manner of their association should be sufficient to turn back the allegations. That Bulgakov employs Nestorian categories to describe the Spirit’s relationship to Mary’s humanity also vindicates him of heresy. Adoptionism was deemed to fall short of the mark of orthodox Christology precisely because it underplayed the Divinity of the Lord and failed to capture the depth of the identity between the human Jesus and the Logos. The Nestorian ‘two persons and two natures’ language fell short of the proper representation of the Divine Word truly becoming flesh. These very points of lack are what Bulgakov wants to preserve in his Marian construction. Mary always remains a ‘creature,’ a ‘vessel,’ and an ‘instrument’ of the Holy Spirit, even if she comes to be so par excellence. These words function as orthodox control factors that keep him from slipping across the line into heresy, even as he teeters on the edge.

Like

Unlike

1. Most notoriously Fr. Georges Florovsky, who A. F. Dobbie-Bateman has called the “Anti-Bulgakov.” See “Footnotes (IX)-In quos fines saeculorum,” Sobornost, no. 30 (1944).↩
2. See Decision of the Council of Bishops of the Russion Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, Dated 11/30 October 1935, On the New Doctrine of Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov Concerning Sophia, the Wisdom of God, translated by Reader Isaac Lambertsen.↩
3. For more on the so-called ‘Sophia controversy’ see Paul Valliere, Modern Russian Theology, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co., 2000), 287-89 and Rowan Williams, Segeii Bulgakov, (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 172-181.↩
4. St. John Maximovich, The Orthodox Veneration of the Birthgiver of God, Fr. Seraphim Rose, trans., (Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1996).↩
5. Valliere, 288 n.21. See also Andrew Blane, ed., Georges Florovsky, (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993).↩
6. Some notable English examples include: Paul L. Gavrilyuk, “Universal Salvation in the Eschatology of Sergius Bulgakov,” Journal of Theological Studies (April 2006): 110-32; Andrew Louth, “Eucharist in Sergii Bulgakov,” Sobornost 27:2 (2005): 36-56; Myroslaw Tataryn, “Sergei Bulgakov: Eastern Orthodoxy Engaging the Modern World,” Studies in Religion 31, no. 3-4 (2002): 313-22; Myroslaw Tataryn, “Sergius Bulgakov (1871-1944): Time for a New Look,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 42 (1998): 315-38; Paul Valliere, Modern Russian Theology, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co., 2000). Rowan Williams, Segeii Bulgakov, (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999). See also Antoine Arjakovsky, Essai sur le père Serge Boulgakov (1871-1944): philosophe et théologien chrétien, (Paris: Parole et silence, 2006); Lingua Graziano, Kénosis di Dio e santità della materia: la sofiologia di Sergej N. Bulgakov, (Edizioni scientifische italiane, 2000); Arvydas Ramonas, L’attesa del regno: eschaton e apocalisse in Sergej Bulgakov, (Pontifica Universita Lateranense, 2001).↩
7. I will draw from the unpublished manuscript The Burning Bush, translated by T. Alan Smith, as well as the three major dogmatic works: Sergei Bulgakov. The Bride of the Lamb. Boris Jakim trans. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002); The Comforter. Boris Jakim trans. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004); The Lamb of God. Boris Jakim, trans. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007).↩
8. Valliere, 328.↩
9. For a feminist engagement of Bulgakov’s thinking on gender see Brenda Meehan, “Wisdom/Sophia, Russian Identity, and Western Feminist Theology,” Cross Currents 46, 1996: 149-68.↩
10. The Burning Bush, 150↩
11. The Burning Bush, 151. Italics original.↩
12. The Comforter, 53-73; The Lamb of God, 107-117.↩↩
13. The Burning Bush, 151-52.↩
14. Theodore of Mopsuestia, “Fragments of the Doctrinal Works: On the Incarnation, Book V,” in The Christological Controversy, Richard A. Norris Jr., ed. and trans., (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1980): 113-22.↩
15. “On the Incarnation, Book V,” 114.↩
16. “On the Incarnation, Book V,” 114-15.↩
17. “On the Incarnation, Book V,” 117.↩
18. The Burning Bush, 145 n.13.↩
19. The Burning Bush, 145 n. 13.↩
20. The Burning Bush, 144.↩↩
21. The Burning Bush, 144-45.↩↩
22. The Burning Bush, 117.↩↩
23. The Burning Bush, 158.↩
24. The Comforter, 223.↩↩↩
25. The Burning Bush, 172.↩
26. The Burning Bush, 156.↩
27. The Burning Bush, 173.↩