The Land of Unlikeness

The Comforter: Bulgakov on the Holy Spirit
David W. Congdon, Princeton Theological Seminary

I must begin by confessing up front that I am wholly unqualified for this task.  I am knowledgeable neither in Russian Orthodox theology nor in pneumatology.  Furthermore, I approach theology as a modern, Western Protestant-attributes which predispose me to find the work of Sergius Bulgakov quite alien in nature.  Due to limitations in time and ability, I have limited my focus to the second volume in Bulgakov’s “great trilogy” on Divine-humanity, The Comforter.  In this volume, Bulgakov builds on the account of Divine-humanity and Sophia that he explores in more detail in The Lamb of God (christology) and The Bride of the Lamb (ecclesiology and eschatology), the first and third volumes in the trilogy, respectively.  My treatment of Bulgakov’s pneumatology will proceed by exploring (1) the procession and (2) the revelation of the Spirit, before (3) closing with some final critical reflections.

1. The Procession of the Spirit

Bulgakov begins his treatment of the Holy Spirit’s procession by framing the problem of the filioque historically.  In the early patristic literature, two variations on the procession of the Spirit coexist: the Eastern dia (through) and the Western que (and).  The former states that the Spirit precedes from the Father through the Son, while the latter says that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.  While distinct, these two were not mutually exclusive; there was no ecumenical dogma either way.  The pivotal change occurred with Patriarch Photius in the ninth century.  In his anti-Latin treatises, he made the two patristic options mutually exclusive, with the addition of causality: the Spirit originates either from the Father alone or from the Father and the Son (siding with the former).  This position had the effect of determining the rest of the debate.  From that point on, one was either Photian or anti-Photian.

Bulgakov criticizes the Latin position on several levels, which I will briefly summarize.  The basic charge involves impersonalism and subordinationism.  The impersonalism is rooted in the fact that the three persons of the Trinity are co-divine because they ontologically share in “the impersonal and pre-personal Divinitas” (123).  Ontologically priority thus belongs to divinitas.  In the differentiation between the persons, we have an “ontological subordinationism,” since the ontic origination of the hypostases involves a “decreasing progression of Divinity” (124).  The Father alone fully shares in deity.  More importantly, in this origination, “the triunity of the Holy Trinity is destroyed, and the Holy Trinity is sundered into two dyads” (ibid.).  Photius created two dyads in the Trinity by asserting that the Son and the Holy Spirit originate “from the Father alone,” creating the dyads Father-Son and Father-Holy Spirit.  The Latin response was merely a variation on the Photian error, so that the two dyads now are Father-Son and Father-and-Son – Holy Spirit.  Photianism and anti-Photianism “are completely equivalent” in nature (138).

Bulgakov’s response to the filioque doctrine is carefully crafted.  Against impersonalism, Bulgakov argues that the being of God is “totally hypostatize[d]” (140).  God simply is Father-Son-Holy Spirit.  More importantly, against ontological subordinationism, Bulgakov argues that the hypostases “do not have any origin.”  God does not originate; God just is from all eternity.  Bulgakov acknowledges that the West affirms such statements, but he argues that origination is logically inconsistent with a definition of the Trinity as equi-eternal and equi-divine.  Origination finally undermines the doctrine of “divine trihypostatic aseity” (138).

The central rebuttal to the Latin filioque involves recognizing that each hypostasis is defined in relation to the other two hypostases.  This leads to Bulgakov’s “general thesis, which is a kind of axiom concerning the Holy Trinity: The three hypostases, in their character, are not single and not double, but trine.  They must be understood not on the basis of themselves alone, but on the basis of their trinitarian union” (141).  What is key about this definition is that he can affirm what most people mean when they refer to the filioque: viz., that the procession of the Spirit involves “the necessary presence or participation of the Son” (142).  The difference is that he extends this “necessary presence or participation” to each of the other persons in the Holy Trinity.  The Father is therefore defined by generation and spiration, Son and Spirit; the Son is defined by the engendering of the Father and the reposing and passing through of the Spirit; and the Spirit is defined by the procession from the Father and the presence of the Son.

In conclusion, as long as we jettison any notion of origination from the doctrine of the Trinity, then the various formulas used to describe the procession of the Holy Spirit “can and must be understood . . . not as mutually contradictory or mutually exclusive expressions but as equivalent in some sense” (146).  Each formula describes the Trinity “from different points,” while still referring “to one and the same Divine being” (ibid.).  It is thus high time, according to Bulgakov, to reconsider the unacceptable split within the communion of the church.

2. The Revelation of the Spirit

Bulgakov’s doctrine of the Trinity includes a sharp distinction between the immanent and economic Trinity.  As we turn to look at the work of the Spirit ad extra, however, it is necessary to flesh out the relation between immanent and economic as that distinction takes shape in the relation between the Divine Sophia and the creaturely Sophia.  Bulgakov’s sophiology is a key aspect of his theology, one that has been addressed elsewhere in this series.  Here I will provide a brief summary for the sake of clarifying the revelatory role of the Holy Spirit.

According to Bulgakov, divine self-revelation occurs both within the immanent Trinity in pre-temporal eternity and in the economic activity of God in relation to creation.  The immanent self-revelation of God is the Divine Sophia, while the economic self-revelation of God is the creaturely Sophia.  The Divine Sophia is not a fourth hypostasis but rather the life of God in the activity of divine self-revelation ad intra; similarly, the creaturely Sophia is not a second “thing” alongside the world but rather the life of the cosmos in the divine activity ad extra which sustains the world’s participation in the divine life.¹  In both dimensions of revelation, the Father is the monarchical source or “principle,” while this revelation “is actualized as the bi-unity of two hypostases: the Word uttered by the Father, upon which reposes the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father” (177).  It is key to Bulgakov’s theology that the work of revelation requires both Son and Spirit; and that means the Spirit has an indispensable role to play in the divine life.  The Holy Spirit is “the Life of the Father and of the Son” (64) and “completes the self-revelation of the Divine” (65).

Despite a sharp distinction between the immanent and economic Trinity, the Divine Sophia is not alien to the creaturely Sophia.  The created world “is established in being by God . . . in the Divine Sophia, as her creaturely image, or the creaturely Sophia.  In creation there is nothing that does not belong to Sophia” (189).  The being of the world (the creaturely Sophia) is grounded in the being of Father-Son-Holy Spirit (the Divine Sophia), or perhaps more accurately, the creaturely Sophia is united with the Divine Sophia according to the Chalcedonian pattern (“without confusion and without separation”), a formula Bulgakov uses throughout this book.  The unity of divinity and humanity in Christ becomes the analogical template for all other unions, including the unity of God and creation.  We might even speak of an analogy of Sophia, as opposed to an analogy of being (the latter being far too Latin and scholastic).²  The important thing to note here is that Bulgakov openly endorses panentheism, or what he calls a “pious pantheism.”³

The underlying key to Bulgakov’s trinitarian sophiology is the Holy Spirit.  As the life of God, the Holy Spirit is the life of the world; as the one who completes the intra-trinitarian self-revelation, the Holy Spirit is the one who completes the deification of creation.  The Holy Spirit is the “ontic foundation of the world” in a way “that corresponds to the action of the Third Hypostasis in the Divine Sophia” (200).  Just as the Spirit is the force of life and joy in the Divine Sophia, so too the Spirit is the force of life and joy in the creaturely Sophia.  The Holy Spirit sustains the being of the world by bringing God’s self-revelation ad extra to completion.  In the inspiring life of the Spirit, creation participates in the sophianic being of God.  Bulgakov’s panentheism is thus rooted in his pneumatocentric theology of creation, in which the Spirit is the power of life in both God and creation.

3. Concluding Reflections

Reading Bulgakov’s pneumatology is like walking into rich and ornate cathedral: one is immediately captured by the grandeur of its aesthetic beauty, but one easily gets lost in its wide expanses.  And yet, no matter how grand Bulgakov’s project may be, it is necessary to point out some major points of theological disagreement.  For the sake of brevity and discussion, I will list only two.

First, Bulgakov’s entire theology is non-christocentric, at least as that word defines the kind of theology pursued by theologians like Karl Barth.  Bulgakov is non-christocentric in two key ways: (1) he rejects the christocentric method that begins and ends with God’s historical self-revelation in Jesus of Nazareth; and (2) he rejects what he sees to be the ecclesial implications of christocentrism, viz., that it “provides the religio-psychological basis for the possibility of the dogma of the pope as the vicar of Christ” (132).  Here I focus on the former issue.  While it is clear that divine self-revelation is absolutely central to his theology, his method is rather speculative in nature.  He always begins by speaking about the immanent Trinity, only then to discuss how this holds true for God’s self-revelation in the world.  The history of Jesus Christ has almost no importance for how he understands God.  His actualism is a distinctly metaphysical actualism: actus purus, but not actus purus et singularis.  God’s relation to the creaturely world is a diminishment of God’s absoluteness, rather than the proper location of God’s being.  All of this, of course, is related to his panentheism and affirmation of natural theology.

Second, Bulgakov’s speculative doctrine of the Trinity results in a problematic soteriology.  For Bulgakov, as with Barth, revelation is reconciliation.  And since revelation is accomplished in the divine dyad of Son and Holy Spirit, it follows that “it is the Holy Spirit Who completes the work of salvation by His descent on the Pentecost, His abiding in the Church, and His accomplishment of the Kingdom of God” (72).  Bulgakov’s dyadic soteriology is assisted by the fact that redemption is located in the incarnation, not in Christ’s death and resurrection.  This is, of course, a feature common to almost all Eastern theologians, going back to the church fathers.  His soteriology is rooted in the participation of creation in the Divine Sophia which is fulfilled by the Son’s incarnation and the Spirit’s pentecostal descent upon the world.  What remains lacking is the apocalyptic and eschatological event of the new creation that is actualized in Christ’s death and resurrection.

In the end, I would like to adopt much of what Bulgakov proposes in his doctrine of the trinitarian relations.  His work on the procession of the Holy Spirit is brilliant and deserves a wide reading, particularly in any graduate course in theology.  But I would leave behind most of what he proposes in terms of the Trinity’s relationship to the world, much of which is governed by his “pious pantheism.”  While Sergius Bulgakov’s most important contributions to theology are found in the other two volumes on Divine-humanity, his work on the Holy Spirit should not be overlooked and may provide a key to understanding the rest of his theology.

David W. Congdon
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, NJ

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1. See p. 195: “We are saying that God the Father creates the world by and in Sophia, who is not a hypostasis but a hypostatizedness; she is the objective principle of divine self-revelation and life.  Here we must remember that, since Sophia is hypostatized by the hypostases from all eternity, she does not exist separately from them.”↩
2. Bulgakov declares that “God creates the world by and in Sophia; and in its sophianic foundation the world is divine, although it is at the same time extra-divine in its creaturely aseity” (200).  The being of the world is grounded not directly in the being of God, but specifically in the being-in-Sophia of God, the being of God in the act of divine self-revelation.  Bulgakov clearly affirms everything that worries those who reject the analogia entis, including natural theology, a union of divinity and humanity, etc.  But Bulgakov does not have an ontology; instead, he has a sophiology.  There is no substance or essence of God which defines what it is to be divine.  Rather, it is the Trinity in trihypostatic self-revelation which constitutes divinity.  As such, the cosmos is not grounded in an essence but in a divine act, namely, the trihypostatic act of self-revelation.  While this is a more complex and interesting proposal than the traditional scholastic analogia entis, it fundamentally serves the same basic purpose, except that he finds even more continuity between God and the world than do most theologians in the West.↩
3. See pp. 199-200: “This Spirit is the being that contains all things in itself, although it does not add anything to this all from itself.  This Spirit is the world in its extra-divine aseity. . . . This Spirit is the natural energy of the world which can never be extinguished or interrupted in the world, but always bears within itself the principle of the growth of creative activity.  This Spirit is ‘our mother, the moist earth,’ out of which all things grow and into which all things return for new life.  This Spirit is the life of the vegetative and animal world ‘after their kind.’  This Spirit is the life of the human race in the image and likeness of God.  This Spirit is that life-giving principle which pious paganism, without knowing Him, worshipped as the ‘Great Pan,’ as the Mother of the gods, Isis and Gaia. . . . This Spirit is the world itself in all its being—on the pathways from chaos to cosmos.  But is this not a pantheism, an impious deification of the world, leading to a kind of religious materialism?  Yes, it is a pantheism, but an entirely pious one; or more precisely, as I prefer to call it in order to avoid ambiguity, it is a panentheism.”↩