The Land of Unlikeness

“Moltmann and Bulgakov Pneumatologies”
by Kyle David Bennett, Fuller Seminary

1.1. Introduction
This brief post on the pneumatologies of Sergius Bulgakov and Jurgen Moltmann is predicated on and oriented by one query in particular: How do they converge and diverge with reference to the Spirit’s role in the parousia and eschatological return of Christ? For the sake of brevity I have decided not to explicate Bulgakov and Moltmann’s general pneumatologies (for example, who is the Spirit?); one can ascertain such information from the previous post. What I am interested in, and what this post is concerned with, is how does a prominent Russian Orthodox theologian’s view of the eschatological coming of Christ, and the Spirit’s action in it, differ from that of a Reformed theologian? Before we begin this critical juxtaposition though a note on methodology: I have formulated this critical juxtaposition with a categorical framework consisting of three theological foci, namely, resurrection, judgment and new creation. It is my hope and intent, as a systematic theologian, that this formulation will serve to be the most pedagogically salutary and insightful for the reader. Hopefully, he or she will be able to perceive, understand, and appreciate the logic of these two and how their logic influences and conditions their pneumatologies. That being said; let us begin.

1.2. Continuities in Moltmann and Bulgakov’s Pneumatological Parousia
1.2.1. Resurrection
For both Moltmann and Bulgakov the Holy Spirit plays a pivotal role in the eschatological resurrection. They both acknowledge that she is the force and energy that sustains and gives creation life historically as well as eschatologically. Historically, she is the one who animated Jesus’ corpse and gave him the energy and life to respond to the Father’s call to rise. Likewise, eschatologically, at the Parousia of Christ, she will be the one who animates all of humanity and awakens them. Both theologians accentuate that the Spirit has proleptically begun to complete this eschatological resurrection in history.¹ Meaning, they both believe that ever since Pentecost the Spirit has begun to resurrect the dead and give life to all.  She has already begun to resurrect creation in history and prepare it for the final resurrection at the eschaton. Or, to put it another way, the fate of creation has already been decided and she is presently actualizing it.

1.2.2. Judgment
As far as eschatological judgment in concerned both theologian accentuate that the Holy Spirit is central. For Moltmann, the Spirit is already historically bringing God’s judgment through purgation and sanctification of the believer.² For Bulgakov, she is already illuminating and confronting them with their ontological injustice.³ He means, the Spirit is already revealing to them how they are living antithetically to God’s design and desire and how they should be living in and participating in God’s life.⁴ For both theologians this is a terrifyingly salubrious and liberating event.⁵ And it is an event that will continue. Meaning, she has begun to accomplish what she will complete at the final judgment when she conclusively confronts and transforms all of creation. This eschatological event, however, will be drastically different from the historical process mentioned above. At the final judgment, both contend, the Spirit will finally and completely establish cosmological righteousness, justice, and salvation.⁶ She will purify all things and bring creation to a place where God’s presence can dwell in peace and union. She will bring God’s presence in all definitively to fruition. She is working toward this now but will not complete it until Christ has come.

1.2.3. New Creation
Finally, both Moltmann and Bulgakov view the Spirit as being central to God’s salvific program in establishing a new creation.⁷ Through the Spirit’s historical and eschatological work creation will receive a transformed ontology.⁸ It will be the Spirit who brings creation to completion in God by purging and sanctifying it so it can be a place where God can rest and dwell. She is the force that transforms the old creation into the new. Furthermore, she is the divine energy that establishes and constitutes the new creation through her transformation, transfiguration, glorification and deification of the old creation. Both theologians accentuate that the Spirit is the one who brings creation to its salvific completion where God dwells and is all in all. Again, she inaugurated this process when she descended at Pentecost but will not definitively complete it until the Parousia.

1.3. Discontinuities in Moltmann and Bulgakov
1.3.1. Resurrection
Although Moltmann and Bulgakov concur that the Parousia is a Trinitarian event and that the Spirit is central to God’s eschatological program, they diverge as to the manner in which she is. When it comes to the resurrection they diverge in method. For Bulgakov, at the Parousia,  the Spirit comes with the theotokos, Mary, the mother of God. Mary will come into the world following her Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit.⁹ This position is predicated on Bulgakov’s inference that if Mary, the Mother of God, is the Spirit-Bearer and image of the Spirit, then when the Spirit returns at the Parousia of Christ so will she. The return of Christ will also be the return of the Mother of God.¹⁰ The Spirit will bring the theotokos with her. This position differs significantly from Moltmann’s. Not only does Moltmann not address Mary’s eschatological role; he never addresses her role period. He has no developed Mariology whatsoever. For Moltmann, the return of Christ is the coming of the Trinitarian God; there is no coming of Mary.

1.3.2. Judgment
Again, Moltmann and Bulgakov diverge in the Spirit’s method of judgment. Following in the footsteps of his Reformed predecessors Moltmann accentuates that the Spirit works to purge and sanctify the believer before the final judgment. It is her work, or ethic, that brings God’s judgment and salvation. However, for Bulgakov, it is simply the manifestation of the Spirit that is itself an act of God’s judgment. The sending of the Spirit is the judgment of God.¹¹ Her very ontology engenders judgment. The Spirit does not have to purge or sanctify anyone in order to bring about God’s judgment. On the contrary, her very arrival and presence is the judgment of God that will inevitably force all to respond to God and his eschatological program. So, for Moltmann, judgment is what the Spirit does; for Bulgakov it is what the Spirit is. The former concerned with functionality and ethic; the latter concerned with identity or ontology.

1.3.3. New Creation
Finally, Moltmann and Bulgakov diverge in the Spirit’s method of bringing about the eschatological new creation. For Bulgakov, the new creation is not the old creation created anew. Rather, it is the transfiguration or renewal of the old creation.¹² There will be no abolition or ontological violence done to the old creation.¹³ Instead, through the Spirit, the old will be transfigured and concomitantly, a new creation will come to fruition from the old. Therefore, in quintessential Orthodox fashion, the new creation will be a recapitulation and restoration of the old. For Bulgakov the Spirit, the Divine Sophia, will definitively manifest herself in creation and restore it to its original albeit new state. Such a close continuity with the old creation is inadmissible for Moltmann. Moltmann is not willing to accept that the new creation is a restoration or the old. Rather, for him, the new creation is new and therefore, is something over against the old.¹⁴ He acquiesces that while that there is continuity between the old and the new he is unwilling to concede that this is simply a restoration of the old.

1.4. Conclusion
Well, that just about sums it up. Would anyone like to contribute anything? How about any challenges? Thanks for reading and I look forward to the felicitous discussion. Pax Christi vobis.

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1. Sergius Bulgakov, The Comforter (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 347; Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 69. Cf. Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 195. ↩
2. Jurgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993). 339ff. Cf. Moltmann, Spirit of Life, 52ff. ↩
3. Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, 458-59. A sentiment and accentuation espoused and promulgated by John Milbank in his notion of a “participatory ontology.” See, for example, Truth in Aquinas (New York: Routledge, 2001), 22 and also The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, Culture (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998), 2. In the latter Milbank presents a notion of the human linguistic being as functioning within the divine linguistic being where humans are called to make meaning in their human linguistic existence predicated on that of the divine. ↩
4. Ibid. 459. ↩
5. Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 235. Cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol. III (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 617. LeRon Shults accompanies Bulgakov, Moltmann, and Pannenberg in asserting that the eschatological judgment is good news because those “whose longing to belong-to and be longed-for in pleasurable fellowship may be fulfilled in relation to the infinitely hospitable presence of the Trinitarian God, who calls us together with the whole cosmos to participate in the beautiful freedom of shared well-being that is the divine life.” The only way to achieve this is via restorative judgment. F. LeRon Shults, “Parousia and Physical Cosmology,” a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, 18 November 2006. 13. Cf. Christology and Science (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), chapter 4. ↩
6. Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, 455; Jurgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 250. Cf. Moltmann, Spirit of Life, 56-57.↩
7. Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 73. ↩
8. Bulgakov, The Comforter, 342. Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 134. Cf. F. LeRon Shults, Reforming the Doctrine of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 182.↩
9. Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, 409. ↩
10. Ibid., 411.↩
11. Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, 455. ↩
12. Bulgakov, The Comforter, 342. ↩
13. Bulgakov is careful not to suggest that the new abolishes the old or that it does ontological violence to it. Instead, what he accentuates is that the new accomplishes what is proper to the old. It incorporates it; it completes it; yet, surpasses it. It is deification. See, Bride of the Lamb, 426-8. This deification is a process of annihilating all that is not in accordance with the Divine Word and Sophia. Cf. Sergius Bulgakov, Sophia: The Wisdom of God (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1993), 113. While Bulgakov’s notion is predicated on the Divine Sophia Moltmann’s is predicated on the Sabbath and God’s Shekinah. The Spirit will transform creation to a place where God is able to rest. See, Moltmann, God in Creation, 278 and The Coming of God, 250. Here, Moltmann follows the logic of his Reformed predecessor Karl Barth and posits that that “If election is the beginning of all God’s ways, then the restoration of all things is its goal and end,” 238. Cf. Karl Barth, “Gospel and Law” in Community, State, and Church (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2004), 71ff.↩
14. Moltmann, The Coming of God, 265. ↩