THE LAND OF UNLIKENESS

The Burning Bush and Bulgakov’s Kataphatic Theology
M. S. Compton (all rights reserved)

Rowan Williams has observed that, in The Unfading Light,  Bulgakov expounds upon the Palamite doctrine, and finds “not only the foundation of the theology of negation…but also a vision of the transfiguration of the cosmos by the penetration of divine energy.” (1) Although Wisdom-Sophia is “not God” (i.e., a 4th hypostasis,) she is “the first principle of the new created plurality of hypostases…human and angelic…existing in sophianic relation to the divine.” (2) Bulgakov, in essence, says: “The mystery of the world is this femininity.” (3) Bulgakov’s Mariology, wherein the sacred feminine dimension of his theology is perhaps most explicit, is outlined in the second book of his first sophiological trilogy, The Burning Bush, the English translation of which will be available November, 2008 by Eerdmans. Continue reading ‘Bulgakov Blog Conference, Day 6′

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by Henry Karlson
The Catholic University of America, Washington DC

When discussing Bulgavkov’s Sophiology, it is always important to note the reaction, and condemnation, given to it by members of the Orthodox Church. Obviously we must note, as Aron Dunlap does, that the condemnation was not universal; indeed, its value has been and continues to be questioned by the Orthodox themselves. For those who look positively towards Bulgakov, they will be the first to note the non-binding nature of the condemnation, and how they do not fit what Bulgakov taught. For those who look down upon Sophiology, the condemnation, while unofficial, is seen as normative and cannot be summarily dismissed.

As Aron rightfully points out, for Bulgakov, the belief that Sophia as a “fourth person” of the Trinity is erroneous. But why do people claim Sophia represents a “fourth person” for Bulgakov? To answer that question we must look at earlier forms of Russia Sophiology, especially that which is associated with Vladimir Solovyov. In Russia and the Universal Church, Solovyov presents a personified Sophia; to follow a Hindu analogy, Sophia in Solovyov is like God’s Shakti, the personified essence and energy of God. And for Solovyov, this Sophia, the created other of God, is created directly from the essence of God, and becomes the foundation for the world. Sophia is one with the worldly system, propped herself above God, and became fallen. The Gnostic connections with Solovyov’s Sophiology were evident by all, both by those who supported and those who opposed him. How could it not be when Vladimir Solovyov mentioned in his own writings how he learned about Sophia in part through his study of Gnostic treatises? Because Solovyov’s Sophiology was a major influence upon Bulgakov, especially in the early formation of his own Sophiology, it is understandable that his critics would use Solovyov’s Sophiology as a hermeneutical tool to interpret Bulgakov’s dogmatic writings – and, interpreted in that context, it is easy to see how Bulgakov would appear to fall into erroneous, if not heretical, speculations (especially if one looks at his earlier, cruder, vaguer forms of Sophiology). Bulgakov, like Solovyov, would be seen as a Gnostic following the emanation theories of the Gnostics; therefore, he must have believed Sophia to be personified and even fallen.

Aron does a good job describing what Bulgakov’s Sophiology is about, and can help us begin to see why it should not be seen as a reproduction of Solovyov’s Sophiology, even if it is influenced by it. The distinction between Uncreated and Created Sophia relate, in part, to the fact that humanity is created in the image of God. God’s essence, Sophia, love, wisdom, can never be said to be fallen, and is personified only through and by the members of the Holy Trinity. It’s image, created Sophia, is given hypostization through human persons, and it is these persons who are to be said to be fallen. And because an image is always contained within the one whose image is being imagined, it is for this reason one can understand with Bulgakov (via Aron’s description) that creaturely Sophia has its basis and foundation in eternity, even if it is, as the title suggests, created.

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“Sophiology: Divine Sophia”
By Aron Dunlap, Temply University

In the hands of Bulgakov Sophia is described under two general forms, Divine Sophia and Creaturely Sophia. Divine Sophia goes under many names, one being that of the ousia, the Being, of the very Godhead, in distinction to the persons, the hypostases of the Father, Son and Spirit:

The first part of the dogma, that is, the doctrine of the relationship between the three hypostases with their hypostatic qualities and distinctive features, has been to a certain extent elucidated in the process of the Church’s dogmatic creativity.  But the other side, the doctrine of the consubstantiality  of the Holy Trinity, as well as the actual conception of the substance or nature, has been far less developed and, apparently, almost overlooked.¹ Continue reading ‘Bulgakov Blog Conference, Day 5′

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1. Bulgakov, Sophia: The Wisdom of God, 24.↩

“Orthodoxy, Heresiology, and Why We Should Care:
A Response to the Essays on Bulgakov and Apollinarius”
by Anthony D. Baker
Seminary of the Southwest
Austin, Texas

Rarely is new research on heresiarchs of the ancient church of any real theological interest.  Whether or not Augustine was right about what Pelagius meant is an archeological matter, since he was certainly right about the disasterously contractual conception of grace that his “fictive Pelagius” offered.  One of a small handful of exceptions to this rule is Rowan Williams’s Arius, which digs deeply into the source materials of fourth century Christology in order to deliver a punchline not so much about what we are to do with Arius, but about the relation of a creative theologian to the church, especially the church in a time of great doctrinal ambiguity.

As another exception to this rule, though, we must surely count Bulgakov’s reassessment of Apollinarius, part of a beautifully-crafted 88-page essay on Patristic Christology.   As Mr. Bruce points out here, this now seventy-five year old thesis holds up remarkably well alongside the recent work that has been done on Apollinarius, which must now cause teachers of Christology to stop assigning him that remarkably naïve notion that the human nature of Christ was void of a human soul.  In fact, as Bulgakov shows, the bishop of Laodicia understood quite well that what is not assumed is not healed, and so that a body and soul must both be assumed by the Logos.  What he lacked, however, was consistency of language and a thoroughly worked-out anthropology, leading later readers to make a rather insane caricature of his position in order to show the sanity of Cyril’s. Bruce points out very helpfully the crude scholarship of 19th century dogmatic histories on this point, and this makes Bulgakov’s rise in popularity over the last decade even more timely, since only now are these broadly sweeping and almost universally inaccurate tomes finally being exiled from seminary and undergraduate lecture halls. Continue reading ‘Bulgakov Blog Conference, Response to Karlson and Bruce-Aragon’

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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. Continue reading ‘Bulgakov Blog Conference, Day 4′

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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. ↩

“The Preface on Apollinaris”
By Matthew J. Aragon-Bruce
Princeton Theological Seminary

Apollinaris is usually remembered for his misguided attempt to explain the union of the Christ’s two natures. The result was the heresy that bears his name: a Christology which denies that Christ had a human nous, but rather that the divine Logos took its place in the incarnation. His detractors, such as the Cappadocians, have understood this to result in a tertium quid, a God-man mixture who was neither human nor divine (ironically the very thing that Apollinaris was striving to avoid).

This portrait of Apollinaris found in the tomes of Dogmengeschichte has been challenged of late. One notable example is the work of Kelly McCarthy Spoerl, who since the early 1990s, has produced several publications which have called into question the received interpretation of Apollinaris and have brought fresh attention to his life and work particularly his influence in development of Trinitarian theology and pneumatology.¹ Continue reading ‘Bulgakov Blog Conference, Day 3′

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1. See e.g., Kelley McCarthy Spoerl, “A Study of the Kata Meros Pistis by Apollinarius of Laodicea” (University of Toronto, 1991); “Apollinarius and the Response to Early Arian Christology,” Studia Patristica 26 (1993); “The Liturgical Argument in Apollinarius: Help and Hindrance on the Way to Orthodoxy,” The Harvard Theological Review 91, no. 2 (1998); “Apollinarius on the Holy Spirit.” Studia Patristicia 38 (2001): 571-592.  See also, Peter Gemeinhardt, “Apollinaris of Laodicea: A Neglected Link of Trinitarian Theology between East and West,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 10, no. 2 (2007): p. 502, Joseph T. Lienhard, “Two Friends of Athanasius: Marcellus of Ancyra and Apollinaris of Laodicea,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 10, no. 1 (2006).↩

by Joshua Brockway
Bethany Theological Seminary
The Catholic University of America

With Halden Doerge I must claim my limited knowledge of of Sergi Bulgakov. In fact, this is my first venture into his corpus. This said, I must claim my perspective as liturgical and ecclesiological. By this I mean that I approach Doerge’s article as a student of liturgy, ultimately asking how liturgy shapes an ecclesisological vision. Doerge interestingly leaves this in the hands of others as he notes at the close of his article when he confess he does “not sink very deep into the riches of Bulgakov’s ecclesiology,” The effect of this omission is to leave open the place and function of the Church in this “Christification” of the world. Even though Doerge notes that Bulgakov’s “ecclesiological vision is thoroughly cosmic in scope,” he does not draw the link between the liturgical prayer, sacrifice, and praise and the kenotic “self-oblation” of Christ.

Theologies of the Eucharist have often asked how the prayers of the Church, including the oblation inherent in the Eucharistic liturgy, relate to the sacrifice of Christ. In the West at least this leads to conversations about time and space, namely that the Church’s repetition of the sacrificial meal continues the incarnation in various times and places. Bulgakov’s move to see the World, and not the Church itself, as the Grail of the Christ’s blood seemingly removes this quandary. Yet, it begs the question what what the Church is doing in the world, and what it does in its times of worship. Is the Eucharist then a commemorative prayer whereby the Church recalls the transformation of the world which has already been done, or is there something transpiring in the liturgy?

This response is not to diminish Doerge’s helpful, and intriguing, synthesis of Bulgakov’s vision of cosmic transfiguration. I simply wish to draw out the ecclesiological implications of such a vision. If I might venture a guess as to the solution to my question, I would begin with the epicletic emphasis in Orthodox liturgies and Bulgakov’s pneumatology and sophiology. Yet, as I said in my opening sentence, I must plead my ignorance of Bulgakov and defer to the following conversations. Thank you Dan for hosting such a fruitful conversation and Halden for a provocative look at Bulgakov.

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Eucharist, Eschatology, and World in the Ecclesiology of Sergei Bulgakov by Halden Doerge

Sergei Bulgakov is unique among Orthodox theologians, Russian and otherwise for all manner of reasons, not the least of which involves his distinctive ecclesiology. Bulgakov’s The Bride of the Lamb provides perhaps the most innovative work in Orthodox ecclesiology in the twentieth century. In what follows, I will attempt to make a provisional exploration into the fabric of Bulgakov’s ecclesiology looking particularly at a constellation of coordinates that are operative in the shape of his thought. I hope to explore the way in which Bulgakov’s ecclesiological thought is a dynamic theological articulation, which circulates between the nodal points of the Eucharist, eschatology, and the world. Bulgakov’s ecclesiology is, through and through informed by a dynamic conceptual interplay between these three major foci. My aim in this essay is limited simply to the observance of some of these dynamics. I hope that in so doing I will illuminate some of the key contributions of Bulgakov to the ecumenical task of exploring the nature of the church and its place in the shape of redemption. Continue reading ‘Bulgakov Blog Conference, Day 2′

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The conference schedule has been updated over at the conference dedicated page.

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Part II:  A Brief Introduction to Sergei Bulgakov, by Cynthia Nielsen

In the previous post, I mentioned two experiences that helped bring Bulgakov back to the Orthodox Church.  In this post, we encounter the third experience, viz., the death of Bulgakov’s  four year old son in the summer of 1909.  At his son’s funeral, Bulgakov had a strong sense that “his child lived in the life of the Resurrection” (p. 602).  This experience moved him to re-read Soloviev’s works in which the theme of wisdom (created and uncreated) is prominent.  Bulgakov develops his theme of “the Wisdom of God as the foundation and goal of all earthly reality” and begins to employ it in his writings on economics and philosophy.  In his book, The Philosophy of Economy (1912), Bulgakov argues that even though our labor is toilsome, the economic process is meaningful because it participates in the Divine Wisdom.  Moreover, our struggles in nature also involve (besides pain and difficulties) joy and beauty, if we, as followers of Christ, realize that human beings possess a “hidden potential for perfection [and so must] work to resurrect nature, to endow it once again with the life and meaning it had in Eden.”¹  For Bulgakov, the most mundane human activities have value and are redeemable “by the Christian message of the fall and resurrection of man and, with man, nature.  We have a common task and it is universal resurrection out of fall, bringing resurrection-life into everything” (p. 603). Continue reading ‘Bulgakov Blog Conference, Day 1, part 2′

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1. C. Evtuhov, The Cross and the Sickle, p. 147, as found in “Wisdom from Above,” p. 603.↩