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Wisdom from Above? The Sophiology of Father Sergius Bulgakov

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Aidan Nichols OP
Aidan Nichols OP*
Affiliation:
Blackfriars, Buckingham Road, Cambridge CB3 0DD
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Abstract

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Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 85 , Issue 1000 , November 2004 , pp. 598 - 613
Copyright
Copyright © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004

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Footnotes

*

This is the text of the lecture given at Blackfriars, Oxford, on 11 December 2003, when the author received the degree of Master of Sacred Theology in the Order of Preachers.

References

1 Brunnhofer, H. (ed.), Angelus Silesius, Cherubinische Wandersmann. Ein Auswahl(Berne 1910), p. 11Google Scholar.

2 Filosofiya khozyaistva(Moscow 1912; 1990), p. 104Google Scholar. There is now an English translation: Philosophy of Economy. The World as Household(New Haven, CN, and London, c. 2000)Google Scholar. As that sub-title indicates, this is by no means a standard work of economic theory!

3 He had already had occasion to use it when expounding the religious thought of Soloviev, Vladimir: ‘Priroda v filosofii Vl. Solovieva’, in O. Vladimire Solovieve(Moscow 1912), pp. 1–31Google Scholar.

4 Schulz, S. A., ‘Angelus Silesius’, New Catholic Encyclopaedia I (Washington DC, 1967), pp. 520–521Google Scholar. See also Sammons, J. L., Angelus Silesius(New York, 1967)Google Scholar.

5 I have told the story in Nichols, A. O. P., Scribe of the Kingdom. Essays on Theology and Culture(London 1994), pp. 1–2Google Scholar.

6 For his life, his own posthumously published autobiographical notebook remains untranslated: Avtobiograficheskie zametki(Autobiographical Fragments, Paris 1946; 1991)Google Scholar. The fullest secondary account is also in Russian, in L. Zander, A., Bog i mir. Mirosozervanie Otsa S. Bulgakova(God and the World. The World-View of Father S. Bulgakov, Paris 1948), I., pp. 27–61Google Scholar.

7 Freeze, G., The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform(Princeton, NJ, 1983), pp. 102–139CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the wider context, see Nichols, R. L. and Stavrou, T. G. (eds.), Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime(Minneapolis 1978)Google Scholar.

8 On the ideological background, see the essays in Timberlake, C. E. (ed.), Religious and Secular Forces in Late Tsarist Russia. Essays in Honour of Donald W. Treadgold(Seattle and London, 1992)Google Scholar.

9 O rynkakh pri kapitalisticheskom prozvodstve(On Markets in the Capitalist System of Production, Moscow 1897)Google Scholar.

10 Kapitalizm i zemledelie(Capitalism and Agriculture, St Petersburg 1900)Google Scholar.

11 Khristianstvo i sotsializm(Christianity and Socialism, Moscow 1917)Google Scholar. There are also the essays collected as Khristianskii sotsializm(Christian Socialism, Novosibirsk 1991)Google Scholar. As the title indicates, (Archbishop) Rowan Williams’ anthology, Sergi Bulgakov. Towards a Russian Political Theology(Edinburgh 1999)Google Scholar has much that is to the point.

12 Ot marksisma k idealismu(From Marxism to Idealism, St Petersburg 1903)Google Scholar

13 Ivan Karamazov kak filosofskii tip(Ivan Karamazov as a Philosophical Type, Moscow 1902)Google Scholar.

14 Evtuhov, C., The Cross and the Sickle. Sergei Bulgakov and the Fate of Russian Religious Philosophy, 1890–1920 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1997), p. 53Google Scholar. See also Scherrer, J., Die Petersburger religiös-philosophischen Vereinigungen. Die Entwicklung des religiösen Selbstverständnisses ihrer Intelligencija-Mitglieder, 1901–1917(Berlin 1973)Google Scholar.

15 Merezhkovskii, D., Tolstoi i Dostoevskii(Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, St Petersburg 1906)Google Scholar. For this critic, see Chézeville, J., Dmitri Merejkowsky(Paris 1922)Google Scholar.

16 Republished in Bulgakov, S., Dva grada(Two Cities, Moscow 1911), p. 309Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., p. 308.

18 Berdiaev, N. A. et al., Vekhi: sbornik statei o russkoi intelligentsii(Signposts. A Collection of Essays on the Russian Intelligentsia, Moscow 1909)Google Scholar.

19 C. Evtuhov, The Cross and the Sickle, op.cit., pp. 133–137.

20 Ibid., p. 147.

21 Ibid.

22 See Curtiss, J. S., Church and State in Russia: The Last Years of the Empire, 1900–1917(New York 1940)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bogolepov, A. A., ‘Church Reform in Russia, 1905–1918’, Saint Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly 10 (1966), pp. 12–66Google Scholar.

23 Pospielovsky, D., The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1917–1982, I (Crestwood, NY, 1984)Google Scholar.

24 His defence of these monks was published posthumously under the title Filosofiya imenii, (The Philosophy of the Name, Paris 1953)Google Scholar.

25 A lengthy manuscript from this period, setting out the reasons for becoming a Catholic in dialogue – actually, polylogue – form was included in the second volume of Bulgakov's collected writings on social and theological issues, Trudy po sotsiologii i teologii(Works on Sociology and Theology, Moscow 1997), and separately published in French translation as Sous les remparts de Chersonèse(Geneva 1999)Google Scholar.

26 ‘By Jacob's Well’, Journal of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius 22 (1933)Google Scholar, reprinted in Father Sergius Bulgakov, 1871–1944(London 1969), p. 9Google Scholar.

27 Apokalipsis Ioanna(Paris 1947)Google Scholar. There is a useful overview of Bulgakov's writings in L. A. Zander, Bog i mir, op. cit., I., pp. 62–77. For a full list of his writings, see Naumov, K., Bibliographie des oeuvres de S. Boulgakov(Paris 1984)Google Scholar.

28 Reproduced in Doolan, S., La redécouverte de l’Icône. La vie et l’oeuvre de Léonide Ouspensky(Paris 2001), p. 66Google Scholar. For the artist, see A. Nichols, O. P., ‘Leonid Ouspensky and the Love of Sacred Beauty’, in idem., A Spirituality for the Twenty-first Century(Huntington, IN, 2003), pp. 113–130Google Scholar.

29 One might start from Bergant, D. C. S. A., What are They saying about Wisdom Literature?(New York and Ramsey, NJ, 1984)Google Scholar.

30 Agnets Bozhii(The Lamb of God, Paris 1933), p. 124Google Scholar.

31 Ibid., pp. 124–125.

32 The Wisdom of God. A Brief Summary of Sophiology(New York and London, 1937), p. 46Google Scholar.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., pp. 46–47.

36 For Aquinas's presentation, and a wealth of material about the preceding philosophical and theological tradition, see Boland, V. O. P., Ideas in God according to Saint Thomas Aquinas. Sources and Synthesis(Leiden, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Agnets Bozhii, op. cit., p. 140.

38 Ibid., p. 142.

39 Ibid.

40 This is the burden of Bulgakov's reference here to the chapter on apophatic and cataphatic theology in his earlier work, Svet nevechernii(The Unfading Light, Moscow 1917)Google Scholar.

41 Agnets Bozhii, op. cit., p. 143.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid., p. 149.

44 Ibid.

45 Sheldon-Williams, I. P., ‘The Greek Christian Platonist Tradition from the Cappadocians to Maximus and Eriuegna’, in Armstrong, A. H. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Mediaeval Philosophy(Cambridge 1967), pp. 425–533Google Scholar.

46 Kingsley, C., The Water Babies(London 1863), p. 155Google Scholar. Cited Wilson, A. N., The Victorians(London 2002), pp. 298–299Google Scholar.