This work of historical theology profiles the unique role of Sergius Bulgakov (1877–1944) in the unfolding of Russian Orthodox theology over the last century. It narrates the role in his thought of the contested figure of Sophia (the personification of divine wisdom), with special focus on to how his creative appropriation of this ancient concept led him to propose modifications of the church’s doctrines of creation and deification. Our focus on deification acknowledges that patristic sources regarding this topic were only made ready for Russian theological research in the first decades of the twentieth century. Concurrently, another novelty came into vogue among the Russian intelligentsia during these same years: the evocation of both esoteric and biblical versions of Sophia, along with the promulgation of an original theological framework known as sophiology, a development pioneered by Vladimir Solovyov. These unique cultural and religious vectors, deification, creation theology, and sophiology, and their relation to Orthodox trinitarianism, converged around the year 1910 in the life and scholarship of Sergius Bulgakov, while also being firmly resisted by conservatives. A brilliant, wide-ranging, and independent thinker, Bulgakov began as a Marxist economist whose midlife conversion led him to the priesthood and a professorship at a prominent Russian seminary. Bulgakov went on to create one of the last century’s most ambitious and creative Orthodox systematic theologies, an endeavor made possible through his sheer mastery of numerous scholarly sources that, over three decades, he explicated in light of the emergence of sophiology, the worldview of which he became the leading proponent. Against opposition by colleagues at the St. Sergius Theological Institute, where he served as dean, Bulgakov expanded sophiology into a panentheistic theological system that highlighted and integrated concepts of religious living, deification, and cosmology within a vast panoply of other Christian theological dogmas that he examined. This introductory historical account summarizes a selection of Bulgakov’s pioneering innovations, with special emphasis on the reception of his ideas during his lifetime and the decades since.
This essay addresses the historical diaspora of peoples in Abya Yala due to the prevailing colonial matrix sustained by religious dominance. Religious dominance alienated relational spiritualities, shaped the ontological notion of non-being, and exalted the superiority of those who wielded power. This dominance was endorsed in colonial biblical texts of the chosen people and their colonizing re-readings and entailed the seizure of the land. Thus, we discuss the ambivalence of the Bible—of death, but also life—to the extent that its re-readings foster an approach to the sources that strengthen the ancestral spiritualities, which are preserved in creative ways. Such creativity paves the way for the integration of Christian symbols, like liturgy, into the cosmogonic notion of the peoples.
How is it that the Jewishness of Jesus became so obscure that few Christians recognized its reality and significance? How might the church recover this fundamental component of his life and ministry? Two arguments serve as anchors. 1) Early church writers were unable to imagine or depict a Jewish Christ because they regarded Judaism as the old and obsolete Other and their perspective became embedded in church life. 2) Providing a more adequate account of Christian origins entails comprehending a web of interconnected understandings that have the potential to counter the inadequate and unjust account many Christians have internalized.
