Sophiology

JUSTIN M. LASSER

In Orthodox theology Sophia represents an evocation of the mystical apprehension of the divine mysteries in the life of the Godhead and the symphonic apparatus of the cosmos. The term derives from the Greek word for “wisdom” (Sophia). It is the Greek translation of the biblical Hebrew concept Hokhma (wisdom) in the Old Tes­tament scriptures, which contain a rich and diverse tradition about “divine wisdom” (Deut. 34.9; 2Sam. 14.20; 1 Kings 4.29; Job 12.13; Ps. 104.24; Prov. 3.19; Prov. 8.22–31; Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 1.4, 7; 8.34). This tradition was taken up extensively, out of the biblical Wisdom literature, and also with reference to Greek philosophico- religious cosmology, and used by the Logos theologians of the early church to sketch out cosmological Christology. The concept of God’s creative wisdom is deeply rooted in many ancient religious cosmologies (not least pre-biblical Egyptian). In their use of Wisdom Christology the fathers followed Greek and Hebrew sages before them in per­sonifying the divine wisdom, hypostatically, under the feminine figure of Sophia. This tradition continued despite the overall pref­erence of the patristic era for the (masculine) equivalent “Logos” (Word or Reason of God) which was used heavily in the conciliar christological tradition. The poetic play between creator and created, as evidenced in the Sophianic Wisdom literature (see Prov. 8.22), precipitated a fierce debate in the 4th-century Arian crisis. It is the ambi­guity of Sophia’s nature that lends her so easily to theological speculation. Sophiology, although subordinated after the 4th century to the terms of Logos theology, remained a significant part of the Orthodox mystical tradition, and was used to connote the eter­nal, creative, and preexistent Son of God, who entered into human history at the incar­nation, and as “Wisdom of the divine” per­meates the substructure of the entire cosmos which that Divine Wisdom personally shaped, and made, into a vehicle of revela­tion and grace. It is clear from this how pneumatology was closely related to Sophia. In the hands of later Orthodox thinkers (including Sts. Maximos the Confessor and Gregory Palamas) the study of Sophia became an issue of mystical initiation into the communion of the divine life of the Godhead, a way of considering Deification Christology with more of a cosmological stress, an approach that emphasized that true knowledge was not summed up solely in the domain of facts, or Kataphatic dis­course, but rather pointed to the way that material realities open out beyond the world to signal the domain of mystical apprehension. In this sense Sophiology is inherently an esoteric venture. Sophiology, as it became increasingly known in later times, became one of the controversial cen­terpieces of early 20th-century Russian the­ology in the writings of Solovyov, Berdiaev, Florensky, and Bulgakov. It was Bulgakov who perhaps most made it a central pillar of his theological work, and most explicitly tried to demonstrate its central position in Orthodox dogmatics. It was certainly this aspect of his thought that occasioned most resistance from other Orthodox theologians of his time, not least Georges Florovsky and the Synod of the Russian Church in exile, fearing what they felt was its overly close association with similar esoteric trends in Rosicrucianism and other heterodox gnoseological approaches. Nevertheless, Orthodox understandings of Sophiology differ from gnoseology in this respect, that it stands for a summation of ways of “living in,” more than ways of “knowing about,” the Godhead. As Fr. Pavel Florensky wrote, Sophia is “not a fact, but an act” (Florensky 1997: 237).

Like her symbol, the great imperial church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Holy Wisdom takes her place at the very center of Orthodox life. It is the Logos, yet it is also the outreach of the Logos to the world, in the intimacy of the human com­prehension, as the scripture reveals. Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 8.34 teaches that Sophia “is an initiate in the mysteries of God’s knowl­edge. She makes choice of the works God is to do.” Thus to learn wisdom (Sophia) is to be united to God. She exists as the choice of God, and yet she makes God’s choices. Baruch 3.31–2 declares that “no one knows the way to her, no one can discover the path she treads. But the one who knows all knows her, for God has grasped her with God’s own intellect.” The Sophiological tradition in Orthodoxy, with various degrees of success, is the continuing con­templation of this ambiguity – the mystical path of the study of wisdom. Sophia is manifested as teacher, bride, lover, and Christ; both as within and without the human mind and soul. To acquire Sophia is not to acquire scientific knowledge but to begin to see the totality of knowledge from the right perspective.

SEE ALSO: Berdiaev, Nikolai A. (1874–1948); Bulgakov, Sergius (Sergei) (1871–1944); Florensky, Pavel Alexandrovich (1882–1937); Florovsky, Georges V. (1893–1979)

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Bulgakov, S. (1993) Sophia, the Wisdom of God: AnOutline of Sophiology. Library of Russian

Philosophy. Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books.

Donskikh, O. A. (1995) “Cultural Roots of Russian Sophiology,” Sophia 34, 2: 38–57.

Florensky, P. (1997) The Pillar and Ground of Truth, trans. B. Jakim. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Sergeev, M. (2007) Sophiology in Russian Orthodoxy: Solov’ev, Bulgakov, Losskii, Berdiaev. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.

Sophrony, Archimandrite (1896–1993)

JULIA KONSTANTINOVSKY

Archimandrite Sophrony (Sergey Symeonovich Sakharov) was an outstanding Christian Orthodox ascetic, spiritual direc­tor, and theologian of the 20th century. Spiritual son of St. Silouan of Athos, Archi­mandrite Sophrony was the founder in 1959 of the Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist (Essex, UK) under the jurisdiction of the ecumenical patriarchate of Constan­tinople. He is the author of several major works on the spiritual and ascetical life in Christ and on Christian personhood, among them Saint Silouan the Athonite, His Life is Mine, We Shall See Him As He Is, and On Prayer. An accomplished artist, he also founded a unique school of iconog­raphy. Born in Moscow, he then lived most of his life in the West, a revered theologian and elder for the entire Christian world, Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike.

Fr. Sophrony was born into a bourgeois Russian Orthodox family and trained as an artist in the Academy of Arts and Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Archi­tecture. Arriving in Paris in 1922 to further his career, he underwent a profound conversion back to the Christian faith of his childhood, which compelled him to renounce his art and embrace a life of prayer. In 1924 he joined the Russian

Saint-Panteleimon Monastery on Mount Athos, spending the next twenty years first as a coenobitic monastic and subse­quently a hermit. Ordained to the priest­hood in 1941, he acted as father confessor to numerous Athonite monks. After World War II he returned to France to write his highly acclaimed work on Starets Silouan. Enduring health problems prevented him from returning to Athos. Soon, an ascetic community, men and women, gathered around him in Paris. In 1956 it moved to Essex, England, where the present-day Monastery of St. John the Baptist was established.

Influenced by Lossky and Bulgakov, Fr. Sophrony’s thought is nevertheless deeply original. Its fundamental principle is Christian personalism, whereby the Person/ Hypostasis (Lichnost’/Ipostas’) is the arche of all being, Uncreated, as well as created. In his essence, the divine Absolute is personal: it is the Trinity of three divine hypostaseis indissolubly united by one common divine essence. This trinitarian principle is kenotic: the three hypostaseis inhere within one another through mutual self-emptying love. God’s disclosure of himself as a Person to Moses (Ex. 3.10) is the beginning of all theology, its fulfillment consisting in Christ’s self-revelation in his voluntary kenosis “for us men and for our salvation.”

There is commensurability between the personal divine being, on the one hand, and the human person, on the other. Christ is the measure of man: just as he reveals and personifies the perfection of divinity and humanity, so equally man is able to comprise the fullness of the human and divine being (the latter by grace, not by nature). Archimandrite Sophrony saw this possibility as the foundation of the human freedom and of man’s being in God’s image (cf. Gen. 1.26). The following three principles sum up Archimandrite Sophrony’s ecclesio- logy: there is no faith without doctrine; there is no Christianity outside the church; there is no Christianity without asceticism.

SEE ALSO: Elder (Starets); Monasticism; Mount Athos; St. Silouan of Athos (1866–1938)

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Archim. Sophrony (1988) We Shall See Him As He Is. Maldon, UK: St. John’s Monastery.

Archim. Sophrony (1997) His Life is Mine.

Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Archim. Sophrony (1998) On Prayer. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Archim. Sophrony (1999) Saint Silouan the Athonite. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Archim. Zacharias (Zacharou) (2003) Christ, Our Way and Our Life: A Presentation of the Theology of Archimandrite Sophrony South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press.

Sakharov, N. V. (2002) I Love Therefore I Am: The Theological Legacy of Archimandrite Sophrony. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.