Bulgakov, Sergius (Sergei) (1871–1944)
PAUL GAVRILYUK
Bulgakov combines many aspects in his life: Orthodox priest, theologian, religious philosopher, and economist. As a thinker he was interested in all major questions of human existence, offering a comprehensive religious vision of the world, particularly in light of the concept of Sophia, or “Godmanhood.”
Born into the family of a provincial priest at Livny in Russia, Bulgakov began his education at church-run schools. Having experienced a crisis of faith and being attracted to Marxism, he went on to study law and economics at the University of Moscow (1890–4). On the completion of his studies, he taught economics at Moscow (1895–1901) and Kiev (1901–6). During these years he became disillusioned with Marxist theory and gradually embraced a form of religious idealism, an intellectual evolution which he traced in a collection of essays entitled From Marxism to Idealism (1896–1903).
Upon his return to Moscow in 1906, Bulgakov rose to prominence as a public intellectual, participating in the Russian religious and cultural renaissance known as the “Silver Age» In 1909 Bulgakov cooperated with Nikolai Berdiaev, Semen L. Frank, and others in a collection of programmatic essays entitled Landmarks, which warned the Russian intelligentsia against the devastating consequences of the socialist revolution. Bulgakov construed revolutionary socialism as a form of surrogate religion, mimicking various features of apocalyptic Judaism and Orthodox Christianity. In his doctoral thesis, Philosophy of Economy (1912), Bulgakov offered an economic theory that moved further away from Marxism and was informed by philosophical idealism. The Unfading Light (1918), written during 1911–16, provides a first sketch of Bulgakov’s sophiological system, focusing on such issues as the nature of religion, apophatic theology, metaphysical problems of the relationship between God and creation, and human nature.
Bulgakov played a leading role at the All-Russian Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of 1917–18. He was ordained an Orthodox priest in June 1918. With the Bolsheviks in power, Bulgakov was forced to resign from his post as a professor of economics at the University of Moscow and moved to Crimea (1919–22). Expelled from the Soviet Union in early 1923, Bulgakov eventually settled in Paris, where he became the first dean of the newly established St. Sergius Theological Institute. Outside Russia Bulgakov wrote the so-called “minor trilogy” consisting of The Burning Bush (1927), which develops Orthodox teaching regarding Theotokos and offers a critique of the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception; The Friend of the Bridegroom (1928), which discusses the role of John the Baptist in the history of salvation; and
Jacob’s Ladder (1929), which develops Orthodox angelology. Bulgakov developed a comprehensive sophiological system in his second trilogy, On Godmanhood, comprising The Lamb of God (kenotic Christology and a sophiological interpretation of the Chalcedonian Christology); The Comforter (pneumatology); and The Bride of the Lamb (ecclesiology, uni- versalist eschatology, anthropology, and hamartology). While Bulgakov’s sophiology was criticized by Vladimir Lossky and condemned by some church hierarchs as heretical, attention to his work continues to increase both in post-Perestroika Russia and in the West, where his fuller corpus continues to appear in English translation.
SEE ALSO: Florovsky, Georges V. (1893–1979); Lossky, Vladimir (1903–1958); Sophiology
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Bulgakov, S. (1997) The Orthodox Church.
Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Bulgakov, S. (2001) The Bride of the Lamb. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Bulgakov, S. (2003) The Friend of the Bridegroom: On the Orthodox Veneration of the Forerunner. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Bulgakov, S. (2004) The Comforter. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Bulgakov, S. (2007) The Lamb of God. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Valliere, P. (2000) Modern Russian Theology. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.