a ladder between spirit and matter, but instead left a dreadful abyss between them. Christian thought then offered answers to questions posed by Plato and substituted impersonal erotic ascent by Christ′s personal love. Christianity substituted the Platonic "ideas" by the Divine Sophia.[167] Of course, such a sentence requires further elucidation of Bulgakov′s sophiology
For most scholars, theologians or philosophers, concerned with Bulgakov it has become almost a commonplace to differentiate either between the creaturely and the heavenly Sophia (the former bearing shares of the latter), or between an earlier (more philosophical) and a later (more theological) conception of it. In either case, the first conception does not appear as perfectly reconcilable with the second. In my view, the Russian Bulgakov specialist Sergej Khoruzhij most clearly has understood the solution to this problem. As he suggests, the Bulgakovian Sophiology substitutes the "impersonal" Platonic "all-Unitarian ontology" by an ′all-Unitarian personal ontology [my expression, KB].′ He ascribes Sophia – correlating to the Aristotelian ousia – to each of the three hypostases respectively.[168] By simple logics, this three-fold construction defines the heavenly and the creaturely Sophia as signifying one and the same. The ′sophianic′ nature of God reaches out into the world. In Ipostas′ i ipostasnost′, 1924/25, the dichotomy of the created and the Uncreated is explicitly at stake. This writing shows the development of a hierarchy in Bulgakov′s vision of the different incarnations of Sophia. Those modes and forms are what he calls a "hypostasis," viz. the essential nature of a substance as opposed to its attributes. Ipostasnost′ denotes the potentiality of someone or something to turn into a hypostasis, i.e. to incarnate the Godly substance, Ousia-Sophia, on Earth.[169] In this text, Bulgakov comprehensively discusses her modes and forms from the highest in God to the highest on earth, which, of course, is the Church.[170]
Already in his early Philosophy of Economy Bulgakov maintained, "(t)he purpose of economic activity is to defend and to spread the seeds of life, to resurrect nature. This is the action of Sophia (italics mine, KB)."[171] He explicitly refers to Nikolaj Fedorov s obshchee delo: "The content of economic activity is not the Creation of life but its defence, its resuscitation from a deathlike state."[172] My analysis thus wonders: How is resurrection possible? What exactly is resurrection and what is its relation to cognition? My analysis turns around this complex of questions.
The foreword of Philosophy of Economy refers to Solov′ev′s notion of "religious materialism." We read that it refers back Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, and other fathers of the Church, whose teachings, as Bulgakov regrets, merely present "dead capital: "…"economic materialism," on the one hand, and "idealistic phenomenalism," on the other hand, were built on its "ruins."[173] Let us now attempt to understand what Bulgakov made from these "ruins."
In Svet nevechernyj, 1916, a writing that testifies to his becoming more and more a theologian, Bulgakov explicitly refers to Gregory of Nyssa′s teachings on Creation and on resurrection:[174] Gregory developed the idea of Creation in two acts: "general" (obshchee) and "partial" (chastnoe) Creation, viz. Creation "in the beginning" and in a second step during the "six days." Bulgakov quotes: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."[175] "In the beginning" then is another expression for "Sophia." Creation began in "Sophia;" she is "potentiality," is a "unity of opposites, a coinicidentia oppositorum (italics mine, KB)." This way Sophia is "doublecentred," the Sophia is the "architect" of the earth and simultaneously is "transcendent" to it, for the world is created within the distance between heaven and itself. The difference between both, between "idea" and "matter," is the "foundation" of Creation. The establishment of a "living ladder" connecting Earth and Heaven is the final goal of the world′s historical process."[176] Following Gregory of Nyssa, Bulgakov maintained, too, that after God′s first Creational act further development of the Created takes place only by constant "creative participation" of matter (material), i.e. of the Earth (zemlia) itself. Sophia is the marrow of "Godearth" (bogozemlia). Sophia is the true "apotheosis" of matter as the birth of life originates herein.[177] Thus, the present world is good as God′s creation, but is not yet perfect. Creation has not ended yet, but the bogochelovek is entitled to continue Creation. How did Bulgakov define co-creatorship?
As in Solov’ëv, in Bulgakov, too, there is no dichotomy between matter and spirit, between body and soul. In each case, Bulgakov, has taken the distinction one ontological step back from dualism. Matter does not signify evil, but is merely shapeless, dependent upon form and upon its association with the Divine. The human person itself is made of spirit and matter and must properly dispose of each. If this correct, we must analyse in the next analytical step the possibilities, which pertain to man.
His Priroda v filosofii Vl. Solov′eva, 1911, looks at the latter′s variant of "religious materialism" acknowledging matter as "sacred corporality (sviataia telesnost′)." If man knows resurrection, the same must be true for nature as a whole, even though there certainly is a difference in quality. Logical thought would have to either deny man′s spiritual essence or admit it for all nature and all creatures.[178] Despite the fact that Solov’ëv never developed this concept into a refined, separate philosophical discourse, Bulgakov praised him for having prepared the ground for a magnificent Christian metaphysics that allocates the sparkling idea of nature as the "other God" or the "second absolute: "[179] "Nature must be the visible spirit, and spirit must be the invisible nature.′[180] Nature is humanised by becoming man′s "peripheral body, submitting to his consciousness and realising itself in him."[181]
His early religious philosophy already turned around the question of "man in nature and nature in man."
Cf. ibid. 191ff.
Cf. Khoruzhij S.,
Cf. Bulgakov,
Cf. ibid, 38, and many other places.
Cf. Bulgakov,
Cf. ibid, 148f. See Bulgakov′s homage to Fedorov,
Cf. idem,
Bulgakov refers to
The translation is from the English standard-translation, Gen. I, 1–3. The Russian Bible has another numeration. Cf.
Cf. idem,
Cf. Khoruzhij,
Cf. Bulgakov,
Cf. idem,
Cf. idem,
Cf. ibid, 121.
