Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Orthodox Theology in a New Key

Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Orthodox Theology in a New Key. By Paul Valliere. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000. χ + 443 pp.

Three Russian philosopher-theologians are the subjects of this impressive study by Butler University professor Paul Valliere. They are introduced as representing a definable theological direction that sets them apart and that promises to be of interest in the renewal of Russian philosophy and theology following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The title Modern Russian Theology is not a survey of twentieth century Orthodox theologians that might include Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, John Meyendorff, Paul Evdokimov, and perhaps Berdyaev or commentaries on Dostoevsky. It is what Alexander Schmemann called "the Russian School."

Modern refers to the opening of Russia in the nineteenth century to the critical intellectual and empirical culture of the West and its effect on Orthodox spirituality and thought. Russian Theology means not the national setting but the identification of these thinkers as a distinctive tendency or movement to deal theologically with questions of social reform, secular humanism, economic theory, natural science, and art. Rather than traditional denial of the world, this is a trend that affirmed the inherent value of the world and sought to understand the mystery of the divine-human relation. Theosis or divinization was considered to be the creative possibility of all human effort, in the light of the Incarnation and eschatological trinitarian faith. A favorite text is Ephesians 3:9-11 on the sophia of God.

These three are singled out in contrast to the neo-patristic school of theology of mid-twentieth century, along with a dozen others named by the author in passing. They sought a "creative reconstruction of dogma in a modern idiom." Neo-patristic theology concentrates on the mystical relevance of the ecumenical church fathers and eucharistie liturgy. Modern Russian Theology was anthropological rather than sacerdotal and tried to deal with modern problems. This is why the sub-title Orthodox Theology in a New Key alleges that building on the work of Bukharev, Soloviev, and Bulgakov can lead to creative theological discussion between Orthodoxy and postmodern secularism, lay participation in theology, and dialogue with the ecumenical community, Protestantism in particular.

The attention given to each of these theologians is chronological, showing the influence of each on the following generation as their dates indicate: 1824-1871 Aleksandr Matveevich Bukharev, 1853-1900 Vladimir Sergeevich Soloviev, and 1871-1944 Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov. The space allocated is also progressive: 87 pages for Bukharev, 114 for Soloviev, and 176 for Bulgakov. The book is essentially a discussion of primary sources. It is also a justification of living tradition.

Bukharev was a scholarly monk (Archimandrite Feodor) and biblical scholar writing in a time of social criticism, the abolition of serfdom, and addressing the emergence of Russia from imperial isolation to issues of the modern world and the impending intellectual crisis for Orthodoxy. His idea of the humanity of God offended conservatives, and his theology of kenosis gave positive value to the everyday world. He later married. His thought is presented from his writings under headings "Orthodoxy and the Modern World," "Church and Society," "The Accessibility of God," and so on.

Soloviev's father was a well-known historian who was at the same time an admirer of the Enlightenment and a strictly observant Orthodox Christian, The son studied abroad and spent the academic year 1875 in London, studying at the British Museum, possibly at the same time as Karl Marx. He was a pioneer of ecumenism with the Western church and author of major philosophical writings like The Critique of Abstract Principles, Lectures on the Humanity of God, and The History and Future of Theocracy. He introduced the concept of "sophiology" as an extension of the Orthodox doctrine of theosis. Sophiology is the theory that a creative effort will turn out right and is worth the effort because the Triune God is present in the world by the active principle of Divine Wisdom. Soloviev's theory reflects the spiritual love of sophia in the root of philosophia itself, and the embracing of the creation by divine love.

Bulgakov became most noted for this novel doctrine. He was the son of a priest and became a Marxist economist, changing from philosophical materialism under the influence of German idealism to become a lay theologian. He was 34 at the time of the 1905 "intelligentsia's revolution," which gave Russia an uncertain constitutional monarchy, and for a time he advocated Christian socialism. In 1909, his essay "Heroism and Humility" appeared, and in 1912, The Philosophy of Economy, relating practical problems with mystical faith, which Valliere explains under "Nature, Culture and Sophia."

Bulgakov was marginalized politically by the revolution of 1917, but participated as a layman in the national Church Council which reestablished the patriarchate after a lapse of two hundred years. He was ordained at Pentecost the following year in Danilov Monastery in Moscow. While teaching at a university in Crimea, he was arrested and expelled from the Soviet Union in 1922, went to Prague, then Paris. There he became founding dean of a theological institute in honor of his namesake, St. Sergius. Support came from Russian emigres and Protestant ecumenical figures like John R. Mott, and from the World Council of Churches after World War II.

He became prominent through his writings, as evidenced by mention in the correspondence of Jacques Maritain and the novelist Julien Green, dialogue with Yves Congar, and by active participation in Faith and Order meetings of the ecumenical movement. Bulgakov's later years were devoted to dogmatic theology, writing On the Humanity of God and other works. He sees tradition as an "on-going, organic process," and emphasizes the creative human receptivity that makes divine incarnation possible. In what was called "the Sophiology Affair" in 1935, he was unofficially denounced for heresy. Sophiology does not represent the action of the Holy Spirit but the freedom and creativity of human endeavor, even in a materialistic sense, possibly rooted in his early Marxism. It calls to mind process theology.

The author's view that these philosopher-theologians are of interest at the beginning of the twenty-first century is borne out by the importance given Sergei Bulgakov today. A young Russian told this reviewer that during the period of perestroika and glasnost, Bulgakov and others were read avidly because it was the first non-Marxist Russian philosophy students discovered. The martyred priest Alexander Men (1935-1990) shows his influence. Father Bulgakov was described by an Orthodox bishop in France as "one of the best who looked for the Trinitarian revelation in all the circumstances of life, as much private as social." The library at the St. Sergius Intitute in Paris has a card index under Bulgakov with 79 titles in Russian and 19 in French or English. A new series of translations of his works into French has reached twelve volumes, beginning in 1982 and as recently as 1996. Bulgakov archives are reserved there for scholars.

His book Philosophy of Economy appeared in English in 1997, translated by Catherine Evtuhov. In 1999, Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams edited Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political Theology. Eerdmans published Father Bulgakov's The Bride and the Lamb in 2002 and The Friend of the Bridegroom in 2003, both translated by Bori Jakim.

The contribution to North American Protestantism of Modern Russian Theology and these theologians, particularly Sergei Bulgakov, is to make known the capacity of Orthodox theology to engage creatively with new social problems and cultural realities without losing the divine nature of the faith. It is also to show an intellectual model of theology and faith that can enrich and inspire contemporary ministry, both Protestant and Roman Catholic. To enter into dialogue with postmodernism on the basis of trinitarian consciousness represents a wholeness of Christian faith that is not merely rationalist or moralistic. It draws on philosophical imagination rare among Western clergy. Bulgakov calls it "human freedom, the absolute value of the personality, a moral world-order, and a divine mind at work in nature and history" (237). He sees this as a new Chalcedonian epoch, when the two natures in the Godhuman become the sacramental sign of the Word of God in all persons, to be discovered in their innermost selves and to reclaim or refine the secularized world that God loves.

William, J. Nottingham

Christian Theological Seminary

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