Wassen on Gavrilyuk's Universal Salvation in Bulgakov
Following is a review by Gregorios Wassen of Paul Gavrilyuk's paper Universal Salvation in the Eschatology of Sergius Bulgakov. Gavrilyuk's paper was presented at American Academy of Religion (2004) and published in The Journal of Theological Studies (2006). This review appeared in Wassen's blog, The Unburnt Bush, in July 2006. Gregorios Wassen is a student at St. Vladimir's Theological Seminary.


Paul L. Gavrilyuk, "Universal Salvation in the Eschatology of Sergius Bulgakov"
A review by Gregorios Wassen

Prof. Gavrilyuk, an Eastern Orthodox theologian, opens the article by affirming that Fr. Bulgakov 'is a towering figure on the horizon of the twentieth century Eastern Orthodox theology.' The silence around Fr. Bulgakov has been broken and many aspects of his thought are being discussed and reflected upon today as his works become available in English (mostly due to the excellent work of Boris Jakim). Yet the eschatological vision of Fr. Bulgakov has not received any attention in the recent Bulgakov-revival. Gavrilyuk intends to rectify the situation.

The background of Bulgakovian Eschatology

He traces Fr. Bulgakov's eschatological thought back to the young child whose father was a priest at a little cemetary Church. The confrontation with death is one thing influencing Fr. Bulgakov's eschatological thought. After losing and regaining his faith, Bulgakov exposes 'chiliastic aspirations in the socialist project aimed at building the just kingdom of man on earth' as Gavrilyuk puts it. That is Marxism is a religious apocalypticism that would tragically deify the state and project a messianic role onto the proletariat. He lived to see his predictions come true. At this point Bulgakov finds a mentor in the martyr-theologian Fr. Pavel Florensky, whose influence on Bulgakov will prove to be profound for the development of Fr. Bulgakov's eschatology, an eschatology 'unmatched in its breadth by any other Russian religious thinker.'

Fr. Bulgakov and Patristic Eschatology

Patristic eschatology, Fr. Bulgakov observes, takes two opposing directions. A majority of patristic sources oppose universal salvation, and a minority of sources espouse a doctrine of universal salvation along the lines of Origen of Alexandria and St. Gregory of Nyssa. Fr. Bulgakov seeks to disassociate his eschatological thought from 'Vulgar Origenism' and to ground it in St. Gregory of Nyssa rather than Origen. In the absence of a conciliar definition the subject of eschatology, so says Fr. Bulgakov, belongs to the realm 'of more or less authoritative patristic opinions.' In the area of theology, and thus implicitly eschatology, Fr. Bulgakov was self-taught and deeply erudite, even if his prose can sometimes 'gave way to flights of fancy and belletristic digressions' writes Gavrilyuk. Nevertheless the 'breadth of his vision far surpassed the canons of academic theology of his time.'

Select Aspects of Bulgakovian Eschatology

The first aspect Gavrilyuk highlights is the particular shift in Fr. Bulgakov's eschatology 'a terminological shift in eschatology from predominantly forensic to ontological categories.' Which means that the eschaton is first and foremost the completion of creation and only secondarily its judgment. An exegetical move much more in line with patristic thought than Fr. Bulgakov had realized, so says Gavrilyuk. Fr. Bulgakov's eschatological thought is treated most fully in his The Bride of the Lamb though a significant part of this book treating this subject (Apokatastasis and Transfiguration) has been translated independently from the english version of the book. Both are by Boris Jakim.

A second aspect is the synergism that charecterizes Fr. Bulgakov's thought. He moves away from the view that the eschaton happens to mostly passive creatures, this is to be seen in his view of the resurrection of the body so that 'individual souls will cooperate with God in reconstituting their own bodies' expanding upon the thought of St. Gregory of Nyssa that it is the soul which reconstitutes the body. But this proces will also take place on the level of the integral Adam so that 'the process of reconstitution of the body occurred not just in every individual soul, but concurrently in the world soul' securing the ontological and moral unity of humankind.

The resurrection will be general and permament for all. Yet Fr. Bulgakov 'speculated that various groups of people would participate in the general resurrection differently: the saintly figures would do so actively and willingly, while the indifferent and the wicked souls would accept the resurrection as inevitable.' Fr. Bulgakov also holds that the Parousia, the Judgment, and the General Resurrection are not separate, consecutive events. They are one and the same event.The trinitarian kenosis will find fulfillment in the temporal world, and all will immediately recognize Christ as the Godman.

The judgment, according to Fr. Bulgakov, is not about the application of general moral norms, but about the comparison that each individual makes between his empirical identity and his true self. A true self which is in the image of Christ. We have here a 'self-judgment, a deep realization of what one could achieve with the help of Christ and what one has failed to become.' It does not consist in an external application of divine punishment. Yet this self-judgment should not be understood as a mere excercise in subjectivity 'since the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of conscience, enabling each person to see herself for what she really is and making the comparison with the eternal image of herself unavoidable and intrinsically convincing.' At this point Gavrilyuk quotes Fr. Bulgakov's own words, inspired by St. Isaac the Syrian:

"The judgment of love consists of a revolution in people’s hearts, in which, by the action of the Holy Spirit in the resurrection, the eternal source of love for Christ is revealed together with the torment caused by the failure to actualize this love in the life that has passed."

There is no opposition between God's mercy and God's justice, for both these attributes find their origin in God's love. Fr. Bulgakov here is following through on the ideas of St. Isaac the Syrian and Dostoevsky's Elder Zosima: 'Dostoevsky’s elder goes on to say that the person who despised God’s love in this life would be incapable of loving God in the resurrection. The torment that such a person would experience would be internal and spiritual, rather than external and physical.' Fr. Bulgakov also stresses that suffering is purgative and healing as did Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa before him. In the eschaton the progression in evil will be impossible. Only the progression in different kinds of good will be possible. This, so argues Fr. Bulgakov, does not eliminate freedom in that the freedom from evil is the greatest possible freedom.

Fr. Bulgakov on the arguments against an eternal Hell

Since the Scriptures tell us that God did not create death it seems reasonable to suggest He did not create hell either. It is a byproduct of the angelic and human fall in sin. Fr. Bulgakov, so says prof. Gavrilyuk, knew that the Scriptures speak of hell as eternal, yet to him it was obvious that whatever this eternity might be it could not be infinite duration in time. For such eternity would have a beginning in time (after death), and it would also be unduly cruel, and therefore unjust; which distorts the character of God. Ascribing to Him the evils fallen human nature is capable off, but which the Divine Nature is wholly incapable off. Eternity is also misunderstood when viewed as impossibility of change, creaturely being is by its nature capable of change. Prof. Gavrilyuk explains Fr. Bulgakov's interpretation: "the adjective 'eternal' in the Johannine expression 'eternal life' indicates a divine quality of the subject described." There must be an assymetry between the eternity of eternal hell and eternal life, otherwise evil is eternal with the eternity as is good. This would be to fall into dualism or manicheism. Fr. Bulgakov follows the lead of St. Gregory of Nyssa that evil has no existence of itself, it is a parasite of the good. Eternal progression to the good is possible, eternal digression to evil is not for evil would unltimately annihilate itself (since it exists only as a creaturely perversion and is finite). To assert that even one rational creature will be eternally lost, is to affirm the success of satanic evil over God, and is a satanic blasphemy against God as Gavrilyuk quotes Fr. Bulgakov's words.

The ontological and moral unity of mankind also speaks against the possibility of an eternal hell. There will be one humanity shared by those in hell and those enjoying eternal life. Their unity prevents those enjoying eternal life from ignoring those suffering in hell. If hell is indeed never-ending, the compassionate suffering of those enjoying eternal life will also be without end. Referring to 1 Cor. 3, 15 Fr. Bulgakov suggests that the separation between sheep and goats (Gospel of Matthew) is internal and takes place inside all of us. This leads to the after-death state to be a state of purgation by the fires of hell (not purgatory). Fr. Bulgakov rejected the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory as a third place he accepted the fact of purgation after death and saw an affinity with the Roman Catholic doctrine and Orthodox doctrine in their both praying for the dead. In a sense, hell is a universal purgatory. Even satan and his fallen angels are subject to God's mercy and will be restored into their original union with God. Satan is always conscious of himself as a creature and is torn internally between his false pretenses to being the prince of this world and his creaturely angelic nature which is impossible for him to deny and to not be conscious off. Prof. Gavrilyuk writes: "Bulgakov’s reply was that after Satan’s expulsion from the world his resources were bound to be exhausted by this internal contradiction; the prince of darkness would give in to the power of divine love in the end." A theme some might be familiar with from Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment where the murderer Rodion Raskolnikov turns himself in under pressure of his being internally torn by a guilty conscience. Prof. Gavrilyuk writes: "Bulgakov followed Dostoevsky and the Origenist tradition in going beyond the retributive function of punishment and emphasizing the purgative value of suffering."

Gavrilyuk's Critique of Fr. Bulgakov's Eschatology

The first piece of critique is that "Bulgakov was certainly wrong to reduce the mystery of divine forgiveness to mere ignorance or indifference to evil." Prof. Gavrilyuk proceeds to note that Fr. Bulgakov's version of universalism deviates from that of Sts. Isaac the Syrian and Gregory of Nyssa in "daring and original ways." To some extent Fr. Bulgakov expands in his own way some ideas of Fr. Pavel Florensky on Gehenna (The Pillar and Ground of the Truth). Prof. Gavrilyuk explains the unique character of Fr. Bulgakov's eschatological universalism as follows:

"Because of its emphasis upon God as the source and power of being and its methodological shift from juridical to ontological categories, Bulgakov’s eschatology may be termed ontological universalism."

It would seem that Fr. Bulgakov has transgressed his own warning not to fall into dogmatic maximalism, that is dogmatizing unnecessarily. Where Nikolai Berdiaev, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Karl Rahner speculated on the salvation of all, they did maintained what prof. Gavrilyuk calls epistemic modesty. They have not made universalism a necessary constituent of their eschatology but merely a possible one. In Fr. Bulgakov such epistemic modesty is wholly absent. This is a vice in his eschatology rather than a virtue, because it lacks support in the tradition of the Church and violates the principle of apophaticism. Though rejecting the identification Berdiaev made between Fr. Bulgakov's eschatological determinism and Marxist communist determinism (history inevitably leads to a Communist triumph) Gavrilyuk writes: "in the final analysis Bulgakov’s ontological universalism was strongly deterministic for his scheme did not leave even a possibility for permanent and decisive creaturely rejection of God." Specific points against ontological universalist determinism:

1. The eternal resistance against God's will is no more paradoxical as is the allowance of God of the first rejection of the Divine intent. Since God allowed the first rejection of His will, He can allow the eternal rejection of his will.

2. The knowledge of the good does not necessarily lead to conversion from evil to good. Fr. Bulgakov postulates that the weakness of the will shall be removed and only choices of different levels of good will be possible. But this seems to be compulsion rather than freely willed self-determination.

3. Demonic knowledge of God at present is a particularly strong argument against ontological universalism. Demons have no uncertainty concerning God's existence. Yet they continue to reject God and work towards evil against God's intents and purposes. Gavrilyuk writes: "Despite this knowledge, however, the demonic revolt against God is more radical than that of humans. The demons are capable of willing and doing evil for its own sake." Which he believes can only lead to one conclusion: "The obstinacy that the fallen angels manifest in this aeon makes their conversion in the age to come highly improbable without the divine coercion."

4. Fr. Bulgakov's eschatological universalism makes human history irrelevant. The beginning and end are set, so that it is entirely irrelevant what happens in between the beginning and the end on the pathways of creaturely history. Prof. Gavrilyuk writes: "The main issue, however, is whether human history, shaped by human choices, has the ultimate impact upon human destiny? It seems that Bulgakov’s Platonizing universalism, despite his protestations to the contrary, offers a negative answer to this question. However, Bulgakov’s own synergism requires quite the opposite answer: the outcome of the eschaton must be the fulfillment, not the annulment of human history."

Yet prof. Gavrilyuk is not wholly dismissive of Fr. Bulgakov's eschatological speculation. In a concluding thought he writes: "My objections notwithstanding, it is undeniable that Bulgakov’s universalism, especially his shift from juridical to ontological categories, from what he called ‘penal code theory’ to the eschatology of participation in the life of God, opens a fresh dimension that has not been sufficiently explored in the western accounts of eschatology."