Bulgakov

Bulgakov’s ecumenical thought

ANASTASSY GALAHER

Charisma as curse

We normally do not think of personal charisma as a curse. Nor do

we normally think of being an original thinker as a strike against

one’s character. However, in the case of Fr Sergii Bulgakov, it is

arguable that the mesmerising nature of his personality distracted

attention from a sober evaluation of his theology. What is

mentioned repeatedly in the reminiscences of Bulgakov is the

overwhelming impact of his character, quite distinct, that is, from

the content and quality of his economic, philosophical and

theological work.

E. L. Mascall is typical in this regard in remembering

Bulgakov as ‘one who was a prophet rather than a systematic

thinker’1. Yet what is even more puzzling than this reduction of

Bulgakov to the role of ‘prophet’ is the fact that Bulgakov was

simultaneously a theological systematiser par excellence.

However, when Bulgakov’s theology gained widespread attention,

apart from a few disciples who attempted to link the thought to the

person, 2 the connection of the man to the system he built was

evaded. People complained that his sophiological system was

obscure, 3 unnecessary 4 and, most famously, gnostic, 5 and therefore

heretical. 6

Given the extremely political environment surrounding

the 1935 ‘Sophiological controversy’, in which three different

Russian church jurisdictions and many personalities clashed, a

precise evaluation of the ostensible subject of the controversy –

Bulgakov’s theology – is yet to be written, 7 let alone its relation to

the man who created it. It remains unclear what the relation of the

man was to his thought. Yet perhaps one window into this relation

may be found in his ecumenical involvement.

Ecumenism by its very nature is theology in action since it is

our conception of the Church that motivates whether we reach out 27

to other Christians or not. If we do reach out to other Christians,

then how precisely we go about this process is determined by how

we understand the divisions that separate Christians vis-à-vis the

Church. Arguably the most important, and characteristic,

expression of Bulgakov’s ecumenical thought can be found in his

June 1933 proposals for partial or limited intercommunion between

the Anglican and Orthodox Churches in the Fellowship of St Alban

and St Sergius. However, before trying to understand these

‘prophetic proposals’, as Militza Zernov described them, 8 and the

long road which led up to them, it would be wise to give a brief

sketch of the dynamic personality which animated them. I am

speaking of Bulgakov’s ‘obsessive presence’, 9 as Juliana

Schmemann has described it. This presence happened to be most

manifest, as we shall see, when Bulgakov was celebrating the

Liturgy.

‘The enigma of Fr Sergii’

The Schmemanns are a case in point when it comes to their

ambivalent response to Bulgakov as man and thinker. Neither Fr

Alexander nor his wife Juliana Schmemann was ever a disciple of

Bulgakov. Indeed, Fr Schmemann was decidedly puzzled by

Bulgakov’s dual nature as man and thinker. He believed on the one

hand that Bulgakov’s sophiology was, arguably, an idealistic

growth on Orthodoxy but, on the other hand, he felt that this

‘heresy’ was only apparent since Bulgakov had never really

adequately expressed himself, and that beneath Bulgakov’s

sophiological meanderings was the heavenly light of Truth itself,

impeded by his attempts to systematise it. He referred to this as the

‘enigma of Fr Sergii’. 10 Thus at one point in his reminiscences

about Bulgakov, entitled ‘Three Images’, he writes, ‘Let us even

admit that his teaching was “heretical” and that one must condemn

him’. 11 But, a few pages down, he asserts the essential Orthodoxy

of Bulgakov which his system almost obscured: ‘I felt with my

whole being that this man was not a heretic, but that, on the

contrary, he radiated that which is most important and most

authentic in Orthodoxy’. 12

Despite Fr Schmemann’s ambivalence about Bulgakov, both

of the Schmemanns faithfully attended Bulgakov’s 7 am Thursday

Liturgies in 1940 while Fr Schmemann was a student of

Bulgakov’s at the Institute of St Serge in Paris. Fr Schmemann

specifically lauds Bulgakov’s person in contrast to his teaching,

which he claims that he is not competent to discuss. To be sure, he

writes that during his seminars with Bulgakov he spent more time

looking at Bulgakov than listening to him. 13 Thus what sticks out

in Fr Schmemann’s mind is the spiritual presence of Bulgakov as a

person, despite his strange teaching, 14 and this was for him

expressed pre-eminently in his service at the altar. Here he saw

Bulgakov as an ancient priest or Old Testamental High Priest

serving with such beauty that it was always as if he were serving

the Liturgy for the first time. 15 Juliana Schmemann backs up the impression of Bulgakov as a highly charismatic personality given by her husband. She only knew Bulgakov at one remove and was not really familiar with his writings. Yes, she had heard of the controversy that Bulgakov wrote of a certain Sophia who was almost a ‘separate divinity’. 16

Yet despite the fact that his teaching seems to have been slightly

suspect in her mind, she remembers him at the Thursday morning

Liturgies serving alone, reverent to the point that she never saw

him smile, croaking through a voice apparatus in his oesophagus

due to his throat cancer, wearing light vestments because of his

health, and moving as if he were floating just above the ground. An

‘ecstasy’ surrounded Bulgakov in these Liturgies, the more so

since the disciples who attended them treated him like a guru. 17

Spiritual intoxication does not make for a grounded faith: Juliana

Schmemann remembers that when Bulgakov died in 1944 many of

his followers stopped going to church.

Ecumenical thought in action

It is not my object to elaborate Bulgakov’s theological

system, but to examine its historical development through the lens

of his ecumenical thought in action. 18 I wish to determine whether

there was indeed a systematic theology behind what many regarded

as a ‘dangerous, not glorious’ 19 proposal for reunion through

intercommunion and to try to trace this theology’s development in

Bulgakov’s life. What is the connection of Bulgakov’s ecumenical

theology to Bulgakov the man? Was the intercommunion proposal

a vague, albeit prophetic, call for reunification of the Churches or

an incorrect intimation of unity of the Church at and through the

chalice which is in contrast to Bulgakov’s personal sanctity? Is it

possible that through attempting to tie Bulgakov’s life to his

thought we may bridge the gap dividing the man and the thinker?

Or was Berdyaev right, as we learn from A. F. Doobie-Bateman,

when he said, ‘Fr Sergii wants to be a theologian, not a visionary;

and that is his great difficulty’? 20 Could it be that Bulgakov’s

prophetic status has been exaggerated and that he is simply a great

theologian whose place in modern thought has yet to be fully

acknowledged? Perhaps none of these alternatives holds the key to

understanding Bulgakov. For Bulgakov is like Kierkegaard’s

Abraham, the quintessential man of faith, and Bulgakov’s dual

identity, as man of faith and man of ideas, must remain to us an

irreducible enigma. However, prior to examining Bulgakovian

‘partial intercommunion’ in part two of this study it would be wise

to follow the personal path that led Bulgakov up to his proposal.

From Russian Levite to Marxist 21

Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov was born in Livny (Orel

province) on 16 July 1871 to a family from the Russian clerical

caste that could trace its ‘Levite blood’ 22 back to the time of Ivan

the Terrible. Bulgakov attended the local parochial school for three

years and then in 1884 was sent to the theological seminary in

Orel. However, at thirteen years old, his first year of seminary, he

had a religious crisis. This was brought about predominantly by a

period of deep questioning which the textbook theology of the

seminary could not answer. Meeting various people whose

humanism was typical of the ‘intelligentsia’ of the day increased

Bulgakov’s alienation. In the summer of 1888, at seventeen years

old, he left the seminary, refusing to go onto the theological

academy for additional training. After two years of preparation for

university he entered the faculty of law of Moscow university in

autumn of 1890, where until 1894 he studied law, economics,

philology, philosophy and literature.

Having graduated from the university with distinction,

Bulgakov immediately began graduate studies in political economy

while teaching part-time at the Moscow technical school. On

entering university in 1890 he had become interested in Marxism

and in 1895 he published a review of the third volume of Das

Kapital, published posthumously by Engels from Marx’s papers

and concerning ‘The process of capitalist production as a whole’. 23

In the same year, while travelling across the southern steppes at

sunset Bulgakov caught sight of the Caucasian mountains and had

a mystical experience, 24 a revelation of beauty, which he later saw

as his first encounter with Sophia. Unperturbed by such

movements in his spiritual depths, his first major article appeared

in 1896, entitled ‘O zakonomernosti sotsial’nykh iavlenii’, which

continued his Marxist bent of thought in arguing for history’s

regularity according to historical-material laws. 25 The following

year in Moscow appeared his first book O rynkakh pri

kapitalisticheskom proizvodstve [Concerning Markets in Capitalist

Conditions of Production], which propelled him to the status of

one of the most influential Russian Marxists of his day. In January

of 1898, he married Elena Tokmakova and their first child, a

daughter (Maria), was born in November of the same year.

The year 1898 was eventful for Bulgakov academically as

well as personally, for the university sent him, accompanied by his

family, for a two-year study trip to Europe in preparation for a

future professorship in political economy. He visited France,

England and, particularly, Germany, ‘the land of Marxism and

Social Democracy’, 26 in order to do work on issues surrounding

Marxist land reforms for the thesis which he hoped would win him

a doctorate. During this time, through the recommendation of

Plekhanov, he met Kautsky and other social democratic and

Marxist leaders, including Bebel, Braun and Adler. While visiting

the art gallery in Dresden in 1898 he had a second mystical

experience in viewing Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. Gazing at this

painting, he felt that it was looking into his very soul and, being

moved to tears, began to pray. Not surprisingly, Bulgakov was

gradually becoming disillusioned with the materialism of Marxist

thought and in his research in Europe he discovered that the

proposed land reforms of Lenin and Plekhanov did not make

economic sense, largely due to the faulty thinking of Marx on

which they were based. 27 Bulgakov’s thesis, published at St

Petersburg in 1900 in two volumes as Kapitalizm i zemledelenie

[Capitalism and Agriculture], did not win him a doctorate, as he

had intended, but only a master’s degree.

From Marxism to Idealism

Yet this minor setback did not stop him. In 1901 he was hired

to teach political economy at the Kiev school of polytechnology

while also lecturing at the university of Kiev. His public lectures

while in Kiev were so popular with young people that he attracted

to them as many as one thousand or more people at a time. Here he

remained till 1906, studying Dostoevsky and Solov’ev 28 who were

instrumental in moving him more towards his later sophiological

thinking. The universalist character of sophiology would bear fruit

in his later ecumenical work.

In 1902 Bulgakov published an article entitled

‘Samoderzhavie i pravoslavie’ [‘Autocracy and Orthodoxy’] in the

journal Osvobozhdenie which was the organ of what would later

become the socialist coalition, the Union of Liberation. 29 This

article foreshadowed both his involvement in the reformist 1917

all-Russian church council and his later ecumenical attempts to

break down Christian denominational barriers. In the article

Bulgakov called for a reformation of the Church as a part of the

process of political liberation. Political revolution in Russia would

be ‘a fundamental ecclesiastical reform’ since ‘the revolution will

simultaneously be a reformation’. 30 The Church was strangled by

caesaro-papism and had become a decrepit organisation held back

by ritualism and eighteenth-century dogma instead of being a

dynamic body capable of ecclesiastical democracy. Bulgakov

advocated a form of socialist Christianity which embraced those

outside the Church: ‘true Orthodoxy requires its sons to unite with

all those, Orthodox and non-Orthodox, religious and atheist, who

protest and resist autocracy, with all those who struggle for

freedom’. 31 The influence of Dostoevsky and Solov’ev in moving him

from Marxism to a socialist form of Christianity can be seen in his

essays (1896-1902) collected in 1903, Ot marksizma k idealizmu

[From Marxism to Idealism]. In a lecture of 1901 in Kiev that

attracted wide attention also in Moscow and St Petersburg, he

spoke approvingly of Ivan Karamazov’s doubts about the ‘theory

of progress’ which, ‘also apply to socialism, considered not merely

as an economic theory but as a general view of the world, indeed

as a religion’. 32 From Solov’ev he learned of Christianity as a

‘positive or supra-national universalism’ which did not reject

nationality like certain (Marxist) ‘negative, cosmopolitan, non-

national’ types of universalism. 33 On 2 – 4 August 1903 he attended an illegal conference on the banks of lake Constance where, along with Peter Struve, he helped found a broad-based non-revolutionary reformist coalition that has been mentioned earlier -- the Union of Liberation. 34

In 1905 this short-lived coalition published a manifesto entitled

‘Christian Brotherhood of Struggle’. When the edict of Nicholas II

granting religious freedom came in 1905 along with an abortive

revolution, Bulgakov accepted both events as an opportunity for

reform towards a Christian socialism. But through the social

catastrophe of 1905 he was able to overcome ‘the revolutionary

temptation’. 35 Bulgakov’s break with Marxism was secure by 1906. He

was now professor of economy at Moscow’s commercial institute

and lecturer at the university, when he argued, in his ‘Karl Marks

kak religioznyi tip’ [‘Karl Marx as a Religious Type’], that Marx’s

basic ‘religious motive’ was ‘militant atheism’ and this was ‘bound

to coarsen the socialist movement’ whereby ‘class hatred takes the

place of universal human love’. 36 In 1906 and 1907 he attempted to

put such universal Christian love into action while serving briefly

as a deputy in the representative assembly, the second Duma, of

1907 and in attempting to establish a Christian Socialist group

which had, amongst its many aims, the desire, as Evtuhov puts it,

‘to unite all Christians regardless of denomination’. 37 However, he

soon became disillusioned by the sectarian infighting and

extremism of the left and realised that a Christian presence in

politics was a remote ideal. 38

Returning to his father’s house

Such searching after heaven on earth could only end in

disillusionment or in a deeper and more permanent return to the

Church. It was such a return that took place in the autumn of 1908

at a remote northern skete. Here he met a starets who received him

like the father who saw the prodigal son at a distance ‘and ran and

embraced him and kissed him’ (Luke 15:20). He told Bulgakov

that his sins were like drops of water in the ocean of the divine

love. Bulgakov left pardoned, reconciled, trembling and cleansed

by his tears. At the skete’s church the next morning he sealed his

conversion with participation in the Eucharist:

I knew that I was a participant in the Covenant, that our Lord

hung on the cross and shed his blood for me and because of

me; that the most blessed meal was being prepared by the

priest for me, and that the gospel narrative about the feast in

the house of Simon the leper and about the woman who loved

much was addressed to me. It was on that day when I partook

of the blessed Body and Blood of my Lord. 39

Spurred by his new found hope in the Church, in 1909 he

contributed an article to the well known collection Vekhi: sbornik

statei o russkoi intelligentsii [Landmarks: A collection of essays on

the Russian intelligentsia] along with six other Christian converts

from Marxism (notably Nicolas Berdiaev, Semen Frank and Peter

Struve) who were dissatisfied with the intelligentsia of their day.

Bulgakov’s essay was entitled ‘Geroizm i podvizhnichestvo (Iz

razmyshlenii o religioznoi prirode russkoi intelligentsii)’

[‘Heroism and the spiritual struggle (reflections on the religious

nature of the Russian intelligentsia)’]40 , and in it he reflected on the

religious ideals of the Russian intelligentsia. He concluded that the

revolution ‘has not achieved what people expected from it’. 41 The

revolution had brought neither national reconciliation nor a

renewed state or economy, but crime and moral chaos. Without

Christian faith, he argued, revolution would only produce a

tyrannical regime. The true bearers of the folk consciousness of

Russia -- Dostoevsky, the Slavophiles and Solov’ev--understood

that the basis of the nation was ‘religio-cultural “messianism”’. 42

This messianic ideal was the conception of Russian Christianity

bringing together all peoples into a true form of internationalism,

which did not reject cultural particularity, that is,

the idea of a universal mission for the Russian Church or

Russian culture. Such an understanding of the national ideal in

no way leads to nationalistic exclusivity; on the contrary, it

alone can provide a positive image on which to ground the idea

of a brotherhood of nations, rather than a non-national,

atomistic ideal of world citizenship or the ‘proletariat’ of all

nations’, who would cut themselves loose from their roots. 43

He called the Russian intelligentsia, therefore, to return to Christ,

to the house of their fathers, the Church, as indeed he himself had

the year before, since ‘He stands at the door and knocks--at the

door of the heart of the intelligentsia, that proud and disobedient

heart. Will his knocking ever be heard?’ 44

Sophia: in dialogue with Florenskii

Bulgakov had not become a staunch member of the

ecclesiastical establishment--far from it. Indeed, he still held, as he

had earlier in 1902, 45 that the Church was in need of reformation

and this can be seen from his meeting, in early 1914, with

Florenskii and Zenkovskii to discuss the founding of a ‘free

theological academy’ in Moscow. This institution, which never

came into existence, would have been free from ecclesiastical

censorship, while still upholding Orthodox doctrine. Perhaps it is

with this ideal institution in mind that he joined Metropolitan

Evlogii’s Orthodox Institute in Paris in 1925.

Although it was increasingly clear that Bulgakov’s interest

had now turned away from political economy to philosophy and

theology, Bulgakov continued to teach political economy and

worked on his doctoral dissertation. Bulgakov’s dissertation,

marked by the influence of Solov’ev and Schelling, was published

in 1912 under the title Filosofiia Khoziaistva [The Philosophy of

Economy].46 In this work Bulgakov began to work out his

sophiology through the notion of economy as man’s free, creative

and spiritual relation to nature. Sophia is the transcendental subject

of all our knowledge, humanity as a whole, the soul of the world. 47

Man, as a part of created nature, works nature and, in working it,

he humanises it through his partaking of Sophia as the creating

activity of the Logos at work in nature. By working nature, man

takes in and reflects in nature the divine energies of the Logos,

which are Sophia herself, and nature herself becomes recreated as

sophic, that is, transfigured and ultimately divinised. 48 Bulgakov later developed the cosmology and anthropology implicit in this philosophy of economics 49 in his Svet nevechernii: sozertsaniia i umozreniia [The Unfading Light: Contemplations and Speculations], a work published in Moscow in 1917.

Bulgakov’s sophiology was influenced by his study of

Schelling, Solov’ev and his friendship with Pavel Florenskii 50 and

it placed at its heart the trinitarian God’s self-revelation to himself

as his own nature of love, which he loves as an eternal object of

love. This love of God, which is love itself, that is, a ‘loving of

love’, 51 is Sophia, and since divine love longs to express itself

perfectly as another, Sophia, as the divine in the created, is the

womb of all creation, which is God’s own self-distancing from

himself. 52

Creation, then, comes to be by a withdrawal of God in

himself to create a space for another not himself whom he can love

as he loves himself, but as simultaneously totally other than

himself. Bulgakov will later think through all the doctrines of the

Church by meditating upon this divine-created reality that is

creation as Sophia. Indeed, he would identify the Church with

Sophia and come to see her as the locus of God’s self-revelation to

himself in the world. Thus, if the Church is the manifestation of a

process that is happening in all of creation, then all of creation is

potentially ecclesial. The impetus for ecumenism becomes clear: in

the reunion of the Churches in the Church is the beginning of the

process by which God becomes all in all.

Orthodox churchman

Yet not only was 1917 an important year for Bulgakov in

terms of the development of his sophiological system, it was also

an important year for him professionally and personally. He was

given a professorship at the university of Moscow and made a lay

delegate of the institutions of higher learning in Moscow to the all-

Russian church council. He would later look back on this council

as a landmark movement in the Church of complete and creative

ecclesiastical reconstruction, as well as a unique manifestation of

the fulness of Russia:

Bulgakov and Florenskii c. 1917: painting by M. V. Nesterov,

Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow

This council, which consisted of the bishops, the lower clergy

and laity, proved a worthy representative of the Russian

Church. It may be said that not only during the revolution with

its endless mass-meetings, but even under the tsars, Russia

never saw such an array of men of piety, wisdom, and

scholarship as this all-Russian council. 53

While the guns were booming, for the Bolsheviks were taking

Moscow, the council accomplished the type of creative act of

ecclesial unity which would later inspire Bulgakov in his attempts

at reunion of the Churches. It voted to restore the Moscow

patriarchate ‘which Peter the Great had abolished, and gave the

Russian Church a head in the person of the great sufferer and

confessor, the holy patriarch Tikhon, whose name is now worthy

of veneration throughout Christendom’. 54 The following year, in June of 1918, by the blessing of the same hierarch, Bulgakov finally gave into the call of his levite blood 55 and was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Fedor of Volokolamsk, appropriately enough, considering his later reverence for the Holy Spirit, 56 on the day of the Holy Spirit on 24

June, 1918, and in the church of the Holy Spirit within the St

Sergius lavra. The experience of the diaconal ordination was like

going through fire, but of the ordination to the priesthood, he

wrote, ‘I can only keep silent’. 57

The combination of this ordination, with the fact that he was a well-known opponent of Bolshevism, forced Bulgakov to retreat with his family for a month’s vacation to his wife’s estate in the Crimea. Later the same year he attempted to return to Moscow without a passport, but the officials in charge turned him back at Kiev. He then returned to the

Crimea where he eventually obtained employment at the university

of Simferopol in 1919, as well as teaching at the local seminary.

After two years, on 13 November 1920, he was deprived of his

university position because he was a priest and thereafter devoted

himself to full-time writing. On 30 December 1922 he left Russia

with other intellectuals--such as Berdiaev, Struve, Frank, Karsavin

and Lossky. They were exiled by Lenin from the new USSR on 1

January 1923.

The reintegration of christendom

The period just before Bulgakov’s exile (1918-22) was an

important period in his intellectual development. 58 Seeing the

collapse of Russian civilisation around him, and the persecution

and fragmentation of the Church, Bulgakov looked for the origin

of the apocalypse in Russia’s past. He saw the origins of Russia’s

contemporary apocalypse in its abortive westernisation by Peter

the Great, which came too late to make any significant changes to

the Russian character. Bulgakov argued that in the person of Prince

Vladimir, who was baptised at Cherson in 988, Russia inherited, in

its culture and faith, the narrowness, indifference and haughtiness

to the outside world of the enclosed world of Byzantine Christianity 59

instead of the zeal, know-how and world-transforming energy of the Latins. 60 Russia never learned from her mistakes. In place of the caesaro-papist regime of ‘holy Russia’, the Russian intelligentsia looked to yet newer utopias. These utopias were borrowed from Western socialism, but they only repeated the same monstrous isolationism and tyranny of the past with a new religion of militant atheism. The state could not defend itself against the intelligentsia except by force and the lack of free thought made a concerted religious response to socialist dreams impossible in a land that was still quite oriental in its mentality.

The Bolsheviks attempted to be European by looking to the universalism of socialist thought, but only ended up being a savagely tyrannical version of all the Muscovite civilization preceding them. 61

Bulgakov saw Russia as doomed by the choice of St Vladimir for the East and not the West: ‘but, in this choice, the historical destiny of Russia revealed itself as a tragedy, a tragedy of solitude and of cultural isolation, and as the way of the cross’. 62 Bulgakov looked for Russia’s redemption from the tragedy of history in an ecumenical Orthodox Church led by the Russian Church, which would bring all people and denominations together in a common front, which would be ‘that Christian pan-humanity of which Dostoevsky spoke in his Pushkin address as the supreme vocation of the Russian people’, a false image of which could be found in the ‘internationalism’ of Bolshevism. 63

In 1918, in the fifth of the contemporary dialogues comprising Na piru bogov [At the Feast of the Gods], Bulgakov saw this unity of a new

international Christianity as coming, not from a union with Roman

Catholicism, but from ‘clinging to every syllable of Orthodox

teaching, for it is only from the depths of the life of the Church that

the spirit of prophecy, the fulness of completion, can come’. 64

Christendom could be reunified, destroying the secularism of

Bolshevism, by a return to Orthodoxy, expressed perfectly but not

fully in the Eastern Church. Bulgakov understood Eastern

Orthodoxy as the basis of an ecumenical Church, which could only

be fulfilled by the respectful reintegration of Western Christianity

– which means Catholicism. What had to be overcome between the

separated parties so that they were both fulfilled was not so much

dogmatic division itself, but the historical and cultural schisms

brought on by the civilisational split between East and West: ‘ever

since the fatal tenth century, something of priceless value has been

lost both to West and East, something that can and must be found

again’. 65

Once the Churches, and so through them all mankind,

fully understood that their unity was in Christ, that is, the truth of

the Church preserved above all in Eastern Orthodoxy, then

dogmatic divisions would be lovingly resolved through the zeal to

reunify. 66 This salvation of the world would emanate from Russia.

In the words of his ‘refugee’, 67

A common enemy is advancing upon the whole of

Christendom, and his advance does away with old quarrels

between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Differences of dogma

never really had any vital importance in the question, and they

can and must be solved amicably, with a sincere and loving

desire for mutual understanding. In reality, neither Catholicism

nor Orthodoxy are quite the same as they were. Something

visible to only a few is happening here: a new sense of an

ecumenical Church is coming to life. If this consciousness

grows and spreads, all the endless disputes, together with the

vast literature on the subject, will quietly disappear. All else

will fade before the irresistible longing for reunion in Christ.

Later, this same ‘refugee’ was to add:

I believe, and with God’s help shall believe to my last hour, that

the truth of the Church is being guarded intact and entire in

Eastern Orthodoxy, and that the Russian Church will shine

forth with resplendent beauty and irresistible force. The light

that will save the world will come from her.68

Flirtation with Catholicism

For a brief period during Bulgakov’s sojourn in Crimea,

while the first of the great persecutions of the Church was raging in

Russia, Bulgakov rejected his earlier understanding that church

reunion, as the efficacious symbol of the world’s reunion with

God, could only come through a return to Orthodoxy led by

Russia. Through the influence of a certain Fr Matthew, 69 a pious

and learned Lithuanian Catholic priest and ‘a convinced and

enlightened papist’, he succumbed to what he later called ‘my

Catholic infection’ and the ‘temptation’ to set his hopes on the

apparent stability of the Roman papacy. 70

It will be remembered that Bulgakov believed that it was

Russia and its Church’s isolation and, further, caesaro-papism

which permitted the inner disintegration of the nation and the

institution of the Church. The Church’s disintegration could be

seen above all in the rise of the so-called ‘Living Church’. If only,

he argued, in the dialogue U sten Khersonesa [At the Walls of

Cherson], written between 25 April and 30 August 1922, Vladimir

had chosen Rome rather than the isolationist Byzantium, the

Russian Church would have remained unified in the face of

persecution by the state since it would have been built on the solid

rock of St Peter.

The contemporary division of the Russian Church, he

contended, could be seen in the historical example of the Old

Believer schism which remained unhealed because Eastern

Orthodoxy lacked a true notion of the identity of the Church with

the bishop. The Raskol would have been impossible in Catholicism

where there cannot dogmatically be two rival and equally orthodox

Churches under the pope as the focal point of Church unity. 71

But what can one do in such a circumstance? One must flee the

tradition of Cherson 72 with its isolationism and fragmentation and

do what Solov’ev did as a definitive act of reunification: ‘To

Rome!’ 73. Russia’s destiny is to bring the second and first Romes

together through its return, as the third Rome, to the first Rome,

this being the universal source of Church unity. 74

Only through a return to Rome can the Church be reunited since Rome is the centre of the Church on earth: ‘all of the roads must leave from

Rome, that centre of the Church of Christ on earth. Yes, it is indeed this truth that I confess’. 75 Bulgakov’s enthusiasm for the idea of Roman supremacy even went to the extent that he quietly mentioned the pope in celebrating the Liturgy for a time. 76 But his desire to become Roman Catholic soon passed. Having fled the Crimea, Bulgakov arrived in Constantinople in late December of 1922 where he encountered on 8 March 1923 a reason not to join the Catholic Church. This reason was in the form of Roman Catholic propaganda against Eastern Orthodox

Christians put forward by the Jesuit priest Stanislas Tyszkiewicz,

whose attempts to help the Russian refugees in Constantinople led

Bulgakov to conclude that Rome did not want the unity of the

Churches except by incorporating them, indeed, latinising them, if

not restoring by such means as the Eastern rite. 77 His rejection of

the Vatican Dogma 78 was certainly encouraged by his visit to

Hagia Sophia. 79

This reminded him of the true unity of the Church, which was not found in an institution, such as the papacy, however spiritualised, but in the world which rested in God, Sophia as ‘the real unity of the world in the Logos, the co-inherence of all with all, the world of divine ideas’. 80

A blessing in disguise

On 11 May 1923 Bulgakov moved to Prague, where gave

lectures at the Russian law institute. Here he saw that as long as

one remembered Sophia as the true source of unity one could never

lean towards any notion of the papacy as the basis of church

unity. 81 Indeed, he saw everything he had written in U sten

Khersonesa as naïve 82 and reproached himself, in his journals, for

having given into the ‘bolshevik-catholic’ 83 temptation to follow

the papacy. Rather he saw it as a ‘world organisation of the lie’. 84

He felt that he could have betrayed Orthodoxy ‘at the hour of Golgotha’. 85 Bulgakov even went so far as to warn Lydia Berdiaeva that Roman Catholicism was a heresy. 86

He did not destroy the manuscript of U sten Khersonesa, he wrote in his

journals, because ‘after my death I also want people to see my sin,

and the Russian misery to its whole extent’. 87 Already, however, during his time in Prague from May to the summer of 1925, he was trying to take intellectual stock of his personal failings and we see him returning with new vigour to the ecumenical vision he had been developing prior to U sten Khersonesa. However, he now saw Russia’s divisions as a blessing in disguise which made her better able to lead the way towards the unification of the Churches as the first step in the salvation of the

world. He argues accordingly in ‘The Old and the New: a study in

Russian religion’ that the Russian Church, knowing division and

their consequences intimately, is better equipped than Rome to

lead all nations 88 to an Orthodox ‘Ecumenical Christianity’ or

‘pan-humanity’. But this unity must be based above all, in an age

of betrayals and cataclysms, on ‘loyalty to tradition, as this is the

only touchstone of Orthodoxy, which has no external supreme

authority. The tradition, however, must be interpreted in all its

breadth and depth, as the Tradition of the one ancient ecumenical

Church from before the schism, which still survives in the

Orthodox Church, even if sometimes concealed by a crust of

national isolation’. 89

It is not surprising that when he looked back on U sten

Khersonesa, in the early 1940s, from the perspective of more than

ten years involvement in ecumenical action, that he saw the whole

episode as a necessary stage in his intellectual development.

Although he was now convinced that the unity of the Church could

not be found in the spiritualising of the papacy, he had come to a

greater appreciation for Western Christianity. He was also

convinced that most of the differences between the Churches are

not dogmatic, but psychological and historical. His vision of the

Church was now based on ‘an ecumenical Orthodoxy, freed from

all provincialism’, which embraced East and West in love without

in any way destroying their particularity and uniqueness. 90

The Church and non-Orthodoxy

Armed with a renewed zeal to put his belief in the need for

reconciliation of the Churches with the one Church into practice,

Bulgakov set out on his ecumenical career proper 91 . This was

inaugurated during his time in Czechoslovakia with his involvement with the first congress of the Russian Christian Student Movement held in Pšerov from 1 to 7 October 1923. The Russian Christian Student Movement, besides favouring the establishment of an Orthodox theological seminary in Western Europe, was open to ecumenism, especially through alliances with other Christian student groups like the Protestant Young Men's Youth Association. 92

Bulgakov encouraged the group in its actions and, together with Metropolitan Evlogii, began working with it towards establishing an Orthodox theological institute in Paris. Metropolitan Evlogii acquired property in Paris for the Orthodox Theological Institute in 1925 and invited Bulgakov to become its professor of dogmatic theology.

Bulgakov came to Paris in the summer of 1925. Here he entered in on a new portion of his life. Bulgakov’s belief that Russian Orthodoxy was the herald of a new universal Church working towards the reconciliation of the Churches was given a prominent platform in his position as the head of the only Orthodox theological institute in Western Europe. The first genuinely ecumenical meeting (insofar as it was interconfessional)

in which Bulgakov participated was the first Anglo-Russian

Congress at St Albans 11 – 15 January 1926. Here he presented an

important paper on ‘the Church and non-Orthodoxy’, which served

as an important plank in his developing ecumenical theology. For

it emphasised that heterodox sacraments can be understood as ‘of

the Church’. 93

We will return to a discussion of this paper in the

second part of this study.

The following year, during August of 1927, Bulgakov and

Metropolitan Evlogii attended the first world conference on Faith

and Order in Lausanne. This conference became one of the

foundational ecumenical gatherings of the twentieth century and

led in due course to the establishment of the World Council of

Churches. Bulgakov read a paper on the Church’s ministry, 94 but made his mark by calling for the scandalised Protestant majority to

embrace the Virgin Mary as the mystical unifier of the universal

Church. 95

Indeed, the subject of mariology, was considered too

divisive, and so was excluded from the questions that could even

be mentioned. 96 Bulgakov’s section chairman, a Congregationalist,

blocked his speech on the subject for a week on the basis that

mariology was not on the conference agenda. 97 The same year he

published two of the volumes of his ‘small trilogy’, the first of

which was on the Theotokos, entitled Kupina neopalimaia: opyt

dogmaticheskogo istolkovaniia nekotorykh chert v pravoslavnom

pochitanii Bogomateri [The Burning Bush: An Essay in the

dogmatic interpretation of some features in the Orthodox

veneration of the Mother of God]. 98 He was appointed,

nevertheless, to the continuation committee that was to prepare the

second conference on Faith and Order.

The founding of the Fellowship

Bulgakov continued his ecumenical work with the founding

of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius at the second Anglo-

Russian Congress, which met at St Albans from 28 December

1927 to 2 January 1928. 99 He was elected vice-president of the

Fellowship and attended all of its meetings until 1939, including

the famous June 1933 meeting, which I shall discuss below in

detail. These conferences, held every year, except from 1940-4,

were usually held in either April or June at Hoddesdon, north of

London.

It should be noted that in the mid 1920s the relationship

between the Orthodox and the Anglicans seemed very close

indeed. In the period 1922-3, the patriarchates of Constantinople

and Jerusalem, as well as the Churches of Cyprus and Sinai,

recognised the validity of Anglican orders, given that it was

believed that the Anglican Church had a valid apostolic

succession. 100

The unity of the Anglican and Orthodox Churches can be seen further in a 1925 Anglican-organised conference in London celebrating the sixteenth centenary of the Nicene council. Amongst those attending were Metropolitans Antonii (Khrapovitskii) and Evlogii (Georgievskii) for the Russians, Patriarch Photius of Alexandria and Patriarch Damian of Jerusalem. It was a time of great hope, so much so that even

amongst the most conservative bishops of the Russian Church

(such as Metropolitan Antonii [Khrapovitskii] and Archbishop

Anastasii [Gribanovskii]) 101 there was the feeling that reunion

between the Anglican Church and Orthodoxy was possible.

Unexpected illness

Further work in promoting the ecumenical cause came

through lecture tours. By the invitation of the Episcopal Church,

Bulgakov travelled to Canada and the United States in 1934 (29

September – 8 December) 102 and to the United States in 1936 (29

September – 6 November) 103 to publicise Orthodoxy and

encourage reunion of the Churches. In 1936 he also participated in

an Anglo-Russian theological conference in Mirfield, as well as the

Fr Sergii Bulgakov towards the end of his life

first pan-Orthodox congress of theologians in Athens. 104 Then in

July 1937 he attended the second world conference of Churches at

Oxford on the theme of ‘Life and Work’ where, given his background in political economy, he served the section of delegates who dealt with ‘The Church and the economic order’. In August of the same year in Edinburgh he attended the long-awaited second world conference on Faith and Order, where he was concerned with ‘The Church’s unity in life and worship’. 105 Once again, he emphasised the importance of the Theotokos 106 and this was noted in the report of his section. Bulgakov was appointed to the continuation committee as he was considered in the ecumenical movement as the most important Orthodox theologian of his

day. 107

These two conferences finalised plans to create the WCC.

At the beginning of March 1939, Bulgakov was diagnosed

with throat cancer. This necessitated two operations in the next

month, and bought about the loss of his voice after the second

operation in April. Bulgakov therefore ceased his ecumenical work

for the sake of his health. But he worked steadfastly on his last

publications. These included the soon to-be-published book on the

Eucharist, and a long addendum to the third part of his great trilogy

Apokalipsis Ioanna: opyt dogmaticheskogo istolkovaniia [The

Apocalypse of John: An attempt at a dogmatic interpretation]. 108

It is as if Bulgakov was preparing himself for death, for after

finishing his work concerning the last things in the spring of 1944

(5 – 6 June) he suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. He struggled on

for almost forty days until he gradually lost consciousness. 109

Frs Kiprian Kern and Vasilii Zenkovskii anointed him about three days

before his death. 110

He began his death agony on the eve of the feast day of the apostles Peter and Paul and he breathed his last on the feast day of the twelve apostles, 12 July 1944. Three days later he was interred in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.

With this brief introduction to the development of Bulgakov’s ecumenical thought we may proceed to an analysis of one issue in his ecumenical work that may serve as a window into his theology. This was the proposal (given first in June 1933) for partial or limited intercommunion between the Anglican and Orthodox Churches in the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius.

It will be considered in the second part of this essay.

E. L. Mascall. Review of L’Église visible selon Serge Bulgakov: Structure hiérarchique

et sacramentelle in Sobornost 3.1 (1981), p.123.

The most important disciples of Bulgakov were Constantin Andronikof and Lev Zander.

Andronikof, besides being Bulgakov’s French translator, wrote notably on Bulgakov in

‘La problématique sophianique’, Le messager orthodoxe 98 (1985), pp.45-56.; ‘Serge

Boulgakov. Evolution prophétique de sa biographie spirituelle’ in The Common Christian

Roots of the European Nations: An International Colloquium in the Vatican (Florence

1982), ii.481-90); and a preface to Kliment Naumov’s invaluable Bibliographie des

Œuvres de Serge Boulgakov (Paris 1984), pp.7-41. Zander is the author of the only

systematic biography and study of Bulgakov’s thought namely, Bog i mir

(Mirosozertsanie ottsa Sergiia Bulgakova) (Paris 1948). Also see Zander’s ‘In Memory

of Father Sergius Bulgakov’, Sobornost 32 (1945), pp.5-12.

A. F. Doobie-Bateman. ‘Footnotes (iii)--Simple and Serious’, Sobornost 13 (March

1938), p.36.

According to Fr Hopko, this was the opinion of Sophie Koulomzina, ‘Bulgakov’s

devoted spiritual daughter’, after Bulgakov had tried to explain his controversial system

to her (Thomas Hopko. ‘Receiving Father Bulgakov’, St Vladimir’s Theological

Quarterly [=SVTQ] 42.3-4 (1998), p.374.

Archbishop Serafim (Sobolev), Zashchita sofianskoi eresi (Sofia 1937).

‘Decision of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia,

Dated 17/30 October 1935, On the New Doctrine of Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov

Concerning Sophia, The Wisdom of God’, tr. Isaac Lambertsen and P. M. Grabbe

‘Concerning The False Teaching of Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov’. A Report to the

Second Pan-Diaspora Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, which met in

Sremski-Karlovtsi, Yugoslavia, 1/14-11/24 August 1938’, tr. Joachim Wertz and ed.

Isaac Lambertsen, Living Orthodoxy 96. (1994), pp.15-28.

For a brief summary and the literature concerning the sophiological controversy

(including V. Lossky’s attack and Bulgakov’s defence) see Paul Valliere’s magisterial

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

Key (Grand Rapids 2001), pp.287-89. Also see Dom C. Lialine’s ‘Le Débat

Sophiologique’, Irénikon 13.2 (1936), pp.168-205 and Alexis Klimoff’s ‘Georges

Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy’, unpublished paper in St Vladimir’s

Seminary Library (VF 000439). This latter study is biased against Bulgakov, but provides

a meticulous archival reconstruction of Florovsky’s part in the controversy.

Militza Zernov argues that Bulgakov’s proposals regarding intercommunion came to

nothing as people were not ready for them: Militza Zernov, ‘Unity and disunity today’,

Sobornost 8.1 (1986), p.23. Nicolas Zernov also believed Bulgakov was prophetic in this

matter, N. Zernov ‘The Significance of the Russian Orthodox Diaspora and its Effect on

the Christian West’, The Orthodox Churches and the West, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford

1976), pp.318-9. Evgeny Lampert, in his 1940 report of Bulgakov’s June 1933 proposals

on reunion through intercommunion and the discussion which followed it, writes of the

feeling surrounding Bulgakov’s proposals: ‘About seven years ago in the life of the

Fellowship a voice sounded which was felt by many as a prophetic one’, E. Lampert,

‘The Fellowship and the Anglican-Orthodox Intercommunion’, Sobornost’ 21 (May

1940), p.10.

Juliana Schmemann, telephone interview (2002).

Alexandre Schmemann, ‘Trois Images’, tr. Nicolas Grekov and Irène Rovere, Le

messager orthodoxe 57 (1972), p.6.

Schmemann, ‘Trois Images’, p.3

Schmemann, ‘Trois Images’, pp.5-6.

Schmemann, ‘Trois Images’, p.5. After having had the passage in question of

Schmemann’s reminiscences read to her, Juliana Schmemann claimed that this was Fr

Schmemann being characteristically tongue in cheek (telephone interview 2002).

Schmemann, ‘Trois Images’, pp.5-6.

Schmemann, ‘Trois Images’, pp.13-14.

Juliana Schmemann, telephone interview (2002).

There is remarkably little specifically on Bulgakov’s ecumenical thought. See the

excellent study of Barbara Hallensleben: ‘“Intercommunion Spirituelle” entre Orient et

Occident. Le Théologien Orthodoxe russe Serge Boulgakov (1871-1944),’ Le

Christianisme Nuée de Témoins--Beauté du Témoignage, ed. Guido Vergauwen

(Fribourg 1998), pp. 87-104. Also see Henry Hill, ‘Le Père Serge Boulgakov et

l’intercommunion’, Istina 2 (1969), pp. 246-50. For a bibliography of Bulgakov’s

ecumenical work with commentary see Zander, Bog i mir i.159-73.

‘“We feel it is dangerous, not glorious”, said Fr Bulgakov at the Fellowship

Conference in 1935’ (Zernov and Lampert, ‘The Fellowship and the Anglican-Orthodox

Intercommunion’, p.12).

Doobie-Bateman, ‘Footnotes (iii)--Simple and Serious’, p.36.

The following account is based largely on Bulgakov’s posthumous Avtobiograficheskie

zametki [Autobiographical Notes], (Paris 1946), portions of which can be found

translated in Pain and Zernov, ed., Sergius Bulgakov: A Bulgakov Anthology

(Philadelphia 1976), pp.1ff.); Andronikof’s preface in Naumov, Bibliographie des

Œuvres de Serge Boulgakov, pp. 7-41 and the chronology which follows it (pp.43-48);

Winston F. Crum, ‘Sergius N. Bulgakov: From Marxism to Sophiology’, SVTQ 27.1

(1983), pp.3-25; Catherine Evtuhov The Cross and the Sickle: Sergei Bulgakov and the

Fate of Russian Religious Philosophy (Ithaca and London 1997); and Archbishop Rowan

Williams’ invaluable series of translations with commentaries, Sergii Bulgakov: Towards

a Russian Political Theology (Edinburgh 1999).

Bulgakov, At the Feast of the Gods: Contemporary Dialogues – Dialogue the Fifth, tr.

A. G. Pashkov, The Slavonic Review 1:3 (March 1923), p. 617. The latter article is part

of a collection concerning the revolution, its effect on Russia and its origins in Russian

history: ‘Na piru bogov. Pro i contra: Sovremennye dialogi.’ Iz Glubiny. De Profundis.

Sbornik statei o russkoi revoliutsii (Moscow and Petrograd 1918), pp. 111-69.

Bulgakov, ‘Tretii tom Kapitala K. Marksa’, Russkaia mysl’ 3 (1895), pp. 1-20. On

this whole period see Evtuhov, The Cross and the Sickle, pp. 28-37.

For the mystical experiences leading to Bulgakov’s conversion see his

Autobiographical Notes (Pain and Zernov, Sergius Bulgakov: A Bulgakov Anthology,

pp.10-12).

This appeared first in Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii 35 (1896), pp.575-611. Later it

was collected in Ot marksizma k idealizmu: sbornik statei (1896-1903) [From Marxism to

Idealism: A Collection of Articles] (St Petersburg 1903), pp.1-34.

Pain and Zernov, Sergius Bulgakov: A Bulgakov Anthology, p.5.

See Evtuhov, The Cross and the Sickle, pp. 33-6 and Williams, Sergii Bulgakov:

Towards a Russian Political Theology, pp.5-6.

Pain and Zernov, Sergius Bulgakov: A Bulgakov Anthology, p.6.

Bulgakov, ‘Samoderzhavie i pravoslavie’, Osvobozhdenie 1902, 4-6, cited in Evtuhov,

The Cross and the Sickle, p.90.

Bulgakov, ‘Samoderzhavie i pravoslavie’, cited in Evtuhov, The Cross and the Sickle,

p.90.

ibid.

Bulgakov, ‘Ivan Karamazov as a Philosophical Type’, Pain and Zernov, Sergius

Bulgakov: A Bulgakov Anthology, p.39 (partial translation). ‘Ivan Karamazov kak

filosofskii tip’ appeared first in Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii 61 (1902), pp.826-63.

Bulgakov, ‘Vladimir Solovyov: Scholar and Seer’ (Pain and Zernov, Sergius Bulgakov:

A Bulgakov Anthology, p.47, partial translation).

See Evtuhov, The Cross and the Sickle, pp.86ff.

Avtobiograficheskie zametki (Paris 1946), p.28.

Bulgakov, ‘Karl Marx as a Religious Type’, Pain and Zernov, Sergius Bulgakov: A

Bulgakov Anthology, p.60, partial translation. A full translation exists, Karl Marx as a

Religious Type: His Relation to the Religion of Anthropotheism of L. Feuerbach, tr. Luba

Barna (Belmont MA. 1979).

Evtuhov, The Cross and the Sickle, p.101.

Williams, Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political Theology, pp.58-60.

Pain and Zernov, Sergius Bulgakov: A Bulgakov Anthology, p.12. This passage gives

one some idea of the personal significance of the Eucharist for Bulgakov. The Eucharist

was at the heart of Bulgakov’s thought. This may be seen in two essays from the 1930s

which present a sophiological eucharistic theology: see The Holy Grail and the Eucharist.

tr. Boris Jakim (Hudson NY 1997). A book-length manuscript from 1940 entitled

Evkharisticheskaia Zhertva [The Eucharistic Sacrifice] is to be published in Moscow by

Russkii put’ in late 2002-early 2003.

See Williams, Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political Theology (pp.55-112) for

translation of the essay and commentary. A full translation of the collection exists:

Signposts: A Collection of Articles on the Russian intelligentsia, tr. Marshall S. Shatz and

Judith E. Zimmermann (Irvine 1986).

Williams, Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political Theology, p.69.

Williams, Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political Theology, p.105.

Williams, Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political Theology, p.112.

See Evtuhov, The Cross and the Sickle, p.90.

See the recent translation of Catherine Evtuhov with its excellent introduction and

notes: Philosophy of Economy: The World as Household, tr. and ed. Catherine Evtuhov

(New Haven and London 2000). For an analysis of Bulgakov’s developing sophiology

with reference to Philosophy of Economy and other texts of the period see Evtuhov, The

Cross and the Sickle, pp.158-86; also Valliere, Modern Russian Theology, pp.253-78.

Bulgakov, Philosophy of Economy, p.130.

Bulgakov, Philosophy of Economy, pp. 144ff.

See Evtuhov, The Cross and the Sickle, p.172.

See Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, tr. Boris Jakim (Princeton

1997), pp.231-83. Robert Slesinski, however, cautions us in not reading Bulgakov’s

more developed sophiological system anachronistically back into the ‘sketches’ of

Florensky on sophiology (Pavel Florensky: A Metaphysics of Love [Crestwood 1984],

pp.195-96 and pp.169-213 for an elaboration of Florensky’s sophiology). The work of

Bulgakov which perhaps shows the strongest influence of Florensky is Svet nevechernii:

sozertsaniia i umozreniia [Unfading Light: Contemplations and Speculations] (Moscow

1917) of which there exists a complete translation in French: La Lumière sans déclin, tr.

Constantin Andronikof (Lausanne 1984). Selections from the text in English translation

(with introduction) can be found in Williams, Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian

Political Theology, pp.113-61. In Williams’ excellent introduction to his translation of

The Unfading Light he cautiously argues for Florensky’s influence on that work (pp.113-

31).

Williams, Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political Theology, p.134.

See Williams, Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political Theology, pp.127-8.; For

an elaboration of Bulgakov’s sophiology following on the heels of the 1935-7

‘sophiological controversy’ see his Sophia, The Wisdom of God: An Outline of

Sophiology (London 1937).

Bulgakov, ‘The Old and the New: A Study in Russian Religion’, The Slavonic Review

2.6 (1924), p.500. This piece has many of the same preoccupations as the work of the

Crimean period of Bulgakov (1918-22) in its attempt to fathom Russia’s collapse through

an analysis of Russian history. It appears to have been written at the end of his time in

Constantinople or while in Prague.

Bulgakov, ‘The Old and the New’, p.501.; See also Bulgakov, ‘The Guardian of the

House of the Lord (to the memory of the Most Holy Patriarch Tikhon). An address

delivered at Prague 27 April 1925’, tr. D. Mirsky, The Slavonic Review 4.10. (1925),

pp.156-64.

The recurring ‘levitical blood’ trope is not mine, but that of Bulgakov (Pain and

Zernov, Sergius Bulgakov: A Bulgakov Anthology, p.6).

See Bulgakov’s Uteshitel’ [The Comforter] (Paris

1936 (part 2 of O

Bogochelovechestve)). A fragment of this work exists in English translation in Pain and

Zernov, Sergius Bulgakov: A Bulgakov Anthology, pp.139-43. A full French translation

exists: Le Paraclet, tr. Constantin Andronikof (Lausanne 1996).

Pain and Zernov, Sergius Bulgakov: A Bulgakov Anthology, p.8.

Bulgakov wrote a tremendous amount at this period: Die Tragödie der Philosophie

(Darmstadt 1927); Filosofiia imeni [The Philosophy of the Name] (ed. Lev Zander, Paris

1953: French translation--Philosophie du verbe et du nom, tr. Constantin Andronikof,

(Lausanne 1991) to mention only two full-length studies.

Bulgakov, Sous les remparts de Chersonèse (Geneva 1999), pp.30-31.

Bulgakov, Sous les remparts de Chersonèse, p.32.

‘Russia’s disease is at once a false Europeanism and a false Muscovitism’ (Bulgakov,

‘The Old and the New’, p.496).

Bulgakov, Sous les remparts de Chersonèse, p.31.

Bulgakov, ‘The Old and the New’, p.497.

Bulgakov, At the Feast of the Gods, p.617.

Bulgakov, At the Feast of the Gods, p.618.

As we shall see in part two of this study, Bulgakov held this view (which is clearly not

a version of the branch theory), except for a brief period, up until his death. It is made

explicit in his The Orthodox Church (Crestwood 1988), pp.187-92. This work was

published in French in 1932, in English in 1935, and in Russian only in 1965.

Bernard Marchadier argues that the character of the refugee in the dialogues Na piru

bogov and U sten Khersonesa is a mouthpiece for Bulgakov himself (see Marchadier’s

introduction in Sous les remparts de Chersonèse, pp.10-11).

Bulgakov, At the Feast of the Gods, pp.616-18.

Named in a journal entry of 12 November 1923, cited in Marchadier, introduction,

Sous les remparts de Chersonèse, p.5.

Bulgakov, Avtobiograficheskie zametki (Paris 1946), pp.48-50 (cited in Lev Zander’s

introduction to The Vatican Dogma (South Canaan PA. 1959), p.4).

Bulgakov, Sous les remparts de Chersonèse, pp.102-5

Bulgakov, Sous les remparts de Chersonèse, p.45.

From a letter to Pavel Florensky (dated 1 September 1922), describing how he realised

that papal authority was the solution to the contemporary upheaval of Russia (cited in

Bulgakov, Sous les remparts de Chersonèse, p.33n).

Bulgakov, Sous les remparts de Chersonèse, pp.287-91.

Bulgakov, Sous les remparts de Chersonèse, p.288.

Mentioned in a journal entry of 11 May 1922 (cited in Marchadier, introduction, Sous

les remparts de Chersonèse, p.11).

Marchadier, introduction, Sous les remparts de Chersonèse, p.14.

Bulgakov later worked out his rejection of ‘papism’ theologically in his ‘Does

Orthodoxy Possess An Outward Authority of Dogmatic Infallibility?’ (The Christian East

7.1 (April 1926): pp.12-24); Sviatye Petr i Ioann: dva pervoapostola [Peter and John,

the two chief apostles] (Paris 1926); and ‘Ocherki ucheniia o tserkvi. IV. O Vatikanskom

dogmate [Essays of the Doctrine on the Church. IV. On the Vatican Dogma]’, Put’,

1929, 15, pp.39-80 and 16, pp.19-48. An English translation exists: The Vatican Dogma

(South Canaan PA. 1959)). Bulgakov argues in 1929 against any rapprochement with

Rome by the Orthodox as long the doctrine of papal infallibility is maintained.

So Marchadier argues in his introduction, Sous les remparts de Chersonèse, p.17.

Pain and Zernov, Sergius Bulgakov: A Bulgakov Anthology, p.13.

Journal entry of 12 November 1923, cited in Marchadier, introduction, Sous les

remparts de Chersonèse, p.17.

Journal entry of 26 June 1923, cited in Marchadier, introduction, Sous les remparts de

Chersonèse, p.14.

Journal entry of 12 November 1923, cited in Marchadier, introduction, Sous les

remparts de Chersonèse, p.15.

Journal entry of 7 November 1923, cited in Marchadier, introduction, Sous les

remparts de Chersonèse, p.17.

Journal entry of 9 December 1923, cited in Marchadier, introduction, Sous les remparts

de Chersonèse, p.15.

Journal entry of 22 February 1924, cited in Marchadier, introduction, Sous les remparts

de Chersonèse, p.16.

Journal entry of 19 December 1923, cited in Marchadier, introduction, Sous les

remparts de Chersonèse, p.18.

‘It may be said that the Roman Church, having remained unshattered in its immobility

throughout history, is much less fitted to approach the question [‘of true collective

reconciliation’] practically than is the Orthodox Church’ (Bulgakov, ‘The Old and the

New’, p.510).

Bulgakov, ‘The Old and the New’, p.497.

Bulgakov, Avtobiograficheskie zametki (Paris 1946), pp.48-50 (cited in Lev Zander’s

introduction to The Vatican Dogma (South Canaan, Pa., 1959). p.5).

I have based my chronology on Crum, ‘Sergius N. Bulgakov: From Marxism to

Sophiology’, pp.9-11 and Naumov, Bibliographie des Œuvres de Serge Boulgakov,

pp.43-8.

John Strickland, ‘Ecumenical Ecclesiology in the Russian Diaspora: Reflections on the

Cases of Antony, Bulgakov, and Florovsky’ (unpublished paper, 2001), p.14. My thanks

to Dr Strickland for use of his work.

The full title of this study, published in Put’ in 1926 (4.3-26) is ‘Ocherki ucheniia o

tserkvi (iii) Tserkov’ i “Inoslavie”’ [‘Essays of the Doctrine on the Church: The Church

and “Non-Orthodoxy”’]. It was translated in the same period: ‘Outlines of the Teaching

about the Church--The Church and Non-Orthodoxy’, American Church Monthly 30.6

(1931), pp.411-23. and 31.1 (1932): pp.13-26. ‘Tserkov’ i “Inoslavie”’ is remarkably

similar to Florovsky’s frequently cited ‘Limits of the Church’ (Church Quarterly Review

11 (Oct. 1933): pp.117-31). It is entirely possible that Florovsky read Bulgakov’s article

in Put’ or the American Church Monthly, although he did not attend the 1926 conference.

Bulgakov’s article was the third installment of a series of four essays in Put’ concerning

the doctrine of the Church in Orthodoxy (Naumov, Bibliographie des Œuvres de Serge

Boulgakov, pp.96-7).

Bulgakov, ‘The Church’s Ministry’ in The Orthodox Church in the Ecumenical

Movement. Documents and Statements 1902-1975, ed. Constantin G. Pantelos (Geneva

1978), pp.166-71.

Valliere, Modern Russian Theology, p.283.; See Bulgakov’s ‘The Papal Encyclical and

the Lausanne Conference’, The Christian East 9.3 (1928), p.127.

Bulgakov, ‘The Question of the Veneration of the Virgin Mary at the Edinburgh

Conference’ which includes a short introduction and ‘A Brief Statement of the Place of

the Virgin Mary in the Thought and Worship of the Orthodox Church’, Sobornost’ 12

(1937): p.28.

Valliere, Modern Russian Theology, p.283.

Only a small portion of this is available in English translation in Pain and Zernov,

Sergius Bulgakov: A Bulgakov Anthology, pp.90-96. A full French translation exists: Le

Buisson Ardent, tr. Constantin Andronikof (Lausanne 1990). The second volume and

third volumes of the small trilogy are: Drug zhenikha (Io. 3:28-30): o pravoslavnom

pochitanii Predtechi [The Friend of the Bridegroom (John 3:28-30): On the Orthodox

Veneration of the Forerunner] (Paris 1927) of which there is also a French translation,

L’ami de l’époux, tr. Constantin Andronikof (Lausanne 1997); and Lestvitsa iakovlia: ob

angelakh [Jacob’s Ladder: On the Angels] (Paris 1929: French translation, L’Echelle de

Jacob, tr. Constantin Andronikof (Lausanne 1987).

For the Fellowship’s history see N. Zernov’s Orthodox Encounter: the Christian East

and the Ecumenical Movement (London 1961), pp.190-5), and, with Militza Zernov, The

Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius: A Historical Memoir (Oxford 1979).

100

‘Constantinople and Anglican Ordinations--Letter of the Oecumenical Patriarch to the

Archbishop of Canterbury’ and ‘Encyclical on Anglican Ordinations from the

Oecumenical Patriarch to the Presidents of the Particular Eastern Orthodox Churches’,

The Christian East 3.3 (1922), pp.111-16. See the response of Canterbury to

Constantinople in ‘Constantinople and Anglican Orders’, The Christian East 3.4 (1922),

p.150; ‘Acceptance of Anglican Ordinations By Jerusalem and Cyprus’ and Metropolitan

Germanos of Thyateira’s, ‘Anglican and Orthodox Reunion’, The Christian East 4.3

(1923), pp.120-8. The acceptance by Constantinople on 28 July 1922 of the validity of

Anglican ordinations was largely through the work of the Halki theologian P. Comnenos

(‘Acceptance of Anglican Ordinations By Jerusalem and Cyprus’, p.123 and ‘Anglican

and Orthodox Reunion’, p.125) whose treatise On Anglican Orders was influential (an

excerpt of the work in translation existed in the period: P. Comnenos, ‘Anglican

Ordinations’, tr. J. A. Douglas, The Christian East 2.3 (1921), pp.107-16).

101

Metropolitan Antony not only attended an ecumenical service at the 1925 conference

in celebration of Nicaea, but also lauded the notion of the unity of Christianity (not of the

Church--another reality entirely), based on shared truths. On the same trip he visited an

Anglican seminary in Canterbury where he addressed the seminarians as ‘Young chosen

of God’, although he was supposed to have stated at the same conference, that the

Anglicans, like all other non-Orthodox Christian confessions were deprived of

‘hierarchical grace’ (Archbishop Nikon (Rklitskii), Zhizneopisanie Blazhenneishego

Antoniia, Mitropolita Kievskogo i Galitskogo (New York 1956-69), vii.80ff, cited in

Andrei Psarev, ‘The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Ecumenical Movement--

1920-1940 : An Historical Evaluation’, unpublished paper (2002), pp.23-5. My thanks to

Andrei Psarev for the use of his work. Archbishop Anastasii, later the chief hierarch of

the Russian Church Abroad, is reported to have addressed British pilgrims visiting the

mount of Olives convent in Jerusalem in terms clearly pointing to his belief that the

Anglican Church could become united with Orthodoxy: ‘We felt in the Anglican Church

the breath of the “ecumenical” beginning, that always was alive in her concealed depths

[...]. The leaven [of the Anglo-Catholic movement] inspires the spirit of the Anglican

Church, making her alive and vital, and leads her to unification with Orthodoxy’

(‘Anglikane i Pravoslavnye’, Tserkovnye vedomosti 11-12 (1926), p.6, cited in Psarev,

pp.26-7.

102

Bulgakov, ‘Social Teaching in Modern Russian Orthodox Theology’ given as the

twentieth annual Hale lecture at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston,

Illinois on 7 November 1934, Orthodoxy and Modern Society, ed. Robert Bird, (New

Haven Conn. 1995), pp.5-25 and P. T. Anderson’s, ‘Father Sergius Bulgakov in America

By His Travelling Companion’, Sobornost’ 1 (1935), pp.38-44. Bulgakov kept a diary

on this trip, which was published in his Avtobiograficheskie zametki (Paris 1991), pp.114-

35.

103

‘Professor Bulgakov’s Visit to the U.S.A.’, Sobornost’ 8 (1936), pp.4-5.

104

Bulgakov, ‘Thesen über die Kirche’, Procès-Verbaux du premier congrès de

théologie orthodoxe à Athènes, 29 Novembre -- 6 Décembre 1936, ed. Hamilcar S.

Alivisatos (Athens 1939), pp.127-34.

105

Bulgakov, ‘The Hierarchy and the Sacraments’, The Ministry and the Sacraments:

Report of the Theological Commission Appointed by the Continuation Committee of the

Faith and Order Movement Under the Chairmanship of The Right Rev. Arthur Cayley

Headlam, ed. Roderic Dunkerley (London 1937), pp.95-123.

106

Bulgakov writes of the veneration of the Virgin Mary: ‘it is the central, though hidden,

nerve of the whole movement towards reconciliation among the divided confessions. The

way in which the whole Protestant world suddenly ceased to venerate the Virgin Mary

was the most mysterious and real spiritual event of the age of the Reformation. This lack

of feeling continues up to the present time, and one of the most important preliminary

conditions of the success of reconciliation is to overcome it’ (Bulgakov, ‘The Question of

the Veneration of the Virgin Mary at the Edinburgh Conference’, p.28).

107

Valliere, Modern Russian Theology, p.286.

108

The title of the trilogy (recalling Solov’ev’s famous lectures of the same name) is

usually translated ‘On Godmanhood’ or sometimes ‘On Divine Humanity’. I am

following the translation suggested by Valliere in Modern Russian Theology, p. 11-5.

The first part of the trilogy is Agnets bozhii [The Lamb of God] (Paris 1933) (Portions of

it are translated into English in Williams, Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political

Theology, pp. 163-227. There is a French translation, Du Verbe Incarné – L’Agneau de

Dieu, tr. Constantin Andronikof (Lausanne 1982). The second part is Uteshitel’ [The

Comforter] (Paris 1936), of which a French translation exists, Le Paraclet, tr. Constantin

Andronikof (Lausanne 1996). Nevesta agntsa was finished in 1938, but published

posthumously in Paris in 1945. A partial English translation exists by Boris Jakim. This

was published in 2001 (Edinburgh and Grand Rapids) A French translation also exists,

L’Épouse de l’Agneau: La Création, l’homme, l’Église et la fin, tr. Constantin

Andronikof (Lausanne 1984).

109

This work was published posthumously in 1948, and a very small section of it is

translated in Pain and Zernov, Sergius Bulgakov: A Bulgakov Anthology, pp.157-60.

After his second operation, Bulgakov wrote (between July and October 1939) another

piece concerning the last things, ‘Sofiologiia... Smerti...[‘The Sophiology of Death’],

Vestnik Russkogo Khristianskogo Dvizheniia 127 (1978): pp.18-41 and 128 (1979),

pp.13-32.

110

For an account of Bulgakov’s death see Sr Joanna Reitlinger, ‘The Final Days of

Father Sergius Bulgakov: A Memoir’ in (Sergius Bulgakov: Apocatastasis and

Transfiguration, tr. Boris Jakim. (Haven, Conn. 1995), pp.31-53). This translation is

excerpted from Vestnik Russkogo Khristianskogo Dvizheniia 159 (1990), pp.51-79.