Unfading Light: Contemplations and
speculations
Sergius Bulgakov
Eerdmans £31.99
(978-0-8028-6711-7)
Church Times Bookshop £28.80 (Use voucher code
CT152)
SERGIUS BULGAKOV was one of the giants of the early ecumenical
movement, a familiar figure in inter-Church meetings, a founding
father of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, and
universally recognised in these circles as a saintly and brilliant,
if sometimes impenetrably obscure, personality.
Non-Orthodox who knew his theology primarily through one or two
short books in translation and a scattering of articles and
lectures sometimes struggled to see quite why he was such a
massively controversial figure in his own Church - although they
would have appreciated that his pleas for limited intercommunion
were not perhaps best calculated to make him popular with some of
his Orthodox colleagues.
They would also have known relatively little of his remarkable
intellectual history before his exile from the Soviet Union - a
leading Marxist economist, whose reconversion to Christianity, and
spirited and sophisticated polemic against Bolshevism, attracted
personal attacks from Lenin himself.
Until fairly recently, not much of this had changed. But in the
past 15 years or so there has been an explosion of interest in
Bulgakov throughout Europe and North America. Much of this has been
fuelled by a series of English translations of his main works; and
the present book is the latest in this succession. It represents a
crucial period in Bulgakov's evolution, the bridge between his
immediate post-Marxist work (which included a brilliant and
idiosyncratic Philosophy of Economics, which could do with
some intensive study just at the moment), and the great volumes on
systematic theology which he wrote in Paris in the 1920s and
1930s.
It is his first really substantial exposition of the idea that
he was most associated with, the metaphysics of "Sophia". It was
this that triggered his condemnation for heresy by the Patriarchate
of Moscow in 1936 - although the condemnation had at least as much
to do with politics as it had with theology. Recent discussion has
done much to clarify the complexities of his thinking on this. Most
would now agree that the more extravagant accusations are
unfounded. This book is essential for understanding what he is
about.
The "Sophia" philosophy is a way of speaking about God's
self-giving involvement in the world, divine love generating its
image not only in humanity, but in the whole scheme of the order
and interdependence of creation. Divine wisdom exists in both
eternal and cosmic shape; when we engage in art, economics,
politics, or liturgy, we have at least a potential share in this
cosmic energy. The book offers a very full and rich anchoring of
this in Patristic and Byzantine thought, and an exposition of its
application in all these aspects of human life.
Written in a dense and rather Germanic style, with plenty of
excursuses on the history of philosophy and theology, it is, none
the less, a work of real intellectual and spiritual excitement. It
is a cause for celebration that it is at last available in English.
The translator has done a heroic job - although there are passages
that still read a bit awkwardly or mechanically - and provides a
very good introduction to Bulgakov's evolving thought.
This is a welcome addition not only to materials on Russian
Christianity, but to resources for a new theological metaphysic
capable of dealing effectively with issues around the sacredness of
the material, the part played by the imagination in the life of
faith, and the imperatives of political and economic justice.
The Rt Revd Lord Williams of Oystermouth is the Master of
Magdalene College, Cambridge, and a former Archbishop of
Canterbury.