06 — Florovsky and Bulgakov

For roughly twenty years Florovsky and Fr. Sergius Bulgakov were colleagues on the same small faculty in Paris, and for most of that time Florovsky believed that Bulgakov’s theology was the culminating error of a two-century deformation of Russian thought. He never published a refutation of it. He signed one document — a minority report of 6 July 1936 — and made his case indirectly, in essays on creation where the sophiological alternative is refused without being named. This section covers the relationship and the conduct; the sophiology controversy itself belongs to the Bulgakov collection, and is linked rather than duplicated.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration)

What This Section Covers

The Colleague and the Critic — the relationship, the substance of Florovsky’s objection (which was methodological before it was doctrinal), and how it is expressed in his constructive work.
The Minority Report of 1936 and the Silence — the one documented act, the readings of his restraint, and the scholarly dispute about what the restraint means.

Where the Controversy Itself Is Treated

Deliberately not here. The sophiology controversy — what sophiology claims, the Moscow ukazy of 1935, the ROCOR determination, Seraphim (Sobolev)’s indictment, Lossky’s Spor o Sofii, Bulgakov’s defence, the bishops’ conference of 1937, the modern reappraisal — is set out in full in the Bulgakov collection, and duplicating it here would produce two accounts liable to drift apart. Go to:

Fr. Sergius Bulgakov — the master README
What Sophiology Claims — the doctrine
The Condemnations of 1935 — the Moscow and Karlovci acts
Evlogy’s Commission and the 1937 Conference — the commission Florovsky sat on
The Critics: Lossky, Florovsky, and After — Florovsky’s objection in its comparative setting
The Reappraisal: Williams, Valliere, Gallaher — the other side
Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy — the hub essay

This section’s account of the facts is the same as those files’ and is written to agree with them.

The Facts, Stated Once

So that the two content files can argue rather than establish:

Bulgakov (1871–1944) was the senior figure at the St Sergius Institute in Paris; Florovsky (1893–1979) taught patristics there from the mid-1920s. Bulgakov was twenty-two years the elder and was, in the emigration’s eyes, the great man.
In 1933 Florovsky opposed Bulgakov’s proposal for partial Eucharistic intercommunion with Anglicans within the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius (Père Stéphane Bigham, “Fr. George Florovsky: Ecumenist?”, stephanebigham.com).
In 1935 the Moscow Patriarchate and, separately, the ROCOR Council of Bishops censured Bulgakov’s sophiology.
Metropolitan Evlogy appointed a commission chaired by Archpriest Sergius Chetverikov. It divided: a majority report (June 1936) rejecting the charge of heresy while registering serious objections; and a minority report of 6 July 1936, prepared by Chetverikov and signed by Florovsky, holding that Bulgakov’s views “provoke great anxiety” and endangered Orthodox thinking (Evlogy’s Commission and the 1937 Conference; Alexis Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, nos. 1–2 [2005]: 67–100).
A conference of the jurisdiction’s bishops, 26–29 November 1937, found the accusation of heresy unproven but Bulgakov’s opinions seriously flawed. No formal condemnation was issued in his own jurisdiction.
Florovsky never published a direct refutation of Bulgakov. Ways of Russian Theology (1937) makes the case against the whole sophiological tradition without making Bulgakov the personal target.

Why This Gets Its Own Section

Because it is the most scrutinized episode of Florovsky’s life, because the readings of it range from admiration to accusation, and because the repository’s rule requires reporting what is documented, with sources, without concealment (METHODOLOGY §4.2). It is also, straightforwardly, the human centre of the story: two priests in a tiny émigré institution, one of them convinced the other was leading the Church astray, working in the same building for two decades.

References

Klimoff, Alexis. “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy.” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, nos. 1–2 (2005): 67–100.
Gavrilyuk, Paul L. Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. (Chs. 5–6.)
Florovsky, Georges. Puti russkogo bogosloviya. Paris, 1937.