04 — Sophia and the Russian Religious Renaissance

Letter Ten of The Pillar and Ground of the Truth is titled “Sophia,” and it is the most contested thing Florensky wrote. Gathering the scriptural Wisdom texts, the dedications of the great churches of Kiev and Novgorod, the Russian Sophia iconography, and the liturgical material, he presented Sophia as a real principle — the ideal unity and “great root” of creation, the Church, the Theotokos, the virginal integrity of the person — and ventured the phrase “the fourth hypostatic element,” which Bulgakov afterward spent his life avoiding and which supplied his critics with their sharpest charge.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Moscow Theological Academy; the Russian religious renaissance)

Three precisions govern this section and are stated here so that they are not missed.

  1. Sophiology is Florensky’s own theological work, not the teaching of the Orthodox Church. It is expounded here accurately and sympathetically and attributed to him throughout.
  2. The formal condemnations of 1935 targeted Bulgakov’s system, not Florensky’s letter. Moscow Ukaz No. 1651 of 7 September 1935, the ROCOR Determination of 17/30 October 1935, and Moscow Ukaz No. 2267 of 27 December 1935 all name Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov and his doctrine. No official act of any Orthodox Church has ever condemned Florensky by name. That detail belongs to the Bulgakov collection and is deferred to it: see The Condemnations of 1935.
  3. Florensky nonetheless belongs to the same current. He is a source of Bulgakov’s sophiology, Bulgakov said so, and the “fourth hypostasis” vocabulary is his. To say that the condemnations did not name him is a matter of record; it is not a claim that his Sophia is unproblematic, and the honest statement of the question is given in the second file per §4.2.

Files in This Section

File Description
Florensky’s Sophia Letter Ten: the sources, what he actually says, the iconographic argument, and the “fourth hypostatic element”
Florensky, Bulgakov, and the Assessment of Sophiology The friendship, the differences between the two sophiologies, what 1935 did and did not touch, and how the tradition has assessed him — both sides named

See Also