The Moscow Ukazy of 1935

Two decrees of the Moscow Patriarchate, issued under Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) as deputy locum tenens of the patriarchal throne: Ukaz No. 1651 of 7 September 1935, which characterized Bulgakov’s teaching on Sophia as alien to the Orthodox faith and as an arbitrary perversion of its dogmas, warned clergy and faithful against it, and called for its correction; and Ukaz No. 2267 of 27 December 1935, addressed to Metropolitan Eleutherius of Lithuania and Vilnius, which confirmed the first and extended the criticism to Bulgakov’s teaching on the two natures and single hypostasis of Christ. Neither pronounced him personally a heretic; he was not heard before either was issued.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox — the Moscow Patriarchate

Ukaz No. 1651, 7 September 1935

The first act was Ukaz No. 1651, dated 7 September 1935, issued by the Moscow Patriarchate under Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), who was then governing the Russian Church as deputy locum tenens of the patriarchal throne (Ukaz No. 1651, 7 September 1935; text with Bulgakov’s replies in Bulgakov, O Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei [On Sophia the Wisdom of God], Paris: YMCA-Press, 1935; Alexis Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, nos. 1–2 [2005]: 67–100; and the repository hub, Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy).

Its substance was twofold.

It characterized the teaching as alien (chuzhdoe) to the Orthodox faith — an eccentric and arbitrary perversion of the Church’s dogmas, the product of a private philosophical construction rather than of the Church’s mind. Notably, and this is the precision on which the whole subsequent history turns, the ukaz stopped short of a formal charge of heresy and did not pronounce Bulgakov personally a heretic (Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005; Ukaz No. 1651, in O Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei, 1935).

It warned clergy and faithful against the teaching and called on Bulgakov to correct his views (Ukaz No. 1651, 7 September 1935, in O Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei, 1935; Klimoff, 2005).

The document was drafted in Moscow at a moment when the Moscow Patriarchate was operating under the most extreme pressure in its history — the height of the Soviet anti-religious campaign, two years before the Great Terror in which the surviving Russian episcopate would be largely annihilated (see The New Martyrs of Russia). What weight to assign to that circumstance is precisely a question on which Orthodox opinion has differed since 1935, and this collection does not settle it. What the circumstance does not do is unmake the act: the ukaz was issued, in the name of the Moscow Patriarchate, and it has never been rescinded.

Bulgakov Was Not Heard

One procedural fact belongs to the record and is not in dispute among historians of the controversy: Bulgakov was not heard before the decree was issued (Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005; Bulgakov, O Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei, Paris, 1935). No canonical process was opened against him, no charges were served on him in advance, and he had no opportunity to answer before the ukaz went out. His reply took the form of formal memoranda (dokladnye zapiski) addressed to his own diocesan hierarch, Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky) — the only bishop who had jurisdiction over him — and these were published together with the ukaz in the brochure O Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1935) (see Bulgakov’s Replies and the Berdyaev Polemic).

Reporting this is not a defense of Bulgakov’s theology. It is a fact about how the act was made, and both his defenders and his critics have taken it into account: the former as a grievance, the latter as an irregularity that does not touch the substance of the theological objection.

Ukaz No. 2267, 27 December 1935

The second Moscow act was Ukaz No. 2267, dated 27 December 1935, addressed to Metropolitan Eleutherius (Elevfery) of Lithuania and Vilnius, who exercised the Moscow Patriarchate’s jurisdiction in Western Europe (Ukaz No. 2267, 27 December 1935; Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005; and the hub essay, Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy).

It did two things.

It confirmed the first decree against the sophiological teaching.

It extended the criticism to Bulgakov’s Christology — specifically to his teaching on the two natures and the single hypostasis of Christ, which is to say to the kenotic Christology of The Lamb of God (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1933) (Ukaz No. 2267, 27 December 1935; Klimoff, 2005; see On Godmanhood: The Major Trilogy and Kenosis, Christology, and Mariology).

Again without pronouncing him a heretic. The second ukaz, like the first, censures a teaching; it does not pass the sentence of heresy on the man (Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005).

The extension to Christology is significant for two reasons. It shows that Moscow’s objection was not confined to the exotic term “Sophia” but reached a doctrine — kenosis — that has occupied Western as well as Eastern theology and that touches the Chalcedonian definition directly (see Christology). And it shows that the criticism developed over the four months: the first ukaz addressed sophiology, the second addressed the shape of the Christology the sophiology had produced.

Jurisdiction and Effect

Bulgakov was not a cleric of the Moscow Patriarchate. Since 1931 he had belonged, with Metropolitan Evlogy’s whole Western European archdiocese, to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which had received the archdiocese as a temporary exarchate when it could no longer function under Moscow’s requirements and would not join the Karlovci Synod (Antoine Arjakovsky, The Way: Religious Thinkers of the Russian Emigration in Paris and Their Journal, 1925–1940, trans. Jerry Ryan, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013, ch. 1; and see The Founding of St. Sergius).

The consequence, stated without evasion in either direction: the Moscow ukazy were authoritative acts of the Moscow Patriarchate, binding within its own jurisdiction and expressing the mind of its administration on the teaching; they were not acts of Bulgakov’s own hierarchy and carried no canonical penalty against his person. He was not suspended, deposed, or excommunicated by Moscow or by anyone else, and he continued to serve as a priest and to teach (Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005; Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy; see Evlogy’s Commission and the 1937 Conference).

It should also be recorded that no pan-Orthodox condemnation of sophiology was ever issued. The censures remained the acts of the Moscow Patriarchate and of the Russian Church Abroad; the Ecumenical Patriarchate never condemned Bulgakov (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy; Klimoff, 2005). This is stated not as mitigation but as part of the same accurate record that reports the ukazy themselves.

The Weight of the Convergence

Between the two Moscow acts fell the ROCOR determination of 17/30 October 1935 (see The ROCOR Determination and Seraphim Sobolev). That the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Church Abroad — bodies then in bitter and public conflict over the Declaration of 1927, over loyalty to the Soviet state, and over the legitimacy of each other’s administration — both moved against Bulgakov’s sophiology in the same autumn is a fact that has always weighed heavily in the controversy’s reception. Two hierarchies with almost nothing else in common independently judged the same teaching to be outside the faith (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy; Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005; and on the jurisdictional rupture itself see Twentieth-Century Fragmentation).

[Disputed: how much weight the 1935 acts should carry as expressions of the Church's mind. (a) One position holds that two independent hierarchies of the Russian Church, acting conciliarly or through their chief hierarch, condemned a teaching, that the acts stand unrescinded, and that no subsequent scholarly reappraisal can overturn an ecclesial judgment — a position held across ROCOR and traditionalist Orthodoxy and represented in the repository's treatment of the traditionalist wing (see the world of [Fr. Seraphim Rose](../../seraphim-rose/README.md)). (b) A second position holds that Moscow's acts were issued under an administration operating in extremis and without hearing the accused, that ROCOR's was issued by a synod whose own canonical status was contested, that neither body had jurisdiction over Bulgakov, that no pan-Orthodox act followed, and that his own hierarchy examined and did not sustain the charge of heresy — so that the acts are real and serious but not a settled dogmatic determination of the Church (Klimoff, 2005; Paul Valliere, *Modern Russian Theology*, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000, ch. 12). This collection reports both positions and adjudicates neither; see METHODOLOGY §4.2.]

References

Ukaz No. 1651 of the Moscow Patriarchate (Metropolitan Sergius [Stragorodsky], deputy locum tenens), 7 September 1935, on the teaching of Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov concerning Sophia the Wisdom of God. (Text in Bulgakov, O Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei, Paris: YMCA-Press, 1935; also in the Bulgakov entry of the Pravoslavnaya Entsiklopediya.)
Ukaz No. 2267 of the Moscow Patriarchate, 27 December 1935, addressed to Metropolitan Eleutherius of Lithuania and Vilnius, confirming the first decree and extending the criticism to Bulgakov’s teaching on the two natures and single hypostasis of Christ.
Bulgakov, Sergius. O Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei [On Sophia the Wisdom of God]. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1935. (The first ukaz printed with Bulgakov’s memoranda in reply.)
Bulgakov, Sergius. The Lamb of God. Trans. Boris Jakim. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. (Original Agnets Bozhii, Paris: YMCA-Press, 1933 — the Christology addressed by the December ukaz.)
Klimoff, Alexis. “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy.” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, nos. 1–2 (2005): 67–100. (The standard English account of the sequence of acts, the wording of the Moscow decrees, and the procedural history; reprinted as “On the Sophiological Controversy of the 1930s,” ROCOR Studies, 2019.)
Valliere, Paul. Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Orthodox Theology in a New Key. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. (Ch. 12 on the controversy.)
Arjakovsky, Antoine. The Way: Religious Thinkers of the Russian Emigration in Paris and Their Journal, 1925–1940. Trans. Jerry Ryan. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013.