Bulgakov’s Replies and the Berdyaev Polemic

Having not been heard before Moscow’s first ukaz, Bulgakov answered it with formal memoranda (dokladnye zapiski) addressed to his own diocesan hierarch, Metropolitan Evlogy — the only bishop with jurisdiction over him. The memoranda were published together with the ukaz in the brochure O Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1935). Separately and much more aggressively, Nikolai Berdyaev attacked the decree in “The Spirit of the Grand Inquisitor” (1935), turning a theological censure into a public argument about freedom in the Church.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration)

The Form of the Reply

Bulgakov’s response was procedurally exact, and the exactness is part of its meaning. He did not reply to Moscow. He addressed formal memoranda — dokladnye zapiski, “reports” in the canonical sense — to Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky), his own ruling hierarch, to whom alone he owed obedience and account (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).

The memoranda and the text of the first Moscow ukaz were then published together in the brochure O Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1935) — a decision that put the whole matter before the reading public of the emigration and that his critics regarded as itself a provocation (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy; Klimoff, 2005). A further memorandum, addressed to the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad, drew Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev)’s book-length answer of 1937 (Seraphim [Sobolev], Zashchita sofianskoi eresi protoiereem S. Bulgakovym pered litsom Arkhiereiskogo Sobora Russkoi Zarubezhnoi Tserkvi, Sofia, 1937; see The ROCOR Determination and Seraphim Sobolev).

What Bulgakov Argued

The memoranda run along four lines (Bulgakov, O Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei, Paris, 1935; summarized in Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005; and in Paul Valliere, Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000, ch. 12).

That he had not been heard. No process had been opened, no charges served, no answer invited. Bulgakov pressed this as a matter of canonical order rather than personal grievance: a teaching may be condemned, but a teacher is normally examined first.

That the decree misdescribed his teaching. He denied the specific propositions attributed to him — a fourth hypostasis, an intermediate being between God and the world, a divine feminine person, pantheism — and directed his hierarch to the texts in which he had denied them in print (see Divine Sophia and Creaturely Sophia). Much of his complaint concerned the use of early formulations, above all from Unfading Light (1917), as though they were the mature position of The Lamb of God (1933).

That sophiology is a theologoumenon, not a proposed dogma. Bulgakov characterized his work as theological opinion offered to the Church’s judgment — legitimate theological labor in an area the Church has not defined, which he was prepared to have corrected but which was not being presented as her teaching (Bulgakov, O Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei, 1935; Valliere, Modern Russian Theology, 2000, ch. 12). The distinction between dogma and theologoumenon is the one METHODOLOGY §4.2 requires be made explicitly, and Bulgakov made it himself.

That the theological question deserved a theological answer. He asked to be met with argument from Scripture and the Fathers rather than with an administrative act, and offered to submit his work to a competent examination — which is, in the event, what Metropolitan Evlogy arranged (see Evlogy’s Commission and the 1937 Conference).

He did not recant. He also did not defy: he remained under his bishop, submitted his work to the commission Evlogy appointed, and continued to serve. That combination — no retraction, no rebellion — characterizes his conduct for the rest of his life (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy; Michael Plekon, Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002, ch. 2).

Readers should be clear about what this file is and is not doing. Reporting Bulgakov’s defense accurately is not endorsing it. His critics answered every one of these four lines — that the procedural irregularity does not touch the substance; that the denials are ineffective; that a theologoumenon may still be a heretical one; and that the theological answer had in fact been given, at length, by Archbishop Seraphim (Seraphim [Sobolev], Novoe uchenie o Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei, Sofia, 1935, and Zashchita sofianskoi eresi, Sofia, 1937; Vladimir Lossky, Spor o Sofii, Paris: Brotherhood of St. Photius, 1936).

Berdyaev’s “The Spirit of the Grand Inquisitor”

The most famous response to the ukaz was not Bulgakov’s. Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) published in 1935 the polemical essay “The Spirit of the Grand Inquisitor: On the Ukaz of Metropolitan Sergius Condemning the Theological Views of Father Sergius Bulgakov” — the title taking Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov as the figure of an ecclesiastical authority that suppresses freedom in the name of the people’s peace (Berdyaev, “The Spirit of the Grand Inquisitor,” 1935; English translation in The Wheel, wheeljournal.com; 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).

Berdyaev’s argument was not a defense of sophiology — he had his own reservations about Bulgakov’s system — but an attack on the manner of the act: that a theologian had been condemned without a hearing, by an administrative decree issued from a church administration operating under a totalitarian state, and that the spirit of the proceeding was inquisitorial rather than conciliar (Berdyaev, “The Spirit of the Grand Inquisitor,” 1935; Arjakovsky, The Way, 2013; Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy).

The essay did two things to the controversy. It made the affair public and international, and it shifted the terms: from “is sophiology heretical?” to “by what authority and by what procedure may an Orthodox theologian be condemned?” That shift has never been fully undone, and it is one reason the controversy continues to be argued in the register of freedom and authority as well as in the register of doctrine.

It also gave Bulgakov’s opponents a fresh grievance. To an episcopate already convinced that the Paris school was corrupted by Western liberalism, an essay comparing Metropolitan Sergius to Dostoevsky’s Inquisitor was not evidence to the contrary (Arjakovsky, The Way, 2013; Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005). Bulgakov himself did not adopt Berdyaev’s frame; his own memoranda are canonical and theological in tone rather than prophetic.

[Disputed: whether Berdyaev's intervention helped or harmed Bulgakov. (a) One reading holds that it secured him a hearing in the emigration's public opinion and made an unanswered administrative condemnation impossible. (b) Another holds that it politicized a doctrinal question, hardened the Russian episcopate abroad, and associated Bulgakov permanently with a philosopher whose relation to ecclesiastical authority was far more adversarial than his own. Both readings are current in the literature (Arjakovsky, *The Way*, 2013; Klimoff, 2005); this collection does not decide between them.]

What Did Not Happen

Three negatives belong to this file because they are constantly assumed away.

Bulgakov never recanted, and was never required by his own hierarch to recant. The ROCOR determination had requested that Evlogy admonish him with a view to a public renunciation; Evlogy did not do this (see Evlogy’s Commission and the 1937 Conference).

Bulgakov was never suspended from the priesthood, deposed, or excommunicated by any authority. He continued to celebrate, to hear confessions, and to teach (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy; Plekon, Living Icons, 2002, ch. 2).

Bulgakov did not leave the Church or found a party. He remained under his bishop, in his jurisdiction, in his Institute, for the remaining nine years of his life.

References

Bulgakov, Sergius. O Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei [On Sophia the Wisdom of God]. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1935. (The text of Moscow Ukaz No. 1651 together with Bulgakov’s dokladnye zapiski to Metropolitan Evlogy.)
Berdyaev, Nikolai. “The Spirit of the Grand Inquisitor: On the Ukaz of Metropolitan Sergius Condemning the Theological Views of Father Sergius Bulgakov” (1935). English translation in The Wheel (wheeljournal.com).
Klimoff, Alexis. “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy.” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, nos. 1–2 (2005): 67–100.
Valliere, Paul. Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. (Ch. 12 on the controversy and Bulgakov’s defense.)
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. (The public argument in the emigration; Berdyaev’s role.)
Seraphim (Sobolev), Archbishop. Novoe uchenie o Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei. Sofia, 1935; and Zashchita sofianskoi eresi protoiereem S. Bulgakovym pered litsom Arkhiereiskogo Sobora Russkoi Zarubezhnoi Tserkvi. Sofia, 1937. (The point-by-point answer to Bulgakov’s memoranda.)
Lossky, Vladimir. Spor o Sofii: “Dokladnaya zapiska” prot. S. Bulgakova i smysl Ukaza Moskovskoy Patriarkhii [The Sophia Dispute: Archpriest S. Bulgakov’s “Memorandum” and the Meaning of the Ukaz of the Moscow Patriarchate]. Paris: Brotherhood of St. Photius, 1936. (A direct answer to the memoranda, as its subtitle indicates.)
Plekon, Michael. Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. (Ch. 2 on Bulgakov’s conduct after the condemnations.)