Evlogy’s Commission and the 1937 Conference

Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky), the only hierarch with jurisdiction over Bulgakov, did not comply with ROCOR’s request for a public renunciation. He appointed instead a theological commission, chaired by Archpriest Sergius Chetverikov and drawn largely from the St. Sergius faculty. The commission divided: a majority report of June 1936, prepared by A. V. Kartashev, V. V. Zenkovsky, and others, rejected the charge of heresy while registering serious objections to Bulgakov’s formulations; a minority report of 6 July 1936, prepared by Chetverikov and signed by Fr. Georges Florovsky, held that the views “provoke great anxiety” and were a danger to Orthodox thinking. A conference of the jurisdiction’s bishops on 26–29 November 1937 concluded that the accusation of heresy was unproven, but that Bulgakov’s opinions showed serious flaws requiring correction. No formal condemnation was ever issued.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration; the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Western European exarchate)

Metropolitan Evlogy’s Position

Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky, 1868–1946) governed the Russian parishes of Western Europe from Paris, and since 1931 had done so as exarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, having brought his archdiocese under Constantinople when it could no longer function under Moscow’s requirements and would not submit to 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; see The Founding of St. Sergius). He was rector of the St. Sergius Institute, Bulgakov’s bishop, and the man to whom both the Moscow ukaz and the ROCOR determination effectively directed themselves.

His position was difficult in every direction. Moscow had censured his most distinguished priest; Karlovci had asked him to extract a public renunciation; his own Institute would be gutted if he acted precipitately; and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, his own superior authority, had said nothing. What he did was to constitute a theological commission (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy; Alexis Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, nos. 1–2 [2005]: 67–100).

The Chetverikov Commission

In late 1935 Metropolitan Evlogy appointed a commission chaired by Archpriest Sergius Chetverikov — the spiritual writer and historian of Russian eldership, best known for his study of St. Paisius Velichkovsky — and drawn largely from the St. Sergius faculty, to examine the charges (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy; Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005).

The commission divided. Two documents resulted.

The majority report (June 1936), prepared by A. V. Kartashev, V. V. Zenkovsky, and others, rejected the charge of heresy while registering serious objections to Bulgakov’s formulations (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy; Klimoff, 2005). Kartashev was the Institute’s church historian and a former minister of confessions in the Provisional Government; Zenkovsky its philosopher and historian of Russian thought. The report’s shape — no heresy, but real objections — set the pattern for what the bishops would conclude the following year.

The minority report (6 July 1936), prepared by Chetverikov and signed by Fr. Georges Florovsky, stated that Bulgakov’s views “provoke great anxiety” and constituted a danger to Orthodox thinking (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy; Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005). It is the closest thing to a public act of opposition that Florovsky ever made against his senior colleague, and it is the document to which discussions of Florovsky’s conduct in the controversy always return.

Florovsky’s restraint deserves its own note, since it is one of the more scrutinized episodes in modern Orthodox theology. He never published a direct refutation of Bulgakov; he expressed his opposition instead through scholarly essays on the doctrine of creation — where the sophiological alternative is refused without being named — and through this minority report (Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005; Paul Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, chs. 5–6). Ways of Russian Theology (Paris, 1937), published the following year, made the case against the whole sophiological tradition without making Bulgakov the personal target (Florovsky, Puti russkogo bogosloviya, Paris, 1937; see Georges Florovsky and The Patristic Revival). Readings of the restraint range from collegial decency and institutional prudence to a charge of evasion; the literature does not settle it (Klimoff, 2005; Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance, 2013, ch. 6).

The Bishops’ Conference, 26–29 November 1937

The matter was resolved — as far as it was resolved — by a conference of the jurisdiction’s bishops held on 26–29 November 1937 (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy; Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005).

Its conclusion had two parts, and both must be reported:

The accusation of heresy was unproven.
Bulgakov’s theological opinions showed serious flaws requiring correction.

No formal condemnation was ever issued in his own jurisdiction (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy).

This is not an acquittal in the sense of a vindication, and this collection does not present it as one. The bishops of his own jurisdiction told him, in effect, that he was not a heretic and that his theology was seriously defective. Both halves are the finding.

What Followed

Bulgakov remained a priest in good standing and continued teaching at St. Sergius until his death, with the understanding that his sophiology represented his personal theological opinion (theologoumenon) and not the official teaching of the Church (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy). He became dean of the Institute in 1940 and held that office until 1944. He was awarded a mitre in 1943. He wrote The Comforter (published 1936), The Bride of the Lamb (finished under the occupation, published 1945), and the commentary on the Apocalypse; he served, confessed, and taught.

He did not, however, propagandize the censured doctrine or press it as the Church’s teaching, and the practical settlement in Paris was of that shape: the man kept his priesthood, his chair, and his freedom to publish; the doctrine kept the status of a private opinion under episcopal reserve (Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005; Michael Plekon, Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002, ch. 2).

What Was Not Settled

The Paris outcome reflected, as the hub essay puts it, “the Paris jurisdiction’s generally more open intellectual atmosphere,” but it also meant that the sophiology question was never definitively resolved within the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s structures (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy). Nothing was determined dogmatically. The question was left in a condition it has never left since: censured by two Russian hierarchies, examined and not sustained as heresy by a third, never adjudicated pan-Orthodoxly.

[Disputed: how the 1937 finding should be weighed against the acts of 1935. (a) One reading holds that the Karlovci and Moscow acts are the ecclesial judgments that count — conciliar and hierarchical determinations of doctrine — while the Paris finding was the self-examination of the institution the accused himself led, conducted by his own colleagues, and therefore of limited evidentiary value. (b) Another reading holds that the only body with jurisdiction over Bulgakov examined the charge with the texts in front of it, including the testimony of a hostile expert in Florovsky, and did not sustain it — so that the strongest formal act by a competent authority is the 1937 finding of "not proven, but seriously flawed." The two readings correspond broadly to the traditionalist and the Paris-school receptions of the whole affair (see [The Modern Reappraisal](../08-the-modern-reappraisal/README.md)); this collection reports both and adjudicates neither, per METHODOLOGY §4.2.]

References

Klimoff, Alexis. “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy.” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, nos. 1–2 (2005): 67–100. (The commission, the two reports, Florovsky’s signature on the minority report, and the 1937 conference.)
Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy. Repository hub essay, ../../orthodoxy/04-russian-orthodox-tradition/theologians/bulgakov-sophiology.md. (The verified account of the Chetverikov commission, the June 1936 majority and 6 July 1936 minority reports, and the bishops’ conference of 26–29 November 1937.)
Gavrilyuk, Paul L. Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. (Chs. 5–6 on Florovsky’s conduct in the controversy.)
Florovsky, Georges. Puti russkogo bogosloviya [Ways of Russian Theology]. Paris, 1937.
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.
Plekon, Michael. Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002.
Valliere, Paul. Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. (Ch. 12.)
Bulgakov, Sergius. O Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1935.