Kenosis, Christology, and Mariology

Bulgakov’s Christology is kenotic: reading Philippians 2 with maximal seriousness, he held that the Son genuinely emptied himself of the divine mode of glory in becoming man, and that this self-emptying reaches into the eternal life of the Trinity, whose being is self-giving love. It was this — not sophiology alone — that Moscow’s second ukaz of 27 December 1935 criticized. His mariology, set out in The Burning Bush (1927), combines a vigorous Orthodox polemic against the Immaculate Conception with a presentation of the Mother of God as created Sophia in person that his critics found the most alarming point in his system.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration) — a modern theologian’s own positions, measured against the Church’s dogma

The Church’s Dogma First

The Orthodox Church confesses, with the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon (451), one Christ in two natures, divine and human, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the difference of the natures in no way abolished by the union, each nature preserving its own property and concurring in one Person and one hypostasis (Council of Chalcedon, 451, Definition; see Christology and The Seven Ecumenical Councils). She confesses with the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus (431) that Mary is truly Theotokos, Birthgiver of God, because the one born of her is the one divine Person of the Word (Council of Ephesus, 431; see The Theotokos). The impassibility and immutability of the divine nature are patristic commonplaces: it is the Word who suffers, in his flesh, and the sufferings are truly his, without the divine nature being altered (see the Fifth Ecumenical Council’s Theopaschite formula, 553, and the treatment in Christology).

This is the standard. What follows is Bulgakov’s theological work, offered by him and reported here as his.

The Kenotic Christology

The text is Philippians 2:5–11: Christ Jesus, “who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation” — heauton ekenōsen, emptied himself — “and took upon him the form of a servant.”

The patristic mainstream reads the kenosis as the assumption of what was not had rather than the loss of what was: the Word does not cease to be or to possess what is his, but takes flesh and in the flesh accepts the conditions of creaturely life (see, for the classic statement, Cyril of Alexandria and the tradition summarized in Christology).

Bulgakov pressed further. In The Lamb of God (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1933; trans. Boris Jakim, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008) he argued (Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, trans. Jakim, 2008, Part II; Aidan Nichols, Wisdom from Above: A Primer in the Theology of Father Sergei Bulgakov, Leominster: Gracewing, 2005, ch. 9; Brandon Gallaher, Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, ch. 3):

that the Son’s kenosis is a real renunciation of the divine mode of existence — of the actual exercise of divine glory, omniscience, and omnipotence — so that the human consciousness of Christ is genuinely human, genuinely limited, genuinely growing “in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52);
that this renunciation is not a deception or a mere concealment: what is emptied is really emptied, for the duration of the economy, and is received back in the Resurrection and Ascension;
that the kenosis is grounded in the eternal Trinity, whose life is the mutual self-giving of the Persons — the Father’s total giving of himself in begetting, the Son’s total return — so that the historical self-emptying expresses rather than contradicts what God eternally is;
that creation itself is a divine kenosis, since to make a genuinely free other is to limit oneself; and
that the Cross is therefore not an interruption of the divine life but its supreme disclosure — a claim Bulgakov extended in his late writing on the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8).

The Objection

The Orthodox difficulty is not obscure and should be stated at full strength.

If the Son really lays aside the divine mode of existence, then something in God changes and something in God is diminished — and divine immutability, which is not a philosophical decoration but a patristic commitment defended through the Arian and Nestorian crises, is compromised. Chalcedon’s without change (atreptōs) appears to be exactly what is denied. If, alternatively, the “renunciation” is of the exercise only and not of the possession, then the kenoticism is doing less work than Bulgakov’s language suggests, and the sophiological machinery brought in to support it is unnecessary. And projecting kenosis into the immanent Trinity risks reading suffering, potency, and process into the divine life — the perennial charge against modern kenotic theology, Western as much as Eastern (Vladimir Lossky, Spor o Sofii, Paris: Brotherhood of St. Photius, 1936; Archbishop Seraphim [Sobolev], Novoe uchenie o Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei, Sofia, 1935; and see Christology).

This is what Moscow Ukaz No. 2267 of 27 December 1935 picked up when it extended its criticism from Sophia to Bulgakov’s teaching on the two natures and the single hypostasis of Christ — again without pronouncing him a heretic (Ukaz No. 2267, 27 December 1935; Alexis Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, nos. 1–2 [2005]: 67–100; see The Moscow Ukazy of 1935).

[Disputed: whether Bulgakov's kenoticism is compatible with the Chalcedonian definition. (a) The critical position — represented by the December 1935 Moscow ukaz, by Lossky, and by later neo-patristic theology — holds that a real self-limitation of the divine nature contradicts *atreptōs* and imports mutability into God (Ukaz No. 2267, 1935; Lossky, *Spor o Sofii*, 1936). (b) The defending position — argued in detail by Brandon Gallaher and, with qualifications, by Aidan Nichols — holds that Bulgakov locates the kenosis in the hypostatic act of the Son rather than in a change of the divine nature, that he explicitly affirms Chalcedon, and that his account is a legitimate if bold development of a genuinely patristic theme (Gallaher, *Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology*, 2016, ch. 3; Nichols, *Wisdom from Above*, 2005, ch. 9). This collection reports both and adjudicates neither.]

The Mariology of The Burning Bush

Bulgakov’s Marian theology has the same double character as his Christology: a strong and conventional Orthodox polemic wrapped around a distinctly unconventional constructive proposal.

The polemic is against the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception (Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, 1854). Bulgakov argued that the dogma presupposes an Augustinian doctrine of original sin as inherited guilt that the East does not hold; that in exempting the Virgin from the common inheritance it severs her from the race she was chosen to represent and makes the Incarnation less rather than more a real entry into our condition; and that Orthodox teaching on her all-holiness — the progressive sanctification of one who was of our fallen race, culminating in the Annunciation — honors her more, not less (Bulgakov, The Burning Bush: On the Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God, trans. Thomas Allan Smith, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009, Part I; and for the Church’s own position, The Theotokos and Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism). This is Orthodox teaching well and forcefully stated.

The constructive proposal is that the Theotokos is the created Sophia in her personal realization — the creature in whom creaturely Wisdom is fully actualized, the personal heart of the sanctified creation, and in her glorified state a creature standing at the very boundary of the created and uncreated (Bulgakov, The Burning Bush, trans. Smith, 2009, Part II; Nichols, Wisdom from Above, 2005, ch. 6). Bulgakov drew on the Church’s own maximalism about her — “more honourable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim” — on the Sophia icons of Kiev and Novgorod with their Marian temple feasts, and on the Dormition (see St. Mary the Theotokos and Holy Icons).

He was careful, in his own terms, about the line: the Theotokos is a creature, was not exempt from the common human condition, was not divinized in nature, and is not a fourth hypostasis or a member of the Trinity (Bulgakov, The Burning Bush, trans. Smith, 2009; Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology, Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1993, ch. 5). His critics held that the association of the Mother of God with an ontological principle called Sophia, however carefully disclaimed, was where the system did its most spiritual damage — because it touched the object of the faithful’s prayer rather than a technical clause of dogmatics (Seraphim [Sobolev], Novoe uchenie o Sofii, Sofia, 1935, whose treatment leans heavily on the Marian material; Lossky, Spor o Sofii, 1936).

[Disputed: whether Bulgakov's identification of the Theotokos with created Sophia is a legitimate elaboration of Orthodox Marian piety or a compromise of her creaturehood. (a) Critics, above all Seraphim (Sobolev), hold that it assigns her a cosmic-ontological role the Church has never given her and blurs the line between the all-holy creature and the divine (Seraphim [Sobolev], *Novoe uchenie o Sofii*, 1935). (b) Defenders, including Nichols, hold that Bulgakov affirms her creaturehood throughout, that the Church's own hymnography and iconography already say extraordinary things about her, and that he is systematizing what the Church prays (Nichols, *Wisdom from Above*, 2005, ch. 6). This collection reports both and adjudicates neither.]

What Is Not Disputed

Two things in this area are not contested and are worth stating so that the disputed matters keep their proportion.

Bulgakov confessed the Chalcedonian definition and the Ephesine title Theotokos explicitly and repeatedly; he was never accused of denying either, and the December 1935 ukaz criticized his interpretation of the two natures and one hypostasis, not a denial of them (Ukaz No. 2267, 1935; Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005).

And he wrote against the Immaculate Conception, against a merely juridical account of the atonement, and against every reduction of the Incarnation to a legal transaction — positions in which he stands squarely with the Orthodox tradition (Bulgakov, The Burning Bush, trans. Smith, 2009; The Lamb of God, trans. Jakim, 2008, Part III; and see Soteriology).

References

Bulgakov, Sergius. The Lamb of God. Trans. Boris Jakim. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. (Original Agnets Bozhii, Paris: YMCA-Press, 1933; Part II for the kenosis.)
Bulgakov, Sergius. The Burning Bush: On the Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God. Trans. Thomas Allan Smith. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. (Original Kupina Neopalimaya, Paris: YMCA-Press, 1927.)
Bulgakov, Sergius. Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology. Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1993. (First published 1937; ch. 5 on the Theotokos and the Church.)
Council of Chalcedon, 451. Definition of the Faith. (The two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation.)
Council of Ephesus, 431. (The title Theotokos.)
Ukaz No. 2267 of the Moscow Patriarchate, 27 December 1935, addressed to Metropolitan Eleutherius of Lithuania and Vilnius. (The criticism of Bulgakov’s teaching on the two natures and single hypostasis of Christ.)
Nichols, Aidan. Wisdom from Above: A Primer in the Theology of Father Sergei Bulgakov. Leominster: Gracewing, 2005. (Chs. 6 and 9.)
Gallaher, Brandon. Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. (Ch. 3, the fullest modern defense of Bulgakov’s kenoticism.)
Lossky, Vladimir. Spor o Sofii. Paris: Brotherhood of St. Photius, 1936.
Seraphim (Sobolev), Archbishop. Novoe uchenie o Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei. Sofia, 1935.
Klimoff, Alexis. “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy.” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, nos. 1–2 (2005): 67–100.
Pius IX. Ineffabilis Deus. 1854.
Scripture: Philippians 2:5–11; Luke 2:52; Revelation 13:8.