08 — The Modern Reappraisal

This section is the collection’s METHODOLOGY §4.2 flagship. The fact and content of the 1935 acts are reported as fact in Section 05 and are not reopened here. What is reopened is the question those acts did not settle: whether sophiology is in truth heretical, salvageable, or a legitimate if flawed theologoumenon. That is a genuinely live intra-Orthodox dispute, the parties are named, and this collection adjudicates nothing.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox and pan-Orthodox — a live intra-Orthodox dispute

The Two Files and the Two Sides

The section is deliberately symmetrical. The first file states the case against sophiology at its strongest, in the words of those who made it: Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev), the sharpest and the most systematic; Vladimir Lossky, whose Spor o Sofii (1936) is the most formidable philosophical critique; Georges Florovsky, whose objection was methodological and who framed the whole of Russian religious philosophy as a “Western captivity”; and the traditionalist current that has carried the ROCOR determination forward to the present.

The second file states the modern reappraisal, likewise in the words of those who make it: Rowan Williams, Paul Valliere, Aidan Nichols, Brandon Gallaher, Andrew Louth, Antoine Arjakovsky, and the international scholarly apparatus that has grown up around Bulgakov since the 1990s.

Neither file is a rebuttal of the other, and neither is given the last word.

What Is Not in Dispute

Before the disputed matters, the undisputed ones. Both sides agree that:

  • The 1935 acts were issued, say what they say, and have never been rescinded.
  • Bulgakov never recanted, was never subjected to any canonical penalty, and died a priest in good standing in his own jurisdiction.
  • Sophiology is not the teaching of the Orthodox Church and has never been received as such by any Orthodox body.
  • Bulgakov’s questions — the relation of God to creation, the theological standing of matter and history, the ground of the Incarnation’s possibility — are real questions.

The disputes concern whether his answers are compatible with the faith, whether his disclaimers hold, and what weight the acts of 1935 carry.

Files in This Section

File Description
The Critics: Lossky, Florovsky, and After The case against, at full strength: Seraphim (Sobolev), Lossky’s Spor o Sofii, Florovsky’s methodological objection, and the traditionalist reception
The Reappraisal: Williams, Valliere, Gallaher The case for a rehearing: Williams, Valliere, Nichols, Gallaher, Louth, Arjakovsky, and the current state of Bulgakov scholarship

See Also