Sergei Bulgakov’s Sophiology as the Integration of Sociology, Philosophy, and Theology

Abstract

Sergei Bulgakov (1871−1944) grew up in a time of rapid economic progress and increasingly despotic state authority in Russia. His adult life coincides with the Russian Silver Age (1890−1920), a period of tumultuous cultural and political development. Bulgakov’s Sophiology, which is the study of the Wisdom of God, is a reaction to the time he lived in and to the exigencies of his contemporary world, culture, and science. As the integration of sociology, philosophy, and theology, Sophiology had to provide an answer and an alternative to the fragmentation, disintegration, and differentiation of life spheres in the increasingly modern societies of Russia and the Western countries. Although a topical theory, Sophiology is also concerned with the future. In fact, in this chapter I argue that Bulgakov developed his Sophiology to save the future of creation order by studying the relation of Sophia to the world as created order (what Palamas called the divine energies), which I call his sociological Sophiology, and the relation of Sophia to the Trinity (i.e., the order of creation itself—what Palamas called the divine essence), which I call his theological Sophiology. Both are complementary and essentially one, since Sophia is the object of both Sophiologies—but they use different perspectives.