The Bride of the Lamb

by Sergius Bulgakov, Boris Jakim, Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov

Overview

Sergius Bulgakov is thought by many to be the twentieth century's foremost Russian Orthodox theologian. The Bride of the Lamb is widely regarded as Bulgakov's magnum opus and, even more, as one of the greatest works ever produced in the modern Orthodox church. This book is now available in English thanks to esteemed translator Boris Jakim, along with an introduction to Bulgakov and his theological context. For readers new to Russian religious thought, The Bride of the Lamb presents a fresh approach to Christian doctrine. Bulgakov examines issues of ecclesiology and eschatology from a sophiological perspective. This distinctive Russian approach, based on the doctrine of Sophia, the wisdom of God, sees the Creator and creation intimately linked as Divine-humanity. The Bride of the Lamb explores the nature of created beings, the relationship between God and the world, the role of the church, and such eschatological themes as the second coming of Jesus, resurrection and judgment, and the afterlife.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802839152
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	02/08/2008
Pages:	552
Sales rank:	641,134
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Sergius Bulgakov (1871-1944) is widely regarded as the twentieth century's leading Orthodox theologian. His other books include Relics and Miracles, The Unfading Light, The Burning Bush, The Lamb of God, The Comforter, Jacob's Ladder, and Churchly Joy (all Eerdmans).

Boris Jakim is the foremost translator of Russian religiousthought into English. His published translations includeworks by S.L. Frank, Pavel Florensky, Vladimir Solovyov, and Sergius Bulgakov.

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THE BRIDE OF THE LAMB

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By Sergius Bulgakov

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Copyright © 2002 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-3915-2

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Chapter One

The Creation of the World "Out of Nothing"

1. Cosmism

In the Christian understanding of the relation existing between God and the world, it is first necessary to exclude two polar opposites: pantheistic, or atheistic, monism on the one hand and the dualistic conception of creation on the other. According to the monistic doctrine, the world is self-sufficient and can be understood from itself. In the depths of its immanence it realizes the fullness of itself, for there it contains the hidden roots of its own being. The substance of the world is its unique and final foundation. However we understand it, whether materialistically as matter or energy, or spiritualistically as a spiritual monad or system of monads, common to all forms of monism is this self-enclosedness and self-sufficiency of the world, and its absoluteness in this sense. This worldview is essentially cosmotheism, speculative or mystical, or simply atheism, which denies the existence of a divine being above the world or in the world.

This worldview denies the very problem of the origin of the world, since one cannot speak of the origin of an absolute being. This being is eternal, even if its fullness is realized only in time. Here, it can be a question of the relation of noumenal and phenomenal being, substance and the empirical. In general, there is room for all kinds of distinctions within this self-enclosed worldview. Thus, different forms of monism are possible — from the mystico-poetical perception of the world to its prosaically empirical, mechanistically materialistic conception. Here, one can even have the development of a mysticism that is capable of assuming not only a poetic but even a subjectively religious form. However, the monistic worldview too is atheistic, insofar as it does not recognize the supramundane, transcendent God, closes itself off from Him in autonomous being, and thus loses the true idea of the world. The true idea of the world exists only in the relation of the world to the supramundane divine principle.

Because different layers or depths can be distinguished in immanent being, pantheism can fail to be conscious of itself in its cosmotheism as an atheism. History knows religiophilosophical systems that were considered to be profoundly religious, both by their own adepts and by their successors. Stoicism and especially Neoplatonism, Brahmanism and Buddhism, and modern theosophy and anthroposophy are examples of such systems. These doctrines have the common and distinctive feature that the idea of the creation of the world by the supramundane God is alien to them. They sometimes admit the creation of the world, but only in the sense of its self-formation, through its higher powers ("hierarchies") in relation to the lower ones. They speak of the emergence of a number of worlds within the depths of a single cosmic whole. This is a cosmic evolution whose origin is unknown but which, in its "avatars," is proceeding to infinity. But this auto-evolution of the world does not change anything in the fundamental cosmism of this worldview. The main feature distinguishing it from Christian cosmology is the absence of the idea of the createdness of the world, and this absence is, of course, rooted in the denial of the existence of the Creator. The fundamental relation between the Creator and creation, with the entire complex problematic this relation implies, is absent in pantheism. For pantheism, the world is self-evident and does not need an explanation for itself.

2. Dualism

At the opposite pole to cosmism or cosmotheism is dualism. Dualism is characterized by the recognition of the createdness of the world. However, for dualism the world is created not by one creator but by two: "Nature was created together by a white god and a somber black god." The conception of this second principle has its roots in morality and theodicy. It comes from the need to explain the evil and imperfection in the world, but a metaphysical or ontological theme is also important here. Insofar as it is not-God, even though it has its foundation in God as its Creator, the world cannot do without a point of reference or support outside of God or alongside God.

It is this point that lies at the basis of the world's extra-divine being. What we find here is a peculiar application of the law of identity, which is negatively expressed in the law of contradiction (and the law of the "excluded middle"). In the fullness of His divine being, God is only God. He is enclosed and as if limited in His being by His own divinity. There is thus no place in divinity for the world in its separateness. What remains for the world is to search for pou sto, an ontological place for itself (Plato's ekmageion) outside of or alongside divinity. This leads to the postulate of a certain divine altero-being, a second god, whose face is wholly turned toward the world. This second divinity is conceived either in various mythological images of the original mother-matter, Tiamat, whatever the character of these concrete mythological images may be in different religions, or in dualistic ditheism, which recognizes two not only different but, in a certain sense, even opposite gods, gods who fight against and complement each other; for example, Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Persian religions. We find the same thing in gnostic doctrines. It is easy to see the religious absurdity of such a dualism, which is only a masked form of atheism: Two gods are not gods, for they mutually annul each other. Inherent in the idea of God is absoluteness and, thus, uniqueness. If alongside the first god there must necessarily be a second, this means that the first is not a god. The idea of two gods (not resembling in any way the doctrine of the divine tri-unity, or the Holy Trinity) is an expression of a poverty of thought, of thought that has come to a dead end and seeks a way out of this dead end in the absurd. For this reason there is not a single significant philosophical system that is dualistic. Even polytheism, insofar as it is a heno-polytheism (Olympus), appears to be a higher worldview than dualism with its dead-end character. In polytheism we have the idea of the multiplicity of the divine world, which in its fullness becomes a kind of multi-unity, a divine pleroma. The fundamental lie of polytheism consists in the illegitimate hypostatization of the rays of this pleroma as gods; however, when polytheism is understood as creaturely hierarchies or as an intelligent heaven it receives a relatively legitimate interpretation. On the other hand, dualistic atheism is a kind of subjugation to satanism, where the prince of this world, the black god, pretends to occupy a place alongside God.

But this second principle can also be understood as a "place" for the world, Plato's ekmageion or chora, where the world can find existence for itself alongside God's absoluteness. The world does not want to become nothing in the face of this absoluteness, but instead seeks its own something. It finds this something in a kind of anti-god or minus-god. But a minus is only a minus and remains a minus. If a minus wants to transform its own no-thing into a something, it borrows this something from the fullness of divine being, submerges itself in this being, and in a certain sense merges with the latter. Or conversely, it wants to draw the divine being into itself, into its own being. It wants to oppose itself to the fullness of divine being. But divine being is indivisible and cannot be a part of itself. Therefore, it is not possible to take from this being a part of it.

In other words, ditheism is unrealizable. Every system of dualism falls apart from internal contradiction, is ontological nonsense, which one does not have to take into account in the general problematic of the world. It is impossible to accept that God exists and that, alongside Him and besides Him, there exists a pseudo-divine principle, a "second god," expressly directed at the world. We can simply neglect this philosopheme (or theologeme).

But let us affirm the legitimacy and even the inevitability of the striving, expressed here, to find a special place for the world, to protect it in its own being from the fullness of divine being and thereby to save ourselves from pantheism, which sometimes ambushes us not only on the path of cosmotheism but also on the path of theism. It is necessary for the world to find its own place, so that it would be possible to juxtapose and, in a certain sense, even to oppose the world to God, to distinguish ontologically God and the world. However, the conclusion that we can draw from the impossibility and contradictoriness of dualism remains only negative: There is no place and can be no place of its own or independent ground for the world which would belong to it alone. If there is such a place, it must be established by God, for there is nothing that is outside of or apart from God and that in this sense is not-God.

This idea is expressed in the dogmatic formula that the world is created by God "out of nothing." Of course, one should not conceive this "nothing" as some something existing before the creation of the world as its necessary material or at least as the possibility of the origination of the world. To conceive "nothing" as some something, as some metaphysical nebulosity, as some sort of me on, or some sort of noncreaturely, or more precisely, precreaturely (but already tending to creatureliness) "freedom" is to open the door to dualism with all its annihilating contradictions. The nothing out of which the world is created is precisely a not-something, the pure not of ontological emptiness.

In other words, the formula that the world is created by God out of nothing has, first of all, a negative meaning: No extra-divine ground of creation exists. This formula expresses only the content of the idea that the world is created by God (the "analytic" judgment in Kant's sense). According to Pseudo-Dionysius, God also created nothing, giving it being in creation. In this sense we must distinguish two nothings without confusing them: (1) the precreaturely or noncreaturely nothing, or the pure ontological zero, emptiness, which is conceived by us only through logical repulsion, the negation of all being in a certain "illegitimate judgment" (as Plato calls it); and (2) the ontic, creaturely nothing, me on, which permeates creation, so to speak. This me on is just a mode of this creaturely being, but in this sense it is.

3. The Sophianicity of the World

Do we not return, through a consistent overcoming of dualism, to a certain divine monism, which is, as it were, the antipode of pantheistic, or theocosmic, monism? If the latter proclaims that all is the world and that there is nothing outside the world or higher than the world, the former antithetically proclaims that all is God and only God, that there is no place and can be no place for being outside of or alongside God, and that there is therefore no world and can be no world. In the history of thought this conclusion is the usual final result of religiously colored pantheism: All is atman, the divine breath, divinity. There seems to be no way out for thought from this antithesis. A way out can be found only by transferring the question to another plane, metabasis eis allo genos, from the static to the dynamic plane. The world relates to God not as equal to Him, not as a mode of being coordinated with Him, but (if one can say this) as a heterogeneous mode of being. The world is created by God; it is His creation. The world's existence is a special modality of being. This being is one; it is precisely divine being. And for the world there is no other ground, or "place," of being except this createdness by God, except this special mode of divine being. And the fact that the world is created out of nothing means only that the world exists in God and only by God, for the world does not have within itself the ground of its own being. In itself, the world is groundless; it is established on top of an abyss, and this abyss is "nothing."

The world is created. Instead of the problematic of a special place for the world, a place that is the world's own, the problematic of a second god or altero-god, who does not exist, we have the fullness of the problematic of creation, which determines both the being of the world and its relationship with God, the directedness of the world toward God, for createdness is precisely this relationship. It is necessary to understand the nature or character of this relationship. We enter here into the domain of Christian revelation, for the createdness of the world can only be an object of faith and a content of revelation. This truth about the world lies beyond the world. As relating to God, this truth cannot be established by the power of human thought, which, as such, remains immanent to the world. In this sense, this truth is a limit to thought. Nevertheless, this truth can be grasped at the boundaries where it touches the world.

Thus, one must first of all try to understand the idea of createdness in its essential features, in both its positive and its negative aspects. Therefore, a general preliminary question arises: Is the world created by God, or does it have its own being and thus does not need to be created?

a. Platonism

This idea of the createdness of the world serves as the foundation of the doctrine of the world in revelation and is already expressed in the first, foundational chapters of the first book of the Bible, Genesis. This idea is also an element of certain pagan doctrines, although with inevitable dualistic additions and distortions. But this idea was alien and even repellent to ancient philosophy. First of all, it plays no role in Plato's theory of ideas as it is expounded in such fundamental dialogues as Phaedrus, the Symposium, and the Phaedo. Ideas represent the world of the genuinely existent, hovering above and duplicating the empirical world, as it were. This is the sophianic photosphere above the world, the eternal, Divine Sophia, Divinity without God. Contraposed to the Divine Sophia is the creaturely Sophia, the same ideas but submerged in nothing, in becoming, and thus finding themselves in a defective state. (In fact, this state is so defective that there arises the difficult question whether all the images of being can have corresponding ideas.) Thus, the world of becoming looks into the heaven of ideas and (though with refractions) reflects this heaven in itself. But how can one cross this abyss that separates the heaven of ideas from the empirical vale? How can one overcome this ontological hiatus? Platonism has no answer to this question, and it is precisely this separation of the ideal, intelligible ground of the world from the world itself, this hiatus, that Aristotle has in mind in his critique of Platonism.

b. Aristotelianism

Ideas exist not in things but above and outside things. They exist as abstract shadows, to which Aristotle opposes the same ideas but ones that are essentially connected with being in concreto, as goal-causes, energies, entelechies. Aristotle does not deny the truth of Platonism in the teaching of ideas, but he wishes to complete it or to completely unfold it. (Of course, new difficulties arise for him during this attempt at unfolding.) In Plato's Timaeus, we have something like an attempt to complete Platonism. This work speaks of the creation of the world by a demiurge, who creates while looking at ideas, made up of different combinations. In its philosophical incompleteness, the Timaeus is like a torso without a head and face, and the mythological images in which its most fundamental themes are expressed do not aid the understanding but rather hamper thought. The Timaeus appears to discuss creation, but who is the creator? Is he a god or is he a "demon," an intermediary being, only a demiurge? There is no direct answer to this question. In the Timaeus, we find a certain positive definition of the relationship between the Divine Sophia (ideas) and the creaturely Sophia, as if in answer to Aristotle's reproach that they are separated. But the fundamental question of their connection in the One Primordial Principle, or God, is not posed. As in Plato's other works, we have only Sophia, divinity without God, ideas without anyone who has them, inasmuch as the demiurge is not God. Platonism remains only an abstract sophiology, unconnected with theology. Owing to this limitation it dialectically does not hold together, despite the fact that it is unique and a work of genius. It inevitably slides either into subjective (transcendental) idealism (which is where recent critical philosophy places it) or into Aristotelian monism. The latter is a kind of portal leading into Christian theology, but only a portal, not a building. As a sophiological system, Aristotle's metaphysics, despite his polemic with Plato, can be understood as a variant of Platonism. Although Aristotelianism is not free of the claim of being a theology, we have in Aristotle's philosophy only a system of sophiological cosmology, though the latter is expounded in theological expressions. God and the world merge to the point of indistinguishability in this philosophy, are substantially identified. The transcendent is not distinguished from the immanent, insofar as the latter transcends into the former and is its lower state. In this sense, that is, in the light of Christian doctrine, Aristotle's entire system is theologically ambiguous and even contradictory.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from THE BRIDE OF THE LAMB by Sergius Bulgakov Copyright © 2002 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Excerpted by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Translator's Introduction....................ix
To the Reader....................xvii
1. The Creation of the World "Out of Nothing"....................3
2. Creaturely Freedom....................125
3. Evil....................147
4. God and Creaturely Freedom....................193
5 The Church....................253
6. History....................315
7. Death and the State after Death....................349
8. Parousia, Resurrection, and the City of God....................379
Index....................527

Editorial Reviews

Paul Valliere
"Already the most distinguished translator of Russian religious philosophy and theology in the English-speaking world, Boris Jakim has outdone himself with his translation of Bulgakov's Bride of the Lamb. Drawing on his deep understanding of modern Russian Orthodoxy and masterfully balancing the competing demands of literal and idiomatic translation, Jakim gives us a comprehensible Bulgakov without blunting the visionary enthusiasm and prophetic challenges that make Bulgakov's theology the wondrous thing that it is. Jakim has made an exceptional contribution to contemporary theological scholarship and ecumenical understanding. "

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