Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия (Dec 2019)
“In the language of Sophiology”: priest Sergiy Bulgakov’s criticism of St. Augustine’s Triadology
Abstract
As is known, Revd. Sergiy Bulgakov understood his Sophiology not only as a specifi c doctrine of Sophia the Divine and the created, but as a sui generis key to all theological problems which in order to be solved need to be formulated in the “language of Sophiology”. Hence, it is necessary to understand in what way this language corresponds to the traditional languages of theology and whether its employment really leads to a really new level of theological reasoning and theological knowledge. This article deals with this problem with Priest Sergiy’s triadology as an example. The main statements of this triadology are formulated following the prius of the subject, who presents himself as I, you, he. In the created subject these are acts of cognition, whereas in the absolute Divine Subject they are represented as a threefold unity of the Divine Persons. Such presentation of the dogma is contrasted by Revd. Sergiy with the western tradition, which in his opinion since St. Augustine’s time has been following the prius of the substance and is ultimately refl ected in works of Thomas Aquinas. However, the analysis of Augustinian triadology demonstrates that the fragments of his texts mentioned by Revd. Sergius hardly allow a non-ambiguous interpretation: in Trinity the essence is primary with regard to the person; the property of being threefold is not deduced by St. Augustine from the relations (as is done by St. Thomas); St. Augustine’s psychological analogies imply not only the prius of the subject but also his property of being of three hypostases. Thus, Bulgakov’s meanings in actual fact appear to be much closer to the conception of the western theologian whom he is criticising than it would seem at fi rst look. The latter circumstance makes one analyse the language of Sophiology with the aim of identifying its internal parameters and raises the question of the possibility of reading at least some of Bulgakov’s theses while putting them out of the sophiological context which was so cherished by their author himself.
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