Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия (Aug 2013)
DOGMA AND ANTINOMY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SERGEY BULGAKOV
Abstract
This article examines the thought of Bulgakov as regards the dogmatic formulation of the council of Chalcedon as well as his thoughts on the Holy Eucharist. The author wishes to describe the difficult path which Bulgakov followed to arrive at his understanding of the most fundamental points of Christian doctrine and during the course of which he was initially fascinated and later disenchanted by Roman Catholicism. This rather short period, usually known by the name of the Crimean Philosophy of Bulgakov, is one of the key moments in the whole of his activity and provided the final impetus for his turn to Sophiology. The author of this article describes how the return of Bulgakov to Russian Orthodoxy was accompanied by the philosopher’s rediscovery of Sophiology. Sophiology was interpreted by Bulgakov as relieving the existing antinomy between two opposing principles in both the mystery of the Eucharist and the mystery of the Incarnation, between the divine and the mortal. The problem of the consecration of the holy gifts was met and resolved by Bulgakov in the domain of Christology and more precisely in the doctrine of the body of Christ: the earthly or material body and the glorifi ed body, the reality of Christ’s body up until the Resurrection and after the Resurrection. This teaching about the relationship between the two realities of the corporality of Christ was little studied in Orthodoxy Theology before Bulgakov. It was interpreted by Bulgakov in the light of his Sophiology: the Incarnation as the absolute realization in human form of the divine sophiological prototype. The author of this article concludes that Bulgakov’s use of Sophiology provided him with a way to oppose and overcome Kant’s transcendentalism. Thus, it became one of the major facets of Russian Philosophy
