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Institute for Ecumenical Studies, Ukrainian Catholic University, Second conference: “Radical orthodoxy: a Christian answer to Post-Modern Culture”
"Living Tradition--Social theory working with theology: the case of Fr Sergius Bulgakov."
by Michael Plekon
Humanity is running out of breath and losing its strength in this hopeless conflict between the egocentricity of individualism and the sadism of communism, between the soulnessness of statism and the snarlings of racism. But the Church has thus far had no answer to give; under the pressure of threatened persecution, it has settled for carrying on as one tolerated or licensed state institution among others—or it has endured, in the communist world, a truly bestial persecution at the hands of the Beast of pagan polity. Yet it is only the Church that possesses the principle of true social order, in which the personal and the collective, freedom and social service can be given equal weight and unified harmoniously. It is itself this very principle—living sobornost. That is also the dogmatic foundation of an ecclesial polity. But to this end there must be an upsurge of fresh inspiration in the members of the Church themselves, a spring of living water which satisfies the thirst of contemporary humanity, for the sake of a new relationship among nations, a new mission to the darkness of social paganism, for the awakening of a new spirit. This is not the misplaced utopianism of a “rose-tinted” Christianity that consigns the tragic character of history, with its necessary schism between good and evil, to oblivion, believing that before the ultimate separation the forces of good are bound to become fully manifest.[1]
Thus did Fr. Sergius Bulgakov--himself formerly a professor of political economy, a Marxist, member of the second Duma become theologian and priest--describe the situation of the Church and the world in the turbulent 1930s. Despite his break with Marxist thought and his ruthless criticism of both the Bolsheviks and Fascists, Bulgakov nevertheless remained radical in his assessment both of the challenges of the early 20th century as well as the crucial role of the Church in meeting these. The title of the journal in which this essay, “The Soul of Socialism” was published was Novyi grad, “the new city,” and it aptly summarizes his stance. Far from simply condemning the evils of modernity, he rather saw in them numerous openings for the Church and the transformaing work of the Spirit. As Rowan Williams observes, it was but one of a number of essays in which Bulgakov addressed the social situation, teachings and action of the Church.
A few years later he joined with a group of likeminded émigré intellectuals in an anthology titled Zhivoe predanie-- “living tradition,” subtitled “Orthodoxy in the modern world.” (pravoslavie v sovremennosti) [2] Not unlike an earlier anthology published before the Revolution—Vekhi (Signposts), it was a manifesto of sorts, not a statement of principles or demands but rather a collection of essays which revealed a common perspective. This point of view was openness to the modern world, a willingness to dialogue with the cultures, societies and churches of the West. Theirs was never a submission to modernity but the realization, as George Fedotov put it, that like countless Christian thinkers before them, they had to use the language of the modern world and express the Gospel as citizens of it.[3] To be sure, they had harsh words of criticism for modernity’s ills—the brutality of unbridled capitalism as well as totalitarian state socialism and fascism. They embraced the world as God’s creation while recognizing always its need for redemption and transformation.
In his prophetic style, Nicolas Berdiaev attacked the bourgeois domestication of Christianity. Bulgakov himself argued for the dynamic nature of theology. Nicolas Afanasiev examined whether or not the canons of the church could be changed. (They can be.) Others included Fr. Cyprian Kern’s discerning of the levitical and prophetic models of pastoral identity, George Fedotov on the church’s being shaped by the modern world and its thinking (as well as vice versa) and Lev Zander’s vigorous argument for ecumenical work as the work of the Spirit. Quite radical for the time yet still challenging to us today, he affirmed ecumenical work as a continuing Pentecost and all believers as “Christ-bearers” to each other and to the world, though members of divided churches. Church historian A.V. Kartashev likewise argued for the freedom of theological work over against ecclesiastical authority, a bold challenge both to the pre-revolutionary Russian Church and some of the rigidity of Diaspora communities. Basil Zenkovsky took on the cosmic aspects of Christian faith and thought and Boris Sove the ancient communal celebration of the Eucharist as opposed to the many restrictions and individualized piety of “contemporary,” that is early 20th century Russian practice.[4] Paul Valliere has provided incisive analysis of Living Tradition and its all too often overlooked manifesto about the appropriateness and authenticity of dialogue between theology and modern thought, real conversation between culture and the church.[5]
Given later developments, the essays in Living Tradition were nothing short of clairvoyant. Consider the great trilogy on the humanity of God and eschatology that Bulgakov went on to publish as well as his study of the Book of the Apocalypse/Revelation. Berdiaev continued his production of works, many of them championing the freedom of the Gospel as well as the need for engagement in modern life. Fr. Afanasiev, after caring for a Tunisian parish in the war years, spent the rest of his career in historical work on the limits of the church and the “eucharistic ecclesiology” of the first centuries. His work would set the course of ecclesiology, shaping not only the documents of Vatican II but the work of such as von Allmen, Tillard, Cullman, Bouyer and in particular Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff. Schmemann took Afanasiev’s probing of the structure and relationships among bishops, presbyters, deacons and laity not only as a model for the restoration and renewal of celebration of the Eucharist but also to the renewal of the life of the Orthodox church in America. Lev Zander’s commitment to theological education and to the work of the World Council of Churches, along with another Bulgakov student, Paul Evdokimov, resulted in significant Orthodox presence in the international ecumenical movement.
To see “tradition” as “living” is to see it capable of creative response, in new language and concepts, to new situations. Bulgakov’s important essay emphasizes the Spirit’s ability to grow new understanding that do not diminish the truth of the traditional expressions of truth. He and the others had a sense of continuity from the past but also saw the modern period as the arena for God’s action. They could not see the world as separable from the Kingdom of God and the Church. Rather, the world is created by God. As Soloviev and then Bulgakov emphasized in the concept of “the humanity of God,” (Bogochelovechestvo) in the Incarnation God enters the world of space and time. Christological dogma insists that God is humanized as we are divinized. This realization forms the foundation for openness to the world, to culture and politics and all that is human-because God now shares this humanity.
Now it is not possible to consider the long procession of theologians, philosophers and others who looked for a real engagement of the Church and the world. One must go to Antoine Arjakovsky’s massive and masterful study which looks at those who contributed to the journal ‘Put in Paris.[6] There is no study even close to his in sweep or in depth. Iwant to argue that Bulgakov’s engagement with political economy, philosophy and social theory convinced him, as Paul Valliereclaims, that tradition can and indeed should be in dialogue with modernity, i.e. that some of the perspectives of the social sciences are constructive rather than corrosive of authentic Orthodox/orthodox theology. Perhaps the foremost theological critic of social theory in recent years, John Milbank, I believe, has identified Bulgakov as one of the most important theologians of the modern era.[7] It is, of course encouraging to hear this, given all the condemnation and rejection that Bulgakov has suffered over the years, mostly from his fellow Orthodox Christians. Is likewise intriguing given that over the years we have heard so much more about Barth, Tillich, Rahner or von Balthasar, not to mention Bonhoeffer and de Lubac. I mention these because in the enormous Blackwell volume, all these receive individual sections as 20th century “classics,” along with Torrance, the Niebuhrs, Moltmann and Pannenberg.[8] It is not until Rowan Williams’ essay covering the totality of Eastern Orthodox theology that Bulgakov’s name emerges as a principal figure (along with Vladimir Lossky and Georges Florovsky).[9] Just recently at an ecumenical consultation I heard an Orthodox ecumenical official essentially dismiss Bulgakov as not part of mainstream theological education, possibly an interest in more specialized philosophical and theological research, exactly the opposite of what Antoine Arjakovsky argued in his essay in the special double issue of St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly devoted to…the work of Sergius Bulgakov.[10]
Throughout his long life and scholarly career, Fr. Sergius Bulgakov was many things. The son of a priest and a seminary student briefly, like other intellectuals in late 19th century Russia drifted from the faith and found another, first in socialism, then in the liberating thought of German idealism and Russian religious philosophy. It is not possible to grasp Bulgakov’s own path without seeing, in his writings, the influence of Schelling and Boehme, of Soloviev and Dostoievsky. The story of his pilgrimage finds him returning “to the house of the Father,” namely the Church. He became an important advisor to Metropolitan then Patriarch Tikhon at the Moscow Council of 1917-18. Not long after he was ordained a priest, with his friend Fr Pavel Florensky not only accompanying him round the altar in the ordination but also mentoring him in learning to celebrate the liturgy, even providing him with his ordination cross (as well as a great deal of theological inspiration).
The rest of his life (he already had a notable academic career before his expulsion in 1922) was spent mostly as the dean of St. Sergius Institute in Paris. From his start there in 1925 until his death from a stroke 13 July 1944 he produced a second authorship that towers over what he had already written before the Revolution and his emigration-- the smaller and greater trilogies, the studies of the theology of the icon, of the angels, the Mother of God, the Apocalypse. Then there were his lecture tours to America, his intense participation for over a decade in the ecumenical work of the Orthodox-Anglican Fellowship of St Alban and St. Sergius, his participation in the Lausanne and conferences of what we know today as the WCC, the many persons he confessed and cared for pastorally, the sermons he preached---it seems almost more than a life or even the second half of a life! But then often overlooked, is the long line of students and colleagues he worked with and profoundly influenced, from Kartashev, Afanasiev, Berdiaev, Fedotov and Zander already mentioned to Sts Maria Skobtsova and Dimitri Klepinine, theologians Paul Evdokimov, Olivier Clement, Elisabeth Behr Sigel (recently fallen asleep), Nicolas and Militza Zernov, iconographer Sister Joanna Reitlinger, Bishop Cassian, Frs. Lev Gillet, Alexis Kniazeff and Alexander Schmemann, Bishop Walter Frere, Evgeny Lampert, and later John Meyendorff and Alexander Men. Antoine Arjakovsky notes even more outside the Eastern Church such as Congar, LeGuillou, Bouyer, von Balthasar and Rowan Williams.[11]
The number of those in some way affected by Fr. Sergius is immense. And surely the memoirs of him as a person, like those recently compiled by Gillian Crow in her autobiography of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, do not yield a hagiographic or idealized image. In his always acerbic but usually insightful reminiscences, Fr. Basil Zenkovsky sketches a realistic image of a gifted yet conflicted, tender but often distant man. Even those who admired his pastoral gifts, his rapt attention while celebrating the liturgy often had little use for some of his central intellectual interests such as Sophia, Divine Wisdom. This was the case for Fr. Alexander Schmemann who nevertheless named Fr. Bulgakov as the single most significant influence upon him.[12]
Yet let me suggest a few specific ways in which Fr. Sergius Bulgakov contributed to the encounter of the Church with modernity and how his roots and training in the social sciences helped him.
1. The first of these would be his eschatological vision, his seeing through the inner ecclesial tensions, contradictions, abuses and even the divisions among the churches.. Only because of his grounding in historical analysis as well as in political science and sociology that Bulgakov was able to distinguish the divine dimension of the church from its so very human one without at any time confusing them, separating them, conflating them, ignoring one or the other. And only because he recognized the church as both earthly and divine could he be so critical of the leadership of the hierarchs, of the superstition that passed for tradition as in the toll houses and other anthromorphisms retrojected back onto a realm in which they had no place, e.g. equating divine justice with that of the courts here, mistaking an ignorant sectarian view of unity in faith with the explosive centripetal force of the Spirit in the church. Precisely because he possessed a powerful grasp of the empirical church could Bulgakov then stand it over against the heavenly bride of the Lamb in the New Jerusalem. In “The Soul of Socialism” he wrote: