Wisdom From Above A Primer In The Theology Of Father Sergei Bulgakov Aidan Nichols by Aidan Nichols 9780852446423, 085244642X instant download after payment.

Father Sergei Bulgakov was probably the most prolific and the most profound of the great twentieth-century Russian Orthodox theologians; but he had also had the deepest immersion in Western modernity through his early work in economics and philosophy. His immensely wide reading in intellectual history as well as in the theology and spirituality of the early church is clearly in evidence in almost every page he wrote in his maturity. And all of this makes perfect sense of the comparison with Hans Urs von Balthasar which Fr Nichols proposes in these pages. It is a comparison that also helps us put into perspective the questions that hang around Bulgakov’s orthodoxy. His early work was dominated by speculations on the Divine Wisdom, Sophia, which appeared to suggest that Wisdom was almost a divine personage. But as his thought developed, the language of Sophia became more and more a hugely fruitful metaphor for connecting diverse theological themes - creation, incarnation, sacramental life, art, liturgy, the social order. God’s Wisdom was understood by Bulgakov as an eternal quality of self-giving which allowed God’s life to be lived ‘in the other’ as well as for the other. God loves his own love, and so loves to see that love reborn - in the eternal Son, in creation, in the Church. ‘Kenosis’, self-emptying, becomes a governing theme in practically all areas of theology in such a light. It is one of the many virtues of Fr Nichols’ excellent introduction that he makes it absolutely clear that Bulgakov’s great works on Christian doctrine, while they freely use the Sophia imagery, are not in any way compromised by some sort of gnostic speculation (which could not be said of every Russian thinker who had used this idiom). What is presented here is a sophisticated and far- reaching scheme of Christocentric teaching that makes the dogma of Chalcedon come alive in all kinds of diverse contexts.