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Rating: 
Summary: Giddy heights of theological genius
Review: Scandalous that this work has not yet been reviewed, two years after its publication. I am not up to the task, but I'll try to say something. First of all, thanks, praises, and prayers for Boris Jakim whose labors of love are bringing the greatest theologians of modern Orthodoxy to the attention of the west (Bulgakov, Florensky, Frank). The present work is Bulgakov's greatest, a towering theological achievement. It is essentially a work of cosmology, anthropology, and ecclesiology. He wrestles with all the most tormenting questions of Christian theology in the modern age -- creation, the relation of God and the world, the nature of providence, the problem of evil. His criticisms of western theology in general, from Augustine on, are penetrating and devastating. But he is equally critical of an Orthodoxy which is incapable of self-criticism and self-clarification. He reaches deeply into the thought and experience of the eastern Church to bring out the materials for answers to the Church's most profound and pressing questions. Through the doctrinal elaboration of what he calls "Sophiology," (which he inherited from predecessors like Solovyov, but which he alone articulated in an Orthodox way) he provides a real alternative to other revisionist forms of Christian theology (such as process theology) to which many have been driven by the failures of traditional theism. In some specific cases he seems to anticipate the themes of process theology in an extraordinary way, for example: "...even the Creator Himself cannot penetrate, in some sense, the ontic kernel of creation, creaturely freedom..." (p 236), and: "Although creation cannot be absolutely unexpected and new for God in the ontological sense, nevertheless in empirical ('contingent') being, it represents a new manifestation for God Himself, who is waiting to see whether or not man will open the doors of his heart. God Himself will know this only when it happens... Veiling His face, God remains ignorant of the actions of human freedom. Otherwise, these actions would not have their own reality, but would only be a function of a certain divine mechanism of things" (pp 238-9). Combine these insights with Bulgakov's view on the role of angels (also free agents) in providential governance of the cosmos, and you have the convincing beginnings of a viable theodicy -- similar in a remarkable way to that of the open theist Greg Boyd (see his Satan and the Problem of Evil). Yet because Bulgakov is radically faithful to the total ethos of traditional Christianity, his speculations don't end up dissolving in the acid of unrestrained relativism the way process theology seems to. At this point, for me, Bulgakov is the only credible answer that traditional Christianity can give to the postmodern liberal theologies. No one else is even asking the questions or is courageous enough to articulate a prophetically daring speculative theology of Bulgakov's caliber. Reading him, however, is an incredible intellectual and spiritual labor. To Orthodox, I say: have the courage to read Bulgakov, he's NOT a heretic. When I read the aspersions, for example, that Fr Seraphim (Rose) cast on "Parisian Orthodoxy," I remember that fundamentalist monks have opposed every genuine creative movement in the history of the Church, from the homoousion and metrical hymns on. Yet those monks are forgotten, and the Fathers they fought are our pillars and our guiding lights. We shouldn't be afraid of Bulgakov -- he is possibly our only salvation from ossified fundamentalism, and in my mind, quite likely to be seen by the future Church as one of her great Fathers (and Bulgakov was very probably a saint; he was seen in uncreated light by those attending his grace-filled death.) To western Christians, I say: read him to find fresh, different answers to your deepest questions, answers that don't require you to jettison traditional Christianity the way postmodernism does, or your mind and heart the way uncritical traditionalist fundamentalism does.
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