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The Lamb of God
What is our participation in the divine humanity? In explaining this important doctrine, Sergius Bulgakov begins by surveying the field of Christology with special reference to the divine humanity. He considers the role of the Divine Sophia, examines the foundations of the Incarnation, explores the nature of Christ's divine consciousness, and ponders Christ's ministries while on earth. A profound discussion of Christ's kenosis as a model for humanity rounds out this comprehensive and valuable study.
The Lamb of God is one of the greatest works of Christology in the twentieth century and a crowning achievement in the examination of the theology of divine humanity.
The Lamb of God is one of the greatest works of Christology in the twentieth century and a crowning achievement in the examination of the theology of divine humanity.
472 pages, Paperback
First published February 12, 1990
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About the author
Sergius Bulgakov
54 books64 followersSergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (/bʊlˈɡɑːkəf/;[1] Russian: Серге́й Никола́евич Булга́ков; 28 July [O.S. 16 July] 1871 – 13 July 1944) was a Russian Orthodox Christian theologian, philosopher, and economist.
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October 9, 2021
Answer to Jung
I was only a few pages into The Lamb of God before becoming astonished by some of the parallels I was noticing between Bulgakov and one of his contemporaries, an old intellectual acquaintance of mine: C.G. Jung. Bulgakov’s duality of hypostasis and nature, wherein the former—spirit, personality, or an awareness of oneself as an “I”—inhabits, possesses, and assimilates the latter, which is the world or content in which hypostasticity reveals itself to itself, corresponds roughly to the Jungian schematics of the ego and the (personal and collective) unconscious. But whereas Jung’s collective unconscious refers only to the shared and inherited structures of the human psyche, which then take shape in the egoic individual consciousness as images with a certain cultural and developmental specificity, Bulgakov’s creaturely “unconscious” (as opposed to the Divine Ousia that forms its proto-image)—that is, created nature—includes not only the entire psycho-corporeal content of the human body, but extends to everything that is “given”, preconscious, and opaque in its current lack of assimilation into man’s hypostatic self-awareness. That is to say, Bulgakov’s creaturely nature—our spiritual unconscious—incorporates all of creation, of which man is a microcosm:
“Man is a 'microcosm,' and his imprint therefore lies upon the entire world, the macrocosm. The world has its fullness and pinnacle in man, who is the logos of the world...there is and can be nothing in the world in which humanity does not participate, nothing to which man's knowledge, feeling, and will cannot extend...[T]he whole world is man's potential and peripheral body.”
Jung inhabited a Darwinian world in which the meager flickerings of human consciousness—our “light of meaning” kindled “in the darkness of mere being”—were destined always to be overshadowed by the vastness and opacity of the unconscious, which represented millions of years of genetic sedimentation and to which one was obliged to offer propitiation in order to retain some measure of psychic integrity. To be sure, Jung believed in the emancipatory potential of the individuation process, but this mostly entailed a passive reception of subconscious contents into conscious life, and the immutable bigness of nature relative to conscious human volition was taken as a matter of course. The order of men could negotiate a fragile truce with the chaos of nature, but order was always collapsing into chaos, which enveloped and suffused it as eternity does time, preceding it ontogenically. Jung was a philosopher of what Bulgakov called “the fallen Sophia.”
Bulgakov’s world, by contrast, was one made in the image of trihypostatic Divine self-consciousness (“I AM that I AM”); a world of bodiless angels and God-breathed human spirit called to imagistic hypostaticity; one in which spirit preceded creation both pre-eternally and hierarchically, the proper telos of nature was to be hypostatized and made transparent to the dynamic outward self-positing of created spirit, and the perceived superiority of nature to spirit-consciousness, the appraisal of nature as an end-in-itself in a false extrahypostatic self-sufficiency, was an illusion reified by man’s refusal of his calling to humanize the cosmos.
Both men were also notable for their desire to recognize a feminine principle within the Divinity. Jung, the disaffected Protestant, lamented what he viewed as a longstanding refusal on the part of the institutional Church to elevate the earthly Bride of Christ, personified by Mary, to its proper coequality with the Holy Trinity. He celebrated Pope Pius XII’s dogmatic promulgation of the Assumption of Mary in 1950 as the most important event in Church history since the Reformation; one that effectively “quaternized” the Trinity and allowed the Divine consciousness to assimilate the earthy, receptive feminine rather than expelling it from the conscious life of the Church to the shadow realm, where it had thus come to be identified with the satanic. By formally recognizing the Divine Feminine, which had already been an object of devotion among the laity for a thousand years, the Catholic Church had gained a dogmatic leg up on a Protestant world that remained, in Jung’s view, stubbornly Christocentric:
“One could have known for a long time that there was a deep longing in the masses for an intercessor and mediatrix who would at last take her place alongside the Holy Trinity and be received as the ‘Queen of Heaven and Bride at the heavenly court.’ For more than a thousand years it had been taken for granted that the Mother of God dwelt there, and we know from the Old Testament that Sophia was with God before the creation. From the ancient Egyptian theology of the divine Pharaohs we know that God wants to become man by means of a human mother, and it was recognized even in prehistoric times that the primordial divine being is both male and female…It is psychologically significant for our day that in the year 1950 the heavenly bride was united with the bride-groom.” (Answer to Job)
Bulgakov’s sophiology is both more radical and more respectful of Christian orthodoxy, despite its being deemed heretical by the Russian Orthodox Church and remaining controversial today; and it has the additional benefit of providing some positive and elaborative content to the negative Chalcedonian dogma of the simultaneous inseparability and inconfusability of the divine and human natures in Christ. Bulgakov identifies Sophia, the Wisdom and Glory of God, with the singular divine substance, essence, nature, or ousia; the One Substance that the Three Hypostases of the Holy Trinity share. Sophia is not an hypostasis to be “counted” among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but is rather that which is hypostatized by the Divine Triunity, or hypostatizability as such. Within the Divinity, the Divine Sophia is eternally hypostatized by the Trinity and transparent to it. She is the Divine World, of which the Son-Logos, by the Father and in the Holy Spirit, takes eternal possession in a movement of Self-giving love. As the work of God in creation is “to repeat Himself, as it were, to make an image of Himself outside Himself,” whereby God spills out of Himself into extradivine being to exhaust the possibilities of love—thus making God both the Absolute in Himself and the Absolute-Relative in relation to creation, as Saint Gregory Palamas articulated with his essence-energies distinction—the Divine World is thus the foundation and entelechy of the creaturely world; and since the creaturely world has its spiritual center in man, who is its microcosm, the Divine Sophia is therefore the pre-eternal humanity as well.
An operative scriptural passage here is Proverbs 8:22-31, in which Wisdom declares:
“The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
before he had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world.
When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master workman,
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the children of man.”
There is one Sophia with two modalities: divine being and creaturely becoming. This mutual sophianicity of the divine and human worlds, or natures, is precisely the foundation of their commensurability; it is what allows both natures to be hypostatized in the singular person of Christ, whose Incarnation, besides being a profound work of condescension and self-humiliation by the Son of God, represents “an adoption of the hypostasis of the Logos by the human race.” This emergence and newfound accessibility of the Logos in the creaturely world of multiplicity and becoming, which is now united with the divine world in Christ the God-Man without separation or confusion, constitutes an ongoing redemption and deification of the human race, which now has the ability to share in this divine-human life and to attain the fulfillment of its sophianic proto-image.
The New Adam, sojourning in creation and taking the full weight and consequence of the sins of the world into Himself, fulfilled man’s calling to hypostatize the world—and thus deify himself—by positing himself in all of humanity, and thereby in all of creation. By failing to embrace the All-Humanity that Christ is—by refusing to take the All into himself and instead living in individuated inwardness, thereby abandoning his call to hypostatize the cosmos and subordinating his spirit to nature, which thus became an end in itself—the Old Adam, in keeping with the enigmatic Johannine formulation of Christ as the “Lamb slain from the foundation [“throwing down”] of the world,” thus fell by balking at the scandal of the Cross.
Utilizing what I would describe as a Nyssen understanding of the divine kenosis in Christ, Bulgakov articulated a deeply Chalcedonian Christology. Chalcedon represented a dogmatic dialectical synthesis between the school of Alexandria (St. Cyril), which tended toward Monophysitism and Docetism, and that of Antioch (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Nestorius), which tended toward a “Nestorian” division between the natures of Christ. Bulgakov produced a strikingly clear picture of what Chalcedon defined dogmatically but the tradition was not quite able to articulate theologically: that in Christ the divine and human natures are truly united in the singular Hypostasis of the Logos, but without the divinity of Christ obliterating His humanity and turning His life into a Disneyland ride stripped of authentic human freedom, limitedness, growth, and accomplishment. The human feats of Christ—His real conquest of temptations, His real feats of asceticism, His real acceptance of spiritual death at Gethsemane and bodily death at Golgotha—increased the capacity of His human nature (and ours) to “encompass” the fullness of His divinity (and ours, in Christ):
“[Christ’s] divinity empties itself in immersing itself in the depths of the human essence; and His divinity shines forth in the human essence only to the extent that the latter encompasses the divinity’s self-revelation, correspondingly being deified by it. The Holy Spirit reveals in Jesus His proper divine depths.”
The Lord’s work, fulfilled as Prophet and Priest yet ongoing as King while He subjects all things to Himself, is not the work of God alone in His absoluteness nor two separate works of God and man; neither a divine coercion nor an alliance of divine and human persons. It is precisely the work of the God-Man, the efflorescence of the Divine-Humanity for the sake of Whose Incarnation the world came into being.
A work of orthodox daring.
I was only a few pages into The Lamb of God before becoming astonished by some of the parallels I was noticing between Bulgakov and one of his contemporaries, an old intellectual acquaintance of mine: C.G. Jung. Bulgakov’s duality of hypostasis and nature, wherein the former—spirit, personality, or an awareness of oneself as an “I”—inhabits, possesses, and assimilates the latter, which is the world or content in which hypostasticity reveals itself to itself, corresponds roughly to the Jungian schematics of the ego and the (personal and collective) unconscious. But whereas Jung’s collective unconscious refers only to the shared and inherited structures of the human psyche, which then take shape in the egoic individual consciousness as images with a certain cultural and developmental specificity, Bulgakov’s creaturely “unconscious” (as opposed to the Divine Ousia that forms its proto-image)—that is, created nature—includes not only the entire psycho-corporeal content of the human body, but extends to everything that is “given”, preconscious, and opaque in its current lack of assimilation into man’s hypostatic self-awareness. That is to say, Bulgakov’s creaturely nature—our spiritual unconscious—incorporates all of creation, of which man is a microcosm:
“Man is a 'microcosm,' and his imprint therefore lies upon the entire world, the macrocosm. The world has its fullness and pinnacle in man, who is the logos of the world...there is and can be nothing in the world in which humanity does not participate, nothing to which man's knowledge, feeling, and will cannot extend...[T]he whole world is man's potential and peripheral body.”
Jung inhabited a Darwinian world in which the meager flickerings of human consciousness—our “light of meaning” kindled “in the darkness of mere being”—were destined always to be overshadowed by the vastness and opacity of the unconscious, which represented millions of years of genetic sedimentation and to which one was obliged to offer propitiation in order to retain some measure of psychic integrity. To be sure, Jung believed in the emancipatory potential of the individuation process, but this mostly entailed a passive reception of subconscious contents into conscious life, and the immutable bigness of nature relative to conscious human volition was taken as a matter of course. The order of men could negotiate a fragile truce with the chaos of nature, but order was always collapsing into chaos, which enveloped and suffused it as eternity does time, preceding it ontogenically. Jung was a philosopher of what Bulgakov called “the fallen Sophia.”
Bulgakov’s world, by contrast, was one made in the image of trihypostatic Divine self-consciousness (“I AM that I AM”); a world of bodiless angels and God-breathed human spirit called to imagistic hypostaticity; one in which spirit preceded creation both pre-eternally and hierarchically, the proper telos of nature was to be hypostatized and made transparent to the dynamic outward self-positing of created spirit, and the perceived superiority of nature to spirit-consciousness, the appraisal of nature as an end-in-itself in a false extrahypostatic self-sufficiency, was an illusion reified by man’s refusal of his calling to humanize the cosmos.
Both men were also notable for their desire to recognize a feminine principle within the Divinity. Jung, the disaffected Protestant, lamented what he viewed as a longstanding refusal on the part of the institutional Church to elevate the earthly Bride of Christ, personified by Mary, to its proper coequality with the Holy Trinity. He celebrated Pope Pius XII’s dogmatic promulgation of the Assumption of Mary in 1950 as the most important event in Church history since the Reformation; one that effectively “quaternized” the Trinity and allowed the Divine consciousness to assimilate the earthy, receptive feminine rather than expelling it from the conscious life of the Church to the shadow realm, where it had thus come to be identified with the satanic. By formally recognizing the Divine Feminine, which had already been an object of devotion among the laity for a thousand years, the Catholic Church had gained a dogmatic leg up on a Protestant world that remained, in Jung’s view, stubbornly Christocentric:
“One could have known for a long time that there was a deep longing in the masses for an intercessor and mediatrix who would at last take her place alongside the Holy Trinity and be received as the ‘Queen of Heaven and Bride at the heavenly court.’ For more than a thousand years it had been taken for granted that the Mother of God dwelt there, and we know from the Old Testament that Sophia was with God before the creation. From the ancient Egyptian theology of the divine Pharaohs we know that God wants to become man by means of a human mother, and it was recognized even in prehistoric times that the primordial divine being is both male and female…It is psychologically significant for our day that in the year 1950 the heavenly bride was united with the bride-groom.” (Answer to Job)
Bulgakov’s sophiology is both more radical and more respectful of Christian orthodoxy, despite its being deemed heretical by the Russian Orthodox Church and remaining controversial today; and it has the additional benefit of providing some positive and elaborative content to the negative Chalcedonian dogma of the simultaneous inseparability and inconfusability of the divine and human natures in Christ. Bulgakov identifies Sophia, the Wisdom and Glory of God, with the singular divine substance, essence, nature, or ousia; the One Substance that the Three Hypostases of the Holy Trinity share. Sophia is not an hypostasis to be “counted” among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but is rather that which is hypostatized by the Divine Triunity, or hypostatizability as such. Within the Divinity, the Divine Sophia is eternally hypostatized by the Trinity and transparent to it. She is the Divine World, of which the Son-Logos, by the Father and in the Holy Spirit, takes eternal possession in a movement of Self-giving love. As the work of God in creation is “to repeat Himself, as it were, to make an image of Himself outside Himself,” whereby God spills out of Himself into extradivine being to exhaust the possibilities of love—thus making God both the Absolute in Himself and the Absolute-Relative in relation to creation, as Saint Gregory Palamas articulated with his essence-energies distinction—the Divine World is thus the foundation and entelechy of the creaturely world; and since the creaturely world has its spiritual center in man, who is its microcosm, the Divine Sophia is therefore the pre-eternal humanity as well.
An operative scriptural passage here is Proverbs 8:22-31, in which Wisdom declares:
“The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
before he had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world.
When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master workman,
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the children of man.”
There is one Sophia with two modalities: divine being and creaturely becoming. This mutual sophianicity of the divine and human worlds, or natures, is precisely the foundation of their commensurability; it is what allows both natures to be hypostatized in the singular person of Christ, whose Incarnation, besides being a profound work of condescension and self-humiliation by the Son of God, represents “an adoption of the hypostasis of the Logos by the human race.” This emergence and newfound accessibility of the Logos in the creaturely world of multiplicity and becoming, which is now united with the divine world in Christ the God-Man without separation or confusion, constitutes an ongoing redemption and deification of the human race, which now has the ability to share in this divine-human life and to attain the fulfillment of its sophianic proto-image.
The New Adam, sojourning in creation and taking the full weight and consequence of the sins of the world into Himself, fulfilled man’s calling to hypostatize the world—and thus deify himself—by positing himself in all of humanity, and thereby in all of creation. By failing to embrace the All-Humanity that Christ is—by refusing to take the All into himself and instead living in individuated inwardness, thereby abandoning his call to hypostatize the cosmos and subordinating his spirit to nature, which thus became an end in itself—the Old Adam, in keeping with the enigmatic Johannine formulation of Christ as the “Lamb slain from the foundation [“throwing down”] of the world,” thus fell by balking at the scandal of the Cross.
Utilizing what I would describe as a Nyssen understanding of the divine kenosis in Christ, Bulgakov articulated a deeply Chalcedonian Christology. Chalcedon represented a dogmatic dialectical synthesis between the school of Alexandria (St. Cyril), which tended toward Monophysitism and Docetism, and that of Antioch (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Nestorius), which tended toward a “Nestorian” division between the natures of Christ. Bulgakov produced a strikingly clear picture of what Chalcedon defined dogmatically but the tradition was not quite able to articulate theologically: that in Christ the divine and human natures are truly united in the singular Hypostasis of the Logos, but without the divinity of Christ obliterating His humanity and turning His life into a Disneyland ride stripped of authentic human freedom, limitedness, growth, and accomplishment. The human feats of Christ—His real conquest of temptations, His real feats of asceticism, His real acceptance of spiritual death at Gethsemane and bodily death at Golgotha—increased the capacity of His human nature (and ours) to “encompass” the fullness of His divinity (and ours, in Christ):
“[Christ’s] divinity empties itself in immersing itself in the depths of the human essence; and His divinity shines forth in the human essence only to the extent that the latter encompasses the divinity’s self-revelation, correspondingly being deified by it. The Holy Spirit reveals in Jesus His proper divine depths.”
The Lord’s work, fulfilled as Prophet and Priest yet ongoing as King while He subjects all things to Himself, is not the work of God alone in His absoluteness nor two separate works of God and man; neither a divine coercion nor an alliance of divine and human persons. It is precisely the work of the God-Man, the efflorescence of the Divine-Humanity for the sake of Whose Incarnation the world came into being.
A work of orthodox daring.
March 4, 2021
This book is a brilliant, thoughtful, heart-moving and beautiful work of theology.
Bulgakov begins by reviewing the early church councils and theologians in their debates about Christology. He begins with Apollinaris, known for Adoptionism, then tells the story through Nestorius and Cyril and many others, the whole way to the Sixth Ecumenical council. Through this, he argues that Chalcedon gave a dogmatic definition of Jesus Christ, but by saying what is not (without separation, without division) they did not actually answer how the union works.
Bulgakov sets out to offer a theological explanation for this dogmatic definition. In this he utilizes the Divine Sophia which, for me, was the toughest part of the book. Divine Sophia, God’s Wisdom, is identified with God’s essence and goes into the world as creaturely wisdom.
Once this nuanced, profound and mind-bending definition is made, Bulgakov spends the rest of the book developing a theology of Jesus Christ. There is way more to say here than I could possibly say in a short review. I will just say, I have never read a better explanation of how the one person of Jesus is a union of both human and divine natures. The ideas of Divine Sophia play in this, as in the Incarnation the second person of the Trinity empties himself (kenosis) of divine glory (which I think Bulgakov connected to Sophia) to remain divine. Bulgakov emphasizes the Jesus then lived in the world as a God-Man and we must experience him in this way.
This means he truly learned and grew, he truly experienced temptation even though there was no way he could sin. Bulgakov continually splits the difference between Docetism (Jesus is not really human) and Ebionism (Jesus is only human). Everything in this was not just thoughtful, but moving. Perhaps that’s the best thing you can say about a theology book - it speaks to the heart and not just the mind.
I thought Bulgakov’s description of the Virgin Mary and her place in the story was interesting. Being Protestant (though I don’t really use that term), we mostly devalue and ignore Mary for fear of being too Catholic. Bulgakov gave me a lot to think on.
Overall, this may be on the list for favorite 2021 reads (and I have two more Bulgakov books on my shelf to read!). If you’re into theology and want a feast, check this out!
Bulgakov begins by reviewing the early church councils and theologians in their debates about Christology. He begins with Apollinaris, known for Adoptionism, then tells the story through Nestorius and Cyril and many others, the whole way to the Sixth Ecumenical council. Through this, he argues that Chalcedon gave a dogmatic definition of Jesus Christ, but by saying what is not (without separation, without division) they did not actually answer how the union works.
Bulgakov sets out to offer a theological explanation for this dogmatic definition. In this he utilizes the Divine Sophia which, for me, was the toughest part of the book. Divine Sophia, God’s Wisdom, is identified with God’s essence and goes into the world as creaturely wisdom.
Once this nuanced, profound and mind-bending definition is made, Bulgakov spends the rest of the book developing a theology of Jesus Christ. There is way more to say here than I could possibly say in a short review. I will just say, I have never read a better explanation of how the one person of Jesus is a union of both human and divine natures. The ideas of Divine Sophia play in this, as in the Incarnation the second person of the Trinity empties himself (kenosis) of divine glory (which I think Bulgakov connected to Sophia) to remain divine. Bulgakov emphasizes the Jesus then lived in the world as a God-Man and we must experience him in this way.
This means he truly learned and grew, he truly experienced temptation even though there was no way he could sin. Bulgakov continually splits the difference between Docetism (Jesus is not really human) and Ebionism (Jesus is only human). Everything in this was not just thoughtful, but moving. Perhaps that’s the best thing you can say about a theology book - it speaks to the heart and not just the mind.
I thought Bulgakov’s description of the Virgin Mary and her place in the story was interesting. Being Protestant (though I don’t really use that term), we mostly devalue and ignore Mary for fear of being too Catholic. Bulgakov gave me a lot to think on.
Overall, this may be on the list for favorite 2021 reads (and I have two more Bulgakov books on my shelf to read!). If you’re into theology and want a feast, check this out!
December 17, 2013
This is the hallmark of Bulgakov’s “Sophiology” project. Since it is prone to misunderstanding, and those councils which condemned it likely lacked the philosophical tools to evaluate it, it would be wise to state what Bulgakov means by “Sophia.” The short answer: Imagine what would happen if Platonism and Hegelianism had a child. Longer answer: Sophia is the divine prototype. To speak even more loosely, it is the receptacle and vehicle of God’s divine nature (Bulgakov, 98ff). It is the divine glory. Bulgakov even says it is “the divine world.” He then moves to identify Sophia as the “pre-eternal humanity in God” (113).
Whether we agree with him or not, Bulgakov’s comments gain new relevance after we explore what he calls “The Patristic Dialectic.” The heretic Apollinaris was the first to identify the problematic: What is divine humanity and how is the Incarnation possible (4ff)? He, in good Alexandrian fashion, denies a duality of personal principles. He argues, rather, that two perfect principles cannot become one. Thus, how can one understand the union without transforming it into a duality?
We reject Apollinaris’s heretical teaching, but we must admit he formulated it on very good grounds: the union cannot be of two whole integral persons, which is why Apollinaris dropped the human nous from the humanity. Aside from the comments on the nous, this isn’t that different from Chalcedon (11)!
Cyril responds to this by giving his famous answer: there is one nature of the enfleshed Logos. Cyril now has several difficulties: in order for this statement to be Orthodox, we have to reinterpret what we mean by “phusis.” It is also worth pointing out that Cyril is ideologically dependent on his opponents, which likely prevented him from developing a full, positive alternative to Nestorius.
Bulgakov’s genius (if he proves successful) is to solve the dialectic in this manner: man contains within himself the receptacle of divinity. This is so because he is created on the divine proto-image. In other words, there is a mediating principle between divinity and humanity. It will be Bulgakov’s argument that this is what preserves Chalcedon: the third-term mediation allows a true union and avoids duality.
An Analysis and Critique
Strictly judged on Platonic grounds, it’s hard to argue with him. Without agreeing with him on all specifics (heavy Mariology), I have to admit his project seems to ‘work.’ He gives a very beautiful and engaging discussion on creation, time, and eternity.
His heavy Platonizing could be forgiven if it weren't for the occasional foray into Gnosticism. He identifies the Logos with the “Demiurgos” (111). This isn’t that different from the god of Freemasonry and Egyptian magic religion. It is an “architect” that merely re-shapes dead matter. He runs into other dangers with loose terminology: he speaks of a tri-hypostasis, a feminine hypostasis of Sophia, but at other times he denies that Sophia is en-hypostasized. He gives an impressive defense of Orthodox Eucharistology, but I do not think it holds water. He rightly argues that the Ascended Christ is bodily in heaven, notwithstanding any difficulties that entails. The problem for his Eucharistology is that how can the bodily Christ stay in heaven and be physically present in the elements? Bulgakov responds by saying...I kid you not…”He comes down without leaving heaven.” Understandably, some won't be convinced.
I think Bulgakov successfully defended himself from charges of heresy. Further, if one is committed to substance-ontologies, then it’s hard to avoid Bulgakov’s proposal. If there remains some truth in Hegel, then Bulgakov’s ideas could prove quite valuable. At the end of the day, though, many are nervous about employing a heavily Platonic schemata in our theology.
Whether we agree with him or not, Bulgakov’s comments gain new relevance after we explore what he calls “The Patristic Dialectic.” The heretic Apollinaris was the first to identify the problematic: What is divine humanity and how is the Incarnation possible (4ff)? He, in good Alexandrian fashion, denies a duality of personal principles. He argues, rather, that two perfect principles cannot become one. Thus, how can one understand the union without transforming it into a duality?
We reject Apollinaris’s heretical teaching, but we must admit he formulated it on very good grounds: the union cannot be of two whole integral persons, which is why Apollinaris dropped the human nous from the humanity. Aside from the comments on the nous, this isn’t that different from Chalcedon (11)!
Cyril responds to this by giving his famous answer: there is one nature of the enfleshed Logos. Cyril now has several difficulties: in order for this statement to be Orthodox, we have to reinterpret what we mean by “phusis.” It is also worth pointing out that Cyril is ideologically dependent on his opponents, which likely prevented him from developing a full, positive alternative to Nestorius.
Bulgakov’s genius (if he proves successful) is to solve the dialectic in this manner: man contains within himself the receptacle of divinity. This is so because he is created on the divine proto-image. In other words, there is a mediating principle between divinity and humanity. It will be Bulgakov’s argument that this is what preserves Chalcedon: the third-term mediation allows a true union and avoids duality.
An Analysis and Critique
Strictly judged on Platonic grounds, it’s hard to argue with him. Without agreeing with him on all specifics (heavy Mariology), I have to admit his project seems to ‘work.’ He gives a very beautiful and engaging discussion on creation, time, and eternity.
His heavy Platonizing could be forgiven if it weren't for the occasional foray into Gnosticism. He identifies the Logos with the “Demiurgos” (111). This isn’t that different from the god of Freemasonry and Egyptian magic religion. It is an “architect” that merely re-shapes dead matter. He runs into other dangers with loose terminology: he speaks of a tri-hypostasis, a feminine hypostasis of Sophia, but at other times he denies that Sophia is en-hypostasized. He gives an impressive defense of Orthodox Eucharistology, but I do not think it holds water. He rightly argues that the Ascended Christ is bodily in heaven, notwithstanding any difficulties that entails. The problem for his Eucharistology is that how can the bodily Christ stay in heaven and be physically present in the elements? Bulgakov responds by saying...I kid you not…”He comes down without leaving heaven.” Understandably, some won't be convinced.
I think Bulgakov successfully defended himself from charges of heresy. Further, if one is committed to substance-ontologies, then it’s hard to avoid Bulgakov’s proposal. If there remains some truth in Hegel, then Bulgakov’s ideas could prove quite valuable. At the end of the day, though, many are nervous about employing a heavily Platonic schemata in our theology.
May 25, 2024
Bulgakov attempts to turn Christological dogma into theology. In other words, he takes what has been the orthodox statements concerning the nature and Person of the Son/Jesus and unpacks and explains their implications. He wrestles with how the Son exists outside of time as the Second Person of the Trinity, yet within time as Jesus of Nazareth; how the Divine is impassible, yet Jesus undergoes a process of becoming; how the Son has eternal life in himself, and yet Jesus dies.
While exploring the nature of the God-Man, Bulgakov helps us understands ourselves. His treatment of the Divine Sophia as the prototype on which humanity is created is what makes it possible for the Son to be born human. God can become like us because we have been created to be like him. While "The Lamb of God" is a volume on Christology, it's also a profound anthropology.
Bulgakov begins by outlining the history of the Christological debates, which makes clear that questions can be just as important as the answers. He ends exploring the work of Christ as prophet, priest, and king. Though Christ is simultaneously all 3, in time his prophetic ministry was emphasized from his baptism to transfiguration, his priestly ministry from the transfiguration until his enthronement, and this is followed by his kingly ministry.
Protestants in particular seem to have a theology trapped within space and time, which makes some of the categories which Bulgakov addresses as a Russian Orthodox theologian difficult. However, I could see how Orthodox theology provides a framework for a more sacramental understanding of Christ's presence not only in the Eucharist, but in all creation. Not a confusing of Christ with creation, but a presence of Christ in creation made possible because of the incarnation and the Divine Sophia, which makes it possible.
This is a difficult read, but worth the work.
While exploring the nature of the God-Man, Bulgakov helps us understands ourselves. His treatment of the Divine Sophia as the prototype on which humanity is created is what makes it possible for the Son to be born human. God can become like us because we have been created to be like him. While "The Lamb of God" is a volume on Christology, it's also a profound anthropology.
Bulgakov begins by outlining the history of the Christological debates, which makes clear that questions can be just as important as the answers. He ends exploring the work of Christ as prophet, priest, and king. Though Christ is simultaneously all 3, in time his prophetic ministry was emphasized from his baptism to transfiguration, his priestly ministry from the transfiguration until his enthronement, and this is followed by his kingly ministry.
Protestants in particular seem to have a theology trapped within space and time, which makes some of the categories which Bulgakov addresses as a Russian Orthodox theologian difficult. However, I could see how Orthodox theology provides a framework for a more sacramental understanding of Christ's presence not only in the Eucharist, but in all creation. Not a confusing of Christ with creation, but a presence of Christ in creation made possible because of the incarnation and the Divine Sophia, which makes it possible.
This is a difficult read, but worth the work.
October 17, 2025
without a doubt the most difficult thing i have ever read, and yet it fully merits 5 stars. this is difficult not bc of length or unnecessarily flowery vocabulary choices, but rather its content. bulgakov, as best as i understand, attempts to synthesize the best of the german idealist/philosophical tradition, the neoplatonic christian school of thought, and patristics. at the same time, he is working to do theology in the tradition of Chalcedon, but in new and developmental ways.
there are plenty of well read and explained reviews if you want to know exactly what Bulgakov argues and does in this work. his essential thesis is that God and Man are fully united in the person of Jesus Christ, through the very real kenotic emptying of his divinity as apart of his Earthly ministry. his two HUGE ideas as i understand it are the God-Manhood idea (Divine-Humanity in the kenotic understanding as well as the notion of Sophia, the divine wisdom which serves as the ontological bridge between Divinity and Creature, world and God, body and spirit.
all along he is doing stuff from guys lie Schelling and Hegel and Fichte, which are way above my pay grade— and yet!!! this is quite readable . it is highly poetic, mystical, keen, and stirring . the insights in this work surpass any other i have read, and the true light of Christ, or as Bulgakov likes to say “sparks of Divinity” shine through every page. absolutely exceptional.
there are plenty of well read and explained reviews if you want to know exactly what Bulgakov argues and does in this work. his essential thesis is that God and Man are fully united in the person of Jesus Christ, through the very real kenotic emptying of his divinity as apart of his Earthly ministry. his two HUGE ideas as i understand it are the God-Manhood idea (Divine-Humanity in the kenotic understanding as well as the notion of Sophia, the divine wisdom which serves as the ontological bridge between Divinity and Creature, world and God, body and spirit.
all along he is doing stuff from guys lie Schelling and Hegel and Fichte, which are way above my pay grade— and yet!!! this is quite readable . it is highly poetic, mystical, keen, and stirring . the insights in this work surpass any other i have read, and the true light of Christ, or as Bulgakov likes to say “sparks of Divinity” shine through every page. absolutely exceptional.
January 17, 2022
There is little I can say about this monumental work of Christology except that it may have the finest, most precise, and nuanced explication of κένωσις one could hope for. While the Arian heresy of Christ as creature is surely damnable, it is far too easy to embrace a lazy Docetism which impacts the profound depths of soteriology with nary a backward glance. The Lamb of God is the perfect antidote for this all-too-common theological mishandling of the Incarnation and Christ’s nature.
December 20, 2023
Really fascinating book. It is no wonder why Bulgakov has been equal parts controversial and revered, a feeling I experienced while reading. Bulgakov begins by discussing the notion of Divine Humanity within the Patristic period, often taking the side of the "bad guys" Like Apollinarius, Nestorius, and says that Arius should have been listened to more! He describes Cyril as hard to understand, but a teacher of the Church, even calling him straight up heretical at a certain point! He however states that the Calcedonian dogma is a solution to the antinomy of the schools of Alexandria and Antioch, but is ultimately clunky. He also similarly critiques the two wills of the 6th ecumenical council, saying it does not accord with dogma and it would have been better not to count, however the idea is that both natures remain independent, but ultimately agrees that the human will is subordinated to the Divine Will. He finally concludes that the patristic period left a lot of work in the area of Christology which we can now work on
He with a discussion on creaturely and divine sophia, which I believe is one of the least clear aspects of the book. His reading of it comes from Proverbs where he believes that Wisdom has to be common to all persons, which is an interesting argument, although he states that Sophia is not a hypostasis, he seems to equate it as identical with the Ousia, but generally it seems to be something like the Divine ideas combined with the energies essence distinction, which shines within creation.
He then describes the incarnation controversally stating a modified form that it is Mary's personal sinless which allowed Jesus to not recieve original sin, which will no doubt be controversial to Orthodox readers, but describes the incarnation in a way I hadn't thought of before, that Mary is the "human side" of the incarnation, which may go too far, but it helps make sense of our veneration of her, that the incarnation happens simultaneously within Mary.
Ultimately a necessary and important read to engage with, particuarly Bulgakov's idea of Kenosis, I believe it has to be accurate to make sense of the incarnation, it seems to be the only way to make sense of the union, otherwise you have the human side doing one thing and the divine side doing others, which is Nestorian. I think further examination of Christ's prophetic and royal ministries is important as well.. Ultimately this has to be read and engaged with to talk about Christology seriously.
He with a discussion on creaturely and divine sophia, which I believe is one of the least clear aspects of the book. His reading of it comes from Proverbs where he believes that Wisdom has to be common to all persons, which is an interesting argument, although he states that Sophia is not a hypostasis, he seems to equate it as identical with the Ousia, but generally it seems to be something like the Divine ideas combined with the energies essence distinction, which shines within creation.
He then describes the incarnation controversally stating a modified form that it is Mary's personal sinless which allowed Jesus to not recieve original sin, which will no doubt be controversial to Orthodox readers, but describes the incarnation in a way I hadn't thought of before, that Mary is the "human side" of the incarnation, which may go too far, but it helps make sense of our veneration of her, that the incarnation happens simultaneously within Mary.
Ultimately a necessary and important read to engage with, particuarly Bulgakov's idea of Kenosis, I believe it has to be accurate to make sense of the incarnation, it seems to be the only way to make sense of the union, otherwise you have the human side doing one thing and the divine side doing others, which is Nestorian. I think further examination of Christ's prophetic and royal ministries is important as well.. Ultimately this has to be read and engaged with to talk about Christology seriously.
December 30, 2024
Obra prima da teologia ortodoxa
February 13, 2025
Magisterial. The section on eschatology is amazing.
June 7, 2011
Bulgakov is a tough read, but his deep insight makes the effort worth while. This work is complete treatment of the cosmic mystery of Jesus Christ and I recommend it for anyone who wished to probe the mystical depths of Christianity.
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