Contemporary Reading of S.N. Bulgakov’s Legacy: A Review of a New Book

Review on: Building the House of Wisdom. Sergii Bulgakov and Contemporary Theology: New Approaches and Interpretations / Eds. B. Hallensleben, R. Zwahlen, A. Papanikolaou, P. Kalaitzidis. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2024. 536 p.

Abstract

The review considers the collection of articles published in 2024, “Building the House of Wisdom. Sergii Bulgakov and Contemporary Theology: New Approaches and Interpretations”, prepared as a result of an international conference in Switzerland to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sergii Bulgakov. The key theme of the collection was the question of the influence of Bulgakov’s ideas on contemporary Christian theology, and the review examines to what extent the editors and authors of the articles have succeeded in accomplishing this task. The author briefly reviews the materials of the collection, grouped into several sections devoted to S.N. Bulgakov’s personalism and anthropology, his political, economic and ecological views, sophiology, ontology, ecumenical aspects of the heritage of the Russian thinker. In general, the main interest of the researchers is focused on the boundary between ecclesiology and anthropology, thus bringing together contemporary social problems and sophiology. Attempts to use Bulgakov’s concepts of sophiology, kenosis, Chalcedonian ontology and etc. in order to solve the problems of modern society (political or environmental crises, problems of gender or human identity in general) leave a feeling of artificiality of these constructions. The most interesting line of the book is Bulgakov’s intellectual biography, which is assembled from various research texts in a way “from Marxism to idealism”, and from philosophy to theology.