SERGIUS BULGAKOV: RUSSIAN THEOSIS

Boris Jakim

Class presentation by: Andrij NykyforukTHO 3306

About the AuthorBoris Jakim

fellow of Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, Drew University (Madison, New Jersey).

the foremost translator of Russian religious thought into English. His published translations include works by S.L. Frank, Pavel Florensky, Vladimir Solovyov, and Sergius Bulgakov. (https://www.eerdmans.com/Authors/?AuthorId=17080)

Translated The Lamb of God, The Comforter, The Bride of the Lamb, and The Friend of the Bridegroom by Sergius Bulgakov.

About this Essay

Boris Jakim offers a Russian Orthodox perspective on theosis.

Draws primarily from the writings of Sergius Bulgakov (1871-1944)

Other respected Russian saints. The general perspective is that of Boris

Jakim.

According to St. Seraphim of Sarov: the purpose of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.

As a person empties him/her-self of ego and sinful, fallen nature, the vessel that remains is filled with divinity.

Through theosis our fallenness is overcome.

Подвиг(podvig)

Podvig = ascesis – the royal road to deification

Divinity cannot reside in what is corrupt. Deification is achieved in proportion to

the purification of the human nature. Cleansing of the human nature is the

precondition for the sanctification, glorification, transfiguration, and deification of the creature by the Creator.

Deification

Deification is a mystical, supernatural state.

Powerful force that comes to us from outside.

Gift of God’s grace. New creation = Divine-Humanity

Divine-Humanity

This concept is rooted in the Creed of Chalcedon: “We ... teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Divinity and also perfect in humanity; truly God and truly man...consubstantial with the Father according to the Divinity, and consubstantial with us according to the Humanity.”

In the Person of Christ, Divinity unites itself not only with a particular man, Jesus, but with the entire humankind.

Divine-Humanity (cont’d)

The concept of Divine-Humanity in Eastern Christianity was outlined by Pseudo-Dionysius, and

Has been further developed by Vladimir Solovyov and Sergius Bulgakov.

Deification not only of humanity, but of the entire world or the created order.

Bulgakov’s Terminology

Bulgakov’s “geat trilogy”:The Lamb of GodThe ComforterThe Bride of the Lamb

“Divine-Humanity” “Sophianization” “Glorification”

DIVINE-HUMANITY and THEOSIS

In The Lamb of God:Through his spirit, man communes with the divine

essence and is capable of being deified. Man is not only man but also potentially a god-man. Man desires to become a son of God and enter into the glory of creation, and he is predestined to this. Out of natural man, he is called to become a god-man; he is called to surpass himself in the true God-Man, Christ. Man bears within himself the coming Christ, and prior to Christ’s coming, man does not have the power to realize in himself that new spiritual birth which is not of flesh and of blood, but of God.

Theosis is the gift for which we are created and to which we are called.

Incarnation of God is not a catastrophe for the human essence.

Incarnation is the fulfillment of human essence.

All human beings can potentially be deified in Christ.

Divine-humanity is:

A particular form of the Divinity’s consciousness of itself through humanity.

A particular form of humanity’s consciousness of itself through the Divinity.

Fusion of the creator and creationA fusion that is simultaneously:

- kenosis of the Divinity and- theosis of the humanity, which concludes w/ the perfect glorification of the God-Man

Theosis and kenosis

The more a human being empties himself and lets go of his ego, the closer he can come to divinity.

A “god by grace”

Deification

According to Bulgakov: “the action of the divine nature on the human essence.”

It does not consist in the external, physical action of one natural force on another.

It is spiritual penetration, united with the inner reception of this action.

SOPHIOLOGY and THEOSIS

Humanity contains within its creaturely nature both the Word (Logos) and Wisdom (Sophia) of God.

In this sense, humanity is a creaturely sophianic hypostasis.

Sophianicity signifies the universal fullness of its being.

Creatureliness = this fullness only in a state of potentiality.

Distinction: Image vs. Likeness Image is the fullness Likeness is the realization of the image. In relation to the Divine Sophia, the creaturely sophia

is a “receptacle” in which the divine image is reflected.

Creaturely sophianicity presupposes the possibility of unlimited sophianization – the approximation of the creature’s image to the divine image.

Divine Sophia and the creaturely sophia converge forever without coinciding. (252)

This convergence is “infinite life” The process of individual deification is unceasing Humanity never reaches full divinity, except in the

case of Christ, who is the grace of God.

Infinite Convergence

Divine Sophiacreaturely sophia

Union with God

In The Bride of the Lamb, Bulgakov writes:

“...the union with God has already been accomplished for all creation through the union of the two natures, divine and human, in Christ, according to the Chalcedonian dogma, and through the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and all of humankind, according to the dogma of the Pentecost.” (252)

GLORIFICATION and THEOSIS

Besides the ascension of Christ, which is already accomplished, there is the ascension that is in the process of being accomplished:- the glorification of the creature, earthly humanity, which is identical to the humanity of Christ.

God “has raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6)

Through Christ, we “have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph 2:18)

The definitive and final ascension is the final glorification when “God will be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28)

Theotokos

Human ascension and glorification is now beyond the limits of what is known to us.

has already been preaccomplished in the person of the Most Holy Mother of God.

Raised up by her son, Mary has achieved perfect theosis.

The Second Coming

Through the Incarnation and the descent of the Holy Spirit, humanity and the world have received the fullness of sophianization.

The Divine Sophia has united with the creaturely sophia; creation has been completely deified in the union of the two natures in Christ by the Holy Spirit. (254)

Glorification accomplished in a series of events:- the resurrection, - the ascension, - Pentecost, and - the Second Coming

The Second Coming will complete creation.

Bulgakov’s vision of Theosis

“Initially deified in the Incarnation and undergoing continuous deification in the course of Christ’s entire earthly ministry, his humanity now becomes perfectly and definitively deified to the point of fully receiving the glory of God. ... ...this glorification of his humanity is not the return of the glory; the creature receives it for the first time here.

Pentecost

Pentecost lays the foundation for the deification of the world.

The descent of the Spirit signifies the fulfillment of the work of the Divine Incarnation in the world and in humanity.

During Pentecost the Holy Spirit descends not upon the Virgin Mary, as at the Annunciation, and not upon Jesus, as at the Epiphany, but upon all of humanity and all of nature.

THEOSIS: THREE ILLUSTRATIONS

Three phenomenological accounts of human transfiguration:

The vision of St. Seraphim of Sarov in the Snow (winter 1831)

Sergius Bulgakov’s Death-Bed Transfiguration (1944)

The “Pentecost” at the Prerov Conference of the Russian Student Christian Movement, (October 1923)

Questions???

On pg. 252 Jakim states:Divine Sophia and the creaturely sophia converge forever without

coinciding. This convergence is “infinite life” The process of individual deification is unceasing Humanity never reaches full divinity, except in the case of

Christ, who is the grace of God.On pg. 253-254 Jakim states: Mary has achieved perfect theosis. (253) The Divine Sophia has united with the creaturely sophia;

creation has been completely deified in the union of the two natures in Christ by the Holy Spirit. (254)

Is this a paradox, where the D. Sophia is united with cr. sophia, yet they never coincide?

Questions??? In the case where the process of individual deification is

unceasing, does that mean that all people are holy, but our degrees of holiness are different? i.e. Those who we consider saints, are they saints only relatively to us?

Divine Sophia

creaturely sophia