Bulgakov and Russian Sophiology

Abstract Although unquestionably inspired by Solov′ev, Bulgakov’s earliest reflection on sophiology grew out of his early academic profession as an economist. Economic activity—the realm of arts and crafts, ploughing, planting, and reaping, cooking, making clothes, building houses and towns—is continuing the work of divine Sophia, the wisdom of God, and extends to include more developed forms of art. Seen as sophianic, in this way, it avoids the danger of treating nature as there for human use and exploitation, and recapitulates stages in Bulgakov’s own return to his ancestral faith. Wisdom therefore constitutes an ‘in-between’, such as were Plato’s forms: an in-between that expresses God’s presence in the created order. For Bulgakov Sophia, in both its uncreated and created forms, is essential for grasping creation as God’s.