Sergii Bulgakov and the Task of the Theologian

Abstract Bulgakov, like his contemporary Barth, and his younger contemporaries, Balthasar and Rahner, seems to have been convinced that the question how to write a theological dogmatics was a question that had to be faced. Traditionally, theological treatises had followed a basically credal order, going back to ancient catechesis. Bulgakov shares with his contemporaries in questioning that, perhaps even more fundamentally than they did. He shares, especially with Barth, a sense of the primacy of God’s word, interpreting this, less as Scripture than the address of God, who addresses us as Father, through the Son/Word and the Spirit. For Bulgakov, God addresses us pre-eminently through the Liturgy; our words are primarily used liturgically, that is, as the words of the community gathered together with the bishop, in praise of God, as we are caught up in the Son’s coming to us and taking us back with him to the Father.