346 BOOK REVIEWS

Egyptian church in its various historical contexts, and with his detailed study of a
wide range of sources he brings to life the characters and mentalities that animate this
story. This is a book of great depth and importance that illuminates the manner in
which ideas were appropriated and transmitted in early-modern Europe.

University of St. Andrews Bruce Gordon

Wisdom from Above: A Primer in the Theology of Father Sergei Bulgakov. By Aidan
Nichols, O.P. Pp. xii, 317, Leominster, Gracewing, 2005, $33.00.

This is the first ever monograph in English on Fr Sergii Bulgakov, increasingly

regarded as one of the greatest Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, indeed
by some the greatest theologian – or at least most original – tout court in that century.
It comes at a most opportune moment, as Bulgakov’s time seems to have come at last.
Translations of his most important works, not least by the indefatigable Boris Jakim,
are now, or will shortly be, available, and there is a fine introduction to Bulgakov’s
theology by the reigning Archbishop of Canterbury, which provides extensive extracts
in translation with a kind of running commentary. Sergii Bulgakov was one of the
intellectual émigrés, deported from Russian in 1922 on Lenin’s orders. Like many of
these émigrés, he eventually found his way to Paris, where he became professor of
dogmatic theology and later dean of the Institut St-Serge, the theological academy set
up by the émigrés to continue the theological tradition that was being destroyed in
Russia by the triumphant Communists. Bulgakov proved controversial. Central to
the theology was the notion of the Wisdom of God, Sophia, and for his speculations
over this he was condemned in the 1930s as a heretic by the two Russian jurisdictions
to which he did not belong – the Moscow Patriarchate and their most extreme
opponents, the White Russian Church in Exile – though spared by his own
jurisdiction, the exarchate that had sought refuge under the Oecumenical
Patriarchate. After the war, Russian émigré theology followed the ‘Neopatristic’
stars of Lossky and Florovsky, and Bulgakov’s ideas languished (he had died
in 1944).
Before the revolution, Bulgakov, born in 1871 the son of a priest, had lost his faith,
embraced Marxism and become a professor of economics, only returning to the faith,
along with other members of the intelligentsia in the first decade of the twentieth
century, accepting ordination in 1918. Like many of his generation he was influenced
by the extraordinary genius of Vladimir Solov’ev, who died at the end of the
nineteenth century in 1900; he was also a friend of the no less extraordinary genius, Fr
Pavel Florensky, whose scientific interests prevented his exile in 1922 and who died,
shot by the NKVD, in 1937. Bulgakov’s earlier writings are political, economic,
literary, but from his arrival in Paris it was mostly as a theologian that he wrote,
composing two trilogies, the ‘little’ trilogy, consisting of The Burning Bush, on the
Mother of God, The Friend of the Bridegroom, on St. John the Baptist, and Jacob’s
Ladder, on the angels, which can be seen as a commentary on the principal figures of
the ‘Wisdom’ icon of the Mother of God, and his ‘great’ trilogy, ‘On Godmanhood’
(the same title as a famous set of lectures delivered by Solov’ev), consisting of The
Lamb of God, on Christ, The Comforter, on the Holy Spirit, and The Bride of the
Lamb, on the Church and eschatology.
It is with these two trilogies that this book by Aidan Nichols is principally
concerned. Fr Nichols has already written several important articles on Bulgakov, to
which he modestly makes scarcely a reference in his bibliography, as well as books on
modern Orthodox, especially Russian Orthodox, theology (which he does admit to).
In his articles Nichols drew attention to the philosophical background of Bulgakov’s
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ideas, especially his notion of Sophia – a philosophical background instinct with

German idealism, especially influenced by Schelling – and, implicitly at least, raised
questions as to how accessible theology in such a tradition could be today. In this
book, such issues are scarcely aired; it is, as it states, a ‘primer’, that is a (fairly)
sympathetic introductory exposition of Bulgakov’s ideas. Although based on the two
trilogies, Nichols reorganizes Bulgakov’s ideas so that they follow the usual sequence
of a systematic theology, beginning with God, the Trinity and philosophical issues
such as creation and evil (to which the ideas of Sophia are central), and then moving
through Christology, the person and work of the Holy Spirit, ecclesiology,
eschatology, Our Lady, the saints and angels, and finally a chapter on icons. In
each chapter, however, Nichols takes a passage from Bulgakov and subjects it to
careful exposition. It provides, therefore, a very useful introduction to Bulgakov’s
theology, without, however, giving much idea of what might call Bulgakov’s
theological style.
So far as information is concerned, it is reliable, but what it is about Bulgakov that
is leading to a veritable rediscovery (if not discovery for the first time) of his thought is
not brought out. This is not necessarily a bad thing: one can find that out by reading
Bulgakov himself, something much easier with a general sense of the content of his
theology provided by this primer. But a sense of Bulgakov’s theological orientation –
his deeply Orthodox sense, for instance, that the primary ‘arc’ of theology moves from
creation to deification, rather than from fall to redemption, something that seems to
me part of the jigsaw that comes together in the idea of Sophia; or what seems the
notion almost certainly rooted in his Russian heritage rather than discovered in
existentialist Paris, of the profound significance of the difference between individual
and person (person and hypostasis in his language) – would not, I think, be easily
derived from these pages. I thought, too, that the methodical exposition sometimes
leads him to overlook other parallel discussions. For instance, on page 57 discussing
the nature of inherited sin, Nichols remarks that the ‘question of the Most Pure Virgin
does not arise at this stage in Bulgakov’s work’; but it is precisely in this context that
Bulgakov discusses the question of the Virgin in his much earlier work on her, The
Burning Bush (on page 57 we are following his late work, The Bride of the Lamb).
Exposition, to be critical, needs to raise questions, and this Nichols does rather
erratically. Bulgakov is often ticked off for his failures in understanding Roman
Catholicism in general and Aquinas in particular, but these comments are not
contextualized in the Catholicism that Bulgakov found himself experiencing in the
1920s and 1930s. What I would have thought more striking, especially in his The
Burning Bush, is the way Bulgakov seems to anticipate some of the criticisms of the
nouvelle the´ologie. But it is unfair to pursue this: Fr Nichoils intended a primer, and a
very good primer this is.
It is interesting to compare Fr Nichols’ book with the first French book on
Bulgakov: Antoine Arjakovsky’s Essai sur le pe`re Serge Bulgakov (Éditions Parole et
Silence, 2006). This is a very different book. To start off with, it should really be called
‘essais’, as it is a collection of mostly already published essays, rather than a
monograph like Fr Nichols. But in almost every respect it is different. Nichols sticks
to Bulgakov’s works and provides a summary of their ideas; Arjakovsky hardly ever
dwells for long enough on any of Bulgakov’s ideas to promote enlightenment, but
gives a vivid sense of who it is over the last few decades who have found Bulgakov
exciting. One of the puzzles about Bulgakov is that many were drawn by his personal
magnetism, though put off by the forbidding density of his writing. Nichols chops up
Bulgakov into easily digestible bits, whereas Arjakovsky tries to explore this personal,
and especially priestly aura, to which those who encountered him bear witness. They
are, as a result, wonderfully complementary introductions to Bulgakov, Arjakovsky
capturing something of his personal magnetism, while Nichols patiently expounds his
348 BOOK REVIEWS

thoughts. They are both necessary reading for anyone seeking to make something of
Bulgakov.

University of Durham Andrew Louth

Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church. By John D.
Zizioulas, ed. Paul McPartlan, Foreword by Archbishop Rowan Williams.
Pp. xiv, 315, London/New York, T&T Clark, 2006, d75/d25.

This volume comprises some previously published essays and articles, as well as three
new studies entitled ‘On Being Other: Towards an Ontology of Otherness’, ‘The
Father as Cause: Personhood Generating Otherness’, and ‘The Church as the
‘‘Mystical’’ Body of Christ: Towards an Ecclesial Mysticism’.
Where did John Zizioulas leave us more than twenty years ago, and what has
happened meanwhile since the publication of his influential Being as Communion?
From one perspective, maybe of some significance, he became a bishop (in 1986), a
ministry about which he has thought and written extensively ever since his doctoral
thesis. Well over a dozen books and about twenty doctoral dissertations have been
dedicated to his work (see the list in D. Knight, ed., The Theology of John Zizioulas.
Personhood and the Church, Aldershot/ Burlington: Ashgate, 2007). In today’s ever-
changing theological landscape, Zizioulas’ thought on fundamental doctrines of the
Church seems to be abiding.
Communion and Otherness is the product of a lifetime’s work, the synthesis of
Metropolitan John’s thought, ranging from Trinitarian theology to ethics,
psychology, biology and physics. According to the axiom of his first monograph in
English, the ultimate form of existence is ‘being in communion’. The second axiom,
explored in this complementary volume, asserts that communion implies and is
constituted by otherness. Many readers will find that this book also offers some
insights into the spirituality of the author himself.
These latest studies highlight Zizioulas’ genuine connections with Eastern
spirituality rather than with modern existentialist or personalist philosophy. He
draws, for instance, on the lives of saints, particularly the Desert Fathers, and also
refers to more recent spiritual figures in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, such as Saint
Silouan the Athonite (w 1938) and Fr Sophrony Sakharov (w 1993). In Zizioulas’ own
estimation, despite some coincidence of thought with modern existentialism, the roots
of his theology and that of existentialist philosophy are different: ‘God’ in his case,
‘the human being’ in the latter (p. 177 and n. 84, p. 141). In defending his thesis against
the charge of existentialism, Zizioulas exposes the difference between human and
divine personhood. The term atomon used by Saint Gregory of Nyssa to denote a
concrete individual was not applied to the divine persons and is generally infrequent
among patristic writers (pp. 175–76). Zizioulas turns the issue on its head, and charges
his critics with using modern existentialist personalism in the application of human
qualities to the Trinity (e.g., individuality, a notion which the Fathers only used in
regard to human beings, pp. 176–7). In connection with this debate, the reader will
further profit from consulting the meticulously argued essay by A. Brown, ‘On the
Criticism of Being as Communion in Anglophone Orthodox Theology’, in D. Knight,
ed., The Theology of John Zizioulas, pp. 35–78.
Zizioulas engages Western thinkers on the concept of the ‘Other’, arguing that their
accounts are not so much inadequate as incomplete (pp. 47ff.). His discontent is that
the ‘Other’ is conceived either as a derivation or dependant of the ‘I’ (Husserl,
Heidegger, Sartre), or as the product of relationality (Buber). In the case of Levinas,
who receives particular attention, Zizioulas questions what he calls the artificial