Nova Polis

Bulgakov’s Sophiology in the participatory history of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s world.

Fr Sergei Bulgakov along Fr Hans Urs von Balthasar are some of the most notorious and important thinkers of Christian theology from the 20^th century. Bulgakov’s Sophiology centers around the doctrine of God’s wisdom [Sophia] as an activity of the divine Godhead. In such a framework, Sophia is the feminine aspect of divine femininity. In a way that reflects that while the essence [ousia] of God remains completely hidden, through His activities that are equal to His substance due to His absoluteness the material and the supernatural become united. While the material and the immaterial world reflect a relationship of antimony, the material world for Bulgakov is moving toward the full manifestation and restoration of the Cosmos. Such manifestation is “theostic” and part of the human theocosmism by which divine wisdom continues to move nature closer to God throughout history.

In contrast, Fr Hans Urs von Balthasar presents a theological view of history in which nature and thus ultimately history occurs in our natural world that is always impregnated by a creation which is Christological. History then not merely a series of events recorded by bystanders as often seen in post-modern society. On the contrary, history is a divine theo-drama in which through miracles and the laws of nature the activities of God are revealed to the active consciousness of humanity. In agreement with Bulgakov, Balthasar presents history as an ordination of a divine plan moved alone by God’s love toward the redemption the creation. In such a plan, God has always planned for the Incarnation of the Logos by which all humanity participates in the plan of salvation through Christ’s incarnation, life, death, and resurrection. Ultimately, drawing that human history serves as a navigation towards the restoration of the Cosmos and our restoration in the fullness of the priesthood in Christ which Adam possessed.

The participation of the natural law and the evolution of history appear beyond a narrative of linear events. They highlight the drawing of grace towards this authentic utopia in which the thesis and antithesis are unified. In Christ, secular and divine history are united as one. The pursuit of wisdom by the pagan philosophers and the fulfillment of divine revelation are achievable in Christ as the epoch of history. Not just in the present state of his life, but also at the beginning of history and the culmination of the fall eventually through the Parousia. In Christ, the finite, the material world, unites with the infinite by grace. As such, Balthasar writes, “The act of corresponding to what God wills for world history – which is something given by grace but nevertheless put into effect by man – is the central core which makes history happen.”¹ Grace is thus put into effect by men’s living will. In which the effects of the regeneration and ongoing sanctification move us towards our part in the completion of events in the theo-dramatic events which we call history.

Christ, thus representing a Christological epoch, not just in the resurrection-crucifixion, but also in the creation and eventually in the restoration of the Parousia does not act alone. The Second and Third persons of the Trinity are always in a relationship in which they reflect one another. The Son is incarnated through the Holy Spirit animating the limitation-kenosis of the Son upon His Incarnation. And, yet the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son to animate the mission of the Church as a second kenosis and incarnation. The first kenosis is the limiting of the divine nature of the Son to become manifested as a human within history. The second kenosis is ours. A reality in which our self-emptying manifests through our cooperation with the Spirit as a form of the visible and invisible church. Thus, Bulgakov specifies that “The quickening of the Holy Spirit bestows on creatures, in general, the capacity to exist, prior to the emergence of the forms.”² From the creation of the forms (in the beginning), the spirit has implanted already as well the capacity of the creature to participate in the restoration of the Cosmos united with grace.

The wisdom of God, Sophia, allows this participation of creation in the ongoing restoration and maximization of the cosmos via a process of transfiguration. Thus, marking the resurrection of mankind in the Messianic principle as the ultimate reality of the Parousia. The world transformed in the glory of God. A glory recorded within history, both divine (the scriptures) and non-divine (the philosopher) is the pursuit of what’s beautiful, true, and good. The ongoing call and movement of the activities of selfishness in creatures reflect the notion of our own internal individual Parousia. This process is therefore not only a future eschatological event that occurs at the end of time. It is also a present truth and reality experienced originally through the rituals of the first priest, Adam, then the rituals of the temple of Israel. Which now continues in the liturgical life of the Church along with the spiritual lives of the faithful. Such history takes shape in the works and words of Jesus Christ as the center of nature and reality.³ A reality which is only revealed by the Spirit.

The world of history is thus restored in connection to the manifestation of God’s wisdom and glory both through the second and third persons which fully reveal the hidden God, the Father⁴. The events of history are then the ongoing revelation of the triune Godhead in which Israel serves as the root for the manifestation of the Logos, the Little Adonai. Meanwhile, the Church moves towards the kingdom of God on earth towards the fullness of history which is achieved in the eschaton by the establishment of the eternal kingdom of God in which we can no longer separate ourselves from His love by sinning. It is alone in the Parousia then that history is completed both in its natural reality, but also the supernatural reality in which divine hiddenness ceases to exist and mankind can fully relate with the substance of God. The events of history, thus ultimately relate to the divine reality by which the wisdom of God, Sophia, a quasi-hypostatic activity is the ongoing manifestation that restores us in this battle between faith and doubt.

History is therefore not merely a linear and boring long record of events. It is impregnated by the activities of the Holy Spirit through Sophia in which by grace we become actors of the theo-drama of salvation. It is in the liturgical life of the Church and the spiritual life of creatures that this restoration takes an imminent effect. Restoring the fallen world into moving to unite us (while remaining distinct) in the Messianic mind. It is through the Holy Spirit we proceed to the Son by which meditation unites us with the Father in the divine mystery of his hiddenness and the full participation in the cosmos as Sons of God in the Unseen Realm.