BULGAKOV, SERGII NICOLAJEVIĆ. — A celebrated Russian religious thinker and dissident theologian, born into a priestly family in 1871 and deceased in 1944. He was initially a Marxist, like his friend Berdiajev, but later returned to the Christian faith. Ordained a priest in 1918, he was expelled from Russia and settled in Prague in 1923 and in Paris from 1925, where until his death he was dean and effectively head of the Russian Institute of Orthodox Theology. He worked toward rapprochement between the Anglicans and the Russian dissidents. As a writer, he was highly prolific, first in the fields of philosophy and political economy and later in that of theology. In this discipline he was self-taught. His entire religious doctrine is permeated by Sophianic speculations, that is, those concerning Divine Wisdom, in which he is dependent on the Russians V. Soloviev and Florenskij, on the German idealists, and also on the Palamites, etc. On account of this doctrine he was condemned by the dissident Church of Moscow in 1935 and by that of Karlovzi in Yugoslavia.
A student of the Fathers, B. is often too liberal in his interpretation of them. He frequently attacks Catholic dogmas, and although his ideas are at times very profound and suggestive, they often lack logic.
Among B.’s numerous books, the following should be mentioned: The Light without Sunset, Moscow 1917; the “Trilogy” on divine humanity: 1) The Lamb of God, Paris 1933 (French trans., ibid. 1943); 2) The Comforter, ibid. 1936 (French trans., ibid. 1947); 3) The Bride of the Lamb, ibid. 1945; Orthodoxy, ibid. 1932; The Wisdom of God, London 1937. B.’s Christological doctrine was judged by Th. Spáčil: «Nova opinio auctoris orthodoxi de unione hypostatica» (Orient. Christ. Periodica, 1 [1935], pp. 53-92).