The Holy Trinity

Hans Urs Von Balthasar and His Sources

Leamy

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781498227131
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book explores the ways in which Balthasar employs and adapts the thought of Sergei Bulgakov with the Trinitarian theology of Thomas Aquinas to form a kenotic Trinitarian theology that is based on the notion of Personhood as a relation of self-donating love. When we look at Balthasar's Trinitarian theology in light of Bulgakov, and particularly as a rereading of Bulgakov in light of a Thomistic Trinitarian theology, we are not only able to more clearly understand the implications of Balthasar's own Trinitarian theology but also to highlight the beauty and relevance of Bulgakov's Trinitarian contribution. This reading of Balthasar's Trinitarian theology, read in light of a Thomistic adjustment of Bulgakov, provides an excellent point of integration for an ethics that takes into account not only individual virtues and perfection but also the social/relational context of human personhood. This ethics is based in a concept of human nature bearing the imago Trinitatis and fulfilling that nature through sacramental participation and ethical extension of Christ's self-offering love.

1

How Do You Solve a Problem like Sophia?

Introduction

At several key junctures Balthasar turns to “Bulgakov’s Trinitarian insight” to set up theological trajectories (the descent into hell) as well as resolve theological dilemmas (divine impassibility and immanent kenosis). This chapter will give an overview of Bulgakov’s theology with respect to both his “Trinitarian insight” as well as his complicated system of “sophiology.” My thesis is that Bulgakov’s sophiology is a function of his Trinitarian theology. Sophia allows Bulgakov to maintain divine impassibility and simplicity while positing the most intimate relation between the triune life and the Trinitarian foundation of creation.

In order to understand why Balthasar decides to place one of Bulgakov’s central theses at the heart of his own theology, while simultaneously dismissing his overall system, we need to take a closer look at the way that Bulgakov’s sophiology and Trinitarian theology are related. This chapter will focus on the overall background and structure of Bulgakov’s Trinitarian theology in relation to his sophiology, which sets up a discussion of Balthasar’s appropriation and adjustment of Bulgakov via Aquinas in the following chapter. This chapter will proceed as follows: 1) I will first glance at three important sources for Bulgakov: the Russian sophiological tradition, nineteenth- and twentieth-century kenotic theology, and Thomas Aquinas. Although the first two provide much of the overall content and structure for his thought, it is Bulgakov’s interaction with Thomas Aquinas that I will focus on here. Within Bulgakov’s objections to Aquinas we find the raison d’être for a sophiological rendering of Trinitarian theology. Furthermore, Aquinas is a consistent dialogue partner in Balthasar’s appropriation of Bulgakov, and so a detailed understanding of how Bulgakov situates himself with respect to Aquinas is essential for my overall project. 2) In the second section of this chapter I present Bulgakov’s Trinitarian insight. For Bulgakov, the divine life is a relation of kenotic love.8 This love is a kind of suffering or pathos which itself constitutes relationality. Further, the triune relation is eternal and simple, and the one relation that is the divine life constitutes the three divine persons in their uniqueness. 3) Next, before turning to Bulgakov’s sophiology as it functions in specific contexts I will review four theological theses that Bulgakov thinks are not adequately addressed in a Thomistic paradigm. Bulgakov believes that only a sophiological reading of the three doctrines I cover in section four can adequately conform to these four theses. 4) Accordingly, in the fourth section of this chapter I provide a summary of Bulgakov’s sophiological rendering of three key doctrines. First, I look at Bulgakov’s Trinitarian theology, both the idea of the kenosis of the persons as well as the relationship of the persons to Sophia in her divine and creaturely aspects. Second, I focus on Bulgakov’s idea of the “eternal humanity” of the Son as the paradigm for the relationship between God and creation, as well as the basis for the incarnation. In turn, the eternal humanity of the Son sets up a third dimension of sophiology, namely, the relationship between humanity and the church, or salvation history.

The conclusion of this chapter points to the fact that, for Bulgakov, it is the Trinity, not Sophia, which is the theological focal point of his theology. Sophia cannot be the central figure in his thought because she is always the revelation or communication between persons. She is the life of the persons themselves engaged in the act of communication. Sophia is the manifestation of the triune life, or the glory of God, which constitutes the foundation of creaturely being as an image of the triune relation.

Background

The Intersection of Russian Sophiology with the Kenotic Theology Movements

Bulgakov’s sophiology remained a work in progress throughout his life. His intellectual evolution from naïve Christianity to Marxism, and then from a philosophical theism to Russian Orthodoxy was accompanied by an evolving notion of the traditional Russian concept of Sophia, the wisdom of God. Near the end of his life Bulgakov was accused of heresy. Some believed his sophiology had taken priority over and distorted the traditional teachings of the church. In his work Sophia, The Wisdom of God Bulgakov presents the most mature account of his sophiology as a response to these accusations. In his introduction to this work, Bulgakov offers a historical background to Russian sophiology, which, although it is not the most thorough account of the sophiological tradition, does highlight the particular figures and ideas within the tradition who influenced his own understanding of Sophia.9

Bulgakov explains that the Russian preoccupation with Sophia can be traced back to the origin of Christianity in Russia. When emissaries were sent out by Prince Vladimir of Kiev in 989 to investigate various religions, it was the liturgical expression of worship in the Cathedral of Sophia in Constantinople that captured the Russian religious imagination. The report of the emissaries that “We did not know whether we were on heaven or on earth” is an apt expression of the Russian sophiological impulse.10 Sophia is the presence of God on earth, in the world, through the cosmos. She is the gathered-togetherness, or sobernost, of all things that is the expression of divinity, or in some strands of the tradition, is divinity itself.11 In particular, Bulgakov highlights three facets of the sophiological tradition that feature prominently in his work: first, the unity of humanity as an image of something divine or eternal; second, the unity of humanity with the cosmos as a whole; and third, the whole of creation as both a revelation of God and the presence of God in and for a contingent other. Bulgakov believes that these three concepts as expressed sophiologically not only give a Russian cultural application to Christianity, but in fact are presented in scripture, at times assumed by the church fathers, and are the precise concepts necessary to resolve many modern theological dilemmas. He goes further and comments, not only is sophiology a theoretical resolution to theological problems, it gives a practical basis for the “theandric” activity that is the mission of the church, the conversion of the world to Christ in whom we “live and move and have our being.”

Bulgakov’s adoption of these particular emphases within sophiology, and the conclusion that Christ is the source and goal of all creation can primarily be traced to the influence of Vladimir Soloviev (1853–1900). Bulgakov gives Soloviev the title of the “first Russian sophiologist,”12 and adds “I regard Soloviev as having been my philosophical ‘guide to Christ.’”13 The central point in Soloviev that both Bulgakov and Balthasar develop is that

In God’s kenosis (which perfects the whole process of creation by transcending it from within), human kenosis is freely given space in God so that the human consciousness may give itself over absolutely to the divine. In this act, man is freed from all sinful isolation for him who is total unity … This twofold kenosis is the essence of the person of the God-Man no less than of his work, his death on the cross, and it is at the same time absolute glory in twofold form—the self-glorification of God in his creation as much as the glorification in God of the whole man, the man who, in the voluntary death of love, is victorious over all the disastrous contingencies of the material world and so has achieved for himself and for all humanity and the cosmos the resurrection of the body.14

The identification of kenosis, glory, and the nature of God is central for Bulgakov (and Balthasar). Bulgakov develops Soloviev’s thesis in a Trinitarian framework as an interpretive lens for the Christian tradition. Sophia—as kenosis/glory that is both the divine nature as well as the foundation and end for the cosmos—enables him to hold together Greek metaphysical principles and German idealism to re-interpret traditional Christian formulations such as Chalcedon in a way that is both consistent with traditional Orthodoxy as well as relevant...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: How Do You Solve a Problem like Sophia?
• Chapter 2: Thomas Aquinas on Triune Relation
• Chapter 3: Balthasar’s Appropriation of Thomas
• Chapter 4: Emptiness vs. Effigies
• Chapter 5: Ethics as Participation in Relation
• Conclusion
• Bibliography