Sergei Bulgakov

In Dostoevsky’s 1869 novel, The Idiot, two characters mention an intriguing theory, which they both attribute to the eponymous spiritual hero, the Prince: the idea that “beauty will save the world.”  Since then, a long line of writers and thinkers have picked up on this grand and inspiring motto.  After all, who wouldn’t want to believe that beauty will save the world?  Yet few people have tried to work out exactly what that might entail.

One of the most important figures to have taken up this challenge is Sergeii Bulgakov—philosopher, economist, politician, theologian, and priest.  Bulgakov quotes this phrase in at least four different works spanning the major phases of his mature intellectual career: Philosophy of Economy (1912), The Unfading Light (1917), the essay “Beauty and Art” (1934), and The Comforter (1936).  For Bulgakov, this declaration represents the crystallization of an all-encompassing vision for society, a cosmic process of material and metaphysical redemption analogous to individual salvation.  Through it, Bulgakov underlines the continuity between political aims and theological means, with beauty as the pivot. 

In this paper, I consider the role of the aesthetic principle of beauty in Bulgakov’s political theology.  I focus on two dogmatic works of the 1930s: a treatise, The Comforter, and an essay, “Religion and Art,” drawing on a sermon from the same period, entitled “Social Teaching in Modern Russian Orthodox Theology” to clarify key points in his political theology.  I discuss how Bulgakov’s aesthetic notion of Christian humanism enables him to petition for the transfiguration of society and reform of its unjust structures while steering a political theological course between Marxist positivism and Christian apathy.  Furthermore, I argue that the beauty at the core of his conceptual framework enables him to hold together history and eschatology, human freedom and divine sovereignty, in a theologically coherent theandric whole that nevertheless resists collapse into essentially atheistic “progress” or a pantheistic cosmology.  I conclude by posing a question about the possible role of beauty as a functional substitute for Sophia for theologians adapting Bulgakov’s brand of Christian humanism.

Geopolitical change at the start of the 20th century wrought significant change to the study of theology. After the Russian Revolution, exiled intellectuals found their way to the West and connected with like-minded scholars. One of these was Sergius Bulgakov, whose life was particularly complex: beginning as a Marxist and later returning to Orthodox Christianity, he became one of the most prominent, and contentious, theologians of the Russian diaspora. He forged ecumenical connections, including with the Fellowship of St Alban and St. Sergius. Traditionally, scholars have categorised him with the so-called “Russian School”, largely due to his sophiology. But scholars have come to question the accuracy of this categorisation. For example, Andrew Louth has proposed that Bulgakov be regarded as a theologian of the eucharist. Consideration of period documents confirms Bulgakov’s eucharistic consciousness, especially with ecumenism, corroborating Louth’s hypothesis. More research is justified into an important direction in the study of Russian diaspora theology.

This thesis loactes a Christian rationale for human well-being in relation to the doctrine of the triune God. Specifically, this theological inquiry examines the triune God’s work in, and for, creation with a view to identifying the characteristics and dynamics of divine well-being through the intra-trinitarian movement of gift and receipt. This gifting and receiving within the Godhead is identified as ‘Divine self-enrichment’ — defined as God enriching God in the perfection and fullness of God. The mode through which Divine self-enrichment occurs is essentially kenotic. The thesis provides an extended inquiry into the theological logic of kenotic-enrichment, and its implications for human well-being. In particular, the thesis argues that the pattern of kenotic-enrichment is to be discerned in the dynamic economy of God in creation and human life. When humanity exhibits characteristics of kenotic-enrichment identified in the economic Trinity, there we see intimations of the work of God. In this sense, the archetype of divine enrichment is antecedently operative in the creation; where kenotic-enrichment conditions created well-being. The thesis, therefore, argues that a theology of triune self-enrichment provides an alternate, and complementary, theological paradigm for Christian rationale and praxis of international development and humanitarian aid.

Sergei N. Bulgakov’s sophiology is often regarded as a concept submerging human beings in a divine cosmos, where personal dignity makes no difference. I will argue that quite the opposite is true. Bulgakov’s vision meets all three conditions of a modern concept of Human Rights: Firstly, a person must be accepted in his or her autonomy and liberty. Secondly, a person must be accepted as a different, yet equivalent person. Thirdly, all human beings must be regarded as belonging to the same nature of humanity. These issues bridge the gap between Bulgakov’s philosophy of economy and his theological sophiology.

In this paper I shall argue that Bulgakov’s thought, and especially his sophiology, is a justification of human history. I will do so by providing an outline of Bulgakov’s critique of Marxism, and especially by examining his extensive examination of historical research on early Christianity in his papers collected in his book “Two Cities” (1911), before exploring the role of historical consciousness in his eschatological interpretation of the world’s creation and summarising his later views on the concept of developing doctrine.

The paper has been published in Russian (see below): Оправдание истории у Сергея Булгакова // Страницы 20, 2 (2016), 211–224 (Перевод с английского Дмитрий Рындин)

University of Fribourg – September 2–4, 2021

Sergii Bulgakov is one of the preeminent theologians of the 20th century. The international conference on the occasion of his 150th birthday (16th/28th July 1871 – 13th July 1944) aims to promote the reception of his work in Eastern and Western academic life.
The conference wants to explore Bulgakov’s contribution to meeting the challenges of the modern world and to build bridges between East and West. Tthe speakers are asked to correlate Bulgakov’s thought with current theological and philosophical, political, social and economical issues.

The conference is organised by the Sergii Bulgakov Research Centre at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) in cooperation with the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University (New York, USA), and the Volos Academy for Theological Studies (Greece).

Under the patronage of Rowan Williams,
Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge (2013–2020), Archbishop of Canterbury (2002–2012)

In this article, the author analyzes the accounts of divine judgment in Pavel Florensky and Sergius Bulgakov. According to the Russian theologians, divine judgment consists in the act of disclosure of the person’s “likeness of God,” the comparison between the empirical self and the ideal prototype of the person that exists in Christ, and the separation of the sinful aspect of the empirical self from the person. They maintain that the separation between the sheep and the goats is a figure of speech that indicates a division within each human being, not the division of humanity into two groups. With this central point in mind, they mount a case for universal salvation. Drawing on Matthew 5:29–30, they argue that divine judgment entails spiritual amputation and purification, not the damnation of any person in toto.

This article examines Fr Sergii Bulgakov’s writings on the eucharist. It argues that these texts, written at critical junctures at the beginning, middle, and end of his career, constitute a “eucharistic horizon” against which one can envision continuity across Bulgakov’s wide-ranging corpus. Contrary to the scholarly narrative that Bulgakov abandoned his mission to justify Orthodox social action after his exile to Western Europe in the early 1920’s in the interest of building an abstract dogmatic edifice, this article argues that at the core of his thought lies a commitment to the importance of the material world and concomitantly an abiding commitment to collective social action within it. It is argued that the entirety of Bulgakov’s thought can be viewed a resource for restoring a spirit of collective Orthodox social action (as opposed to individual contemplation and ascesis alone) for the transfiguration of human and non-human creation: what Bulgakov called the “common task” of humanity.

This is a continuation of the article published in SapCr 2 (2005), 117-136. Bulgakov’s kenotic theory, at times criticized by orthodox theologians, is even penetrating the west with von Balthasar. The author places it within the vast breadth of Bulgakov’s sophiology, which is the “ousia” of God in revelation. In his sophiology Bulgakov expresses an organic and unitarian theological vision, at one and the same time Christological and trinitarian, cosmological and anthropological, ecclesiological and Mariological, protological and eschatological. In this second part of his article Zak shows the profound linkage between the theory of Christ’s kenosis and Bulgakov’s own concept of Church, even in matters of ecumenism.

Аннотация. В статье речь пойдет о варианте тринитарной онтологии проф. прот. С.Н. Булгакова, изложенном в не публиковавшихся ранее разделах «Глав о Троичности». Текст представляет собой черновую рукопись с множеством правок и датируется 1925 г. Эта датировка позволяет соотнести первоначальную редакцию текста «Глав» со статьей «Ипостась и ипостасность» (1924, опубл. в 1925), и рассматривать «Главы» как своеобразное расширение и продолжение концепции, которая была изложена в пражской статье. В «пропущенных "Главах"» содержится булгаковская тринитарная и софиологическая модели, переходные от «Ипостаси и ипостасности»-к тем онтологическим моделям, которая известны нам по «Агнцу Божиему». В частности, здесь Булгаков отказывается от концепции «ипостасности» как «способности к самоотданию» в пользу концепции Софии-unum, и от паламитского влияния в пользу триадологии свв. Афанасия Великого, Василия Великого, Григория Богослова, Иоанна Дамаскина и др. Отдельные сюжеты «пропущенной Троичности» связаны с философией пола и философией языка.
Ключевые слова: тринитарная онтология, софиология, С.Н. Булгаков, ипостасность, ипостась, субъект, философия пола, философия языка, психоанализ

S. Bulgakov repeatedly makes references to Hegel within the text of 'The Tragedy of Philosophy'. He goes into greater details in the last part of the book, where he pays particular attention to Hegel’s logic. The Russian theologian argues that Logic is one of the most significant of Hegel’s works, providing the foundation for the whole system. The critique is offered by Bulgakov from the perspective of both content and construction of Hegel’s logic.

Il 6 febbraio del 2008 alle ore 22.55 il canale Rossija, emittente televisiva di Stato della Federazione Russa fortemente filo-governativa, manda in onda una produzione per la regia di Aleksej Makeev per la durata di 60 minuti, con la cooperazione alla sceneggiatura di Ol'ga Gol'tjaeva e il sostegno collaborativo di soggetti culturali come il "Muzej Pavla Florenskogo" [Museo Pavel Florenskij] di Mosca, diretto dal sacerdote ortodosso padre Andronik Trubačëv. Il documentario televisivo in prima visione è Istorija odnogo čuda. Bulgakov i Florenskij [Storia di un prodigio. Bulgakov e Florenskij]. Oggetto principale del reportage, in senso vagamente pretestuoso, è l'opera, custodita presso la Gosudarstvennaja Tret'jakovskja Galereja (che ha raggiunto nel 2006 il centocinquantesimo anno di vita), intitolata Filosofy [Filosofi], di Michail Vasil'evič Nesterov (1862-1942), autore sensibile ai temi della pittura religiosa soprattutto durante le prime tappe della propria produzione artistica, prima di divenire soggetto all'influenza del "realismo socialista" ed essere insignito poco tempo prima della morte dello "Stalinskaja Premija" [Premio Stalin]. L'opera in questione, che riprende le immagini dei profili dei filo-sofi Florenskij e Sergej Bulgakov in un doppio ritratto, venne realizzata nel giardino della casa nella quale Florenskij visse con la famiglia presso Sergiev Posad (come ricordato e testimoniato in questo caso dal geologo Pavel V. Florenskij, nipote omonimo del filosofo, e confermato dai ricordi della nonna paterna).

Il senso teologico della differenza di genere nella teologia di S.N. Bulgakov. Il documento è un estratto della tesi per il conseguimento della Licenza in Teologia Dogmatica presso la Pontificia Università Gregoriana dal titolo: "Il senso teologico della differenza di genere:
un dialogo tra H.U. von Balthasar, K.Barth, S. Bulgakov e l'esegesi moderna" (2017).

L’amour que portait Henry Corbin à la sagesse, à la Sophia, englobe les trois termes de ce colloque. Sans pouvoir traiter directement de la notion de femme et d’erôs, ce texte explore la Sophia, féminin philosophique par excellence chez Henry Corbin. Le parcours proposé est une première percée dans le monde sophianique tel que Henry Corbin le concevait, en ce sens il s’agit d’un premier dépouillement. L’axe choisi pour entreprendre ce e exploration consiste à réarticuler les influences de la pensée de Corbin pour montrer que l’emphase généralement mise sur Heidegger a le plus souvent occulté l’importance de la Sophia. Une opportunité pour me re en lumière une influence restée voilée, celle du sophiologue russe Serge Boulgakov. Suite à ce e réarticulation, sans se restreindre à la Sophia boulgakovienne, les sophiologies de Carl Gustav Jung et de Nicolas Berdiaev viendront compléter le tableau des sophiologies occidentales qui jouent un rôle dans la pensée de Henry Corbin.

Henry Corbin’s loving devotion to wisdom, to sophia, englobes the three terms of this conference. Without dealing directly with the notion of women and erôs, this text explores the notion of sophia – philosophically feminine par excellence – in Henry Corbin’s opus. This text is a first attempt to understand the Sophianic world as conceived by Henry Corbin. The axis chosen in undertaking this exploration is to rearticulate the influences on Corbin’s thought in showing that the emphasis on Heidegger dissimulates the importance of sophia. This axis will also highlight an influence that has remained veiled, the Russian sophiologist Sergei Bulgakov’s. In the course of this rearticulation, we will also encounter the sophiologies of Carl Gustav Jung and Nicolas Berdyaev - completing the picture of Western sophiologies present in Corbin’s thought.

The following collection of essays could have had as a subtitle "Towards a New Sophiology." Essays 3, 4, 5, and 8 bear directly on this subject. Apart from the final essay, “Valentin Tomberg and Dostoevski,” all the other essays presented here appeared (in this same order) as articles in the Starlight Journal of the Sophia Foundation of North America over the years 2014-2019. The production of these articles took place during the period that immediately followed the publication of O’Meara’s book, "The Way of Novalis," and should be seen as an outgrowth from the Sophianic direction of that book. In these essays, slightly expanded from the articles, O’Meara elaborates on the Sophianic mission of the Foundation with reference to the main Master-Individualities to whom the Foundation has linked itself, notably Rudolf Steiner, Valentin Tomberg, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), as well as the Master Peter Deunov. However, other well-known individuals are also considered in some depth, including Vladimir Solovyov, Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, Fyodor Dostoevski, Carl Jung, as well as some of the Master-artists of the Renaissance, most notably Michelangelo and da Vinci. Estelle Isaacson and Ita Wegman also assume a significant role in this collection. How to put our arms around the demands being made on us with respect to our spiritual evolution now and in the future may be said to have been the main purpose of this series of essays.

Visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com

The primary identity of the Church as ‘Body of Christ’ in her relation with God is questioned. Understood somatically, since the Logos is the hypostasis of Christ, it fails to give the necessary ontological space for Creation to respond to God’s love.

Congar’s ecclesial ontology, formulated as Body of Christ, is investigated. His hierarchical interpretation of the relation between church structure, whose ontos as visible Body derives apneumatically from the incarnate Logos, and the Spirit, which vivifies the mystical Body through faith and the sacraments, is drawn from the filioque, subordinating the Spirit to the Institution. Souls united with God are eschatological ‘brides’, the reality for which the institution temporarily exists. Christ, or the Spirit, is the ‘I’ of the Church, which is not a ‘person’. Ultimately, souls are to be catholic, transparent to each other and God’s love. There is no explicit relation of Church to Creation.

Bulgakov identifies humanity as the hypostatic centre of Creation. In creating, God kenotically gives away his own being (Sophia) establishing temporality and otherness. Humanity is spirit-embodied earth, hypostasising created Sophia, drawn, through deification by the Spirit, into communion with God. The Trinitarian communion of the Godhead is imaged in Creation as the kenotic, hypostatic transparency of the Church. The Incarnation is a synergism between the Logos and Mary, who thereby participates in the salvific activity of the Son and the Spirit, as Spirit-bearer. She is the ‘Bride’ in whom all others participate.

Congar’s eschatology and Bulgakov’s kenotically hypostasised Creation proffer an understanding of the Church as the invited ‘yes’ of the personalised cosmos, reborn from Christ through the Cross, eschatologically irradiated by the Spirit with the glory of God, unified in kenotic love, whose communion with the Trinity as the ‘fourth’ hypostasis, ‘the Bride,’ proceeds through her nuptial union with the Son.

Bulgakov’s psychological and spiritual evolution can be reckoned as representative for his entire generation. Moving from Marxism to Idealism and finally conceiving his best known theory, namely Sophiology, he was considered by many one of the most influential and sometimes controversial Orthodox thinkers of the 20th century. The theory of Sophiology, his most disputed premise which lies at the center of his theological vision, is considered “a systematic attempt to work out the basis on which political action and policy could be seen as philosophically – and, eventual, theologically - legitimate” . If we reflect on our present cultural and political context we will find a renewed relevance in studying the evolution of Bulgakov’s theological and politic thought, due to the similarities of both periods. Just like in the last turn of the century, we also face issues of legitimacy of the political action, a new cultural paradigm and an economical crisis.

"Providential Empire: Russia's Religious Intelligentsia and the First World War" analyzes and contextualizes controversial commentary on the First World War by Russian religious philosophers, primarily Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdiaev, Vladimir Frantsevich Ern, Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov, Prince Evgenii Nikolaevich Trubetskoi, and the Symbolist Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov. Examining the prominence of the concept of Providence in their thought, the dissertation shows how Christian Providentialism can become the basis of an ideological worldview. Belief in the ability of the human mind to perceive the hand of God in history and unfolding events, along with belief in the need to interpret this ostensible evidence of the hand of God as callings to which individual believers or collective actors, such as nations, are meant to respond, leads to the emergence of a "politics of Providentialism." While expressed in a specifically Russian idiom and shaped by a specifically Russian context, the religious intelligentsia's politics of Providentialism was not unique to Russia, and was derived naturally from a traditionalist Christianity that arose in late modern Europe to stand against the perceived cultural threat of nihilism. This politics of Providentialism was one of the defining characteristics of the late imperial Russian religious intelligentsia, and, a socially significant phenomenon, it had a substantial presence in late imperial Russian civil society.

This article is a translation of the excursus—Augustinianism and Predestination—appended to the third volume of Fr. Sergius Bulgakov's major dogmatic trilogy, The Bride of the Lamb. It was not translated in Boris Jakim's 2001 translation of the text and an English version has not yet appeared. The excursus is of major significance for the history of the reception of Augustine in Orthodoxy, as well as for understanding the shape of Bulgakov's theology in one of its final formulations near the end of the author's life. As the foremost Orthodox defender of universal salvation in the twentieth century, Bulgakov appends to his volume on the Church and eschatology a treatise on Augustine's doctrine of predestination, grace, and the question of partial or universal salvation. For Bulgakov, as for Augustine, protology and eschatology were one in their divine foundation, and as such Bulgakov's reflections on the great architect of Western theology will reward scholars of Augustine, Bulgakov, and Orthodoxy more generally.

Название: Журнал ПУТЬ (1925—1940): Поколение русских религиозных мыслителей в эмиграции
Автор Антуан Аржаковский
К.: Феникс, 2000.— 656 с.
ISBN 966-7558-81-9

Настоящее исследование посвящено теме поколения русской ин¬теллигенции в эмиграции. Это—докторская диссертация по истории.
В книге освещены особенности, составляющие квинтэссенцию журнала "Путь" и среды интеллигентов, которая образовалась вок¬руг него. Автор предлагает методологический подход, который по¬зволяет читателям пройти извилистыми путями современной исто¬риографии. Он состоит в том, чтобы соединить критический метод микроистории с феноменологическим методом символической исто¬рии.
Работа предназначена для широкого круга читателей, изучающих историю русской мысли и эмиграции XX века.

Оглавление

Проект исследования
Краткое описание журнала «Путь»

МОДЕРНИСТСКИЙ ЖУРНАЛ (1925—1929 гг.)
Поколение интеллигентов-модернистов
Модернистское созвездие
Экуменическая позиция: Утверждение Востока пред лицом Запада

НОНКОНФОРМИСТСКИЙ ЖУРНАЛ (1930—1935 ГГ.)
Церковные границы поколения
Парижская школа
Церковная позиция за пределами торных дорог

ДУХОВНЫЙ ЖУРНАЛ (1935—1940 ГГ.)
Введение: парадигма Духа
Раскол интеллектуального поколения
Конфликт двух типов духовности
Общий горизонт войны и новый Иерусалим

ОБЩЕЕ ЗАКЛЮЧЕНИЕ: ДВА ТЕЛА ЖУРНАЛА
Конец истории журнала «Путь» (1940—1948 гг.)
Память о поколении в России
Ход памяти во Франции

ИНДЕКС СТАТЕЙ ЖУРНАЛА «ПУТЬ»

In this paper I will explore three different visions of ecumenism found in three Orthodox thinkers of the last century, Nikolai Berdyaev, Fr Sergius Bulgakov and Vladimir Lossky. With the exception of Bulgakov, they are not the most frequently cited figures in relation to the ecumenical movement, and yet they all were deeply engaged in conversations and cooperation with Christians from other churches, and tried to spell out what these relationships meant for them and in what sense they made visible both already existing and desired unity. As they all are related to the controversial figure of Vladimir Solovyov, I will first briefly turn to him. Then I turn to Berdyaev's discovery of creative and free Orthodoxy, which should be instrumental in overcoming the divided life of the Christian world, followed by Bulgakov's sophianic and pastoral concepts of unity, and finally to Lossky's mystical-eschatological reading of the Christian sources and his devotion to various saints which did not follow divisions into confessional camps. In the conclusion I will ask what of these ecumenical visions could be fruitfully revived to provide inspiration in our search for unity, and strengthen our focus on what is experientially real.

Vladimir Lossky (1903–58) and Sergii Bulgakov (1871–1944) are normally taken as polar opposites in modern Orthodox theology. Lossky's theology is portrayed as being based on a close exegesis of the Greek Fathers with an emphasis on theosis, the Trinity and the apophatic way of mystical union with God. Bulgakov's ‘sophiology’, in contrast, if it is remembered at all, is said to be a theology which wished to ‘go beyond the Fathers’, was based on German Idealism and the quasi-pantheist and gnostic idea of ‘sophia’ which is a form of the ‘Eternal Feminine’ of Romanticism. In short, Lossky's theological approach is what people normally think of when they speak of Orthodox theology: a form of ‘neo-patristic synthesis’ (Georges Florovsky). Bulgakov's theological approach is said to be typical of the exotic dead end of the inter-war émigré ‘Paris School’ (Alexander Schmemann) or ‘Russian Religious Renaissance’ (Nicolas Zernov). Lossky, we are reminded, was instrumental in the 1935 condemnation, by Metropolitan Sergii Stragorodskii of the Moscow Patriarchate, of Bulgakov's theology as ‘alien’ to the Orthodox Christian faith. Counter to this widely held ‘standard narrative’ of contemporary Orthodox theology, the article argues that the origins of Vladimir Lossky's apophaticism, which he characterised as ‘antinomic theology’, are found within the theological methodology of the sophiology of Sergii Bulgakov: ‘antinomism’. By antinomism is understood that with any theological truth one has two equally necessary affirmations (thesis and antithesis) which are nevertheless logically contradictory. In the face of their conflict, we are forced to hold both thesis and antithesis together through faith. A detailed discussion of Lossky's apophaticism is followed by its comparison to Bulgakov's ‘sophiological antinomism’. Lossky at first appears to be masking the influence of Bulgakov and even goes so far as to read his own form of theological antinomism into the Fathers. Nevertheless, he may well have been consciously appropriating the ‘positive intuitions’ of Bulgakov's thought in order to ‘Orthodoxise’ a thinker he believed was in error but still regarded as the greatest Orthodox theologian of the twentieth century. Despite major differences between the two thinkers (e.g. differing understandings of reason, the use of philosophy and the uncreated/created distinction), it is suggested that Lossky and Bulgakov have more in common than normally is believed to be the case. A critical knowledge of Bulgakov's sophiology is said to be the ‘skeleton key’ for modern Orthodox theology which can help unlock its past, present and future.

This article distances the classic Patristic teaching of Eastern Orthodoxy on theosis from the pseudo-religious ideology of transhumanism. By appealing to the Silver Age of Russian theologians a century ago, today's transhumanist vision is dubbed Mangodhood, an idolatrous construction of a technological Tower of Babel. In contrast, the classical Orthodox teaching of deification or theosis relies on the spiritual grace of the true God, rendering the true goal of religion to be Godmanhood.

В научном периодическом издании Екатеринбургской духовной семинарии публикуются материалы и исследования по различным вопросам богословия, церковной истории и смежных дисциплин, извлечения из протоколов заседаний ученого совета ЕДC, рецензии и отзывы на дипломные работы студентов семинарии, рецензии и библиографические заметки на новые актуальные для богословской науки исследования. Издание адресуется преподавателям и студентам духовных учебных заведений, историкам, богословам, философам, а также всем интересующимся.
The academic journal issued by Ekaterinburg Theological Seminary publishes materials and research articles on theology, church history and related disciplines, extracts from the protocols of the seminary academic council meetings, reviews and comments on the diploma papers of the seminary students, reviews and bibliographical notes on new research in the area of theological studies. The journal is addressed to teachers and students of religious schools, historians, theologians, philosophers and all those interested in the above mentioned topics.

Russian Cosmism is a lively and still productive tendency in the history of Russian esoteric thought, important but little known outside Russia. This paper presents a brief introduction to the ideas of several of the major figures in this tendency. From Nikolai Fedorov, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, to Svetlana Semenova, today's leading Cosmist, the emphasis of this movement has been on the human role in shaping and directing future human evolution, in all its physical, social, and spiritual manifestations.

It is argued that those who uphold Ecumenism and Anti-Ecumenism in Eastern Orthodoxy share much more in common than is normally thought to be the case. Both groups see the Orthodox Church as the Una Sancta of the Creed and that Orthodoxy must always witness to
itself as the fullness of the Christian faith. They also both see ecumenical encounter (whether in dialogue or in condemnation of the Other) as being a species of civilisational dialogue between two very different realities of Christian East and West. Ultimately, it is contended, both parties have much to learn from one another so that their opposition is not a sterile but a creative antinomy.

Предлагаем вашему вниманию второй выпуск журнала Tartaria Magna (Тартария Магна), в котором мы продолжаем тему противостояния и компромисса между "своим" и "чужим". В этом выпуске представлены исследования авторов, так или иначе касающиеся вопросов конструирования и разрушения социальных границ религиями. Второй выпуск Tartaria Magna носит название "Мир "своих" и "чужих": Духовные братья, священные враги" ( www.tartaria-magna.ru ). Как и круг поднимаемых проблем, исследовательская география выпуска традиционно широка - от Прибалтики до Тибета, от Закавказья до Забайкалья. В выпуске представлены исследования авторов из разных стран, занимающихся изучением различных народов и культур, но всех их объединяет высокий исследовательский уровень, проблематика номера и... журнал Tartaria Magna.

The term pneumatophore, originally drawn from the taxonomy of botany, has profound ecological implications. In the plant kingdom, it refers to roots which stick out of swampy waters to reach for pneuma, or the breath of life. For Bulgakov, the Theotokos serves as a vibrant bearer of Spirit and sophia-wisdom, but the term pneumatophore is also used today as an inspiration to guide us toward a heightened sense of global responsibility, which characterizes all modern theologies of panentheism. This is chapter 7  of the book "Sergius Bulgakov and the Patristic Roots of a Feminine Spirit," which explores the recently discovered text on Mary by Maximus. Subsequent chapters discuss Bulgakov's panentheism in more depth.

It is argued that those who uphold Ecumenism and Anti-Ecumenism in the Orthodox Church share much more in common than is normally thought to be the case. Both groups see the Orthodox Church as the Una Sancta of the Creed and that Orthodoxy must always witness to itself as the fullness of the Christian faith. They also both see ecumenical encounter (whether in dialogue or in condemnation of the Other) as being a species of civilisational dialogue between two very different realities of Christian East and West. Ultimately, it is contended, both parties have much to learn from one another so that their opposition is not a sterile but a creative antinomy.

Il tema dell’unità di Dio è centrale nell’ambito degli studi dedicati all’ontologia trinitaria, intesa sia come argomento che come disciplina connessi con il tentativo di alcuni studiosi di ridisegnare le categorie e i concetti della metafisica/ontologia alla luce dell’intelligenza della rivelazione trinitaria di Dio in Gesù Cristo. Se l’ontologia trinitaria è caratterizzata da un simile sforzo, i suoi protagonisti non propongono una trattazione identica del tema in questione. Essa, infatti, ha dei risvolti ed esiti differenti che dipendono dalle differenze esistenti tra i modelli di ontologia trinitaria. L’Autore si limita a presentare le interpretazioni dell’unità di Dio elaborate da parte dei tre modelli: quello proposto dal teologo tedesco K. Hemmerle, quello sviluppato da alcuni filosofi e teologi russi (P.A. Florenskij, S.N. Bulgakov e L.P. Karsavin) e quello “genetico” del filosofo, saggista e poeta spagnolo F. Rielo Pardal. Pur nella differenza, tali interpretazioni possono offrire un apporto di grande rilievo al proseguo del dialogo tra filosofia e teologia e al coinvolgimento di entrambe nella costruzione di una società e di un mondo fraterni e solidali.