At Orthodox Vespers in the Chapel of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Patrick Comerford
In Orthodox theology, theosis (θέωσις) or deification is a transformative process in which the goal is the attainment of likeness to or union with God. As a process of transformation, theosis is brought about by the effects of katharsis (κάθαρσις) or purification of mind and body and theoria (θεωρία).
In Orthodox theology, theosis is the purpose of human life. It offers a very different approach to thinking about salvation than the western theological thinking about redemption and atonement.
This morning [10 September 2014], at the international summer conference in Cambridge organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, we were introduced to theosis in the thinking of Russian philosophers and theologians.
The conference in Sidney Sussex College, which began on Monday morning, is looking at “Horizons and Limitations of Russian Religious Philosophy.”
Dr Ruth Coates speaking at the IOCS summer school in Sidney Sussex College this morning (Photograph: IOCS)
Dr Ruth Coates, senior lecturer in the Russian Department in the University of Bristol, spoke on “Nikolai Berdyaev and the Silver Age Reception of the doctrine of deification.” Dr Clemena Antonova of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, spoke on “Seeing God ‘Face to Face’: the visual implications of theosis in Byzantine Theology and Russian Religious Philosophy.”
Ruth Coates specialises in nineteenth-century Russian literature and 19th and early 20th century intellectual history. Her research interests are in the work of the 20th century philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin; in 20th and early 20th century Russian thought; and in Russian Orthodox culture and its influence on secular Russian thought. She has edited The Emancipation of Russian Christianity, and is the author of Christianity in Bakhtin: God and the Exiled Author.
In 2009 she organised the “Vekhi Centenary Conference 1909-2009.” She is the co-organiser, with Dr Sarah Hudspith of Leeds University, of the BASEES 19th century Study Group. Her current project concerns the reception of the doctrine of deification in Russian culture, with a focus on the thought of the late imperial period.
The Russian theologian and political philosopher Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) was born near Kiev into an aristocratic military. He spent a solitary childhood at home, reading widely in his father’s library and learning many languages.
In 1904, he moved with his wife Lydia Trusheff to Saint Petersburg, then the centre of Russian intellectual and revolutionary life. In 1913, after criticising the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, he was charged with blasphemy, but the trial never took place because of the outbreak of World War I and the subsequent Bolshevik Revolution.
Surprisingly, Berdyaev was able to continue writing, lecturing and publishing for another five years after the October Revolution of 1917. In 1920, he became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Moscow, but he was soon arrested for conspiracy soon after and jailed, and in 1922 he was expelled from Russia in September 1922 with a select group of 160 prominent writers, scholars, and intellectuals.
From Berlin, Berdyaev moved to Paris in 1923, where he continued to write, publish and lecture. He never returned to Russia and died in 1948 in Clamart, near Paris.
Berdyaev was an often critical but practising member of the Russian Orthodox Church. He wrote in Dream and Reality: “When I became conscious of myself as a Christian, I came to confess a religion of God-manhood [Orthodoxy]; that is to say, in becoming a believer in God, I did not cease to believe in man’s dignity and creative freedom. I became a Christian because I was seeking for a deeper and truer foundation for belief in man.”
He was an existentialist and a mystical philosopher, and he felt it was the mystics of the world who came closest to understanding the role of spirit. Many of the philosophers he drew on were mystics, including Meister Eckhart and Jacob Boehme, and he was deeply influenced by Dostoevsky.
The concept of theosis is a central theme in Orthodox theology and spirituality. For Berdyaev, the mystical experience reveals the specific status of humanity as created in God’s image. In our creative life, we can be divinised and, consequently, participate in the divine community.
Berdyaev analyses the process of theosis referring to the most perfect example of Christ. Theosis, in his view, is the aim of human existence. He wrote:
“The idea of theosis was the central and correct idea, the Deification of man and of the whole created world. Salvation is that Deification. And the whole created world, the whole cosmos is subject to Deification. Salvation is the enlightenment and transfiguration of creation and not a juridical justification. Orthodoxy turns to the mystery of the Resurrection as the summit and the final aim of Christianity. Thus the central feast in the life of the Orthodox Church is the feast of Pascha, Christ’s Glorious Resurrection. The shining rays of the Resurrection permeates the Orthodox world.
“The feast of the Resurrection has an immeasurably greater significance in the Orthodox liturgy than in Catholicism where the apex is the feast of the Birth of Christ. In Catholicism we primarily meet the crucified Christ and in Orthodoxy – the Resurrected Christ. The way of the Cross is man's path but it leads man, along with the rest of the world, towards the Resurrection. The mystery of the Crucifixion may be hidden behind the mystery of the Resurrection. But the mystery of the Resurrection is the utmost mystery of Orthodoxy. The Resurrection mystery is not only for man, it is cosmic. The East is always more cosmic than the West. The West is anthropocentric; in this is its strength and meaning, but also its limitation.
“The spiritual basis of Orthodoxy engenders a desire for universal salvation. Salvation is understood not only as an individual one but a collective one, along with the whole world…The greater part of Eastern teachers of the Church, from Clement of Alexandria to Maximus the Confessor, were supporters of apokatastasis, of universal salvation and resurrection. And this is characteristic of (contemporary) Russian religious thought. Orthodox thought has never been suppressed by the idea of Divine justice and it never forgot the idea of Divine love. Chiefly – it did not define man from the point of view of Divine justice but from the idea of transfiguration and Deification of man and cosmos.”
The Cloisters in Sidney Sussex College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Later this morning, Dr Clemena Antonova spoke on “Seeing God ‘Face to Face’: the visual implications of theosis in Byzantine Theology and Russian Religious Philosophy.” She has studied at Edinburgh and Oxford and lectured in England, Bulgaria, Scotland and the US. Her most recent book, based on her PhD thesis at Oxford, is Space, Time, and Presence in the Icon: Seeing the World with the Eyes of God (Ashgate, 2013).
She asked why the corpus of writings on theosis is so often conceptualised in visual terms and through visual metaphors and terms that describe human vision. And she tried to reconstruct a concrete model for the way divine perception works.
She drew on the work of Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky (1882-1937), including his Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art. Florensky was murdered on the night of 8 December 1937 in a wood near Saint Petersburg, and is listed as a New Martyr and Confessor.
She also drew on the writings of Archbishop Rowan Williams on icons and theosis.
She spoke about “vision beyond vision” which is beyond pure aesthetic experience.
Dr Antonova illustrated her lecture generously with icons, and compared perspective in iconography, which invites us to move beyond time and space, and the use of perspective in the work of the Cubists, especially Picasso.
10 September 2014
Getting away from it all on
Robinson Crusoe Island
Robinson Crusoe Island is a tiny islet in Cambridge where the River Cam splits between Coe Fen and Sheep’s Green (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Patrick Comerford
There is an island in the South Pacific that is known as Robinson Crusoe Island or Isla Robinson Crusoe. It is the second largest of the Juan Fernández Islands, and lies 670 km west of the coast of Chile. A neighbouring island is known as Alejandro Selkirk Island.
Robinson Crusoe Island was once known as Más a Tierra (Closer to Land). It was the island that became home to the Scottish castaway Alexander Selkirk from 1704 to 1709, and is said to have inspired Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe (1719).
To reflect the literary associations of Más a Tierra – but more especially to attract tourists – the Chilean government renamed the place Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966.
I was on Robinson Crusoe Island on Tuesday [9 September 2014] – but not in the South Pacific. Instead, I visited Robinson Crusoe Island, a tiny islet in the River Cam, between Coe Fen to the east and Sheep’s Green to the west, on a point on the river south of the weir where Scurdamore’s Punts are moored at Silver Street Bridge and immediately north of the Fen Causeway.
Cattle grazing on Coe Fen in the late summer sunshine (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Coe Fen is known beyond Anglicanism as the name the tune composed by Ken Naylor for the hymn How shall I sing that majesty. And during an afternoon break from the IOCS summer school in Sidney Sussex College I had decided to go for a walk by the river at Coe Fen, inspired, of course, by that tune.
Naylor was the music master at the Leys School, at the corner of Trumpington Street and the Fen Causeway, and named his tune after Coe Fen, an open space beside the school.
Coe Fen on the east bank of the Cam and Sheep’s Green on the west bank form a natural area that was once important for commercial activity in Cambridge. There was many watermills her, but because the land between the artificially raised banks of the watercourses was liable to flooding it was only suitable for grazing.
Cows grazed on one side of the river on Coe Fen and sheep on the other side, Sheep’s Green, and so they have been named.
By the 19th century, the Fen had become so marshy and boggy that it became necessary to drain it as a measure to prevent the outbreak and spread of diseases. A public subscription in 1833 raised £150 to drain the Fen, and later, in 1912-1914, the level of the Fen was raised by dumping rubbish on it.
In the late afternoon, I walked down Trumpington Street to the Leys School, and turned along the Fen Causeway. The Fen Causeway Bridge opened in 1926, and I am told it is sometimes called the Lesbian Bridge because of the graffiti sometimes written on its underside. Instead of checking this out, I joined a footpath south into Coe Fen, where the land is a semi-natural area and cattle still graze.
I walked south until the path meets Vicar’s Brook and then turned west and crossed a narrow bridge that took me onto Sheep’s Green, a small island formed by the way the river has split further north at the weir at Silver Street Bridge.
Sheep’s Green Bridge is a second narrow bridge that was rebuilt in 2006. Here pedestrians and cyclists jostle to give way to each other, and the bridge led me onto Lammas Land, a town park, with a small open air pool for children and a playground.
Lammas was observed on 1 August in England as a harvest festival when loaves of bread were made from the first ripe corn. Areas of green designated as Lammas lands in law were common land for nine months of the year, but passed to the sole use of their owners for the other three months on Lammas.
To the south of Lammas Land is the aptly-named Paradise, a nature reserve and woodland with a central marsh area, wet woodland and a number of riverside mature willows.
Crusoe Bridge, built in 1898-1899, is a steel footbridge with timber deck and supported on four cast-iron columns (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
I walked back north along Lammas Land and walked east along the Fen Causeway for a brief distance, and then turned to the north side of Coe Fen, where I found the bridge that crosses Robinson Crusoe Island to my left or the west.
Stepping across Robinson Crusoe Island and Crusoe Bridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Crusoe Bridge, which was built in 1898-1899, is a steel footbridge with timber deck and supported on four cast-iron columns. This is the final bridge on the “Upper River” before it reaches the small weir at the mill pond.
Robinson Crusoe Island was once known as Swan’s Nest, but the present name has been in use for more than a century.
The land is deceptive in places here, and many apparently dry channels running through the grass are filled with marshy water, often filled with reeds and damp growth. These channels date back to the time when this area had many mills grinding corn for Cambridge.
Punters on the river between Crusoe Bridge and the weir at Silver Street Bridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
I crossed Robinson Crusoe Island and the bridge, and enjoyed the spectacle of people enjoying the late summer sunshine in kayaks and punts. But the old boathouse that has been on Robinson Crusoe Island was closed and fenced off, and difficult to see.
Coe Fen and Sheep’s Green are important thoroughfares for cyclists and pedestrians, particularly between the city centre and Newnham, and part of the pathway along the river out towards Grantchester runs through this space.
We are enjoying an extended summer this week and the river is still busy with tourists and punts. I walked on north to the weir and stopped at the Anchor at Silver Street Bridge for a glass of wine. There I sat watching the bustle at the pubs and the punting station at Scudamore’s.
Before returning to the bustle of academic life at Sidney Sussex College, I had one more look at the Mathematical Bridge that links one side of Queen’s College with the other across the river. The punters below seemed to be deft enough not be marooned on Robinson Crusoe Island further south.
Punts at the Mathematical Bridge below Silver Street Bridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Patrick Comerford
There is an island in the South Pacific that is known as Robinson Crusoe Island or Isla Robinson Crusoe. It is the second largest of the Juan Fernández Islands, and lies 670 km west of the coast of Chile. A neighbouring island is known as Alejandro Selkirk Island.
Robinson Crusoe Island was once known as Más a Tierra (Closer to Land). It was the island that became home to the Scottish castaway Alexander Selkirk from 1704 to 1709, and is said to have inspired Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe (1719).
To reflect the literary associations of Más a Tierra – but more especially to attract tourists – the Chilean government renamed the place Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966.
I was on Robinson Crusoe Island on Tuesday [9 September 2014] – but not in the South Pacific. Instead, I visited Robinson Crusoe Island, a tiny islet in the River Cam, between Coe Fen to the east and Sheep’s Green to the west, on a point on the river south of the weir where Scurdamore’s Punts are moored at Silver Street Bridge and immediately north of the Fen Causeway.
Cattle grazing on Coe Fen in the late summer sunshine (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Coe Fen is known beyond Anglicanism as the name the tune composed by Ken Naylor for the hymn How shall I sing that majesty. And during an afternoon break from the IOCS summer school in Sidney Sussex College I had decided to go for a walk by the river at Coe Fen, inspired, of course, by that tune.
Naylor was the music master at the Leys School, at the corner of Trumpington Street and the Fen Causeway, and named his tune after Coe Fen, an open space beside the school.
Coe Fen on the east bank of the Cam and Sheep’s Green on the west bank form a natural area that was once important for commercial activity in Cambridge. There was many watermills her, but because the land between the artificially raised banks of the watercourses was liable to flooding it was only suitable for grazing.
Cows grazed on one side of the river on Coe Fen and sheep on the other side, Sheep’s Green, and so they have been named.
By the 19th century, the Fen had become so marshy and boggy that it became necessary to drain it as a measure to prevent the outbreak and spread of diseases. A public subscription in 1833 raised £150 to drain the Fen, and later, in 1912-1914, the level of the Fen was raised by dumping rubbish on it.
In the late afternoon, I walked down Trumpington Street to the Leys School, and turned along the Fen Causeway. The Fen Causeway Bridge opened in 1926, and I am told it is sometimes called the Lesbian Bridge because of the graffiti sometimes written on its underside. Instead of checking this out, I joined a footpath south into Coe Fen, where the land is a semi-natural area and cattle still graze.
I walked south until the path meets Vicar’s Brook and then turned west and crossed a narrow bridge that took me onto Sheep’s Green, a small island formed by the way the river has split further north at the weir at Silver Street Bridge.
Sheep’s Green Bridge is a second narrow bridge that was rebuilt in 2006. Here pedestrians and cyclists jostle to give way to each other, and the bridge led me onto Lammas Land, a town park, with a small open air pool for children and a playground.
Lammas was observed on 1 August in England as a harvest festival when loaves of bread were made from the first ripe corn. Areas of green designated as Lammas lands in law were common land for nine months of the year, but passed to the sole use of their owners for the other three months on Lammas.
To the south of Lammas Land is the aptly-named Paradise, a nature reserve and woodland with a central marsh area, wet woodland and a number of riverside mature willows.
Crusoe Bridge, built in 1898-1899, is a steel footbridge with timber deck and supported on four cast-iron columns (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
I walked back north along Lammas Land and walked east along the Fen Causeway for a brief distance, and then turned to the north side of Coe Fen, where I found the bridge that crosses Robinson Crusoe Island to my left or the west.
Stepping across Robinson Crusoe Island and Crusoe Bridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Crusoe Bridge, which was built in 1898-1899, is a steel footbridge with timber deck and supported on four cast-iron columns. This is the final bridge on the “Upper River” before it reaches the small weir at the mill pond.
Robinson Crusoe Island was once known as Swan’s Nest, but the present name has been in use for more than a century.
The land is deceptive in places here, and many apparently dry channels running through the grass are filled with marshy water, often filled with reeds and damp growth. These channels date back to the time when this area had many mills grinding corn for Cambridge.
Punters on the river between Crusoe Bridge and the weir at Silver Street Bridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
I crossed Robinson Crusoe Island and the bridge, and enjoyed the spectacle of people enjoying the late summer sunshine in kayaks and punts. But the old boathouse that has been on Robinson Crusoe Island was closed and fenced off, and difficult to see.
Coe Fen and Sheep’s Green are important thoroughfares for cyclists and pedestrians, particularly between the city centre and Newnham, and part of the pathway along the river out towards Grantchester runs through this space.
We are enjoying an extended summer this week and the river is still busy with tourists and punts. I walked on north to the weir and stopped at the Anchor at Silver Street Bridge for a glass of wine. There I sat watching the bustle at the pubs and the punting station at Scudamore’s.
Before returning to the bustle of academic life at Sidney Sussex College, I had one more look at the Mathematical Bridge that links one side of Queen’s College with the other across the river. The punters below seemed to be deft enough not be marooned on Robinson Crusoe Island further south.
Punts at the Mathematical Bridge below Silver Street Bridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Who was William Mong, the ‘rice
cooker tycoon’ from Hong Kong?
Dr William Mong … a portrait in the William Mong Building in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Patrick Comerford
The International Summer Conference organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies is taking place once again this year in the William Mong Hall in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
The William Mong Building is the main lecture theatre in Sidney Sussex College. Our coffee breaks each morning and afternoon make good use of the garden between the William Mong Hall and South Court.
With the Chapel on one side and the rooms of South Court, dating from the early 1930s, on the other side, this sun-filled space provides an ideal space this week to renew old friendships and to make new friends in the autumn sunshine.
Each day, as I work on my laptop at the back of the hall, I am sitting beneath a portrait of William Mong. But who was William Mong? And why is this lecture room and conference space named after him?
Dr William Mong Man Wai (1927-2010) was known in Hong Kong as the “rice cooker tycoon.” He was an entrepreneur and philanthropist and the Chair and Senior Managing Director of the Shun Hing Group, the distributor of Matsushita products (National, Panasonic, Technics) in Hong Kong.
Mong was born in Hong Kong in 1927 and after returning from Beijing to Hong Kong in 1948 he set up Shun Hing Holdings in 1953. He used his father’s business links with Panasonic to import Japanese goods, and went door-to-door to sell the first eight rice cookers.
Many university buildings in Hong Kong and China are named after him. In 1996, the Nanjing Purple Mountain Observatory named Asteroid 3678 the Mong Man Wai Star in recognition of his work to promote economics, science, technology and education in China.
In 1996, he donated £1.5 million to Sidney Sussex College for building a multi-purpose lecture and conference hall.
Queen Elizabeth II and Dr William Mong officiated at the unveiling ceremony of the Mong Building in 1996, and the Mong Hall became the first building named after an Asian in a college in Cambridge University. The building was completed in 1999.
William Mong died from cancer on 20 July 2010. He left behind a fortune estimated to be worth tens of billions of Hong Kong dollars, but multiple lawsuits involving his family and his business interests have continued in legal battles over his fortune for the past four years.
Enjoying the sunshine in a small corner between South Court and the William Mong Building in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Patrick Comerford
The International Summer Conference organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies is taking place once again this year in the William Mong Hall in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
The William Mong Building is the main lecture theatre in Sidney Sussex College. Our coffee breaks each morning and afternoon make good use of the garden between the William Mong Hall and South Court.
With the Chapel on one side and the rooms of South Court, dating from the early 1930s, on the other side, this sun-filled space provides an ideal space this week to renew old friendships and to make new friends in the autumn sunshine.
Each day, as I work on my laptop at the back of the hall, I am sitting beneath a portrait of William Mong. But who was William Mong? And why is this lecture room and conference space named after him?
Dr William Mong Man Wai (1927-2010) was known in Hong Kong as the “rice cooker tycoon.” He was an entrepreneur and philanthropist and the Chair and Senior Managing Director of the Shun Hing Group, the distributor of Matsushita products (National, Panasonic, Technics) in Hong Kong.
Mong was born in Hong Kong in 1927 and after returning from Beijing to Hong Kong in 1948 he set up Shun Hing Holdings in 1953. He used his father’s business links with Panasonic to import Japanese goods, and went door-to-door to sell the first eight rice cookers.
Many university buildings in Hong Kong and China are named after him. In 1996, the Nanjing Purple Mountain Observatory named Asteroid 3678 the Mong Man Wai Star in recognition of his work to promote economics, science, technology and education in China.
In 1996, he donated £1.5 million to Sidney Sussex College for building a multi-purpose lecture and conference hall.
Queen Elizabeth II and Dr William Mong officiated at the unveiling ceremony of the Mong Building in 1996, and the Mong Hall became the first building named after an Asian in a college in Cambridge University. The building was completed in 1999.
William Mong died from cancer on 20 July 2010. He left behind a fortune estimated to be worth tens of billions of Hong Kong dollars, but multiple lawsuits involving his family and his business interests have continued in legal battles over his fortune for the past four years.
Enjoying the sunshine in a small corner between South Court and the William Mong Building in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
The discussions on Russian religious
philosophy continue at summer school
Cloister Court in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Patrick Comerford
Our discussions of Russian religious philosophy continued this afternoon, when the Greek theologian Revd Professor Nikolaos Loudovikos, University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki, spoke on “Created as Uncreated: some remarks on Bulgakov’s Sophiological Christology.”
Father Nikolaos Loudovikos (Νικόλαος Λουδοβίκος) was born in Volos in 1959 and studied in Athens, Thessaloniki, the Sorbonne in Paris, and Cambridge. He received his PhD in 1989 from the Theological faculty of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for his dissertation, The Eucharistic Ontology in the Theological Thought of Saint Maximus the Confessor.
He is the Director of Studies and a Professor of Dogmatics and Philosophy at the University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki and a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge.
He was speaking this afternoon in Sidney Sussex College on the second day of the International Summer Conference organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies.
Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) was a Russian Orthodox theologian and philosopher. As a student, Bulgakov was interested in Marxism and took part in the Legal Marxism movement. Under the influence of writer such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Solovyov, he rediscovered his religious beliefs. In 1907 he was elected to the Duma.
His early work was influenced by Solovyov and Pavel Florensky, and he was ordained priest in 1918. In 1922, he was one of a group of 160 prominent Russian philosophers expelled from Russia by the Bolsheviks, along with Nikolai Berdyaev and Ivan Ilyin.
In exile, he became professor of Church Law and Theology in Prague and then helped found Saint Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, where he died in 1944.
Bulgakov’s teachings on sophiology are highly controversial, and he was accused of heresy. He was sympathetic to the idea of universal reconciliation, with the reservation that the continuing punishment of the immortal souls of the wicked may be unending since human free choice can never be destroyed.
Bulgakov’s ideas were explored further later this afternoon, when Father Tikhon Vasilyev, who is working on his PhD at Wolfson College, Oxford, spoke on “The Idea of Pseudo-Dionysius and Sergius Bulgakov.”
A quiet corner of Chapel Court in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Patrick Comerford
Our discussions of Russian religious philosophy continued this afternoon, when the Greek theologian Revd Professor Nikolaos Loudovikos, University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki, spoke on “Created as Uncreated: some remarks on Bulgakov’s Sophiological Christology.”
Father Nikolaos Loudovikos (Νικόλαος Λουδοβίκος) was born in Volos in 1959 and studied in Athens, Thessaloniki, the Sorbonne in Paris, and Cambridge. He received his PhD in 1989 from the Theological faculty of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for his dissertation, The Eucharistic Ontology in the Theological Thought of Saint Maximus the Confessor.
He is the Director of Studies and a Professor of Dogmatics and Philosophy at the University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki and a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge.
He was speaking this afternoon in Sidney Sussex College on the second day of the International Summer Conference organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies.
Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) was a Russian Orthodox theologian and philosopher. As a student, Bulgakov was interested in Marxism and took part in the Legal Marxism movement. Under the influence of writer such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Solovyov, he rediscovered his religious beliefs. In 1907 he was elected to the Duma.
His early work was influenced by Solovyov and Pavel Florensky, and he was ordained priest in 1918. In 1922, he was one of a group of 160 prominent Russian philosophers expelled from Russia by the Bolsheviks, along with Nikolai Berdyaev and Ivan Ilyin.
In exile, he became professor of Church Law and Theology in Prague and then helped found Saint Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, where he died in 1944.
Bulgakov’s teachings on sophiology are highly controversial, and he was accused of heresy. He was sympathetic to the idea of universal reconciliation, with the reservation that the continuing punishment of the immortal souls of the wicked may be unending since human free choice can never be destroyed.
Bulgakov’s ideas were explored further later this afternoon, when Father Tikhon Vasilyev, who is working on his PhD at Wolfson College, Oxford, spoke on “The Idea of Pseudo-Dionysius and Sergius Bulgakov.”
A quiet corner of Chapel Court in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
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