Russia has always defined itself through its opposition to Europe, beginning with its essence, as being mostly a Christian-Orthodox nation, whereas Europe was traditionally Christian-Catholic and, following the Enlightenment, liberal-secular.

From an intra-Christian perspective, they date this theological rift to the so-called Filioque controversy relating to the Trinity. While describing the procession of the Holy Spirit in the Trinitarian Nicene creed, Western Christianity added the term filioque, i.e., “from the Son.” In Eastern Christianity, however, they refrained from doing so, arguing that it would make the Son “co-eternal” with the Father.

Modern academics argue that it is merely a semantical dispute, but it has been an issue of contention between these Christians for around a thousand years and has hampered any attempts at full communion between the churches.

Another controversy had arisen in the 14th century: the Hesychast controversy. This was a theological dispute that took place between Barlaam (an Italian monk) and Gregory Palamas (who is considered to be one of the three “pillars of Eastern Orthodoxy” alongside Photios I and Mark of Ephesus).

Hesychasm is a monastic tradition that is unique to Eastern Christianity. It is centered around an inner prayer known as the “Jesus Prayer” and obtaining, by means of it, theosis, i.e.,  the idea of uniting with God through the uncreated light that was manifested to Jesus’ disciples and is equated with the Holy Spirit.

Barlaam, trained in the dialectical scholastic tradition, argued that this would introduce a sort of division and thus polytheism within the Trinity, as every individual spiritual experience would entail a form of divine multiplicity.

Palamas retorted that God’s essence (ousia) remains “untouched” but that His energies or His acts and operations in our phenomenal world (which are also uncreated like the essence), are possibly experimented. He thus aimed to preserve God’s transcendence as well as his immanence since, without the concept of energies, God wouldn’t be “active and operational,” and believers wouldn’t be able to “approach” (being in communion with) Him through prayer or sacraments. *

Many Orthodox Christians see within this a wider philosophical evolution of two different civilizations: While the East retains an experiential approach to religion that is centered around spirituality, this doctrine of “divine simplicity” and “dry rationalism” found within European scholasticism would ultimately pave the way for the wave of liberalism and secularism that was to come centuries later (Hesychasm would later be cemented in Eastern Christianity following the Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347).

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Sophiology

Centuries later, another theological point would separate both Western and Christianity: “Sophiology.”

Sophiology is the idea that, aside from the Trinity, there’s a sort of fourth feminized “element”—Divine Wisdom, which is a representation of our phenomenal or material world, a kin to neo-Platonism’s idea of “World Soul.”

Like with the Hesychast controversy, those who oppose it argue that it introduces an extra “character” into the Trinity, but the Sophiologists themselves say that they’re just trying to give a “personality” to the Wisdom literature as found in the Old Testament.

The thinker who first articulated such an idea was Solovyev, who died in 1900, and who was conversant with Western philosophy.

Marcus Plested, in page 24 of his 2022 book, Wisdom in Christian Tradition: The Patristic Roots of Modern Russian Sophiology, defines Solovyev’s approach to Sophia and Sophiology:

Soloviev’s central (and distinctly Schellingian) intuition is of the underlying unity of all things. Total or all-unity (vseedinstvo) is the essential nature of all that is. This unity is not, however, that of a monad but necessarily entails alterity, otherness. In the footsteps of Boehme and Baader, Soloviev speaks of this eternal alterity as Wisdom (Sophia): God’s selfrevelation to himself and to the world. God contains the creation from all eternity and the creation contains God from all eternity. This unity of created and uncreated natures is the expression of a primordial divine humanity (Bogochelovechestvo)—man in God and God in man. This intuition is perhaps his most decisive intellectual contribution and is foundational to Sophiology. Christ, in this schema, is the supreme instance of divine humanity. But Christ is somehow secondary to Sophia, the underlying principle of all-unity or divine humanity. Sophia longs to manifest herself not only in God and in Christ but in the world, in human history. Soloviev is reluctant to tie down Sophia to the Word of God alone, not least because of his apprehension of the distinctively feminine character of Holy Wisdom. Sophia is neither God nor the world, neither divinity nor humanity, but rather the very unity that unites them. She is the liminal, the ‘in-between’.

A few decades later, Sophiology would be broadened by Sergei Bulgakov, often considered the most important Russian theologian of the last century. Bulgakov applied Sophiology in fields like modern economics. (Before returning to Christianity, he was, for some time, a committed Marxist.)

Besides the obvious Catholic and Protestant criticisms, Bulgakov was also met with opposition from within Russian Orthodoxy for what is perceived to be a form of pantheism—if the material world is some kind of emanation of God, “holy,” this must mean that it is, in a way, itself divine.

Florovsky, himself also considered to be one of the most important Orthodox theologians of the last century, would continue the critique as follows:

• Sophiology diverges from traditional (patristic) Orthodox teaching on fundamental questions like creation;

 

• It falsely claims to be sanctified by historical precedent;

 

• It represents a retreat from the reality of a historical religion into the abstractions of speculative philosophy;

 

• Its sources are not only non-patristic, but to a significant degree non-Orthodox (Protestant mysticism) and non-Christian (the occult).

Sophiologists respond by saying this is not pantheism (both Solovyev and Bulgakov read Spinoz enough to know about this) but panentheism i.e., the world of nature is not holy in and of itself but only by virtue of it being sanctified by Divine presence.

Many other groups prefer to use the term panentheism over pantheism, including Sikhs.

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These theological developments remain of interest to us as a way to see just how deep the rifts within Christianity actually go and also how, within a single subgroup (such as Russian Orthodoxy), you can have multiple leading theologians fiercely opposing each other.

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