Introduction

Regula M. Zwahlen

pp. 159-162

in: Regula M. Zwahlen (ed), Sergej Bulgakov, the 'awakening giant' of Orthodox Theology, Studies in East European Thought 64, 2012.

Abstract

One of the authors of this issue comes to the conclusion that Sergej Bulgakov “is like an awakening giant,” a “secret whetstone of modern Orthodox theology.”1 According to Fëdor Stepun in 1914, Bulgakov’s contribution to the Russian history of ideas would be more important than those of his contemporaries. Indeed, a deeper interest in Bulgakov seems to be wakening at present even as the general interest in “Russian religious philosophy” seems to be fading away. The renewed interest indicates the direction of Bulgakov’s reception during the last decade of research, at least in the anglo-american world, where most of Western “Bulgakovology” is taking place today. Rather than a major movement it is present as the persistent conviction of several scholars that if Christianity still wants to overcome confessional boundaries, it cannot avoid taking into account what this “most creative Russian orthodox thinker of the twentieth century”—in the words of one of his English translators—had to say. In short, the direction leads “out of a religious-philosophical ghetto into what [Bulgakov] no doubt hoped would be the main square of Orthodox theology.”2