LA CREAZIONE SECONDO SERGEJ BULGAKOV
Creation according to Sergei Bulgakov

Summary/Abstract: “God created the world”. This truth does not apply exclusively to the very beginning of the world when creation was called to exist from nothingness. Theology of creation inevitably reflects on the relationship between God the Creator and the created universe. Sergei Bulgakov meditates in the most profound way on this relationship. While a Russian theologian tries to avoid any associations with the monistic concept that renders God’s transcendence weak and undermines His creative identity, he circumvents a possible deception of seeing the creation next to God, as if we were dealing with two separate realities. His system is built on a sophiological panentheism where God perpetually manifests Himself. God acts both through an intra-Trinitarian life (divine sophia) and in a non-God reality, i.e. in creation (earthly sophia). Bulgakov does not agree with a vision that sees in the Creator the First Cause without any reason. Attributing causality to God would reduce Him – according to our author – to the intra-world chain of cause and effect. Creation is not about being the cause of things, but about manifestation outside of oneself. That is the reason why Bulgakov claims that eternity is in the act of creation, because God has always, already been the Creator. This statement does not negate God’s creative freedom, because a distinction of necessity and freedom does not apply to God. Absolute is what it wants to be, and it wants to be what it is. The eternal creation finds its eternal foundation in the intra-Trinitarian life and – similarly to it – relies on love in its dual aspects: sacrifice and benediction. Sacrifice (kenosis) is a withdrawal to make room for another, and at the same time, to get out of oneself in order to manifest oneself in the other. Sergei Bulgakov’s theology of creation is fundamental for ecological reflection. The vision “everything in God and God in everything” is, after all, a call to protect creation wisely, that is, divine sophia.

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