The Sophiology of Sergius Bulgakov

Part 3, God is Not the Cause of the World, but its Creator

After two posts, you might be asking, "What's the win here in exploring Bulgakov's sophiology? What's to be gained by thinking about this strange, new thing?" 

Well, I hope you saw one win in the last post. The panentheistic vision of Bulgakov's sophiology reveals to us that all of creation, because it exists, because it is real, is founded upon God's divinity. Everything is spiritual. And this, I would argue, is a critical and valuable insight. Sophiology rebuts the perverse materialism that haunts our increasingly post-Christian world. To borrow from Hunting Magic Eels, sophiology is a very enchanting theology. In the imagery of Stephen Freeman, instead of living in a two-story universe, with God upstairs in heaven and we downstairs on earth, we are, instead, living in a one-story universe where God is, in Freeman's words, "everywhere present and filling all things." 

For example, Bulgakov describes the creaturely Sophia, the divine foundation of creation, as "the world soul," God's life inhabiting, sustaining, holding, and catalyzing creation. As Bulgakov says, Sophia is "the life of the world," "she is the eternal foundation for the soul of the world, the soul of the soul." Humanity, thus, has a dual nature, what Bulgakov calls "divine-humanity." As he describes, "The roots of a person's being are submerged in the bottomless ocean of divine life and get their nourishment from this life." And all of creation has this dual character: "All of creation has in God a supratemporal foundation and through this foundation participates in eternity, for the creaturely Sophia is the image of the Divine Sophia."

The creaturely Sophia is also the "entelechy" of the world. Entelechy was a word coined by Aristotle, and it describes how being actualizes in moving toward its final goal, how the potentialities of being come to be fully realized. So, it's not just that creation has a divine foundation, the "world soul" is also dynamically and actively drawing creation toward its final end. Creation is "going somewhere." Since the creaturely Sophia abides in the divine Sophia it is through this "Sophia-connection," to put it awkwardly, that God is drawing all of creation into a sharing of his divine life. As Bulgakov says, "The creaturely Sophia is becoming the image and likeness of the Divine Sophia." This is the Orthodox idea of theosis and divinization.  

Now, you might find all of this a bit too mystical or woo-woo. But that is precisely why we're doing this series. Whether or not you can follow or agree with all this Sophia stuff, exploring this unique area of Christian theology should, at the very least, push back on some bad habits of mind. Deistic habits like imagining God at a distance, living "upstairs" in heaven. Also materialistic habits of mind that fail to see that everything is spiritual, that because things are real they are resting on God. Some mystical Christian woo-woo just might be what the doctor ordered. 

Beyond sophiology interrupting the bad habits of our overly deistic and material imaginations, it also interrupts how our theological imaginations have been colonized by causality. Thinking of God as a "cause" has been a pernicious habit of mind which has resulted in a lot of consternation and confusion. As Bulgakov says, "this conception of God as the 'first' cause of the world represents an age-old misunderstanding, which must be eradicated from both philosophy and theology." A goal of sophiology is to help us see that God is not a cause. 

According to Bulgakov, one of the mistakes of the Western theological tradition has been to imagine that God relates to the world through causality. That is, when we say that God "creates" the world we imagine this as a cause/effect relationship. God is the "First Cause" or the "Uncaused Cause" setting off a chain of causation. This is a mistake, according to Bulgakov. God's relationship to the world is sophianic, not causal. What might this mean? Well, when we imagine the relationship between a cause and its effect, we imagine something mechanical or deterministic occurring. Also, the relationship between cause and effect becomes severed over time. If the cueball hits the eight-ball the eight-ball moves away. After being struck, there is no enduring "relationship" between the cue ball and the eight-ball. In short, imagining God's relation to the world as being causal creates the deistic, God-working-at-a-physical-and-temporal-distance imagination which sophiology is trying to overcome.

Describing Sophia as the "world soul," then, is simply an attempt to posit some living, vital, and animating connection between the world and God. A casual, mechanical "deadness" does not describe how God relates to the world. God is not the Big Domino that pushes around us little dominos. Rather, through the sophianic connection, God's life is filling and vitalizing creaturely existence. Instead of deterministic chains of cause and effect, creation is suffused with creative and vital potencies and energies that flow from the spiritual foundation of the world. 

In addition, sophiology restores Personhood to the connection between God and the world. God is not a cause, God is a Person. Consequently, God's connection to the world is not mechanical and causal but wholly personal and relational. Taking an image from the Psalms, in God's relationship to the world "deep calls to deep." Following Martin Buber, God's Thou addresses our Thou. Creation is not a machine. Creation is a relationship.

Now, if you're imagining here, in my descriptions of the vitality of the "world soul," something like the pagan conception of Gaia and the divine feminine principle of the world, a potency and power that catalyzes, vitalizes, animates, and energizes all of creation, a pervasive and dynamic spiritual power that makes the cosmos crackle and pop, well, you're close to the vision of creaturely Sophia. The key difference is that the pagan vision of Gaia is pantheistic, whereas the sophianic vision of Sophia is panentheistic. Here, then, is another win in investigating sophiology for those who are interested in exploring connections between Christian theology and pagan spiritualities. 

Okay, then, if God is not to be considered a cause, how does God relate to the world? According to Bulgakov, God is not cause but Creator. Bulgakov:

To determine the actual relation between God and the world, another category must be used, a category for which there is no place in the immanence of the world. This category must be used to [preserve] both the positive connection between God and the world and the ontological distance between them. This category is not cause, or motion, but creation and createdness. God is not the cause, or mover, of the world. He is the world's Creator (as well as the world's Preserver and Provider...), and the world is God's creation. Philosophical and theological usage often do not notice the entire essential distinction between these categories...Translating the language of creationism into the language of causality, people say and think that the createdness of the world signifies the world's causal dependence upon God, whereas what actually exists here is a difference that approaches oppositeness...God the Creator is above and outside the causality that exists in the the world itself. In this sense, God is not the cause of the world but its Creator, just as the world is not an effect of divine causality but God's creation. God and the world are not related as cause and effect by analogy to the mechanical causality of the world...They are linked in another way, by another connection...

Sophia, the Wisdom through which God creates and sustains the world, is this different connection. Recall, Bulgakov's big theme is divine mediation, how God relates to the world. According to Bulgakov, most of Western theology (wrongly) thinks about this relation as being mechanical and causal. In contrast, Bulgakov posits Sophia, which replaces a dead, mechanical, and impersonal connection between God and the world with a living, ongoing, vitalizing, and personal relationship. Sophia replaces the Domino Idea of God as "first cause" or "prime mover." Here's an overly simplified way of describing this:

Western Domino View of God's Relation to the World:

God --> Cause --> World

Sophiological Creational View of God's Relation to the World:

God --> Sophia --> World

God <-- Sophia <--World

Notice, in the sophiological view, that God relates to the world through God's own life, Divine Sophia giving life to the creaturely Sophia. Notice also how that divine life doesn't just create the world, but acts to draw the world into the life of God, which is theosis. Creation, then, isn't a one time event. Creation is an entire journey that starts with a birth but fully culminates in sharing the life of God. This entire span, from birth to final goal, is God's creative relationship with the world. God is both our origin and our end.

The theological wins here, in my estimation, come in how this vision of the world helps us escape the materialistic, reductionistic, and deterministic imaginations we find in the scientism of people like the New Atheists. But even among Christians this scientistic imagination reigns. Viewing the world as a machine, and God as a mechanic who tinkers with it, is, sadly, the default way Westerners--Christian and Non-Christian--tend to think about the world. In this sense, the pagan conceptions of Gaia and the divine feminine are more Christian than how most Christians in the West think about the world. Where most Western Christians think of God as the Big Cause in the Sky, pagans see the world as suffused with divine power, life, and potencies. And the pagans have the better imagination here. Consequently, exploring Orthodox sophiology can be good medicine for Western Christians whose imaginations have been bent by viewing God's relation to the world as being that of a cause to its effect.

So, write this down and put it in your pocket so that you won't forget:

God is not the cause of the world, but its Creator.