The hidden goddess of Bulgakov

Sergei Bulgakov was a Russian Marxist who eventually converted (or reverted) to Orthodox Christianity and became a priest. He was forced to leave Russia after the Bolshevik revolution. Bulgakov is mentioned in passing in one of Trotsky's writings ("In Defence of Marxism") as a particularly egregious example of a defector from Marxism and Marxist dialectics. Ironically, Bulgakov was condemned as a heretic by the Orthodox Church he had chosen to serve. The reason was his Sophiology, a theological position interpreted by his opponents as either an attempt to make God partially feminine, or to make the Virgin Mary divine (or both).

"Sophia: The Wisdom of God" is Bulgakov's exposition of his Sophiology. The text is extremely convoluted and difficult to read, and probably of interest only to Orthodox theologians. But yes, it could be given a heretical spin or two. To Bulgakov, Sophia is the real nature or essence of God, both the unknowable essence of the Father and the substance keeping the Trinity together. The Son reveals Sophia. Sophia is also somehow identical with the prototypes of Creation (a concept similar to Platonic Ideas), and even with Creation itself. God didn't create the world out of necessity, but the creation was in some sense nevertheless inevitable due to God's overflowing love. This sounds like a version of Neo-Platonism, although Bulgakov denies it. At one point, the author exclaims that this isn't pantheism but panentheism. Of course, most Christian theologians would regard panentheism as a form of pantheism. As for the Virgin Mary, while Bulgakov does stress her humanity and distinction from God, he nevertheless sees her, too, as Sophia, and as the manifestation of God's human archetype.

In contrast to Vladimir Solovyov, Bulgakov apparently didn't have religious visions of the Divine Feminine in person. Still, it's difficult not to draw the conclusion that the point of the exercise is to make God part-feminine. While the Greek word "Sophia" simply means "Wisdom", the word is feminine and symbolically described as a woman even in the Bible, where the Wisdom of God is a she. (An intriguing problem for traditional theologians, who identify the Wisdom of God with the Logos, i.e. the Son and therefore Jesus Christ!) Describing this feminine aspect of God as in many ways fundamental, while implying that Mary has some connection to it, certainly sounds like a worship of a goddess.

Somehow I find it hard to believe that dry and abstract theological tomes (like this one) is the real point of Sophiology...