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affirm this, there is nothing any Orthodox could disagree with; for Bulgakov, the doctrine
of the Immaculate Conception is ‘an incorrect expression of a correct idea about the
personal sinlessness of the Mother of God’ (p. 48; italics in the original). What is wrong
with it, from Bulgakov’s point of view, is, first of all, the false doctrine of original sin that
it entails, derived from the notion of natura pura. Bulgakov’s discussion is mostly con-
cerned with the question of the origin of the human soul, which the doctrine of original
sin forces into the foreground. Bulgakov himself has no clear conclusion, but seeks what
is true in the different theories put forward in the tradition: creationism and traducianism.
The doctrine of original sin obscures this question. But his main point is that the doctrine
of the Immaculate Conception sees the Mother of God as a great exception: it separates
her from the human race, whereas, according to Bulgakov, her regaining the state of
hypostasis means that she is closer to us than we can ever be to one another. Furthermore,
her sinlessness is not simply a divinely preserved premise; it is the fruit of an ascetic
struggle on her part, a podvig, as he puts it. Because the Mother of God is close to us, she
is our intercessor—‘unsleeping in her prayers, unfailing hope in intercession,’ as the
kontakion for the Dormition puts it. She is not removed from the human race, rather
uniquely close to us, her children, and among us, there are even those whom she regards
as ‘of her race’ (referring to St Seraphim of Sarov’s vision of the Mother of God).
Bulgakov develops his positive theology of the Mother of God by a lengthy and pro-
found reflection on her liturgical feasts. The notion of the divine Wisdom, in some way
reflected pre-eminently in the Mother of God, underlies the development of his ideas,
which found further development in his last, unfinished work, The Bride of the Lamb.
Thomas Allen Smith has provided a fluent translation, with a useful introduction. He
also makes the text a bit easier to follow by shifting two enormous footnotes into appen-
dices to Chapters 1 and 4. What we look forward to now is a translation of Jacob’s
Ladder!

Divine Sophia: The Wisdom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov. By Judith Deutsch Kornblatt,
including Annotated Translations by Boris Jakim, Judith Deutsch Kornblatt and
Laury Magnus. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2009.
Pp. xviii + 297. $21.95/£11.95 (pbk), $55/£30.50 (hbk). ISBN 978-0-8014-7479-8 (pbk),
978-0-8014-4792-7 (hbk).

Reviewed by: Andrew Louth, University of Durham.

Vladimir Solov’ev was the key figure behind what Nicolas Zernov has taught us to think
of as the ‘Russian Religious Renaissance,’ the return to religious belief, and especially
Russian Orthodoxy, among the intelligentsia as the nineteenth century yielded to the
twentieth. The symbolist poets, Blok and Bely, as well as thinkers such as Florensky and
Bulgakov, were inspired by his vision of reality. Solov’ev was a many-sided figure.
Although the largest part of his work can be regarded as theological, he was also a poet,
with important ideas about the theory of art and culture, a literary critic, who wrote
memorably on Dostoevsky, whom he had known as a young man, Pushkin and Lermontov,
a historian and philosopher. There is scarcely anyone associated with the Russian
Religious Renaissance who was not influenced by him. Central to everything he was

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concerned with is the figure of Sophia, Wisdom, and it is to this notion that this book is
devoted. Despite its brevity (less than 300 pages), it seems to me to be the best introduc-
tion to Solov’ev’s understanding of Sophia available. It falls into two parts. In the first
part, the introduction, Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, who has over the last couple of decades
written a string of important articles on aspects of Solov’ev’s thought, introduces the
notion of Sophia in Solov’ev’s thought, showing how it was rooted both in his own per-
sonal life, and in his vast learning. Sophia was, for Solov’ev, a woman whom he experi-
enced in visions three times in his life—during the liturgy as a youth, while working in
the British Museum, and finally in the Egyptian desert, where he had gone in response to
the second encounter—and whom he also sought among the women he knew, finally in
Anna Schmidt. This visionary woman was celebrated in his poetry: his ideal beauty, his
muse, his protector and guide. But the roots of Solov’ev’s sophiology also lie in his vast
learning. Kornblatt takes us through the sources of his ideas. First, the ‘Hebrew Scriptures’
(not perhaps the best term for books from the Christian Old Testament which include the
Greek Wisdom of Solomon; the Septuagint might be a better term, though Solov’ev
knew Hebrew and is interested in the different valency of Hokhmah, as compared with
Sophia); secondly, Greek wisdom from Plato to the Neoplatonists, including the Jewish
Platonist, Philo; thirdly, the New Testament (called the ‘Christian Scriptures’), the Greek
Fathers and the Orthodox Liturgy; fourthly, ‘Mother Moist Earth’ and more specifically
Russian ideas; fifthly, Gnosticism and the Kabbalah; sixthly, post-Reformation Christian
mysticism, stemming from Jacob Boehme, not least his English pupils such as Pordage,
and their idea of the virgin, Jungfrau; which leads, seventhly, to the eternal feminine in
Goethe, with glances back to Cervantes and Dante; which itself leads, though Kornblatt
does not present this as a separate subject, to German idealism, and especially the Russian
take on this in which Schelling is central. All this is excellently done, with the notions
introduced concisely, together with fine illustrative citations from both the sources and
Solov’ev. It is, however, a tall order to cover all this in less than fifty pages, and some
parts are a bit breathless, especially perhaps the section on Gnosticism, where I fear
Kornblatt gets confused between modern scholarship of Gnosticism, which mostly
focuses on the Nag Hammadi material, which was unknown to Solov’ev, and what
Gnosticism could have meant to Solov’ev himself. When Solov’ev visited London in
1875, Gnosticism was nearly as exciting a subject as after the discovery of the Nag
Hammadi library at the end of the Second World War, and for a similar reason: Hippolytus’
Refutatio had been recently published, giving a very philosophical view of Gnosticism,
and in the British Museum, where Solov’ev worked, were to be found two Gnostic
codices—Askewianus and Brucianus—which Solov’ev might have consulted (but did he
know Coptic?). Codex Askewianus had already been published in a Latin translation in
1851 (the same year that Hippolytus’ Refutatio was published as the Philosophoumena);
Kornblatt mentions Solov’ev’s knowledge of this text. It is some sense of what was
exciting about Gnosticism circa 1875 that we need to recover for understanding Solov’ev.
The second part of the book consists of texts from Solov’ev himself, with immensely
valuable introductions and notes by Kornblatt. These selections begin and end with
poems: the early poems about his encounters with his tsaritsa or empress, with her ‘azure
eyes’, and closing with his final poetic account of his encounters with Sophia, called
‘Three Encounters,’ which sets the encounters in the narrative of his life. Kornblatt draw

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418 Irish Theological Quarterly 75(4)

attention to the significance of the poetic framing, as it were, of the accounts of Sophia.
There follow the ‘mystical-theosophical-philosophical-theurgical-political’ dialogue,
‘Sophia’ (written in French and called ‘La Sophia,’ but I don’t think an idiomatic transla-
tion of that into English would be ‘The Sophia’), extracts from his philosophical prose,
especially the Lectures on Divine Humanity (or Godmanhood), and Russia and the
Universal Church, the semi-autobiographical short story, ‘At the Dawn of Misty Youth,’
and a short play, ‘The White Lily: Or a Dream on the Eve of the Feast of the Protection
of the Mother of God.’ With this selection, Kornblatt captures the several dimensions of
Solov’ev’s Sophia, both an important philosophical concept and an inspiration for his life
and imagination. One runs the risk of misunderstanding Solov’ev—and his impact—if
one misses the imaginative dimension of his engagement with the divine wisdom.
In short, as an introduction to Solov’ev’s understanding of Sophia, this book is with-
out parallel. It complements the selection made by Vladimir Wozniuk, The Heart of
Reality (Notre Dame, 2003), which concentrates on literary and aesthetic works; together
they introduce one to the most important aspects of this strange and influential figure of
the Russian silver age.

Encounter between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy: Transfiguring the World
through the Word. Edited by Adrian Pabst and Christoph Schneider. Aldershot: Ashgate,
2009. Pp. 297. Price £60.00 (hbk). ISBN 978-0-7546-6091-0.

Reviewed by: Gregory Collins O.S.B., Glenstal Abbey, Murroe, Co. Limerick.

This book contains papers given at a conference in Cambridge in early October 2005 at
the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies. It represents a dialogue between Eastern
Orthodox theologians and those (mainly Anglicans) who advocate what has become
known as Radical Orthodoxy. It is a very technical volume and most of the pieces it
contains would not be easily accessible for those with only limited knowledge of either
of the two traditions engaged in the dialogue. However, the valuable introduction by
Adrian Pabst and Christoph Schneider does help to contextualize and illuminate a great
deal of what follows. They also make the important point that whereas Eastern Orthodoxy
is a Church with a thousand-year tradition, Radical Orthodoxy is a recent academic and
intellectual movement.
The scope of this book is very wide, ranging from Byzantium in Late Antiquity
through the thought of St Thomas Aquinas on the beatific vision and up to the modern
period, covering along the way such diverse areas as theology, economics, monastic lit-
urgy, politics and even depth-psychology. As with all such composite volumes, each
reader will tend to focus most on what interests him or her personally. As I cannot make
any serious claims to be a polymath, I will therefore draw attention to the areas of discus-
sion which most engaged me.
The first piece in the volume is Antoine Arjakovsky’s discussion of the glorification
of God’s name in the work of Fr Sergius Bulgakov. It is a controversial issue, indelibly
associated with the Russian naval intervention on Mt Athos in 1913 when monks were
deported to the Caucasus having been accused of worshipping the name of Jesus as a
substantial emanation from the Godhead. Yet the great Russian theologian is actually

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