Bulgakov and Paul on the Two Worlds Created by Humanity's One Multi-Unity

The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. 1843. John Martin. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

“​The Eternity and Temporality of Man” (section 1.5) brings us to the end of chapter one in our reading of Bulgakov’s The Bride of the Lamb. In rereading this last portion of the chapter, I’m reminded again that Bulgakov had not yet finished preparing this text for publication when he died and that he would likely have pared down some of the luxurious meanderings. However, I love the gushing and muddy eddies that fill the book as it wanders around each new bend in Bulgakov’s thoughts. With this last section of chapter one, we get two extended versions of a case for why the number of angels and the number of humans must both be finite and yet hold within this finite number an infinite depth of personal being as God’s gift to us of our creaturely life. We also hear more than one account of why humans all share one nature (are all members of one body, the “Adam-Kadmon” or the “integral multi-unity” of the “all-human organism”) while angels are each a unique kind of creature and therefore best understood as “a choir” or “a harmonious multiplicity” and “not a multi-unity” like humans. As a bit of an aside, in talking about humans and angels, Bulgakov can almost never resist some comparison and contrast with animals as we see again in this section. Finally, the topics of the human fall and of original sin are both major considerations unpacked here at some length for the first time (but not the last). Subscribe to read my reflections on some of these points.