"There is Nothing in Creation That is Absolutely Dead"

In a day or two, I will send out a link to a free and public essay that I was invited to write about the meta-historical human fall by Father “Fedora” Aidan (Kimel) for his wonderful Eclectic Orthodoxy blog. It’s an honor to have been asked to write it, and Father Aidan was most encouraging regarding what I produced (which is very much just a lay person’s attempt to survey the work of scholars and church fathers). This reflection here, however, is behind my newsletter subscription paywall and is the next installment in my long-neglected reading notes on Sergius Bulgakov’s book The Bride of the Lamb. I do plan to get back to this project of posting reading commentary section by section through the rest of this book. I hope, even, to catch back up to my original schedule (listed out here at the end) with a few months of extra posting. This installment reflects on section 4 of chapter 1 which is entitled “​The World Soul and Its Hypostases.” It is an intense section covering a host of topics including the nature of persons (hypostases) versus individuals, spirits versus souls, the multiple ways in which all of creation is alive, the dual modes of creation (with our self-positing in created nature alongside our givenness as divine Spirit as our creaturely freedom is grounded in God’s own freedom), the nature of male and female, the nature of animals, and the relation of the three divine persons (who hypostatize Divine Sophia) with the many creaturely persons (who hypostatize creaturely Sophia). It’s utterly overwhelming, exasperating, and over my head while also filled with life-giving insights. Please subscribe if you’re foolish enough to want to read my few and haphazard thoughts in response to reading it all again just now for the fourth time.

(And before you take the plunge on my newsletter subscription, here is a link to an entirely free and legal copy of a recent book dedicated to Sergius Bulgakov and written by a host of the top scholars of his work who are alive and working today.)