Still Running Off at the Keyboard

The theological writings of Archbishop John, printed in various church periodicals over four decades, have not yet been collected in one place. Those presently available to the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood would fill a volume of something more than 200 pages. His longer writings belong for the most part to his earlier years as a hieromonk in Yugoslavia, where he was already noted as outstanding among Orthodox theologians. Especially valuable are his two articles on the Sophiology of Bulgakov, one of them revealing convincingly, in a very objective manner, Bulgakov's total incompetence as a Patristic scholar, and the other being of even greater value as a classic exposition of the true Patristic doctrine of the Divine Wisdom.

With regard to Father Sergiuss [Bulgakov] speculations on Sophia (Wisdom), Archimandrite Luke of Jordanville recently pointed out that there are some significant similarities between Sophiology and New Age philosophy. The heretical notion that Sophia, the Wisdom of God, is a fourth Hypostasis of the Trinity and a female entity in effect "divides the simple essence of God into two principles—the male and the female" ("New Age Philosophy, Orthodox Thought, and Marriage," Orthodox Life, Vol. XLVII, No. 3 [1997], p. 34). In its 1935 Ukaz condemning Bulgakovs errors, the Moscow Patriarchate notes that it is not a long step from this dualistic conception of God to a "deification of sex" as it was understood by "some of our secular writers such as V.V. Rozanov" (ibid. [emphasis ours]). Father Luke clarifies this intimation when he explains that, "If in God there is male and female and if in His image in man there is also male and female, one may conclude that if male and female unite in carnal relations they are reflecting the Divine" (ibid., p. 35). Rozanov, incidentally, was not only a precursor of Sophiology and the "sexualization" of Orthodox theology, but was also a virulent anti-Semite who hated the Old Testament and who, throughout his life, had a lovehate relationship with the Orthodox Church.