The Old and the New: Churching a Secular Age from Solovyóv to Bulgakov

Michael Lee Miller has written an exceptionally learned study of the pre-1924 thought of S. N. Bulgakov that makes an essential contribution to our understanding of Silver Age Russian cultural and intellectual ferment. Using the notion of ‘the social imaginary’ developed by Charles Taylor in his “A Secular Age” as a point of entry, Miller shows how Bulgakov appropriated and transformed the earlier response to the problem of secularisation by Vladimir Solovyov in order to fashion his own vision for Russia as it moved away, at times violently, from the tsarist past to an equally troubled new, ostensibly atheistic society. Miller focuses on what Bulgakov himself identified as crucial for Russian religious philosophy, namely, ‘theocracy’, and charts its evolution from Solovyov, through Vyacheslav Ivanov, Semyon Frank, and Pavel Florensky down to Bulgakov himself. All the great themes that occupy Bulgakov – history, tragedy, religion, Marxism, work, economy, matter, beauty – receive their due in this truly magisterial discussion of Bulgakov’s thought.

Prof. T. Allan Smith

Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Theology, USMC

Emeritus – Full Member, Graduate Centre for Theological Studies at the Toronto School of Theology

Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto

With awesome learning and effortless command of the original Russian sources, Miller traces the intricate lines of thought that lead from Solovyóv to Bulgakov, focusing on the period from “The Philosophy of Economy" to "The Unfading Light,” shedding light on the tangled and often obscure texts of the Russian Silver age. He closes with a conclusion and ‘appendix’—really the high point of the book—which reach beyond his self-imposed time scale, with profound meditations on how Bulgakov conceived the future of the Church after Christendom, a kind of theocracy democratized, and how his later thoughts on gender shake off the thrall of lingering notions of patriarchy. An astonishing tour de force!

Archpriest Andrew Louth

Professor Emeritus, Durham University

Author of "Modern Orthodox Thinkers" (2015)

Miller makes a major contribution to contemporary research on the two Russian giants Vladimir Solovyov and Sergii Bulgakov. Both thinkers articulated sophisticated Christian Orthodox responses to the challenges of modernity and secularisation. Miller provides a penetrating and detailed analysis of their understanding of history, knowledge, work, and power. He not only pays attention to the Russian intellectual and cultural context of these authors, but also manages to relate their works to nineteenth and twentieth-century Western history of ideas. This book is not just of interest to specialists in the field of Russian philosophy and theology. It should be read by anyone who is interested in a fresh Christian vision of the world that avoids a stale and nostalgic conservatism as well as an uncritical and naive progressivism.

Dr. Christoph Schneider

Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge