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Sophiology did not recognize these self-imposed limitations of Weber′s sociology Not only the ′is,′ but also the ′ought′ belonged to its sphere.[516] In other words, not only the description of the actual state of society as it is – in the fallen state of humankind and society – is the task of sophiology, but also the description of society as it ought to be – as the Kingdom of God on earth. One important task of sophiology is the interpretation of the world from the telos of society – or from the intentions of God for humanity in material history

2. The cement and organization of society

For all possible – political, societal or religious – perspectives on the ′good life′, one dominant problem was the problem of cohesion. What was the cement of polity or society, or what was the ultimate motive for any social group action? What was the force that kept the state undivided, or that was lying at the basis of society as a whole, or of every individual social organization? The perspective that formulated it colored the answers to this question: liberals answered with the notions of self-interest and positive law; Christians of all denominations with the notions of Divine love and Divine law, and communists would point to the natural law of solidarity within an economic class or social group.

Weber differentiated even the cement of society: social actions of individuals can be coordinated into group action from different motivations.

Individuals are motivated either out of sentiment or emotion, habit or tradition, convictions and beliefs, or rational calculation of interests. The latter two categories Weber considered rational and named goal-rational and value-rational motivations. The first two categories of habit and emotion according to Weber are irrational and more or less unconscious. Emotions and habit are not capable of building society, but only community.[517] According to Weber, in modern society the dominant types of social group action are value-rational or goal-rational actions that give rise to societyformation, not to community-formation.

Vladimir Solov’ëv and Sergei Bulgakov developed an Orthodox Christian social philosophy, or a Christian sociology that they named sophiology or the study of Sophia, the Wisdom of God. In essence, they opposed the rationalistic and individualistic or abstract view on society as an association of self-interest, or of self-chosen values, that Weber′s sociology developed. They also opposed the Christian duty of love for God and neighbor – or carltas/agap – that Lev Tolstoi developed, and that Weber used as an Ideal type to describe the essence of the Christian attitude to life. Finally, they opposed Weber′s acknowledgement that science cannot decide between good and evil with the notion of Divine wisdom (or Sophia) that can provide this knowledge to humankind.

2. a. Love-of-other or love-of-self as the essence of Christian social love: Solov’ëv versus Tolstoi

In Smysl′ llubvl, his famous philosophical-theological treatise on the meaning and essence of love, Solov’ëv reacted to the conception of love as duty, that he saw expressed in Lev Tolstoi′s Krecerova Sonata (1889) and Posleslovle k Krecerovol Sonate (1890).[518] In Smysl′ llubvl, Solov’ëv departed from the meaning of human sexual love or polovala llubov′, whereas Tolstoi was primarily concerned with the sinfulness of carnal love or plotskalallubov′. Solov’ëv′s essay started with the meaning of human love for biological and historical humanity, and in the end found its meaning in Divine-humanity or Bogochelovechestvo. Its smysl′ – that has the double sense of ′meaning′ and essential ′nature′ that reveals itself – is Sophla, the Wisdom of God. Solov’ëv did not mention Sophla in this essay, but referred to her as vechnala Zhenstvennost′ – the eternal Feminine – that he compared to Plato′s heavenly and earthly Aphrodite (SL, chapter 4.VII, p. 63).

Sophia, or the eternal Feminine, makes all human forms of love – including human polovala llubov′ or erotic love – meaningful. According to Solov′ ёч human erotic love is the highest bloom of human individuality. (SL, 2.I, p. 28) The meaning of human love is the justification and salvation of human individuality or personhood through the sacrifice of egoism (SL, 2.III, p. 32), or the transcendence of the self. Erotic love is the means to transcend the self and to become a more complete individual that can take part in the transcendent All-unity without losing its particularity. The individual cannot reach salvation individually, but only together with others in sobornost′, Tolstoi′s vision of salvation was a mystical union of the individual with an absolute God. In order to reach this salvation, the individual Christian had to live a worldly life of abstention, of rigid asceticism in every respect, of vegetarianism, of celibacy (even in marriage), of extreme pacifism, and of disciplined and preferably agrarian daily work. The individual Christian should not love himself and serve only himself, which is the essence of egoism, but should ′love God and neighbor′ that is the core of Christian altruism and self-sacrifice, according to Tolstoi. The ecclesiastical structure of the Church was not necessary to reach this salvation, nor so-called Christian marriage. Tolstoi′s explicit rejection of the sacrament of marriage in his Kreutzersonata shocked Russian and European society most.[519]

Tolstoi′s Christian love according to Solov′ ёv however is not anti-egoist, but ultimately egoist, as it is only interested in the salvation of the individual self, Tolstoi′s ascetic egoism – that reveals itself as anti-naturalist negation of every instinctive and bodily human need or pleasure – according to Solov’ëv is self-hatred and self-destruction that can have no place in true love. (SL, p. 34) Tolstoi′s salvation consisted in the loss of human individuality that is absorbed into the Divine Absolute. According to Solov’ëv, Tolstoi′s way to salvation was a continuous violence to human nature that contradicted God′s nature as love. For Solov’ëv the erotic love between a man and a woman is the fulfillment of their human nature. Only after the transcendence of the one-sidedness of human nature – or of the necessity of being engendered – humankind is ready to unite with God and be part of All-unity.

This salvation or union with God and All-Unity does not disturb the essential distinction between God and humankind, just as the union of a male and a female does not disturb the individuality and particularity of each. Love does not destroy the individuality or better the person-hood of the human individual, but it makes the human surpass him or herself. Solov’ëv′s teaching on salvation through love is a staged climb toward the perfection of human spiritual, moral and physical nature into Bogochelovechestvo (or the true communio of humankind and God in Divine Humanity) through the Grace of God,

Max Weber made the Tolstoian vision of Orthodox love as a mystical and brotherly love into the Ideal type of the Christian ethic of brotherliness,

This ethic resembles the world denying Puritan Christian ethic that has the same distracted brotherly love as an ascetic task and inner-worldly daily praxis at its center. This brotherly Christian ethic according to Weber finds its source in a denial of the world that is characteristic for salvation religions, that is a-cosmic and intrinsically a-social.[520] Tolstoi′s extremely world-denying individual ascetic praxis negated the value of everything inner-worldly. Tolstoi′s extremely negative evaluation and rejection of the inner-worldly realm differs from Puritanism with its more diverse valuation of this world, and from Orthodoxy that usually recognizes the sinfulness of the world, but did not impose any abstention from or hate for the world that God created.

2. b. Bulgakov′s sophiology as a continuation of Solov’ëv′s project – with some important adaptations

Sergei Bulgakov largely followed Solov’ëv in his critical treatment of Tolstoi′s concept of Christian love as duty and considered it as too individualistic, abstract and one-sided. Like Solov’ëv, Bulgakov never preached abstention from erotic love, nor celibacy between husband and wife. Bulgakov however never gave human love as eros the central position it had in Solov’ëv′s concept of salvation and All-Unity. For Bulgakov, not human eros or erotic love, but Divine love is central. Divine love – or Sophia

– is primordial and makes human love and life possible and meaningful. Although salvation can only be given by the Grace of God, humankind is not supposed to wait for it passively. Human work is essential for the salvation of humanity and the world.[521]

If the human individual is incomplete or imperfect, according to Bulgakov this is a result of the primordial sin. The erotic union of a male and a female does not restore human nature to its condition before the fall. Humanity does not become perfect or complete through eros or polovaia love. According to Bulgakov, only the daily work of every human individual in podvizhnichestvo[522] can make humanity complete as Divine-humanity in sobornost′.

Bulgakov replaced Solov’ëv′s concept of love as the intermediary between humanity and God with the concept of work. Bulgakov interpreted work in its broadest sense as consumption and production, and essentially as the transformation of nature into culture, or the humanization of nature.[523] Whereas for Solov′ev sobornost′ signified the ideal organization of the Orthodox Church community, for Bulgakov sobornost′ more and more became the characteristic of Orthodox social organization. It is the direct telos of Orthodox podvizhnichestvo which expresses itself as a daily methodic work – an ascetic praxis that is a calling (poslushanie) and a service to God for every Orthodox believer. Bulgakov′s concept of work as podvizhnichestvo is consciously close to the Puritan innerweltliche Askese that Weber recognized in the ′spirit of Capitalism′, which had a definite – although unintended – economical or inner-worldly result.[524]

Throughout his personal intellectual development from religious philosopher to Orthodox theologian, Bulgakov kept using Sophia as icon of the presence or energies of the Christian Trinitarian God in the world.[525] Bulgakov developed his sophiology in Philosophy of Economy (1912) first as Christian sociology, or as a study of the presence of God′s love or Sophia in the every day world. In Svet Nevechernii (1917) Bulgakov developed sophiology in a philosophical way, as to its gnoseology, ontology and historiosophy.[526] Sophiology, however, is also an integral part of Orthodox theology or of bogoslovie. Bulgakov developed sophiology as theology in his two theological trilogies.[527]

Not sexual intercourse between humans as a kind of inter-communion of tvarnost′ (created-ness), but divine embodiment of tvar′, or the communion of created-ness and uncreated-ness in Godmanhood, was Bulgakov′s central point of attention in these writings. The ultimate icons of this communion are the divine Incarnation in the God-man, Christ, and at Pentecost in the Christian Church, as embodied by the twelve apostles of Christ. These are icons of Godmanhood. Sobornost′ for Bulgakov is the quality of this Divine-human unity in the Church that is the body of Christ on earth. If the double task of the ′humanization of nature′ and the ′churchification of society′ is accomplished through Christian work as podvlzhnlchestvo, sobornost′ would become the characteristic of the organization of Orthodox society.[528]

3. The tasks of Bulgakov’s sophiology

Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy never officially accepted sophiology as its official social teaching. In 1928, the Russian Orthodox Church of the Karlovtsy jurisdiction accused Bulgakov of heresy because of his sophiology In 1937, the Church court of the Moscow Patriarchate exonerated his case.[529] But even in his own circle of the St. Serge Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, of which Bulgakov was co-founder and dean, the Spor o Sofll or dispute on Sophia clearly showed the resistance against sophiology Despite his efforts, Bulgakov did not succeed to remove Sophia from her Gnostic roots, or to associate her closer to the Orthodox patristic tradition. The suspicion of Sophia being the fourth and female hypostasis of God remained predominant in lay and official Orthodox circles.

For Bulgakov, Sophia is the unique object of sophiology as Christian sociology, philosophy and theology. As the nature of God, Sophia is the nature of the relation of God to the world that expresses itself as Divine love for his creation. At the same time, Sophia is Jacob′s ladder for humanity – or the possibility of a relation with God, and of cataphatlc or positive theology The nature of God and its relation to the world is manifest to humankind as divine Wisdom, Love, Providence, Beauty, Glory and Grace, to enumerate some of the positive qualifications that are characteristic of this Divine-human relation for Bulgakov.

Sophiology as positive theology is in fact the opposite of the traditional apophatlc or negative theology in Orthodox tradition that concentrated on bogoslavle (the glorification of God) and bogosluzhenle (the liturgical service). In his trilogies, Bulgakov wanted to develop or disclose the dogma of the Trinity that was established at the Council of Chalcedon to adapt it to the modern world, and turned to dogmatic theology One could say that Bulgakov changed – slovle or – slavle into – logy, and in this change seemed to elevate philosophy and science above the glorification of God in liturgical service.

Furthermore, Bulgakov′s sophiology kept consciously close to secular sociology of the Weberian kind. Bulgakov classified secular sociology as the ′phenomenology of economy′[530] with economy being one of the expressions of the relation between God and the world. Sophiology, in contradistinction to sociology however, had to be capable to discern between good and evil, true or false appearances of God in the world, or between the active presence of God or of Antichrist in the world.[531] Sophiology is therefore Christian sociology and is not only a phenomenology of the ′is,′ but also has to give an account of the ′ought.′ Sophiology is not only sociology, but also social ethics and social theology.[532]