Wisdom in Christian Tradition

Abstract

This book provides a comprehensive and sustained treatment of the theme of wisdom in the Christian tradition. Following a survey of the biblical and classical background, it offers a detailed exploration of the theme of wisdom in patristic, byzantine, and medieval theology up to and including Gregory Palamas and Thomas Aquinas in Greek East and Latin West, respectively. Three principal levels of Christian wisdom discourse are distinguished: wisdom as human attainment, wisdom as divine gift, and wisdom as an attribute or quality of God. This journey through Wisdom in Christian Tradition is undertaken in conversation with modern Russian Sophiology, one of the most popular and widely discussed theological movements of our time, characterized by the idea of a primal pre-principle of divine-human unity (‘Sophia’) manifest in both uncreated and created forms. Sophiology is a complex phenomenon with multiple sources and inspirations, including the Church Fathers. Fidelity to patristic tradition became an ever-increasing feature of its self-understanding and self-articulation, above all in the work of Fr Sergius Bulgakov (1871–1944). Sophiology’s ‘unmodern turn’ to patristic sources has, however, long been fiercely contested. This book is the first to thoroughly evaluate the nature and substance of this claim to patristic continuity. The final chapter offers a radical re-thinking of sophiology in line with patristic tradition. This re-oriented sophiology maintains sophiology’s most distinctive insights and most pertinent applications while divesting it of some its more problematic elements