Barbara HELLENSLEBEN, Regula M. Zwahlen, Aristotle Papanikolaou, Pantelis Kalaitzidis, eds. Building The House of Wisdom: Sergii Bulgakov and Contemporary Theology: New Approaches and Interpretations. Munster, Germany: Verlag, Aschendorff, 2024. ISBN 978-3-402-12061-3, $87.00. Reviewed by Walter N. SISTO, D’Youville University, Buffalo, NY 14201.

 With the publication of Building the House of Wisdom: Sergii Bulgakov and Contemporary Theology: New Approaches and Interpretations, there is little doubt that we are firmly within a Bulgakovian theological renaissance. This book is a testament not only to the growing interest in Bulgakov’s sophiological system but also to the impact of the English translations of his major theological works. The text is an anthology of papers gathered from the international conference held in honor of Bulgakov’s 150th birthday at the University of Fribourg in September 2021.

This book, available for free download from the publisher’s website, is an invaluable addition to Bulgakov scholarship. It provides a collection of papers organized around topics such as his theology of personhood and anthropology; politics, economy, and ecology; sophiology; creation and ontology; and ecumenical perspectives. What stands out about this text is not only the breadth of topics covered but also the diversity of contributors, ranging from relatively unknown graduate students to foundational theologians in the field, including Rowan Williams, Catherine Evtuhov, Paul Ladouceur, David Bentley Hart, and John Milbank.

Given the extensive range of topics and the format of the book—which includes 33 articles spanning over 500 pages—it is difficult to provide a comprehensive review. Moreover, not every article is equally well-researched or argued. I encountered multiple instances where footnote citations did not match the text, and there were grammatical errors in certain articles. Some essays offer little more than an overview of their topic or fail to engage meaningfully with the existing scholarship. Despite these relatively minor shortcomings, the book is a welcome addition to any Bulgakov library, as many of the articles are groundbreaking.

David Bentley Hart’s article, “Building the House of Wisdom: Sergii Bulgakov and Contemporary Theology: New Approaches and Interpretations,” is one of the gems in this collection. In this piece, Hart responds to an interlocutor, Heath, regarding Bulgakov’s theology of personhood and the critique that Bulgakov introduces “a ghostly separation of the Person of the Father from the single act of generation and spiration, from the particular kenotic act that is constitutive of Fatherhood” (46). Hart argues that Heath misunderstands Bulgakov, particularly his assertion that “many of Bulgakov’s claims regarding the relations of the divine Son and Spirit to the Father follow necessarily from the one indispensable maxim of all Trinitarian theology and dogmatics: that the taxis of the economic Trinity is the taxis of the immanent Trinity, and that only by virtue of that identity is it possible to affirm anything about God as Trinity” (46).

What follows is a technical discussion, but Hart concludes by highlighting some of the radical and often overlooked aspects of Bulgakov’s theology of personhood, which are essential to understanding his entire sophiological system. One key point is that hypostasis and nature should not be treated as "extrinsic principles," and that “human nature is not an impediment to union with the divine in one person” (58). For the incarnation to be possible, Christ’s hypostasis must be both human and divine. There is not merely a commonality between the human and divine natures—if that were the case, it would not constitute an incarnation, and Christ would not be fully human and fully divine. Hart emphasizes that for Bulgakov, the incarnation represents not a violation of human creatureliness but rather its fulfillment, as Christ’s hypostasis is a Divine-Human hypostasis. Christ, therefore, is the archetypal human hypostasis, which we image, and the human "I" that makes deification possible.

Hart also draws attention to the dynamism of human personhood, stating, “Each of us is in transit; each of us is always as yet becoming a person; and the ‘I’ that we are always seeking to become is the ‘I’ who the incarnate Logos always already is: the human being who is wholly human in being wholly God, and who thereby entirely realizes the divine-human essence of our nature. We truly become persons only in his person, as his person is the full expression of the one trihypostatic Person of God” (61).
Overall, I highly recommend this book to any scholar or student interested in Bulgakov studies or in exploring Orthodox sophiological perspectives on a wide range of topics.