Sophiology

A system developed by Vladimir Soloviev and worked out theologically by Fr Sergius Bulgakov, in which Sophia, the Wisdom of God, is treated as a principle standing between God and creation and in some sense personal. It was condemned in 1935 by the Moscow Patriarchate and, separately and in the same year, by the Russian Church Abroad, which rarely agreed with Moscow about anything in that decade. The objection is that it introduces a fourth something into the doctrine of God and blurs the line between the uncreated and the created, which is the one line Orthodox theology will not let go of. What Sophiology was reaching for, a real contact between God and the world that is God Himself and not a creature, the tradition already has in the distinction between the essence and the energies.