Theosis in Bulgakov: The Fulfillment of Creation’s Sophianicity

by Norman Russell

Theosis is defined by Dionysius the Areopagite as “the attaining of likeness to God and union with him so far as possible.” Sergii Nikolaevich Bulgakov came to his mature understanding of theosis as a result of a personal spiritual journey that took him from Marxist materialism (although he was to deny that he had ever been an atheist), via German philosophical idealism, to a recovery of the Church’s faith strongly colored by the sophiology of Vladimir Solovyev.

Norman Russell

An honorary research fellow of St. Stephen’s House at the University of Oxford. He is the author of several books on Orthodoxy, including The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (2004) and Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age (2019). He has also translated a significant number of works by Greek philosophers and theologians, including Nikolaos Loudovikos, Stelios Ramfos, and Christos Yannaras.

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