What is Sophiology for?

The fundamental intuition of Sophiology is relatively easy to enunciate; it is that the gulf between the uncreated God and Creation, brought into being out of nothing, does not put Creation in opposition to God... Creation is not abandoned by God, it is not godless, for apart from God it would not be at all; it is not deprived of grace, for it owes its existence to grace. Rather Creation is graced, it is holy; in Creation God may be encountered. Andrew Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers 58

 I have lately been revisiting Sergius Bulgakov's account of his conversion in Unfading Light, meditating on it in a way.  Bulgakov, of course, began his life in a Christian home, and his own father was a priest. He became a Marxist and a materialist as a young man, but on a journey to western Europe, things began to shift, and the ground was prepared for a renewed Christian faith. A particularly dramatic moment occurred when the train he was on approached the Caucasus mountains. It was the first time Bulgakov had ever seen those mountains. 

Evening was falling. We were travelling across the Southern Steppe, covered with the fragrance of honey colored grass and hay, gilded with the crimson of a sublime sunset. In the distance, the fast approaching Caucasus mountains appeared blue. I was seeing them for the first time. And fixing my avid gaze on the mountains that had opened before me, drinking in the light and the air, I harkened to the revelation of nature. My soul had grown accustomed long ago to thinking of see with a dull silent pain only a dead wasteland in nature beneath the veil of beauty, as under a deceptive mask; without being aware of it, my soul was not reconciled with a nature without God. And suddenly in that hour, my soul became agitated, starte to rejoice and began to shiver: but what if... if it is not a wasteland, not a lie, not a mask not death, but him, the blessed and loving father, his raiment, his love. (Unfading Light 8) 

Despite the recent resurgence in Sophiological reflection thanks to the work of John Milbank, Michael Martin and others, Sophiology still carries a hint of exoticism, of the esoteric or even the occult. This is not altogether unfair. Think of the wild stories of Solovyov wandering into the Egyptian dessert seeking a vision in obedience to vision. This is the stuff of Spiritual romance. And certainly, Sophiology has real ties with Hermeticism, and even Gnosticism, although I think the "gnostic" elements of Sophiology are more terminological than substantial. After all any form of Biblical Christianity, no matter how prosaic, is going to have some terminological overlap with Gnosticism. 

But despite all its aura of the wild, weird and exotic, Sophiology is an eminently practical, and literally, down to earth mode of theology. The roots of Bulgkaov's Sophiology were in his vision the mountains. At it's heart all Sophiology begins with Bulgakov's questioning "What if...[creation] is not a wasteland, not a lie, not a mask?" What if life, not death, is the truth?  Sophiologists, with their preference for the symbolic, poetic and polysemous, can be confusing to read. But Leave aside for a moment all the baroque, baffling, hermetic symbolism, even the name "Sophia"; what Sophiology is really about is finding ways of living and being that are not based on death or the fear of death. Many, if not most, of our ways of being in the world really are based on death and violence. 

This deathly mood appears in forms both plain and obscure, but it all begins with the opposition between God and the World, Grace and Nature. This separation, fundamentally illusory and introduced by us, leads us to see the world as dead material, a chaos that must be conquered by Herculean strength. It is a fundamentally violent metaphysics, that leads to technologism, totalitarianism, and a view of the world which is finally anti-Christian, and yes, Gnostic, in the truest sense. 

Sophiology isn't the only theological dialect that stands over against the various metaphysics and theologies of violence, perhaps it's not even the best.  But truth be told, I don't see how we can ultimately dispense with a theology of Wisdom if we are going to find a Biblical way of speak of the mystery of God in Creation and the Creation in God. Sophia is the Biblical name for this mystery, the mystery, to which we must attend if we are to find alternative ways of living not based in fear, but in faith, hope and love.