EASTERN CHRISTIAN STUDIES 13

ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY
AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Edited by
Alfons Brüning and Evert van der Zweerde

PEETERS
LEUVEN – PARIS – WALPOLE, MA
2012

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 CONTENTS

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V

Introduction: Orthodox Christianity and Human Rights — An Ambig-

uous Relationship (Alfons Brüning, Evert van der Zweerde). . . . 1

1. CLAIMING UNIVERSALITY

The Religious Scope of Human Rights (Johannes A. (Hans) van der Ven) 19

Uneasy Alliances: Liberal, Religious and Philosophical Human

Rights Discourse (Evert van der Zweerde) . . . . . . . . 35

Natural Law and Natural Rights according to Vladimir Solovyov

and Jacques Maritain (Elena Pribytkova). . . . . . . . . 69

2. DIFFERENT CIVILIZATIONS?

Humanism and the Traditional Orthodox Culture of Eastern

Europe: How Compatible were They in the 16th and 17th Centuries?
(Mikhail V. Dmitriev) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

From “Natural Law” to the Idea of Human Rights in 18th-Century

Russia: Nobility and Clergy (Tatiana Artemyeva) . . . . . . 111

“Freedom” vs. “Morality” — On Orthodox Anti-Westernism and

Human Rights (Alfons Brüning) . . . . . . . . . . . 125

3. CENTRAL TERMS

Human Rights in the 2008 Bilateral Discussions of the Russian

Orthodox Church with the Evangelical Church of Germany and the
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (Heta Hurskainen) . . . 155

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 VIII CONTENTS

Sergey N. Bulgakov’s Concept of Human Dignity (Regula Zwahlen) . 169

The ‘We’ in Normative Political Philosophical Debates: The Position

of Christos Yannaras on Human Rights (Kristina Stoeckl) . . . 187

4. CHURCHES, VALUES AND SOCIETAL REALITY

Religiosity, Tolerance and Respect for Human Rights in the Orthodox

World (Christopher Marsh and Daniel Payne) . . . . . . . 201

Human Rights — the Orthodox Churches’ Teaching and Survey

Data (Inna Naletova) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

Official and Unofficial Voices of the Russian Orthodox Church:

Analyzing Human Rights in Official Documents and Personal
Interviews (Maija Turunen) . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

5. CHURCH – STATE – SOCIETY

Human Rights and Religious Rights: the Context of the Debate in

Europe Today and the Orthodox Perspective (Philip Walters) . . 253

The Russian Orthodox Teaching on Human Rights: its Socio-Cultural

Significance and its Social Theory Perspective (Alexander Agadjanian) . 271

Human Rights and their Reception in Orthodoxy — a Romanian

Perspective (Radu Preda) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Bulgarian Orthodoxy and the European Court of Human Rights:

The Case of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church
(Daniela Kalkandjieva) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

6. ACTIVISM AND REFLECTION

“Human Rights as a Pre-Condition for the Inner Life of the

Church” — Life, Initiatives and Theology of Father Pavel Adelheim
(Pskov, Russia) (Paul Baars) . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

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 CONTENTS IX

Spiritual and Political Dimensions in the Conception of the Rus-

sian Orthodox Church Concerning Dignity, Freedom, and Human
Rights (Marina Shishova) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351

General Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365

Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

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 SERGEY N. BULGAKOV’S CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY

Regula ZWAHLEN

Sergey N. Bulgakov’s sophiology is often regarded as a concept sub-

merging human beings in a divine cosmos, where personal dignity makes
no difference. I will argue that quite the opposite is true. Bulgakov’s
vision meets all three conditions of a modern concept of Human Rights.
Firstly, a person must be accepted in his or her autonomy and liberty.
Secondly, a person must be accepted as a different, yet equivalent per-
son. Thirdly, all human beings must be regarded as belonging to the
same nature of humanity. These issues bridge the gap between Bulgakov’s
philosophy of economy and his theological sophiology.

Introduction

During a Christmas sermon at the time of World War II, Sergey N.

Bulgakov (1871-1944) spoke the following words: ‘Not because of
human dignity The Lord came into this world, but to save the lost sheep,
to whom He has bestowed the dignity of His image.’1 It had become
clear by then that human dignity was not a self-evident, “natural” or
“rational,” universal value, but a value that had to be protected by inter-
national legal standards.2 While at that time the moral aspect of protecting
individuals and nations from ideologically motivated violence and from
extinction was very strongly expressed, today the discussion often
focuses on the question of how far the rights of individuals may diverge
from “traditional social norms.” This question can be reduced to the
philosophical question of why Human Rights should be justified. The
current search in the Russian Orthodox Church for answers to these
questions has provoked a new debate on liberal, universal, and cultural
values. In this debate, liberty and morality are far too often treated as

1
Sergeî Bulgakov, ‘S nami Bog,’ in idem, Slova, pouweniq, besedx (Pariç:
YMCA-Press, 1987) [Sergey Bulgakov, ‘God with Us’, in idem, Sermons, Exhortations,
Lectures (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1987)], p. 120.
2
Hannah Arendt, ‘“The Rights of Man”. What Are They?,’ Modern Review 3/1
(1949), pp. 24-37.

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 170 R. ZWAHLEN

irreconcilable enemies. I would like to introduce the Russian thinker and

theologian Sergey Bulgakov into this discussion, because, as I shall
argue, the core motivation of his thinking was a justification of human
dignity and liberty based on Christian teachings and morals.
Bulgakov’s teaching — especially his sophiology — is often regarded
as a concept that submerges human beings in a divine natural cosmos,
where personal dignity, let alone individual rights, make no difference.3 In
this article, I argue that quite the opposite is true: Bulgakov’s sophiology is
the result of a lifelong struggle for human dignity, this being the reason for
his break with Marxism,4 and, later, for his critique of “traditional” Rus-
sian Orthodox views. Certainly, Bulgakov was not concerned with the
questions of Human Rights and how they should be implemented. He saw
Human Rights as a logical continuation of the acknowledgement of human
dignity. In a lecture delivered in 1927-28, Bulgakov argued: ‘Today the
principle of freedom of the person has triumphed (in a Christian under-
standing it corresponds to the dignity of the sons of God; in a liberal
understanding to human and civil rights).’5 Therefore, he concentrated on
the normative question of why human dignity should be assumed. Lesley
Chamberlain states that the Russian philosophers ‘strengthened the value
of liberty rooted in Christian responsibility. [They] cultivated what would
become after the 1939-45 war the politics of human rights, but they did so
in a religious rather than a legal framework.’6 Today, the present-day phi-
losophy of Human Rights poses this same question. In fact, Bulgakov’s
view meets all three conditions of the modern concept of Human Rights,
as defined recently by the authors of an Introduction to the Philosophy of

3
For instance, according to Igor Evlampiev, Bulgakov ‘finally went very far away
from the idea of humanism and the vision of the absolute significance of the human
person — he returned to a ‘medieval world-outlook’ with its vision of God’s indivisible
dominion of men and man’s creative impotence.’ Cf. Igorà I. Evlampiev, ‘Religi-
ozxî idealizm S.N. Bulgakova,’ in idem, S.N. Bulgakov: pro et contra [Igor’
I. Evlampiev, ‘The Religious Idealism of S.N. Bulgakov’, in idem, (ed.), S.N. Bulgakov.
Pro et contra] (St. Petersburg, 2003), p. 25.
4
Bulgakov (1902): ‘For [Marx] the problem of the person as an individual — the
indestructible core of human personality, its integral nature — does not exist.’ Cf. Sergey
Bulgakov, Karl Marx as a Religious Type: His Relation to the Religion of Anthropo-
theism of L. Feuerbach (Belmont Mass.: Nordland Publ., 1979), transl. by Luba Barna,
p. 51.
5
Sergeî N. Bulgakov, ‘Hristianskaq sociologiq,’ in V.V. Sapov, (red.), S.N.
Bulgakov. Trudx po sociologii i teologii, tom 2 (Moskva: Nauka, 1997) [Sergey
N. Bulgakov, ‘Christian Sociology,’ in V.V. Sapov, (ed.), S.N. Bulgakov. Works on
Sociology and Theology, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1997)], p. 547.
6
Lesley Chamberlain, The Philosophy Steamer: Lenin and the Exile of the Intelligentsia
(London: Atlantic Books, 2006), p. 241.

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 SERGEY N. BULGAKOV’S CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY 171

Human Rights.7 But first, a few words need to be said about the reception
of Bulgakov’s writings in the Russian Orthodox Church today and about
its discussion on Human Rights and dignity.

Bulgakov’s reception in the Russian Orthodox Church today

It is not accidental that in 1937 Bulgakov was accused of heresy, by

Metropolitan Sergii, not on the grounds of his cosmological views, but
because of his too anthropocentric worldview.8 As today an ‘anthropo-
centric system of values’ is regarded as the foundation of a liberal, secu-
lar humanism without any limits,9 the verdict on Bulgakov’s teachings
has not been revised. In a lengthy critique of contemporary official
church practice published in the autumn of 2008, some (anonymous)
Russian Orthodox priests lament the state of modern Orthodox theology
and its unwillingness to discuss the theological thought of the theologi-
cal school of the Russian émigrés in Paris, especially the works of Bul-
gakov.10 It is no surprise that such controversial authors like Bulgakov
are not taken into consideration in the elaboration of the new Russian
Orthodox Church’s Basic Teaching of on Human Dignity, Freedom and
Rights (Osnovy 2008).11 It is helpful, though, that Patriarch Kirill, when
introducing the latter document, pointed out that this document reflects
a ‘micro-model of Church discussion’ and that it included many con-
tradictions.12 This is why Bulgakov’s voice should be added to this

7
Christoph Menke, Arnd Pollmann, Philosophie der Menschenrechte zur Einführung
(Hamburg: Junius, 2007).
8
Metropolit Sergij von Moskau, ‘Verordnung des Moskauer Patriarchats,’ Orient und
Occident. Staat - Gesellschaft - Kirche. Blätter für Theologie und Soziologie, Neue Folge
(1936), no. 1, p. 2.
9
Kirill, Patriarch von Moskau und der Ganzen Rus’, ‘Die Glaubensnorm als Lebens-
norm,’ in idem, Freiheit und Verantwortung im Einklang. Zeugnisse für den Aufbruch zu
einer neuen Weltgemeinschaft, (ed. by B.Hallensleben, G. Vergauwen, K. Wyrwoll, trans-
lated by Xenia Werner) (cf. Bibliography) (Freiburg: Institut für Ökumenische Studien
der Universität Freiburg Schweiz, 2009), p. 32.
10
Cf. Gruppa SvqÏennosluçiteleî N-skoî Eparhii, ‘Cerkovà s bolàjoî i s
malenàkoî bukvx,’ Novaq gazeta, 09-06-2008 [Group of Priests at the N-skaya Epar-
chy, ‘The Church with a Capital and with a Small Letter,’ Novaya gazeta, 09-06-2008],
13/ 16 / 25. They name Pavel Florensky, Sergey Bulgakov and Aleksandr Men.
11
Osnovx uweniq Russkoî Pravoslavnoî Cerkvi o dostoinstve, svobode i
pravah weloveka, cf. http://www.mospat.ru/en/documents/dignity-freedom-rights/.
12
Mitropolit Smolenskogo i Kaliningradskogo Kirill, Doklad ‘Ob osnovah
uweniq Russkoî Pravoslavnoî Cerkvi o dostoinstve, svobode i pravah weloveka‘
na Arhiereîskom Sobore Pravoslavnoî Cerkvi, [Kirill, Metropolitan of Smolensk

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 172 R. ZWAHLEN

discussion. In fact, the main issue of his early “Christian socialism” was
a social concept based on a Christian view of human dignity; and his
works — most of them published in Russia only in the last ten years —
may even have secretly inspired some of the participants in the current
discussion.
The main contradictions in the ongoing discussion are, in my opinion,
to be found in the very “discourse” in which many participants often
tend to repeat the old pattern of opposing ‘liberal, anthropocentric Western
values’ to the ‘moral, traditional, theocentric Eastern values’, even if
they are aware of this problem and want to overcome it.13 The same
questions tormented most of the Russian religious thinkers of the first
half of the twentieth century. They tried to fill the gap between anthropo-
centrism and theocentrism by creating the notion of “divine humanity”
[bogowelovewestvo], meaning that humankind should become divine
by following the example of the first Godman, Jesus Christ. According
to these thinkers (Dostoevsky, Solovyov, and many others), the very core
of Christian teaching, quite obviously, consists in believing in Christ,
which means that God had become man already and that, therefore, it
would make no sense to focus on either God or man alone.
Religious thinkers like Bulgakov fought against both the anti-tradi-
tionalism of destructive revolutionaries and the traditionalism of dusty
conservatives. In both cases, he fought in the name of human dignity,
liberty, and creativity. These were, in his opinion, qualities of man, as
God’s image and likeness, who develops tradition freely as a condition
of social life. As a priest and teacher of dogmatic theology, Bulgakov
was very concerned with the relationship between dogma (morals, obe-
dience) and liberty.14 Bulgakov, who did not consider himself a liberal
thinker at all, is today an icon of the “liberal wing” of Russian Orthodox

and Kaliningrad, Report on the Basis of the Teaching of the Russian Orthodox Church on
Dignity, Freedom and Human Rights], http://www.mospat.ru/archive/41595.htm..
13
Kirill (2009), p. 42.
14
In an article on Freedom of Thought in the Orthodox Church (1936), he wrote: ‘Is
there not a contradiction between free seeking for truth and the revealed dogma dispensed
by the Church? I am convinced that no such contradiction exists. The dogmatic teaching
of the Church must become real in the personal thought and experience of everybody, for
dogma does not only represent an abstract doctrinal statement: it is primarily a fact of our
inner, mystical life — apart from that it is dead. But this personal experience is impossible
without freedom of thought, and freedom of the spirit. […] Our Orthodox Church — and
this is especially true of the Russian Orthodox Church — has never been sufficiently
educated for freedom.’ See the edition of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius (ed.),
A Collection of Articles by Fr. Bulgakov for the Fellowship of St. Alban and St.  Sergius
(London, 1969), pp. 33, 36.

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 SERGEY N. BULGAKOV’S CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY 173

thinking, because he emphasised liberty above tradition, but he would

never break the connection between them.15 This connection is not an
abstract concept, but the creative human being him- or herself. Bulgakov
emphasised liberty, because he encountered the deep, yet blocked foun-
tain of Orthodox tradition, the waters of which he would have liked to
spread all over the world. Therefore, he wanted to unblock the water
containers, or else to build new ones.
In Bulgakov’s opinion, thinking more about tradition and certain
moral limits would do no harm to liberal Western Christians, just as
developing freer, more joyful relations with regard to its traditions and
filling them with life would be good for Russian Orthodoxy. In other
words, in the situation of modernity Bulgakov preferred to focus on
developing attractive Christian models of personality, society, sexuality,
marriage, family, science, life and death instead of condemning isola-
tion, abortion, divorce, homosexuality, euthanasia or even “blasphemous
art,” etc. He knew that a liberal policy is not about promoting the latter,
but about coping reasonably with all possibilities of human social life,
whether good or evil, in a way that grants to each person human dignity
and freedom of choice. He sees a difference between (secular) law and
(Christian) morals, two things that should not be confused. Morals are
about personal salvation, while laws, if they incorporate the principles
of Human Rights, are about social life. Law addresses the difficult task
of protecting human dignity from the pure logic of perpetrators and vic-
tims: ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone [John 8:7]’.16 It could
become very dangerous, if a person who did not choose the right way,
would not be granted human dignity, as suggested in the first document
of the Russian Orthodox Church on human dignity, published in 2006:
‘It is by doing good that the human being gains dignity. Thus we distin-

15
In many of Patriarch Kirill’s texts we find an emphasis on tradition, which he
claims to be a notion opposed to liberty. His notion of tradition is linked with nation, the
fatherland or the cultural context of Russian Orthodoxy. It follows that the Russian
national tradition is opposed to so-called Western universalism. The question is not one
of protecting and saving each person’s life, but of protecting and saving the Russian
Orthodox people. Kirill asks if ‘our national civilisation will be conserved in the coming
century, if it will find its place in the world community of nations and if the Orthodox
people will survive.’ Kirill (2009), p. 43. This question has appeared in different terms
before, namely how these quite post-modern ‘cultural’ values are compatible with uni-
versal Christian values.
16
As Bulgakov defines it, ‘Law is the protection of the life of a person from the
assaults of other persons.’ Bulgakov (1997), p. 537. Osnovy 2008 takes up this definition:
‘Safeguarding the individual against the arbitrary actions of those in power and employers
and against violence and humiliation in his family and collective.’ Cf. Osnovy 2008, V.2.

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 174 R. ZWAHLEN

guish between worth [cennostà] and dignity [dostoinstvo] of the per-

son; worth is given, while dignity is acquired.’17 The Orthodox vision of
a person, as defined in these recent documents, emphasises each per-
son’s development from being God’s image to being God’s likeness.
This is a very promising concept for a form of Christian anthropology to
which Bulgakov referred as well. However, if this view is applied to
state law, talk of a Christian justification of human dignity would become
absurd if only saved Christians could obtain it. Obviously, this critique
has been heard.18 However, if the latest document [Osnovy 2008] avoids
the distinction between a person’s value and a person’s dignity, it still
proclaims a distinction between ontological dignity and a dignified life:
‘In Orthodoxy the dignity and ultimate worth of every human person are
derived from the image of God, while dignified life is related to the
notion of God’s likeness achieved through God’s grace by efforts to
overcome sin and to seek moral purity and virtue.’19 In terms of seman-
tics, this formulation is a step forward to an Orthodox justification of
modern Human Rights policy because dignity has not to be “acquired”,
but is ontologically given.20 For Bulgakov, it would be the Orthodox
tradition in particular that would enrich the somewhat “dry” liberal con-
cept of human dignity with its understanding of man as the image and
likeness of a free and loving Creator of all things.
In the following, I will show how Bulgakov’s teachings can justify a
modern concept of Human Rights without betraying Christian belief and
tradition.

The justification of Human Rights

Modern Human Rights discourse started from the assumption that

there exists no universal, culturally neutral justification of Human
Rights, yet it should be possible to find an intercultural agreement on the

17
World Russian People’s Council, Declaration on Human Rights and Dignity
(2006), http://www.mospat.ru/index.php?page=30728: ‘Soverjaq dobro, liwnostà
priobretaet dostoinstvo. Takim obrazom, mx razliwaem cennostà i dostoin-
stvo liwnosti. Cennostà — yto to, wto dano, dostoinstvo — yto to, wto prio-
bretaetsq.’
18
See, for example Nikolaî Plotnikov, ‘Vperëd, v qzxweskiî Rim!,’ Politi-
weskiî çurnal [Nikolay Plotnikov, ‘Forward to Heathen Rome!,‘ Politichesky zhurnal],
15/110 (2006).
19
Osnovy 2008, I.2.
20
See also the chapter by Heta Hurskainen in this volume.

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 SERGEY N. BULGAKOV’S CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY 175

idea of Human Rights based on a core shared morality.21 It is assumed

that each culture can develop and interpret for itself a concept of
Human Rights that corresponds to most of its own traditional values,
provided that it is interested in peaceful coexistence and cooperation
with other cultures. The advantage of this notion of human dignity lies
in the fact that it is not a deduction based on a certain ideology or
culture, but that it fulfils a certain function. In the wake of World War
II, human dignity, though much older as a notion, provided a common
idea of otherwise very different and differing positions, such as liber-
alism, socialism and Catholicism. Each position had to change or re-
interpret its definition in order to apply this notion.22 For example, the
experience of modern secular states that do not necessarily support
Christian values helped advance liberal policies in the Catholic Church,
which had resisted them for a long time. Now it became important to
support human dignity, and especially the right of religious freedom
and expression of faith free from state interference.23 Furthermore, the
authors of Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Rights claim that
the “moral catastrophes” of the European wars and totalitarian regimes
in the 20th century have taught the international community two main
lessons. First, that the concept of human dignity had to be supported
by international laws and, second, that the normative concept of human
dignity had to be justified by each nation, culture, and religion indi-
vidually.24
This is the task to be faced today, even though the issue had already
been addressed by Russian religious thinkers at the beginning of the
20th century. They were fighting against the Marxist claim that only an
atheistic worldview could promote human dignity. They were also pro-
testing against the claim that the church should be loyal to the state
and justify the death penalty for terrorists.25 Unfortunately, this Russian
tradition of religious reflection about human dignity is not taken into
consideration today. Quite a few patriotic Russian thinkers still claim

21
See contributions to this volume by Elena Pribytkova, Hans van der Ven, Evert van
der Zweerde, including their shared reference to Jacques Maritain.
22
Menke & Pollmann (2007), pp. 73, 92, 131.
23
The Catholic example is described by Josef Isensee, ‘Die katholische Kritik an den
Menschenrechten. Der liberale Freiheitsentwurf in der Sicht der Päpste des 19. Jahrhun-
derts,’, in Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Robert Spaemann, (eds.), Menschenrechte und
Menschenwürde (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987), pp. 138-174.
24
Menke & Pollmann (2007), p. 16.
25
Documented in a collection of articles Against Death Penalty [Protiv smertnoî
kazni] from 1906 (edited by Gernet / Goldovsky / Sacharovich).

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 176 R. ZWAHLEN

that the concept of Human Rights is a “Western construction” that has

nothing to do with Russian values. Nevertheless, recent official docu-
ments of the Russian Orthodox Church show an awareness and under-
standing of the function that a concept of Human Rights can fulfil to
promote Christian values:
From the point of view of the Orthodox Church the political and legal
institution of human rights can promote the good goals of protecting human
dignity and contribute to the spiritual and ethical development of the per-
sonality. To make it possible the implementation of human rights should
not come into conflict with God-established moral norms and traditional
morality based on them. One’s human rights cannot be set against the values
and interests of one’s homeland, community and family. The exercise of
human rights should not be used to justify any encroachment on religious
holy symbols things [sic], cultural values and the identity of a nation.
Human rights cannot be used as a pretext for inflicting irretrievable damage
on nature.26

Such remarks still raise questions about the priority of humanity or

nationality. This is symptomatic for a discussion focusing on the imple-
mentation of Human Rights, the justification of which is quite weak.
The obvious uncertainties in the definition, arising from the question
whether human dignity should be adjudged legally to every “image of
God,” even when living in sin (consciously or unconsciously), or only to
a person on his or her way to becoming “God’s likeness,” testify to a
certain lack of theological reflection and justification of the notion in
question. Bulgakov was quite clear on this issue:
God’s image is the ontological, inviolable basis, the original strength given
to man in order to live and create. Dependent on his freedom it can grow
or decrease, light up or obscure.27

According to Bulgakov, the dignity of a human being resides in the

freedom to choose. Neither the state nor the Church can take away what
God has entrusted to human beings. Russian thinkers like Bulgakov
often refer to Dostoevsky’s worst example of such a practice, viz. the
Grand Inquisitor, who wanted to give people bread and safety at the
price of their freedom. In this world, state law should provide the social
conditions for living a dignified life, and the Church should teach its

26
Osnovy 2008, III.5.
27
Sergeî N. Bulgakov, Agnec Boçiî (Moskva: ObÏedostupnxî Pravoslavnxî
Universitet, osnovannxî Protoiereem Aleksandrom Menem, 2000) [Sergey
Bulgakov, Agnus Dei (Moscow: Father Alexander Men Orthodox Open University,
2000)], p. 174.

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 SERGEY N. BULGAKOV’S CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY 177

justification and the path of personal moral development to those who

have freely chosen to do so:
The likeness is the image of divine creation and eternal spiritual activity.
God’s likeness in the human being is each man’s free realisation of his own
image. […] The way of creation as becoming God’s likeness is a difficult
path full of temptations, demanding much concentration on all sides, but it
is also a kingly, godlike path, a path of freedom.28

In other words, the Last Judgement is a personal issue between God

and every individual human being, and the nation-state has nothing to do
with it.
With this quite lengthy introduction, I hope to have prepared the
ground to present Bulgakov’s treatment of the question of human dignity
in the light of the modern philosophy of Human Rights.

Sergey Bulgakov and the modern concept of Human Rights

Christoph Menke and Arnd Pollmann have defined three constitutive

attributes of a modern concept of Human Rights:

1. A human being has to be accepted as an individual in possession of

autonomy and subjective freedom to live his or her own life;
2. Every human being must be accepted as a being of equal value;
and
3. One must assume that there is a common humanity of humankind.

The author of Philosophie nach Auschwitz has shown that National

Socialism aimed to disintegrate the moral-political category of “humanity”
and to negate the “common humanity of humankind.”29 The defence of
Human Rights, therefore, needs to be justified in terms of the equality of
all human beings (regardless of race, health, class, religion, etc.) as a mat-
ter of principle.
Russian religious philosophers developed several normative ideas of
humankind based on the view of humankind as God’s image and like-
ness. One of the most original, but less known, of these anthropological
concepts is that of Bulgakov. His anthropology relies mainly on the

28
Ibid.
29
Rolf Zimmermann, Philosophie nach Auschwitz; eine Neubestimmung von Moral
in Politik und Gesellschaft (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2005).

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 178 R. ZWAHLEN

doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the Chalcedonian Creed of the two natures
of Christ without confusion or separation [in duabus naturis, inconfu-
sus, inseparabiliter], and the teaching of man’s creation in God’s image
and likeness, which, especially in Orthodox teaching, is not lost, but
only obscured by man’s fall. Here, Bulgakov argued, were all the con-
ditions for a strong concept of personality, where spirit and nature are
united, without confusion or separation, and where freedom means
autonomy in the Kantian ontological sense, i.e. it cannot be given up,
even if one would want to, since God did not create marionettes, but
creative beings.
The main source of possible misunderstanding in Bulgakov’s
teachings is his understanding of nature. Vladimir Lossky, his main
critic at the time of his official indictment (1937), condemned Bulgakov’s
mingling of person and nature. Nevertheless, Bulgakov remained con-
vinced that Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and even Sigmund Freud,
had shown one true thing, namely that nature plays a huge and deter-
mining role in human life. In his opinion, a justification of human
dignity without a convincing understanding of nature could never
cope with the ongoing scientific developments, which tended
towards natural determinism, eugenics, and racism. That is why Bul-
gakov, after leaving behind Marxism (with its one-sided focus on
matter), also broke with idealism (with its one-sided focus on spirit).
He based his anthropological thinking on Christian, especially Ortho-
dox teachings, where he found a holistic view of spirit, soul, and body.
Bulgakov saw not only the human spirit and soul, but also human
nature and the body, as worthy of being saved and protected. Bulga-
kov’s sophiology is certainly a justification of nature, the latter not
being a perpetrator of sin. To him, nature was God’s creation, man-
kind’s extended body, and the only place where human creativity
could and should be realised.
In order to compare this to the modern concept of Human Rights, the
notions of autonomy, otherness, and humanity in Bulgakov’s concept
must be examined.

1) God’s image as an autonomous person

As we have seen, according to Bulgakov, the idea of man as God’s

image and likeness is the ontological basis of every human being. This
should not be understood in the sense of a determined and complete set
of properties but as an ‘infinite series of different possibilities, among

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 SERGEY N. BULGAKOV’S CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY 179

which human freedom chooses.’30 The idea of God’s image and likeness
does not say much about the specific conditions of the “image” or of the
“likeness” (because they are beyond a precise, cataphatic definition),
but it describes the act of realising the given image, or becoming God’s
likeness in a free, autonomous way:
The image of God in man is not merely a ‘resemblance’ or a ‘property.’ It
is a higher reality, a spiritual reality, an energy of God-likeness and God-
likening. The union of ‘image and likeness’ is the realization of the image
in life, the transition from statics to dynamics, from potentiality to energy.
But at the same time the character of the image creates an indissoluble con-
nection between it and the Proto-image, whose copy it is. The image in this
sense is not original but derivative. Its whole reality is conditioned pre-
cisely by this connection; the image is this connection itself in actu. […]
This connection implies a certain inseparability of God and man, which in
advance excludes deism’s postulate of a radical separation between God
and man (together with all of creation).31

Bulgakov is drawing the apparently paradoxical conclusion that it is

not the freedom from God, but the inseparable connection with God that
provides true autonomy to the person:
Freedom in creation is, first of all, connected with the personal principle.
As autonomous being, the person is synonymous with freedom, as actuality
or self-positing. Without this, the person does not exist. […] The freedom
of the person remains inviolable and impenetrable even for God. […] His
omnipotence does not destroy the ontological barriers, as Christ Himself
says about Himself: ‘I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hears my
voice, and opens the door, I will come into him, and will sup with him, and
he with me’ (Rev. 3:20). This door is creaturely freedom, the source of the
originality and reality of creation in correlation with the Creator.32

Hence, to become God’s likeness does not mean to become an identi-

cal copy of God or to merge with the divine substance, but to act,
live and create in a godlike manner and to become God’s partner in
creation. It is worth noting that in Bulgakov’s view, subjective auton-
omy is not a negative concept that must be given up, once a person
becomes a Christian:33

30
Sergey Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans,
2002), translated by Boris Yakim, pp. 135-136.
31
Ibid., p. 202.
32
Ibid., pp. 127, 226.
33
This would be the case in Nikolay Berdyaev’s concept: ‘In the depth of spiritual
freedom there is no formal autonomy, there is no difference between autonomy and
theonomy.’ Nikolaî A. Berdqev, ‘Filosofiq svobodnogo duha. Problematika i
apologiq hristianstva,’ in idem, Dialektika boçestvennogo i weloveweskogo

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 180 R. ZWAHLEN

Freedom is the ontological privilege precisely of creatures. […] The

most general precondition of freedom is spontaneity of movement,
autonomy of life. […] Ontologically, man cannot get rid of freedom
even if he so desires, for it is the mode of the very being of the crea-
turely spirit. […] If God created man in freedom, in His own image, as
a son of God and a friend of God, a god according to grace, then the
reality of this creation includes his freedom as creative self-determina-
tion not only in relation to the world but also in relation to God. To
admit the contrary would be to introduce a contradiction in God, who
would then be considered as having posited only a fictitious, illusory
freedom.34

Therefore, according to Bulgakov, subjective or personal autonomy is

a God-given fact, it constitutes the human condition, and without it one
would never be able to become and remain a Christian at all.35 Auton-
omy is a God-given human capacity, not a liberal value. In 1935, when
Bulgakov made these remarks, there was no Universal Declaration of
Human Rights yet. As a consequence, the Church for him supports and
promotes Human Rights not in an opportunist adaptation to the Zeitgeist,
but because of a well-reflected Christian anthropology. While in the cur-
rent social concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, subjectivity and
autonomy are synonyms for the ‘fallen man outside God’, since ‘out-
side God, only fallen man exists [vne Boga suÏestvuet lijà welovek
padjiî],’36 for Bulgakov these notions defined the mode of life of
God’s image and likeness. As such, man just cannot be “outside God,”
even if he is fallen.

(Moskva: Folio, 2003) [Nikolay A. Berdyaev, ‘Philosophy of the Free Spirit. Problemat-
ics and Apologetics of Christianity,’ in idem, Dialectics of the Divine and of the Human
(Moscow, 2003)], pp. 151-152.
34
Bulgakov (2002), pp. 129, 132, 234, 237. Since freedom is the ontological privi-
lege of creatures, God is not free in the same sense, even if He is its source: ‘In revela-
tion, it is said not that God is freedom but that He is love. Therefore, He is higher than
freedom in its indissoluble connection with necessity. […] Love is beyond freedom
and necessity, because perfect fullness belongs to divine love.’ Bulgakov (2002),
p. 128.
35
‘But this salvation of man, effectuated by Christ, the new Adam, in a free act, for
all humanity — this salvation must be freely accepted by each particular man.’ Sergey
Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church, translated by Elizabeth S. Cram (London: The Cente-
nary Press, 1935), p. 129.
36
Osnovy 2000, IV.7. In the English translation, the full text reads: ‘In the contempo-
rary systematic understanding of civil human rights, man is treated not as the image of
God, but as a self-sufficient and self-sufficing subject. Outside God, however, there is
only the fallen man, who is rather far from being the ideal of perfection aspired to by
Christians and revealed in Christ (Ecce homo!).’

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 SERGEY N. BULGAKOV’S CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY 181

2) The Other as hypostasis

Bulgakov tried to revitalise the Greek concept of üpóstasiv [hypostasis]

with the modern existentialist understanding of person.37 These reflec-
tions are stimulated by the discourse about inter-subjective relations that
Martin Bubers’s Ich und Du of 1923 initiated. Bulgakov justifies the
inter-subjective aspect of man being God’s image and likeness, referring
to the Trinitarian dogma of three hypostases, united by one common
nature, oûsía [ousia]:
The dogma of the Holy Trinity consists in two basic postulates. The first
affirms the triune character of the Deity, “trinity in unity” and “unity in
trinity”. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are three distinct
divine persons, together constitute one God. The second postulate is con-
cerned with the consubstantiality of the Holy Trinity, which has but one
substance or nature (ousia or physis, substantia or natura).38

Bulgakov defines the difference between hypostasis and ousia by

analogy with Aristotle’s distinction between the individual and the uni-
versal, that is to say, between the individual (this man) and the species
(man). The differences between the individual hypostases are defined by
their original properties and their specific relations.39 If man is the
image of this Trinitarian God, Bulgakov concludes, this divine structure
has to give meaning to the structure of human life as well. Hence, the
personal spirit of human beings corresponds to the personal spirit of
God’s hypostases, and human nature corresponds to God’s nature, ousia.
The difference between God and human beings would lie in the fact that
God exists in three hypostases, while to each man is given only one.
That is why a man cannot exist on his/her own, but needs other persons
in order to realize all his/her capacities as a hypostasis.40 According to
Bulgakov, the dogma of the Divine Trinity is about individuality, rela-
tions to others and a common nature. It calls for accepting and loving the
other, as oneself. It is about self-realisation and about relating to others.
37
Michael A. Meerson, The Trinity of Love in Modern Russian Theology: The Love
Paradigm and the Retrieval of Western Medieval Love Mysticism in Modern Russian
Trinitarian Thought (from Solovyov to Bulgakov) (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1998),
p. 161.
38
Sergeî N. Bulgakov, ‘Tragediq filosofii,’ in idem, Sowineniq v dvuh
tomah, tom 1 (Moskva: Nauka, 1993) [Sergey N. Bulgakov, ‘The Tragedy of Philosophy,’
in idem, Complete Works in Two Volumes, vol. 1, (Moscow, 1993)], p. 23.
39
Lucian Turcescu, Gregory of Nyssa and the Concept of Divine Persons, American
Academy of Religion Academy Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005),
pp. 51-53, 116-117.
40
Bulgakov (2000), p. 121.

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 182 R. ZWAHLEN

In his works from the late 1920s, Bulgakov develops a “personal

grammar”. A person’s self-realisation is only possible by confronting
other persons. Face to face with another man, an individual experiences,
in linguistic terms, its status as a first, second and third person, i.e. a
human being is an “I”, marking off his or her individuality from others.
He or she is a “Thou” in facing his/her relation to another, and a human
being is a “He” when noticing the existence of many other, unknown
persons. Only when one confronts “Thou” and “He,” does the “I” real-
ize itself as an “I”. Hence, Bulgakov’s concept of personality is consti-
tuted by a dynamic self-reflection in the triangle “I-Thou-He”:
I-Thou is an encounter in the state of realisation, in which a mutual posi-
tioning, a reciprocal reflection is realised. But I-Thou in this encounter is
unstable, dubious and unconfirmed. It becomes constant and stable only
when a He appears: an I-Thou (which is another I, that I am facing directly)
and a He-Thou (another I, which neither the first nor the second I is facing
directly), meaning neither an I, nor a Thou, but one who is still connected
to them and coexisting with them and who could take the position of either
of them. In this sense, He is the guarantor of I and Thou. In the triangle
I-Thou-He the I can take up each position and is always connected to Thou
and He. Hence, the real subject is a certain unity, a triunity of three per-
sons: the first, the second and the third (the secret of personal pronouns).
I is not the only person, but the first person to which a second and a third
belong. These three constitute the self-conscience, the self-positioning of
an I.41

Bulgakov explains the special relation between I and Thou in a more

detailed way. The unknown I cannot be known as an object. It can only
be known as a subject that is recognised as another, albeit similar I:
There is a special way of cognition of a subject (but not of an object) by a
subject: it is to go beyond the self not into one’s nature, but beyond the self
into the self, which means into the Thou. The only organ of such a form of
cognition (beyond Kant’s gnoseology) is knowledge of oneself as another.
‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ — this commandment has, like all bibli-
cal commandments — an ontological grounding in the nature of things. It
shows above all, that your neighbour, Thou — is your own I, and that in
the same way you love yourself and confirm your own I as the imperturbable
foundation of your thinking, you should confirm the other I, must do so,
and by doing so fulfil the law of your being and unfold your own I to its
true fullness.42

41
Sergeî N. Bulgakov, ‘Glavx o troîwnosti,’ in idem, Trudx o troîwnosti
(Moskva: O G I, 2001) [Sergey N. Bulgakov, ‘Chapters on the Trinity,’ in idem, Works
on the Trinity (Moscow, 2001)], pp. 59-60.
42
Bulgakov (1993), pp. 410-411.

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 SERGEY N. BULGAKOV’S CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY 183

Thus, according to Bulgakov, the Trinitarian dogma justifies man’s

ontological need for social relations, which should be grounded on the
acceptance of another person’s otherness, but also on his likeness in
terms of personal dignity. The aim of social action is not indistinct unity,
but a unity in diversity. But Bulgakov’s I, which in its self-knowledge
includes the Thou, embraces not only the persons it knows, but also all
humankind. His claim that being part of humanity can only be known in
a personal way illustrates the close and inseparable connection between
personality and human nature that Bulgakov wants to justify. This con-
nection cannot be justified only by personal (hypostatic) cognition, but it
must be ontologically given. This is where Bulgakov’s concept of con-
substantiality (which means, his concept of sofía [sophia]) comes into
play. It corresponds to the philosophical claim of the common humanity
of mankind.

3) The humanity of mankind

According to Bulgakov, the interconnectedness between all human

persons by birth and succession is evidence of the unity of mankind, not
only in a biological, but also in a metaphysical sense. Like Marx and
Feuerbach, Bulgakov sees humanity as a species being [Gattungswesen].
The term man is not only a nominal, abstract notion, but a real being, an
ontological and a logical given and a common basis of being for all indi-
viduals. The symbol of this human being is Adam as a man, not as an
individual:
It seems to me that only the acknowledgement of a prior unified human-
ity — a metaphysical forefather, Adam — can explain the characteristic
connection of the individual and the universal in the human personality.
What makes an individual human is not the individual principle but his
expression of that which is common to all of humanity. Humanity is one
although it has many faces. This is not a sentimental phrase but the expres-
sion of an ontological relationship.43

Humanity is the potential that connects humans more than indi-

vidualisation can separate them. Each man is the realization of this
potential. His belonging to a universal totality is not to be compre-
hended as a limitation of individuality but as its completion, as the
missing aspect of a universal potential that the individual in question
does not realise.

43
Bulgakov (2000), p. 139.

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 184 R. ZWAHLEN

This universal potential corresponds to Bulgakov’s created Sophia.

To understand this notion, we must turn once again to his teaching of
man’s creation as the image and likeness of the Trinitarian God. If the
term hypostasis was used earlier to understand the relationship of an
individual to other individuals, the term ousia can help us understand the
consubstantiality of all individuals whether they know each other or not:
the humanity of mankind. In Bulgakov’s opinion, this aspect of God’s
trinity has so far been neglected:
The first part of the dogma, that is, the doctrine of the relationship between
the three hypostases with their hypostatic qualities and distinctive features,
has been to a certain extent elucidated in the process of the Church’s dog-
matic creativity. But the other side, the doctrine of the consubstantiality of
the Holy Trinity, as well as the actual conception of substance or nature,
has been far less developed and, apparently, almost overlooked.44

Roughly speaking, Bulgakov develops the term as follows: ousia,

God’s nature, exists in two modes; on the one hand, it is personified by
three hypostases, on the other, it exists independently as God’s contents,
which is the divine Sophia, or the divine cosmos. In the act of creation,
God is liberating his contents as an independent being “outside” him-
self, or as Bulgakov puts it ‘the Divine being in Sophia receives another
being in the world.’45 According to Bulgakov, creation is God’s first
kenotic act, because kenosis [kenwviv] is the theological term for God’s
renunciation of his absoluteness.46 God’s incarnation in Christ was thus
the second kenotic act. The first kenotic act of creation corresponds to
the creation of the created Sophia ex nihilo.47 The created Sophia is the
world in which man is created as God’s image and likeness, as a created
hypostasis. This model claims an analogical structure of God and man,
i.e. the created hypostases live in the created nature [Sophia] like the
divine hypostases live in the divine nature. This is why the entire created

44
Bulgakov (1993), p. 24.
45
Bulgakov (2002), p. 46.
46
Mikhail Sergeev, Sophiology in Russian Orthodoxy: Solov’ev, Bulgakov, Losskii,
and Berdiaev (Lewiston N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006), p. 101; Paul L. Gavrilyuk,
‘The Kenotic Theology of Sergius Bulgakov’, Scottish Journal of Theology 58/3 (2005),
p. 251.
47
According to Helmut Dahm, the differentiation between the divine and created
Sophia corresponds to the Christian Creed on the invisible and the visible worlds (fac-
torem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium). Cf. Helmut Dahm, ‘Aufstieg zur
Weltgeltung,’ in Helmut Dahm, Assen Ignatow, (eds.), Geschichte der philosophischen
Traditionen Osteuropas (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 1996), p. 132.

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 SERGEY N. BULGAKOV’S CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY 185

cosmos should be understood as man’s body (and beauty). Bulgakov

uses the notion “anthropo-cosmos.”
In other words, in Bulgakov’s concept of man each human person cor-
responds to the individual and social mode of being of the divine
hypostases, while human nature corresponds to the universal mode of
being of the divine ousia. Therefore, Bulgakov’s Trinitarian concept of
man and of the world provides an original model, fit to explain the com-
plex relationship between individuality, society and nature. In fact, Bulga-
kov’s Trinitarian thinking is the result of his effort to reconcile three con-
cerns of modernity: to justify each person’s individual dignity and
autonomy (Kant), to embed each person in fruitful social relationships
(Orthodox conciliarity, or sobornost [sobornostà] or even in what Marx,
in the 6th Feuerbach thesis, called the “ensemble of social relations [Ensem-
ble der gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse]”)48 and to reinforce man’s creative
relationship to nature (Schelling). These issues bridge the gap between his
philosophy of economy and his theological sophiology.
To summarise, a simplified model of Bulgakov’s anthropology would
start with the main Christian dogma that the triune God is defined as the
unity of three individual hypostases in one ousia, one nature. Being in
God’s image and likeness, human beings constitute a multitude of hypostases,
united in one nature, namely the “world.” In this world, and because of
their common nature, human beings are able and supposed to live in the
same complex and loving relationship as the three divine hypostases
without losing their autonomous individualities.49 Bulgakov’s Trinitar-
ian teaching thus meets three crucial requirements of the modern Human
Rights concept: autonomy, “equivalent difference,” and common
humanity. In his late writings about Orthodoxy and economic life, Bul-
gakov gave a straightforward description of his fundamental criterion for
all kinds of human relations:
There is only one supreme value in the light of which economic forces
must be judged. That is freedom of personality, in law and in economy.
Then the best economic form — whatever its name, and however it com-
bines capitalism and socialism — is that which, in any given circumstances,
best assures personal liberty, protecting it from natural poverty and social
slavery.50

48
Karl Marx, ‘Thesen über Feuerbach,’ in Marx Engels Werkausgabe, Band 3 (Berlin
[DDR]: Dietz Verlag, 1983), p.6.
49
Besides, because of their nature being rooted in God’s nature, human beings are
able to live in the same complex relationship and communication with God.
50
Bulgakov (1935), p. 201.

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 186 R. ZWAHLEN

A professor of political economy, an Orthodox priest, and a theolo-

gian, Sergey Bulgakov was also a highly original and creative thinker. It
would be a pity to forget his speculative, yet inspiring ideas about a
Christian teaching on human dignity that is aware of such problems as
interpersonal recognition and responsibility, as well as of humankind’s
relation to nature and its environment, all of which are still of actual
relevance.

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