"Now is the Son of Man Glorified"

fourth in a series on Bulgakov's eschatology

Hagia Sophia Christ Enthroned ca. 1040

Bulgakov’s eschatology begins and ends with Jesus Christ. It begins with his ascension and glorification. It ends with the deification of all things through the full and fulsome sharing of his glory and power. In The Lamb of God, Bulgakov works it out along these lines:

1. Ascended and glorified, Christ, although he remains hidden, is not cut off from the world. Just the opposite, in fact: he is enthroned in the secret place that is its heart. And his royal, prophetic, and priestly ministry continues, Bulgakov argues, in four ways: (a) through his “holy image,” which is “imprinted” in the hearts of the faithful; (b) through the power of the Eucharist, which, because it is in the truest sense communion, mysteriously accomplishes the “unceasing sanctification of the elements of the world”; (c) through the ongoing suffering of Christ in the members of his body (cf Col. 1.24); and (d) through his energy at work in everyone and everything as its inmost and most determinative reality, its “immanent law” (p. 434).

2. Although we can and should distinguish Christ’s works in time from his work upon all times, we must not forget that these works (plural and temporal) are always essentially inseparable from the work (single and eternal) that gives the works their meaning. That is to say, eschatology is teleological and entelechial as well as apocalyptic, because all that Christ does is both historical and suprahistorical “at the same time.”

3. Jesus’ “Second Coming,” like his First, “is not a unilateral but a bilateral act.” And all that he does honors and sanctifies human freedom. Consequently, there are genuine contingencies at play in the playing out of God’s purposes in and for creation. Far from thwarting God or threatening our confidence, however, the reality of these contingencies testifies to Christ’s Spirit-led wisdom and creativity, which is the ground of all our hopes.

Here are some of the relevant passages. As always, they call for careful reading and re-reading: